New Staff Visits Halmonis!

On March 26th, 2021, our new staff member Jiwoo visited halmonis living in Gyeonggi province and Seoul. She shared the following personal reflection on her visits.

As a new staff member having only started 3 months ago, I could not calm down my nervousness as I prepared for my first ever meeting with halmoni. As I bought meat and snacks that halmoni would enjoy, I ran simulations in my head of how the meeting would play out. Determined to make a good first impression, I promised myself ahead of the meeting that I would start with a bright and warm greeting.

Despite all this mental preparation, we were greeted with silence when we arrived at the doorsteps of her house. Ringing the bell and shouting her name incurred no response and it was only after a phone call did the door finally open.

Halmoni’s long life had dimmed her hearing and sight. As our louder than usual, enthusiastic “Hello” echoed throughout the narrow corridor of her house, halmoni gave us a welcoming smile and gestured us to come in.

The small room to which we were led to soon turned lively as we began to unpack our prepared meat and snacks while halmoni prepared her own snacks for us. Despite our polite assurance that we were fine, halmoni had made up her mind that we had to eat something.

In a matter of seconds, we were all sitting in front of a table with an assortment of snacks consisting of Halmoni’s recent favourites, crab flavoured chips and vitamin energy drinks, and a delicately placed pile of fresh strawberries with neatly trimmed stubs.

Wasting no time, we raised our energy drinks as Halmoni made a welcoming toast with a loud “cheer.” All of sudden, Halmoni frowned as she looked at us.

“You shouldn’t drink while working. I am going to report this to your boss!”

We bursted out laughing at Halmoni’s humor.

As we continued on eating, our fellow activist Ppoka asked halmoni a question.

“Did you curl your hair halmoni? It looks pretty. Do you think I should curl my hair like yours?”

The curly white haired halmoni responded.

“Sure why not. You should try everything while you are still young.”

A seemingly excited Ppoka let her hair fall down. In truth, she had previously been scolded by halmoni for her hair and was still unsure how halmoni really felt about her curling it. Hearing jalmoni’s approval(?) was more than enough for Ppoka to show off her curly hair.

“Halmoni, what do you think of me?” asked Ppoka with her eyes glittering with anticipation.

Halmoni stared at Ppoka’s face for a bit and gave a quick response.

“Messy.”

Poka’s face sank with disappointment as she started tying her hair back up. The rest of us collapsed laughing at this hilarious scene. All the nervousness that we had previously felt before left us as halmoni’s amazing sense of humour brightened the small room. It almost felt as if we were visiting an old friend.

Impressed with halmoni’s sense of humour, our other activist Hang asked with admiration,

“You were popular back in the days, weren’t you Halmoni?”

“I sure was. I was always the best dressed person in town.” responded halmoni.

As we continued to chatter, I could notice halmoni constantly readjusting her jaw. It seemed that talking for long periods was putting a toll on her jaws and teeth. When asked if she had any sore spots on her body, halmoni explained that while her body was fine, her eyes and jaw were uncomfortable. For her convenience, we changed her ringtone and raised the notification volume on her phone so that she could easily hear phone calls and other notifications.

The long period of life had certainly left a mark on halmoni. Despite this, like halmoni herself had mentioned before, she was the coolest and loveliest halmoni I had ever met.

While most can say aging is normal, I couldn’t help but feel a wave of sadness sweep over me as I looked at halmoni.

In the month of April, when the essence of Spring flourishes and the flower buds explode in beautiful colours, we promised Halmoni that we would all go flower-viewing.

Until then, all I can hope is for time to treat her more gently.

<Seoul’s Fighting Halmoni>

Despite constantly running simulations before every one of our meetings with halmoni, it always seems impossible for me to imagine the scene after our greetings. The reason for this is because I don’t know what kind of person halmoni is and what kind of story she will tell us.

Ironically, none of my simulations proved to be correct. Instead of your normal ‘hello’, we were greeted with an enthusiastic fist bump and a fighting(korean saying used to encourage or cheer someone or something) cheer. Taken aback by halmoni’ stylish greeting, I quickly stopped myself from making an awkward formal greeting.

Our more veteran companions, activist Ppoka and Hang, on the other hand, seemed to be at complete ease with halmoni’s unorthodox greeting as they exchanged their own greetings with Halmoni. Looking at their interaction with Halmoni, I could see a warm and loving glint in their eyes akin to that of someone looking at an old friend. It seemed like there was a long and deep bond between them and Halmoni, something rookie activists like us wouldn’t understand. After our greetings had ended, we presented Halmoni with a gift: a soap made by our activist friend Peace Butterfly Network(a university student organization working on the Japanese military sexual slavery issue). A smile broke upon Halmoni’s face as she assured us that she would use the soap for washing her face.

Noticing how we were frozen in place by awkwardness, activist Ppoka and Hang introduced me and Minsu to Halmoni as new rookie activists. Halmoni gave us both a quick look and said a word,

“Little Chicks(nickname for rookie activists)?”

The almost century old halmoni decided she would open up her bundle of stories just for us rookie activists. Our bodies froze once again as we prepared ourselves for halmoni’s story. Coming from the rural area of North Hamgyeong Province(currently North Korea), halmoni’s country accent required our untrained ears to lean in closer to catch every word she said. Despite this, halmoni’s expressions spoke a thousand words, each with a certain emotion.

“I was told that my tailbone had been broken. While I wondered at first of how this could have happened, I realised that it must have been broken back when a Japanese soldier had stomped on my hip. I remember it being so painful that I had wet myself without noticing.”

As she talked, her eyes turned red with tears.

“The world is so much nicer these days.”

As halmoni repeated this sentence over and over again throughout her story, I couldn’t help but feel a sharp pain in my heart. For me, the world was still a long way from being nice. The fact that halmoni thought it was nice, therefore, made it impossible for me to truly grasp how much pain and suffering she had gone through in her life. I wondered if the present world was truly a nice place for halmoni to live in.

As we said our goodbyes, halmoni once again gave us her fighting cheer and fist bump. Rather than giving her comfort and joy, it felt like we had received it. Looking back on our meeting, I promised myself that I would always remember halmoni’s passionate fighting cheer whenever it gets too hard and continue pushing forward.

* For halmoni’s safety, every activist thoroughly sanitized their hands before interacting.

Translator: Jimmy Chae