I wanted to repay them. It had been several years. I found a suitable job and got married.  I remembered my great-grandmother and my own mother who had enabled this life for me. However, my great-grandmother passed too soon. I felt great sorrow in my inability to make it back sooner. For her well-being as well as my own, I tried my best to help my mother while she still clung to the world.  My mother and father lived back in our countryside home. Walking up the hill, the sky

A long time ago… During the U.S. military regime in Korea, measles was running rampant.  My neighborhood friends died off one by one. I often cried from the pain, and the neighborhood mothers cried with me, reminded of the young they couldn’t save.  It seemed as though I was recovering, but then it suddenly worsened.  My mother, determined to save me, carried me on her back and knelt in front of the village chairman, my great grandfather. She cried and cried and cried, pleadi

Everywhere Hak looked he saw remnants of his childhood: the smooth yellow dirt of the yard that was often laid with tables of crimson...

He had done this every day since her death. Her portrait stood at the head of the table, the warm smile shining over the multitude of traditional dishes he had prepared. He then lit the tried and true candles and bowed in commemoration with his son. But from his repeated ceremonies, the candle holder had become chipped and unbalanced. The candle toppled from its throne, and the fire spread rapidly, eager to escape its confines. It consumed the house; the historical pieces and

The afternoon Sun shone ahead, forcing Jo's eyes downward. As he walked forward, the sun’s heat imbuing into his hair, he stepped upon...