I sent Part I and Part II of the Girl From Deoksanggi Valley, a short story inspired by my observations traveling and exploring Korea, over the past two days. Now I send the full story. Jump to Part III to see the conclusion.
Deoksanggi Valley, Yeotan Village, Jeongseon County, Gangwon Province, 1999
Part I
"I see it!"
"Where? Where?!"
Kyung-hwa pushed herself up behind the rocks looking down over the bramble-filled field between the river and the mountainside and looked around desperately, but all she could see was the back of her brother Ji-hwan and his friend Sang-hoon.
"Hey, let me see!" Kyung-hwa said.
"Quiet! You're going to scare the weasel!" Ji-hwan shouted. Ji-hwan moved slightly, and Kyung-hwa squeezed herself in and held her legs against the edge of the rock. Still, she couldn't see anything resembling a weasel.
To the right, the field began to slope down ever steeper, and incendiary yellow primroses grew under and around the rocks leading to the riverbank. To the left, the terrain grew treacherous and rose steeply in the opposite direction, as spindly pine trees with narrow trunks and sparse branches grew taller and taller up the mountain. Straight ahead, crops like rapeseed, corn, and apples grew in the irrigated plots of land of the Deoksanggi Valley. The late afternoon sun cast a radiant golden glow over everything, almost making it look like the flowers were on fire.
The scene Kyung-hwa looked out over would look intoxicating to the foreign vagabonds and exhausted city slickers from Seoul who would take weekend road trips to Jeongseong County twenty years later and drank the local corn-brewed maekgeolli. But back then, the old homes hadn't yet been replaced by guesthouses. Back then, the only thing Kyung-hwa cared about was running through the fields, swimming in the stream, and trying to keep up with her brothers. And at that moment, the only thing that mattered was catching sight of a weasel.
"It was there a minute ago! I swear! I told you you scared it away!"
"Shut up, you fool."
The voice of Myung-hwan, their oldest brother, resounded from behind them.
"There was no weasel. Weasels don't come out until the sun goes down. They're nocturnal. You'll learn that when you get to do science in school."
"I told you!" Ji-hwan said to Sang-hoon.
"Did not!"
But Ji-hwan and Kyung-hwa had already descended the rock pile and were running towards Myung-hwan.
Kyung-hwa chased after her brothers. Myung-hwan, age 11, led the way, followed by Ji-hwan, nine, with the youngest, eight-year-old Kyung-hwa, just a step behind. Despite the fact that Sang-hoon was the same age as Ji-hwan and a head taller than Kyung-hwa, he was straggling two or three steps behind Kyung-hwa.
“Hey, wait up, you guys!” he said.
They ran over to the edge of the clearing between the neighbor’s farm and the meadow and the mountainside. There were a bunch of bushes leading up the mountain slope, getting thicker as the mountain got steeper. The kids climbed up, Kyung-hwa periodically going on her hands and knees when her little body couldn’t stand upright. Sang-hoon warned about snakes, but Myung-hwan and Ji-hwan said they could kill a snake, and Kyung-hwa believed she could, too. They found a bokbunja bush. The plant’s stalks were tall and spiky. Some of them even came up to Myung-hwan’s neck! Kyung-hwa looked around her and saw green stalks with pointy green leaves and red and black berries in all directions. The kids picked the berries and ate them. They bit into the ripe, dark black bokbunja brambleberries. The berries exploded with satisfyingly tart and delectable juice swirling over their tongues, activating their taste buds.
Then Myung-hwan told them to follow him to the apple orchard in the farm. Eomma and Appa told us not to wander into the neighbor’s farm and never to pick apples from the tree, Kyung-hwa thought. But they looked so tempting! What if the snake told them to eat it? Myung-hwan reached his hand up and grabbed an apple and gave it to Kyung-hwa. They heard a shouting from the house.
“Kyung-hwa! Ji-hwan! Myung-hwan! Get out of there! What did I tell you! Come in for dinner!” Eomma was yelling.
“You are so dirty!” Eomma scolded Kyung-hwa when she got inside. Dirt was on her hands she used to eat blackberries. Mud stuck to her knees from when she was climbing. A couple of scrapes on her arms from the thistles.
“How can a little girl get so dirty? That is not the way to be,” she said before telling Kyung-hwa to wash up and set the table. And why were you eating the apples off the tree?
“I didn’t do it!” she said while putting the metal chopsticks and wooden spoons out. “I saw you with the apple in your hand.” Her brothers were playing with their GI Joe toys.
Kyung-hwa longed for the freedom of her brothers. They got to run around more outside the supervision of Eomma and Appa. They need to grow strong, the parents would say. She wanted to be like Myung-hwan. Myung-hwan got the newest clothes and the best toys. She liked his action figures—army soldiers, Power Rangers, Superman (they weren’t always the name brands, and sometimes they looked a little different than they did in the cartoons on TV, but they were always fun and exciting, and she snuck around and played with them sometimes).
True, Myung-hwan didn’t have as much time to play now that he was going to weekend cram school. When he wasn’t at school, he had to do a lot of reading and homework. Kyung-hwa only started going to school last year, and she didn’t like it. The teachers made everyone stay in their desks all day and keep their indoor slippers on, and they made her not move in her seat. Lots of the boys moved around and even got up from their desks, but almost all the teachers didn’t do anything.
“Look at Chae-young! Look how well-behaved she is! Be like Chae-young!” they would say. Chae-young was "nice," "quiet," and "polite." She was the girl every girl was supposed to be like.
Kyung-hwa hated her.
Part II
After dinner, she and her brothers were back in the field in front of their house. Their only sources of light were the twinkling stars, the shining full moon, the flickering on and off of the fireflies, and a flashlight. Myung-hwan and Ji-hwan pulled out baseball bats, and the boys went to gather their friends. Kyung-hwa carried the flashlight. Sang-hoon returned with his 11-year-old brother, Byung-hoon, who was in the same classes as Myung-hwan. They had just learned about mammals, and the two older boys acted as experts on weasels now. Byung-hoon carried a baseball bat, too. He was braver than his younger brother.
“We need to look in these rocks by the mountain,” Myung-hwan explained. “Weasels like to hide underground all day and come out at night to kill the mice.”
They walked to a clearing in the trees where they had a good view of a lot of rocks and bumps in the ground. Kyung-hwa shined the flashlight back and forth. They didn’t see anything. “We can share, right? I want the baseball bat, too!” she said. “Later,” Myung-hwan dismissed her.
Kyung-hwa saw something move. She tilted the flashlight to the right and fixed it on a boulder. In the space underneath the boulder, she saw a brown point of fur with a black stub nose and whiskers. The weasel moved forward and its eyes and face came into view.
“Let’s get it!” Ji-hwan said.
“No, we must approach slowly. Don’t scare it,” Myung-hwan replied.
Myung-hwan and Byung-hoon went around the boulder to the right. Ji-hwan and Sang-hoon and Kyung-hwa went around to the left. Kyung-hwa picked up a stick from the ground and held it in her other hand. It was short and light and not as good as a baseball bat, but it would have to do if her stinky brother was going to be greedy with the bat.
When they got around to the other side, they didn’t see the weasel at first. There were so many shadows and trees and things blocking their lines of vision, it was hard to see what was where. Then, two piercing yellow eyes came into view straight ahead of them. The weasel was craning its neck, looking back at them, looking confused itself.
They all started running. The weasel dashed forward, a long, narrow ball of fur, a snake with clawed feet. In a burst, it jumped up the top of a rock and hid behind on the other side.
“Come out, you weasel! We know you’re there!” one of the boys shouted.
The weasel climbed up the back of the rock and bared its teeth, hissing at the five children, right in the spotlight Kyung-hwa shone from the flashlight. They froze for a moment. Kyung-hwa saw a larger stick on the ground and tried to pick it up, but the flashlight slipped while she was reaching for it, and the weasel was gone before anyone could see it. The weasel scurried up the mountain and moved from side to side in unpredictable zigzags past owls hooing in the trees and foxes watching in their dens.
Everyone started running up the mountain in a mad rush, but it kept getting steeper and steeper. The dirt went out from under Myung-hwan’s feet, and he slipped backwards. Sang-hoon got scared, and he held back. Kyung-hwa moved slowest, trying to keep her balance while carrying her stick in one hand and the flashlight in the other. Eventually, when everyone was exhausted and discouraged, they all stopped. Breathing heavily, her brothers glared at Kyung-hwa.
“You made the weasel get away! You moved the light!” Myung-hwan said and threw the baseball bat on the ground.
“You didn’t give me the bat like you said!”
“You can’t even swing the bat!! You’re a girl!!!”
Furious, Kyung-hwa picked up the bat from the dirt, walked over to a tree, and wielded the bat with all her might. It struck against the lowest branch. With a crack, the branch split in half.
Part III
“Eomma, my older brothers won’t let me play with them!” Kyung-hwa said the next day. When Myung-hwan and Ji-hwan were running around with their Super Robot Brave Rangers, Myung-hwan had said, no. He said you’d break it. You keep arguing and causing problems when we play.
Eomma shook her head and said, “You shouldn’t be running around with them.”
“That’s not fair!”
“You played with them yesterday. What did you do?”
“We almost caught a weasel!”
“Chasing a weasel is dangerous for a little girl. Why don’t you play with your dolls?”
“But Eomma, I don’t like to play with dolls!”
“You need to have some playmates your age. I was talking to Mrs. Park yesterday, Chae-young’s mommy. She said that Chae-young is lonely, too. I should set up a playdate for you.”
Kyung-hwa wanted to scream. She didn’t want to play with boring Chae-young. She just liked to dress up in play clothes and move the dolls around the rooms in her giant fake house.
Eomma dropped off Kyung-hwa at Chae-young’s house next door. Chae-young was sitting in the living room watching “Snow White” on the VHS machine. Snow White was traipsing through the forest as turtles and haires, squirrels and chipmunks, and deer sang to her. Kyung-hwa kept looking out the window. There were real animals out there. Finally the prince came to kiss Snow and take her to his castle. Blech! Who would want to live up high in a tower in some man’s remote castle?
Like a princess in one of those movies, Kyung-hwa was trapped in the cell built by her family and village. She got tossed into Chae-young’s house with increasing regularity on weekends and summer days when school was on break. Chae-young would always want to watch some frilly movie like “The Little Mermaid” or “Beauty and the Beast.” Chae-young loved the princess things.
There weren’t many copies of the original versions of the movies out in rural Korea back then, but the Chae-young had some aunts living in San Francisco and L.A. who would burn the movies onto tapes and send them over. They were all English. No subtitles. Their parents thought they could get better at English, too, by watching them. Chae-young also had the books of all the stories and the sequels and prequels and whole universes of stories.
The young Kyung-hwa didn’t know enough to be able to analyze the social messages in such movies. She just knew they were silly and boring. Why were the princesses content to sit around the castles just looking at flowers and talking to clocks and candlesticks? Why must she cook and clean the cabin for the dwarves every day? Doing all that just so some guy will kiss her? Some beastly guy who holds her in a dungeon?
Kyung-hwa tried to convince Chae-young to go out and climb the mountain or jump in the stream. She never wanted to. What if we get hurt? The biggest adventure she ever had with Chae-young was sneaking into Mrs. Park’s bathroom and finding where she kept her lipstick and taking some to try it on.
Kyung-hwa didn’t care much about trying it. But she liked the idea of sneaking in and finding it without getting caught. Chae-young had kept talking about how much she wanted to have beautiful lips and beautiful eyes and beautiful everything—just like her favorite princess, Cinderella. She couldn’t wait until she grew up and got to wear makeup like Mommy! Why wait? Why not go get it, Kyung-hwa said. Lipstick proved to be considerably easier to capture than a weasel.
The only Disney film Kyung-hwa kind of liked was “Aladdin.” (Curiously, Chae-young didn’t have any “Mulan” books or movies.) Princess Jasmine jumped the castle gates and went on an adventure! She went about the exciting street market and interacted with interesting people and fought back physically. And, another thing young Kyung-hwa didn’t fully understand at the time, Jasmine was different from the other Disney princesses. There she was in the depths of the marketplace giving orders to the palace guards. There she was rebelling against the people telling her how to dress. She wasn’t the one sacrificing her voice and her freedom to try to get the boy to kiss her.
But what Kyung-hwa liked most of all was the flying. Not because of the corny song, but because of the view flying over the highest towers, into the night sky, flying anywhere.
And there was another cartoon Kyung-hwa enjoyed. It wasn’t Disney. It was Japanese. An anime. Kiki’s Delivery Service. The witch got to fly around where ever she pleased on her own broomstick! It was she who rescued the boy.
In August, Kyung-hwa and her family went to the Seoul Air Base in Seongnam to see the Seoul Air Show. Kyung-hwa, Myung-hwan, and Ji-hwan sat on a blanket with Eomma and Appa. Kyung-hwa ate a deep-fried fish cake coated in a bread crumb and potato batter and slathered in ketchup and yellow mustard. The Black Eagles came flying in overhead in an eight-plane flying-V formation. They looked like the geese Kyung-hwa saw flying together in a V. They released red and blue smoke from their tail pipes. Then they turned and pulled up, flying straight up into the sun. The three planes in the back maneuvered to the front, and they continued pulling back at a steeper and steeper angle until they were upside down. They completed a loop.
The Black Eagles continued turning and changing angles and flying in and out of formations, releasing smoke across the sky. They would fly so close to each other. They would spin together. They would even fly at each other, making it look like they would hit, but just avoiding collision at the last possible moment.
"Wow," Kyung-hwa said. "I want to fly a plane."
Kyung-hwa and Eomma argued again that night. Kyung-hwa said she wanted to be an Air Force pilot. Eomma said that the military is no place for a girl. It is too violent. Girls must be nice! It is too dangerous. Soldiers need to be strong.
In the 1990s, even commercial flying was dangerous in Korea. In 1993, Asiana Airlines Flight 733 had crashed into Mt. Ungeo, on its third approach to the runway of the Mokpo Airport, causing the plane to almost unrecognizable pieces, and killing 68 of the 116 passengers and crew. Four years later, Korean Air 801 descended so quickly into the summit of Bijia Peak that the passengers didn't even have time to scream. Two-hundred twenty-nine perished. There were only 25 survivors.
Pilot wasn't considered a woman's job, either. Not a civil pilot and certainly not a fighter pilot. Ki-ok Kwon had been the first female Korean fighter pilot, flying with the Republic of China Air Force during the Japanese occupation, and helping to found the Korean Air Force. But she was history. Unknown history, at that. Her story wouldn't be told until 2005 when the biopic Blue Swallow came out. Back in the old days, Koreans would be surprised to even see a woman inside the cockpit of Korea Air.
And women in the military were even less common. Women made up less than two percent of the armed forces, and they were not assigned to combat units. Hazing by one's commanding officers against male and female soldiers was brutal. There were cases of conscripts being whipped, kicked, forced to lick dirt off the floors, choked, and force fed. Every year from 1993 through 1996, over 300 Korean soldiers were killed in incidents linked to hazing or suicide. Women in the military were treated as sexual objects, expected to serve as "flower girls" at drinking parties.
Kyung-hwa's mom loved her daughter. She thought her daughter was precious. She came from a traditional home, and she absorbed the lessons of her upbringing. Everything looked alright to her. Korea was getting richer. Life was better for her than it was for her mother, and it was going to be better for her daughter. She could get a better education than any previous generation of Koreans. She could even get a job with a prestigious conglomerate (a chaebol). They were hiring women now! And she could find a nice husband. Why would Kyung-hwa want anything more?
She loved her daughter. She just didn't know how to show it.
"I worry about Kyung-hwa," Eomma said to Appa before going to sleep.
I can't be a pilot?, Kyung-hwa thought. Girls can't run and chase weasels. Girls can't fight. Girls can't fly a plane. "It's not a girl's job." Forget it. Kiki can fly! She's a girl. All the witches I saw are girls. If I can't fly a plane, I'll fly a broomstick. I don't want to be a pilot, anyway! I want to be a witch.