The Girl From Deoksanggi Valley
Part I of a short story inspired by the Land of the Morning (un)Calm
Deoksanggi Valley, Yeotan Village, Jeongseon County, Gangwon Province, 1999
"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 But back then, the old homes hadn't yet been replaced by guesthouses.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.