History and the Stories of Ordinary People

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Since Lira House has shut down, I am moving the main text and the comments over here.

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Body

• This story is not from 2ch’s VIP board, but from the modern and contemporary history board.

1 A post for telling everyone the real, actual history that you heard from your grandfather or grandmother.

Encounters with famous historical figures Stories related to important historical events Stories where an ancestor was a hero, known only to that family And anything else, however trivial, as long as it’s interesting

Please write up stories like these. Personally, I’d like to hear stories from the opening of Japan up to the Russo-Japanese War.

11 The late grandmother of a girlfriend I used to date, when she was young, drank a milkshake for the first time in Ginza, Tokyo, and thought, “How can something this delicious exist in the world,” lol

13 This is a story from the late Taisho to early Showa period, but my great-grandmother, after graduating from elementary school, worked at the local prefectural industrial school while learning the automatic spinning machine. Since that was a very important skill at the time, she was paid a salary on the same level as an elementary school principal.

So every few months she would buy houses and land for her relatives. They say she was around 13 years old at the time, so it’s a story unimaginable in this day and age.

16 Come to think of it, my great-grandmother’s great-grandfather or grandfather was an attendant who guided the Tokugawa shogunate’s fishing and hunting outings. In return, he often received gifts like swords and clothing bearing the Tokugawa family’s hollyhock crest.

Once, when a relative’s kid got into a fight at school, he supposedly went to take revenge carrying that sword, lol A cousin who was a hoodlum in the Showa era carried a sword around as if it were nothing, but apparently never faced any sanctions for it…

There are various other stories too, but in any case, the laws seem to have been looser than they are now.

17

16 If it’s a real Tokugawa family sword, it’s amazing. Isn’t that an important cultural property now?

19

17 Is that so? Since there were supposedly about 10 of them, they’re probably not treasured swords but rather things commonly given as gifts. One of them seems to still be at my mother’s family home, but the rest were apparently requisitioned during the war. The other items were stacked up in the attic, but a typhoon blew the whole roof away and they were all lost, lol

Anyway, next year I’m thinking of going to my mother’s family home with a wad of cash to receive that sword, lol

37 This is a story about the Russo-Japanese War that my grandmother heard from her great-great-grandmother. My great-great-grandmother said that at the time, she thought there was absolutely no prospect of Japan defeating Russia. It is said that Japan won the Russo-Japanese War thanks to Admiral Togo…

38 I was really interested in how ordinary commoners of the time perceived historical facts, and the direction of this post is good.

39 I think the Russo-Japanese War was Russia’s suicide.

44 My grandfather was taken to Siberia but survived.

My grandmother thought she would die when a bomb fell during an air raid, but the bomb happened to land in the outhouse and didn’t go off.

48 In the Taisho era, my grandmother’s grandfather was a civil servant, and he received a horse as his retirement payment. But it was a very clever horse, and it would often run off while doing farm work, yet it would always come back home at dinnertime.

5

48 That’s hilarious wwwwww So laid-back lol

113 My late grandfather was dragged off to Nomonhan (translator’s note: a large-scale military clash between Japan and the Soviet Union in 1939. The Japanese army, whose equipment was poor at the time, suffered enormous casualties). Fortunately he returned without a single wound… Now that the Soviet side’s records have been released, it turns out both sides suffered great losses..

What he felt as someone who was there was:

“If there’s this much of a difference in equipment, there’s absolutely no way to win….”

115 My maternal grandfather, who died when I was 10, was deployed from Tokyo as a student soldier at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, and fought at Liaoyang and Mukden. Many of his university classmates volunteered too, but almost all of them died during the attack on Port Arthur.

So he hated General Nogi his whole life, saying, “Because of General Nogi, who ordered those reckless attacks, many good men died.” Even though he belonged to the Army, he revered Navy Admiral Togo like a god, and he even hung Togo’s photo in his living room.

During the Pacific War, he openly declared, “A war started by a madman like Hideki Tojo can never be won,” and because he supported candidates skeptical of the war in elections and hid liberals in his home, he was hauled off by the police, and plainclothes officers loitered near his house. Apparently, had he not been an officer of the veterans’ association, he would surely have been arrested.

But after the war ended, the very fact that he had been a veterans’ association officer became a problem, and he was greatly harassed by the communists.

“The war is finally over, but these commies are even nastier than the Special Higher Police were at their peak”

He lamented this often, but after the Korean War began, the communist forces collapsed again, and my maternal grandfather regained his power as a village notable.

119 My late grandmother, born in the Taisho era, was a young lady of an ultra-prestigious family who lived in central Osaka. She watched Takarazuka plays every day and went shopping at cake shops and chocolate stores run by foreigners in Kobe.

Even when the war broke out, she evacuated to a villa where she ate sukiyaki and ice cream without lack, and her younger brother used the sugar and starch syrup in the house as bait to pick up countless women…

She enjoyed a high level of culture nearly indistinguishable from modern times, but the fact that until the day she died she defended Hitler and Mussolini as great men on the grounds that they were “on Japan’s side” makes me feel the era.

145 My grandmother is 91 years old, and she says she met Heihachiro Togo, the naval admiral who led Japan to victory in the Russo-Japanese War. For some reason he came to the girls’ school my grandmother attended, and when my grandmother, as the student representative, said, “Your Excellency, please leave us a piece of calligraphy,” he said nothing and left a piece of writing in a magnificent hand. They say it still remains at the school.

She expected him to say a word or two, but from start to finish he didn’t utter a single word, so she never heard his voice. At first she even wondered whether he might be deaf, but the fact that he immediately wrote something when asked, “Please leave us a piece of calligraphy,” meant it wasn’t a disability.

235 My grandfather.

When he was young, he was acquainted with Soichiro Honda (translator’s note: the founder of the major corporation HONDA),

and when Soichiro Honda was first starting his motorcycle shop, he was invited, “Won’t you join me?”

but he turned it down because he didn’t think it would make money.

Ahh, Grandpa! You had no eye for it at all!!

237

235 At the time, in the neighborhood (Akasaka?), Honda was treated as a “speed freak,” a bit of a weird guy. No wonder.

247 This is a story I heard from my father… When my grandfather or great-grandfather was young, he lived next door to Yosano Akiko, “the mother of modern Japanese literature,” and at the time the neighbors apparently said, “Don’t play with that girl!” about Yosano Akiko.

She seems to have been a delinquent girl.

250

247 Well, it’s obvious nowadays, but back then a love marriage was considered improper. Since she showed a free-spirited disposition from that era, she couldn’t have been well regarded for that very reason.

252 My grandfather was in the Kwantung Army, and he was dragged off to Siberia until the war ended, returning in Showa 24 (1949). At that time my father was 5 years old, and since he only knew his own father from a photo, when he first saw his grandfather, who had changed and looked different from the photo, and was told “Your dad’s home,” he had no sense of it at all and, thinking it was some strange stranger, he ran away. It must have been painful for my grandfather too.

In the Siberian camp, everyone was malnourished, and comrades died every single day. A comrade who had said “Good night” the previous evening would be found dead in the morning.

“I can’t die in a place like this; I will definitely survive and return!” — thanks to constantly steeling himself with this strong resolve, he survived. Until he passed away 8 years ago, he cursed the Russians, and even his dying words were “Never trust the Russians.”

597 When my great-grandmother was young, Yamamoto Gonbee (translator’s note: a naval admiral during the Russo-Japanese War who also served twice as Prime Minister) apparently often passed by near her house in his commuter carriage.

So when the young great-grandmother called out, “Mr. Gonbee!” he would reply “Yes!” even though it was a commoner calling, and he politely saluted from his carriage.

599

597 If this story is true, isn’t it the highest-level story among all the stories in this post? She not only came into contact with the most powerful man of the time but even glimpsed his comical everyday side…

823 My grandfather was also someone who experienced Siberian internment.

To find out about the miserable realities of the Siberian internment, I asked my grandfather, but “The Russians were kind” came as a completely unexpected answer.

According to my grandfather, the Russian soldiers gave them their leftovers generously, and that’s how he was able to survive.

It’s really a rather absurd story, but my grandfather seems grateful for the very fact that he was able to return alive. Besides that, his stories were only things like: after the forced labor of farming was done, two gamsa (translator’s note: a typo for “gamja,” meaning potatoes) were distributed per person from the harvest, and they made rice cakes out of them. Well, just stories like that.

827

823 Even looking at wartime service records,

you can easily find records — even from people going “I can NEVER forgive the Soviet Union, aaaaaaaaah!!!” — saying the Russian people were unexpectedly kind. Mostly it’s food-related stories, though…

And there were also things hard to imagine in the Japanese army, like the story of a Soviet officer who was demoted to private for assaulting a prisoner.

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Comment

Noegong 2008/04/19 11:30
There are many interesting stories. I enjoyed it.

Teirua 2008/04/19 11:35
Sheesh.. I missed it..

By the way, the Russians were kind…

This may have been the case for the Japanese army, but it would not have been the same for the German army.

Heart Attack 2008/04/20 00:06
Back then, the Russians, the moment they saw a German, would’ve gone “Fascist!” lol;

Bean 2008/04/19 11:34
I really enjoyed reading it. I was very happy because I was studying history. Thank you for translating the thread! ^^

-_-ㅗ 2008/04/19 12:06
The Soviet soldiers were kind… maybe it was their personality… but surprisingly, there might have been some people who treated them well, calling them ‘fellow proletarians who were sacrificed by the imperialists’.

This is pure speculation… Putting aside what actually happened, they must have had a certain ‘moral comparative advantage’ in mind with the national mission of liberating oppressed people around the world through revolution in the future, so there may have been a policy aspect to their treatment of prisoners. It’s as if the Chinese socialist regime is a mess of human rights, but pays too much attention to gender equality.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been for the Germans at all.

Ernst 2008/04/19 14:31
It somehow reminds me of Noja Park…..

Hume 2008/04/19 23:11
It was the era of “fiscal” Russia. (translator’s note: a typo for “Imperial/Tsarist Russia” — jejeong Russia misspelled as jaejeong Russia) Russia before the revolution. Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War practically meant the collapse of Imperial Russia.

Wednesday 2008/04/19 23:41
“Fiscal” Russia….. huh? (translator’s note: poking fun at the typo in the comment above)

-_-ㅗ 2008/04/20 00:46
The story above is a mixture of the Russo-Japanese War and its aftermath, as well as the stories of people who had been interned ever since the Russo-Japanese War. It’s hard to say it was strictly during the Imperial Russia period.

Reina 2008/04/19 12:35
Lira, In the last line of 823, “gamsa” should be “gamja” (potato), I think..

Enjoyed the article~

Beast 2008/04/19 12:35
823// I think it’s “gamja” (potato), not “gamsa” keai0212 2008/04/19 12:37
The country may be bad, but the people may not be bad….

It’s okay to hate ideas, but don’t hate people.

What am I talking about?

Mimir 2008/04/19 12:41
Russian people are kind(?)

Good thread 2008/04/19 12:42
Continuing the flow, if you have a story here that you all know, please leave a comment ↓

Passing by 2008/04/19 12:57
It’s fun haha. If there’s something you really know, it might be interesting to write it down one by one. First of all, I…

My great-grandmother, born in 1905, actually met King Gojong. My family belongs to the Jeonju Lee clan, so I live in the Jeonju Lee clan village. Even now, more than half of the village residents are from the Jeonju Lee clan. I heard that during the late Joseon Dynasty when state affairs were in disarray (probably around the time of King Cheoljong’s accession to the throne), a person came from Seoul to look for someone worthy of ascending to the throne. For reference, his hometown was in Gimje, Jeollabuk-do. He was once the favorite of King Sejo, but it was a neighborhood where the descendants of Prince Im Yeong, the fourth son of King Sejong, lived (that is, distant relatives in the line of succession to the throne). It still takes 3 hours from Seoul to Gimje by bus, and the fact that he came to our neighborhood at that time… is, of course, a cross-section of history that shows how the society of the late Joseon Dynasty was a crucible of chaos.

asdf 2008/04/19 12:59
My grandfather was shot twice in the shoulder during the Korean War… Yet somehow his arm stayed intact…. And he could recite, his whole life long, some long public-service slogan from the Japanese colonial era, something like “Let’s pay our taxes on time.”

asdf 2008/04/19 13:04
And there’s an anecdote about my father: back when the student movement was thriving on campus, he had absolutely no interest in such things, kept his hair neatly trimmed, and usually wore something like a brown jacket, so whenever activist students spotted him, they’d shout “It’s a cop!” and run away…

Onyanko Club 2008/04/21 13:48
You’re lucky you weren’t mistaken for a prakchi (plainclothes police informant) and lynched.

Puhap 2008/04/19 13:10
…My grandfather’s ancient ancestor…

He was a monkey. He used to pick and eat bananas from the trees. He got tired of eating bananas, came down to the ground, and took to catching and eating termites, and since he used his hands so much to catch the termites, his intelligence naturally developed and his head got huge, all the fur on his body fell out… and before he knew it, when he turned to look, his tail had fallen off.

I had no idea my grandfather could do hair removal. He’s truly a great man.

ㅇㅎ 2008/04/19 13:13
It’s not fun… it has no concept…

ddd 2008/04/19 16:05
Australopithecus rather than monkey Besides, there are no bananas…

Hakka 2008/04/19 17:53
Well… people are harsh…

It’s true that it’s not funny, but it still makes me laugh.

coolbrain 2008/04/19 20:32
Smile first (laughter)

Eunkong 2008/04/20 08:54
It’s so boring I feel embarrassed reading this.

Asnarika 2008/04/21 02:49
Eunkong//Agree. It’s been a long time since I felt embarrassed while reading a comment.

Burning Longing 2008/04/21 08:07
I’m sorry, but you seem like a different ‘species’ than us.

Human ancestors were not monkeys

Humans and monkeys have the same ancestor;;

CHiKA 2008/04/21 11:02
Don’t post boring comments like this on ‘our’ Lira House.

Armed Communist Guerrilla 2008/04/19 14:00
My grandfather, who passed away a while ago.

In the North, his family was apparently quite a family of some standing. Not just wealthy, but a family of educated doctors-.-;

What’s more, his wife’s family was a landowner so big that people said, “You can’t walk anywhere without stepping on the Jang family’s land,” but sure enough, after liberation, when the Soviet army moved in, they were utterly ruined (..)

But according to my grandfather, he didn’t cross the 38th parallel with grim resolve, abandoning his hometown and property like others did. He had just gotten married, and the medical clinic work his older brother ran was so grueling that he used going to Seoul with his wife as an excuse and ran away;; Then he got hit by the June 25 (Korean War) and abruptly ended up a displaced person -.-;;;

2501 2008/04/19 14:02
235 Fainting.. After all, no one knows the future..

Ernst 2008/04/19 14:31
They say my grandfather, grandmother, and father lived on an island.

During the Japanese colonial era, there was one policeman (really a policeman, named Officer Park…),

and he had a very good reputation, doing things like carrying home an old man who had fallen asleep drunk.

My father served in the military in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

At the time, the sitting president died and a certain someone (famous from the movie “Splendid Holiday”) staged a coup.

So my father, a soldier at the time, says it was a “super emergency” (because it was a coup, not North Korea).

That’s what he said. I didn’t ask anything after that.

Simonan 2008/04/19 14:32
My 5th-generation ancestor is said to have served as a gamchal (inspector) of the Saheonbu during the Korean Empire. Later he is said to have even risen to Daesaheon (the head of the Saheonbu). Put simply, you could think of him as having served as the head of an institution roughly like the Prosecutors’ Office or the Board of Audit and Inspection. We still have the letter of appointment at home.

Of course, since the Korean Empire fell after he was appointed, his term was short. They say he was only able to work for a few months.

Skynet 2008/04/19 17:15
My grandfather was conscripted from his hometown during the Korean War, not long after he’d gotten married, but thanks to having learned English somewhat early and diligently back then, he was reassigned to an administrative post connected to the U.S. military. Because of that, he got to share in various supply rations, which helped the household, and around the time of the January 4 retreat, my grandmother, who had been with him the whole time, had a subtle hunch that “this doesn’t feel right,” so they grabbed the personal belongings and pay they’d been holding and fled. If they had stayed with the unit, they’d have been swept up by the Chinese army and met with disaster, apparently..

But because of this, his military record wasn’t properly kept, so he ended up serving in the army twice ㅠㅠㅠㅜㅠㅜㅠㅜㅠㅜㅠㅜ Poor Grandpa.

Taki-kun 2008/04/19 14:58
They are all of a high level, but all I knew as a child was that my grandmother’s cousin was in North Korea, and one day he was seen on TV as a high-ranking government official. Of course, he has passed away now.

r 2008/04/19 16:07
It is said that my grandmother once cooked food for the North Korean soldiers who came down from the mountains during the Korean War. It seemed like he calmly returned to the mountain after eating. By the way, Yamamoto Gonbei is suspected of being a lolicon.

Hey cat, bark like a dog 2008/04/19 17:52
If you look at modern literature dealing with the Korean War, you often see tragedies where someone is killed by the ROK army for having fed the People’s Army, or killed by the People’s Army for refusing to feed them.

My grandfather (probably in his mid-40s at the time) fed and sheltered the People’s Army, and somehow, in the process, also ended up drinking and hanging out with the ROK soldiers. With his outlandish craftiness he came through the “Hampyeong civilian massacre” unharmed, and after the war, through some soldier’s introduction, he even became a civil servant in Hampyeong County despite having no formal education_-;;;

I respect you, Grandpa. Thanks to that craftiness, I’m here today.

Hwaa 2008/04/19 19:47
Wow, this is valuable information from the grassroots level at the time. The text or the comments.

Ethel 2008/04/19 19:57
My grandfather was a middle school teacher. It is said that he encouraged voting fraud during the 3.15 rigged election ^_^ Vote for Rhee Seung-man at the polling booth. Is Rhee Seung-man saying this after pulling up the polling booth curtain? Since he was a civil servant, he just did what the government told him to do. Grandpa Jimotmi ㅜㅜ

Tank 2008/04/19 19:59
As for the Siberia story, my maternal grandfather’s story is that the Soviet Union was a multi-ethnic country at the time, so different peoples’ origins behaved differently. For example, soldiers from one side were treated kindly, but soldiers from the other side said that if they held out their hands without saying anything, they had to give something, and if they didn’t give it to them, they showed vicious behavior by killing them on the spot.

Ernst 2008/04/19 23:01
I’m interested in that story.

Because the Soviet Union was such a large region.

So, I think treatment in the Soviet Union changed depending on one’s background. And I think the same is true for North Korea, which was influenced by the Soviet Union.

Hmm 2008/04/19 20:12
I don’t think my ancestors did anything special. Isn’t this strange? (….)

Bad handwriting 2008/04/19 20:27
My paternal grandmother’s hometown is a mountain village in the Gaema Plateau. The reason she married into my grandfather’s house near Wonsan Port at the age of 19 was that “the Japanese were rounding up young girls, and she was afraid she’d be dragged off”… On the other hand, my maternal grandmother’s family was in Chungcheong Province, and my maternal grandmother’s father was a local notable during the Japanese colonial period (so basically a pro-Japanese collaborator =_=). If the war hadn’t broken out, my parents would never have met in their whole lives.

coolbrain 2008/04/19 20:30
Actually, in our country you don’t have to go back all that far…

I heard that my father was almost dragged off to the Samcheong Re-education Camp because of a tattoo (childishly, ‘love’) he’d had inked on his forearm as a joke during his military days.

I mean, even people who are around 30 now lived through the so-called “Jeon-ttaeng News” in their childhood….

rhflffk 2009/01/17 08:17
It’s not “Jeon-ttaeng,” it’s “Ttaeng-jeon.” It refers to 9 o’clock. Beep. Beep. Beep. Ding~ “President Chun Doo-X today, at the Blue House…” (translator’s note: “Ttaeng-jeon News” mocked how the Chun Doo-hwan-era 9 p.m. news always led with him the instant the time signal chimed)

Mild Seven 2008/04/19 20:37
Around 1935, when my grandfather first started working in Seoul at the age of 16, he bought a bicycle, which was the ultra-cutting-edge machine of the time, and when he came down to his hometown of Wando to help with the family’s affairs, he brought the bicycle tied up and carried it with him. Of course the reaction of those around him was “Wow, that’s amazing!” “I’ve never seen anything like that!” … My grandmother, too, seems to have been reeled in by the sight of him riding around on the bicycle, and it looks like I’ve inherited the blood of my grandfather, who to this day still loves to show off things like a PS3 or the latest cell phone ^^;

Lemon Lime 2008/04/19 20:40
My great-granduncle? was an independence activist. But my grandfather actually went off to study at Waseda University, got conscripted there on the spot;; and suddenly became a Japanese soldier!?… so the mood at home was a little uncomfortable. My grandfather, having grown up coddled since the family was among the local notables, only knew how to read books and could hardly do anything else, so I think he just kind of drifted into being a Japanese soldier going with the flow….-0-;;

Oh, come to think of it, when my grandfather went to fight in Manchuria(?)… who was it again, that famous general… Kim Jwa-jin? Anyway, when he came back from there, he caught a tiger barehanded and made a backpack out of its skin. But while the family was evacuating after the Korean War broke out, since my grandfather’s house was the biggest, it was made into an enemy camp, and when they returned to their hometown after the war, that tiger-skin backpack was gone. Someone must have stolen it. Ah, what a waste, dammit, it was a dream…

Lara 2008/04/19 20:48
My friend’s uncle served as a riot soldier during the Gwangju Democratization Movement..= = ; ; It is said that he suffered mentally for a while after returning.

Me 2008/04/19 21:08
My mother’s great-aunt lived in a wealthy house somewhere near the boundary between North and South Korea. Her way of thinking was dichotomous: that humans are divided into the noble class and the lowborn.

When the South Korean army came to mooch food, they barged all the way into the inner room and yelled at the top of their lungs to hand over food, so the family fed them while trembling with fear and sent them off. But when the North Korean army came to mooch food, the rank-and-file waited outside the house, and only the commanding officer came into the yard and politely asked, “Could we trouble you for a meal?”

The great-aunt said, “All the South’s propaganda is a lie. The South Korean soldiers are the lowborn and the North Korean soldiers are the nobles.” As a child I just took that at face value, but my dad’s interpretation was brilliant. Dad said, “So it really was a bukchim (invasion of the North) — meaning North Korea invaded first — not a namchim. Compared to the hastily thrown-together, ragtag South Korean army, the North Korean army was prepared and well-trained.”

Melomero 2008/04/20 20:18
Your father’s interpretation is really cool… wow, nice.

Wind volume 2008/04/21 17:17
But you’ve got the terminology mixed up. namchim (남침) -> to invade the south bukchim (북침) -> to invade the north In other words, since North Korea invaded the south, namchim is the correct term. Why is no one pointing this out ㅡㅡ;;

Elephant Elisa 2008/04/22 13:44
Wind volume // See the reply by ‘I am;;;’ just below… […]

Me 2008/04/22 16:29
Ah, sorry for the momentary mix-up in terminology;; [a bit embarrassing] But honestly, everyone gets what I mean, right? (wink)

Wow 2008/04/19 21:33
This is fun, owner. Thanks, thanks. Couldn’t you translate lots more stuff like this in the future??

I am;;; 2008/04/19 21:49
It was a namchim (southward invasion) of June 25 by North Korea. The orthodox theory is that since North Korea invaded the South, it’s a namchim, while some scholars claim South Korea struck North Korea first and so use the term bukchim.

Elephant Elisa 2008/04/19 23:30
It’s an important difference of whether the word takes the object or the subject;

Me too once 2008/04/19 21:49
This is a story that is a bit out of date and of little use. My paternal grandfather was killed in the Vietnam War. As the descendant of someone who served the country, my father received various benefits. Sometimes, I have a nagging thought that I wish the benefits would extend to me as well…^^;;

And all the items from that era still remain in my parents’ home. Mainly things like fans and radios, but they still work properly. I really use the fan especially in the summer….

d 2008/04/19 21:57
Wow, the quality of comments on this post is high.

New Ruri 2008/04/19 22:13
It’s not a big deal, but I did it once too.

My father’s hometown is in the countryside right near Jiri Mountain. I don’t know exactly what year it was, but when my grandfather was young, I heard that so-called partisans came down to the village, gathered the villagers at the playground of a nearby elementary school, and shot them to death. None of our relatives were harmed (I don’t know what it would be like for relatives who are 8th cousins;), but that’s because everyone in the rural villages knew each other at the time. He said that a lot of people like him, a man from a nearby neighborhood, also died. My father also sometimes said things like, “Someone’s uncle in my hometown died at that time.” That’s why many families still hold ancestral rites on the same day.

Well 2008/04/19 22:17
I don’t have any great stories either.

I heard a few stories from my grandmother when I was young. My grandmother had several older brothers [three or four? I don’t remember exactly;;], and the story goes that one of them became a ROK Army soldier and one became a North Korean People’s Army soldier. She said the brother who joined the People’s Army was so brilliant and sharp at the time that she suspected that’s why he fell into communism. Anyway, it seems both of them died in the war, and because my grandmother’s side had relatives like that, even when my father’s brothers tried to go to a military academy, they couldn’t. Well, it seems it got better after about 10 years [my youngest uncle did ROTC and was commissioned as an officer;]

What can I say, it was a very bitter and sad story. I only heard it once, but I still remember it.

Futaba 2008/04/23 03:29
This is a story that comes to mind while waving the Taegeukgi…

Zzz…(la_sola) 2008/04/19 22:34
We… there’s nothing special. It’s just that my maternal grandmother came down from North Korea in 625… I’m glad everyone came down safely, otherwise it would have been TV-worthy.

Then I go to the world of eternal diving…Zzz

ㅇㅇ 2008/04/19 22:58
The story of the daughter of a wealthy family who ate ice cream with hot pot even during the war is impressive.

Ernst 2008/04/19 23:20
I just asked my grandfather,

It is said that the People’s Army came during the Korean War and did a lot of labor. Mainly digging…

And someone my grandfather knows lived in Busan during the Japanese colonial era and went to the island. It is said that he was so hungry that he ate human flesh (by killing people).

They say he passed away a long time ago, but he didn’t say what it tasted like.

And an old man I once saw at my maternal grandfather’s funeral said that during the Korean War, someone he knew was killed by

a People’s Army sniper’s bullet. When sniping, it’s hard to hit someone who is below the shooter, but it’s easy to hit (take aim at) someone who is above the shooter.

So some people, when the People’s Army came, ran up the mountain to flee,

and they got shot and killed, they say.

It reminds me of the movie The Godfather (1972) where a police officer aims his gun at a person running up the stairs and shoots him.

(From now on, this is not really true) For reference, meat should be cut with a knife before being fed, but people who die from gunfire are killed by gunpowder even if the bullet is removed.

They say it takes away the taste of meat. In addition, it is said that the submachine guns used at the time were difficult to use while eating meat because the bullets were lodged in them rather than penetrating. Moreover, because it was automatic shooting, the bullets got stuck so much that the color of the blood was strange and it was said to be not good anyway.

Still, it is said that it was easy to eat something whose shape was difficult to recognize due to gunshot wounds. It is said that it was difficult to eat the ones with their entire shape intact. (Please imagine for yourself what kind of meat it is)

And no matter how much training you have when it comes to killing someone, it is said that you will hesitate the first time you kill someone. In that case, it is said that if you think of them as beasts or animals rather than people, you can easily kill them. (So-called ‘othering’)

It is said that the reason the military teaches that “our main enemy is xx” is to prevent battle fatigue by giving them a sense of purpose.

Diarrhea Legend 2008/04/20 02:20
Does it make sense to say that if you run over someone shooting a gun, you will be shot to death? Is this because it is easy for the muzzle to go up when holding a gun and shooting, but difficult to go down?

Minseok 2008/04/19 23:49
It’s not a big deal for me either… The North Korean People’s Army invaded the neighborhood where my grandmother lived, but they just left it alone and went somewhere else, and other relatives took refuge at my grandmother’s house.

You said that the People’s Army told you to sing something and made you memorize the song, and that kind of thing happened, but other than that, it was a war, but it was different because there was nothing else to do.

In short, nothing much happened during the war. This is it.(….)

Er 2008/04/20 00:11
In the case of my grandmother, she took refuge in Busan during the Korean War. Even during the war, spring came and flowers bloomed, so she often told me about how she carried a basket, packed a lunch, and went on a picnic with local girls (natives and refugees). Everyone was digging for vegetables and chatting about various things, and then went to a cave to wash themselves. There was a cave inside a large hill on that mountain, and there was a spring with cold water in the middle of summer and warm water in the winter. Now that I think about it, I think it was probably a hot spring area^^;

Hamburger 2008/04/20 00:33
Trackback. It’s too long to write as a comment. My grandfather was also kidnapped during the Japanese colonial period.

Wind sound 2008/04/20 01:37
Although this is not the story of my grandmother’s generation; My maternal family is from Gwangju. It seems things were truly grim when that “Jeon-ttaeng” guy was in power. They say there were countless incidents of people being beaten down and dragged off in the streets. My mother was a high school student during the Gwangju Democratization Movement, and once, while walking down the street with her eldest nephew on her back, she heard gunfire, so she shoved the nephew into a nearby handcart and shielded him with her body. She thought she had to save this child no matter what; After that, my grandmother practically locked my mother in the house, afraid something might happen. She said it was incredibly chaotic because the phones didn’t work and you couldn’t go out or come in. Even after the citizens’ militia rose up, ordinary citizens were so naive that they worried it might turn into a riot; Still, it seems people pooled rice and kimchi together to give to the citizen soldiers. The militia members carried weapons too, so they moved around extremely carefully, afraid that things might turn ugly. And my youngest uncle was in Seoul, so he didn’t get caught up in it (my grandmother cursed that, given his very fierce temper, he’d have joined the citizens’ militia if he’d been there; in fact, many of my uncle’s friends died at that time). But after the Gwangju Incident, when he went into the military, he faced terrible hazing as “a Gwangju guy — one of those over whom the commies came in and put the army through hell.” But he had such a hot temper --; that he fought back against every bit of hazing thrown his way, until in the end the other side caved and begged him for mercy. It must have taken him an enormous amount of suffering to get to that point, but he wouldn’t talk about that part. On top of that, my father, who lived in Seoul at the time, said he genuinely had no idea what was happening in Gwangju. All mass media was completely blocked, so people outside Gwangju really thought it was a North Korean spy incident. That’s why my mother to this day doesn’t trust the mass media --; Sometimes my father says that if only the internet had existed, Chun couldn’t have pulled off what he did.

dd 2008/09/28 21:33
My mother was also working as a banker in Seoul at the time, and one day she suddenly stopped answering the phone or sending me letters, so she looked towards Gwangju and cried every night.

Wind sound 2008/04/20 01:50
Ah, the story of grandma. You know how during the Japanese colonial era there was the Soshi-kaimei (the forced change to Japanese-style names)? My grandmother did it too, but the village mood at the time was just, “The government says to do it,” without much deeper meaning. Changing the name was one thing, but no one actually went around calling each other by them -_-; She’d say “It was Shufuku, or Ofuku, or something like that,” and the atmosphere was so relaxed that the granddaughter who was listening was dumbfounded… And my grandfather was incredibly tall for the time and a real stylish modern dandy. (He died when my mother was three, so I don’t even know his face;) But even after marrying, he’d just sit around all day supposedly “making something,” which frustrated my grandmother so much that one time she burned every one of the designs my grandfather had sketched out. What he’d been working on was “a machine that automatically plants rice seedlings (…)” (…). Later, after my grandfather passed away, such a machine really did come out, and she realized he had been ahead of his time after all. …If only she hadn’t burned them, by now… OTL

Minseok 2008/04/20 02:20
Oh, one more thing. It’s about when Uncle Jeon was around and when the democratic uprising broke out in Gwangju.

At that time, when college students were protesting, they said that in the front, students from the sports department (so-called good students) linked arms and took the lead in moving forward, while other college students followed behind and protested in the back.

However, when they protested like that, the suppression began, and they said that when the suppression began, the ranks were broken. It is said that the ranks were disorganized and everyone started running away. He was running away from the military and police, and the police were chasing him from behind. At that time, a large man (in the sports world) saved a woman. And those two met so well that they became my friend’s parents.(…………)

er 2008/04/20 02:54
Oh, by the way, one more story about my house. My grandfather was a bastard (and the son of his third wife, that is, his second concubine;;). However, my great-grandmother did not even marry for the first time. I have some doubts about what my great-grandfather did….-ㅂ-;;; Judging by the way the eldest grandfather (…i.e., the legitimate eldest son;;;) lived, it seemed like he was a very wealthy family, but since he had no wealth to return to his illegitimate son, the grandfather took a boat. So, my grandfather’s occupation was Madoros +_+ It must have been rare for people to have been to the Philippines, the United States, or India in those days. But thanks to that, my grandmother is a half-widow…ㅠㅠ I think we saw each other twice a year. Even though my grandfather died young, it’s amazing that my father, my aunts, and my uncle were all born. Anyway, my grandmother received rare gifts (…) every time my grandfather returned home, representative examples include salami as thick as thighs, Indian sarasa, red velvet from Macau, etc… So, my grandfather was a fashion leader when he was alive. Hanbok made from Indian sarasa, this is cool -_ㅠb Oh, and they cut the sausage into chunks and fried it with kimchi….=ㅂ=;;; I heard it was delicious. People really like budae stew these days too haha.

Hmm 2008/04/20 03:11
When my maternal great-grandmother was young, she won a sericulture competition or something in Haeju, Hwanghae Province, and came to Seoul to receive an award. Queen Myeongseong gave her the award.

Eunkong 2008/04/20 09:13
When I was young, I was playing a Dragon Ball game on the Famicom, and my grandfather, who was behind me, smoothly read out the lines in the game. Up until then, I just thought, “Wow, Grandpa speaks Japanese well too..”

But I found out later that my great-great-grandfather was a policeman during the Japanese colonial era; Thanks to that, my grandfather even went to study in Tokyo. After the Japanese era ended, my grandfather, being quite an intellectual for the time, held some post at a government office, but stepped down over a bribery(;) case, and then, using the skills he’d picked up while studying in Tokyo, he became a Japanese cuisine chef.

Heh heh;

Hehe 2008/04/20 07:46
Stories from our country are definitely more interesting. I keep going back and forth and checking to see if there are any more ripples~_~ Oh 2008/04/20 09:17
My grandparents both died before I was born. I feel a little heartbroken because I can’t join in.

xenia 2008/04/20 09:22
In our country, this is not a thing of the distant past. ^^ ‘That’ happened in Gwangju when I was in kindergarten.

At the time, I lived on the road from the courthouse to the provincial office (Chosun University is in between), and when I was leaving to go to kindergarten in the morning, I was surprised to see soldiers and a tank (^^;;;;;) passing by. Mom said the tank was passing by, and then she said that today was a day she didn’t have to go. ^^ Now that I think about it, I wonder if it was something like an armored vehicle, but at the time, it was just a tank… ^^

My younger sister was 3 years old at the time, and my father was carrying her up on the roof. She also said that she came down because she was scared of getting shot when she saw people carrying guns and carrying something like a straw going up the hill behind the neighborhood (where the city library is now built). It was probably a suppression force at the time.

My grandfather was a landowner, and my maternal grandmother was from the Jiri Mountain partisans. ^^;;; My maternal grandmother worked as a tenant farmer at my grandfather’s house after coming down from the mountain, and my father fell in love with the tenant farmer’s daughter and married her… ^^;;; My maternal grandmother is still suffering from the aftereffects of torture. There are many scars all over the body… There were many unfortunate things that happened in the era of ideology…

Dodge 2008/04/20 14:15
Now that I think about it, there seems to be a lot more content in such posts in Korea than in Japan. During my great-grandfather’s time, it was the Japanese colonial era, Yukio, military regime… Even during my grandfather’s time, it was the Japanese colonial era, Yukio, military regime… During my father’s time, after Yukio, there was a military regime… Regionally, Gwangju is a democratization protest… Jeju is 4.3… etc… Looking back, our country’s modern and contemporary history smells bloody…

Hmm 2008/04/20 14:37
My grandfather and grandmother said that I changed my name at the beginning, but there was no strong opposition, so I just said so because they told me to and moved on. My maternal grandmother went to school during the Japanese colonial period, so she knew some Japanese. So my mother also learned something from my grandmother… Now that I think about it, there is no eventful family history in my house. However, because it was a rural area, it was common in Japan to starve, let alone eat rice, due to rice exploitation.

At the time of the Korean War, there were no mountains nearby, so partisans were a story of strangers, and my maternal grandfather and grandfather both returned safely from the war without any injuries.

My uncle fought in the Vietnam War, and these days, when he watches TV, he says he’s lucky he didn’t have any aftereffects from the defoliant. After he was discharged from the military, he went to the Middle East to work. When I was young, I was fascinated to see pictures of the desert in my drawer.

When I think about it, I’m at the level of an ordinary citizen…

There are a lot of stories about Gwangju 2008/04/20 17:32
My college classmate’s father served in the suppression force during the Gwangju Democratization Movement. It is said that he was so scared of the militia that he hid under the bridge for several days.

Thinking about it now, he may have run away and told his son that he didn’t know because he didn’t want to talk about it in detail… Krasse 2008/04/20 17:37
235….I can’t help but cry. Lower Jaw Adult 2008/04/20 19:03
My grandfather and my maternal grandfather were both veterans of the Korean War. However, although my grandfather had a hard time in the front lines, my maternal grandfather was born in Japan and went to middle school there, so thanks to that he ended up in the rear lines. And my maternal grandfather’s uncle became a leftist anti-Japanese activist. It is unclear whether it was after liberation or before, but he founded a small school in Haenam, Jeolla Province. However, he eventually passed away during the chaos after liberation. Anyway, after the war, my grandfather worked as a farmer in his hometown, and my maternal grandfather tried to remain a soldier and was eventually discharged. My first aunt was also present during the Gwangju Democratization Movement.

ㅇㅇㅇ 2008/04/20 20:10
My great-grandfather went to Japan because it was difficult to farm and live in his hometown, but the Great Kanto Earthquake occurred and the Japanese were so vicious that they killed Koreans, so he tried to stay if possible, but eventually returned to his hometown. That’s what my father said. Well, if my great-grandfather had stayed in Japan, I might not have been born and I might have become a Korean in Japan.

Cask 2008/04/20 20:39
My hometown (my elders’ hometown) is the countryside of Uiryeong, Gyeongsangnam-do, and during the Korean War the village served as a North Korean army field hospital. The chief medical officer held the rank of lieutenant colonel, and he was a warm, courteous, “thoroughly decent” man. They took three cows for use as patients and ate them. Later, when the unit withdrew, they brought two horses and gave them to them, saying they were sorry for killing the cows, which were all the farmers’ property, and told them to use them to do farming with the horses. So there were two horses in the village, and young people would ride the horses and run around the ridge in front of the village, but they would sometimes fall and get hurt. Then one of them fell from a bridge without railings and died, and there was only one left, but when they returned, the police station confiscated it as a communist item, and the villagers took it to the police station and cursed them a lot. I found out later that the police chief was riding that horse.

Haha 2008/04/20 20:53
My maternal grandfather was during the colonial period. It is said that he received something like a conscription warrant(?).

The atmosphere at the time was that going to conscription almost felt like “going to die.” Drinking alcohol for free and playing a bit of trouble in the village It was said that everyone closed their eyes.

The day the conscription was called…

You even remember the date exactly.

August 15, 1945…;;

First of all, there are rumors that the Japanese army has surrendered. Because it is not possible to check information clearly on the Internet like now, He hid in a local hill directly overlooking the local school playground (convocation location).

First of all, I’ll pay attention to it, and if it’s in the mood to check in, I’ll try to chase after it.

But are people really all thinking the same way? None of the young people scheduled to convene that day showed up. They say they only saw cigarette smoke here and there in the mountains..^^

Pyeonggun 2008/04/20 23:55
Well… I’m from Jeju, so it’s hard to hear about the June 25 incident;; However, the April 3rd Incident may have been a big issue, so he was reluctant to talk about it…

Snake 2008/04/21 00:48
There are a lot of really interesting stories haha. I’ll have to ask them when I get home. My grandfather was a military officer and my maternal grandfather and grandmother came from North Korea… I think there are quite a few stories to be told.

Anonymous lol 2008/04/21 02:22
My grandmother was standing at the well across from her house during the Korean War. Tanks and military trucks started approaching the road between the well and the house, so my great-grandmother quickly came over! He shouted and ran across the street like crazy, but tanks passed by there for three days, and it wasn’t long before the village was completely devastated by an air raid. ㅇ<-< Wow, if grandma hadn’t come running at that time, I wouldn’t have been able to play the keyboard here.

Whenever I hear stories like that from my grandparents, I feel like war should never happen ㄱ;;; It’s terrible to think about my really important family and friends becoming like that;; This post really made me think about many things ^3^ I enjoyed it~ Lira and everyone who left comments haha

Tamanu 2008/04/21 07:48
Looking at the replies to this post, there are a lot of interesting stories.

My grandfather and grandmother were trying to receive rice provided by the Bodo Federation, but they ran out and were upset because they couldn’t receive it. A few months later, they said they were upset when they saw that all the people who had received the grain were taken away and shot to death.

Goyang, look dumb 2008/04/21 08:18
The Taegeukgi is waving.

Among the people who are actually leaving comments here right now People who almost never were born if they were to be honest How many… haha

Anonymous passing by 2008/04/21 10:32
These comments seem really great

My maternal grandmother was the owner of a wealthy family in Pyongyang, but they say she abandoned her house and land in the chaos and crossed the 38th parallel to the south. Before that, he went to a prestigious school in Pyongyang and was said to be an elite in his own right.

Onyanko Club 2008/04/21 14:00
My house is in Busan…there is no war story~ but there is nothing special… This thread is fun.

There’s a story about a Japanese police officer mentioned above. A few years ago, on TV, an elderly woman in the countryside was looking for an elementary school eunsa (since it was the Japanese colonial era). He was a Japanese teacher (I went all the way to Japan and met him). Even though he gave classes wearing a sword, he was the one who showed me what an educator is. The wife works with local women… and has a good reputation~

It was quite a shock to me, who thought that all seniors who lived during the Japanese colonial era would hate Japan!

Dora 2009/02/18 15:20
Suddenly, I remember an article I saw a while ago. It contained an interview with a grandfather and grandmother who lived during the Japanese colonial era. While the grandfather had a very negative evaluation of Japan, the grandmother said, ‘Still, there are things to learn from Japan…’ ‘Well, he said something with this kind of nuance. I thought there were exceptions.

goo~ 2008/04/21 17:46
They say my grandfather was a great genius (from what I heard). He graduated from Waseda University, and from what I see in the photo, he is literally a knowledge elite type. After graduating from college, he worked as a high-ranking police officer in Japan and amassed a considerable amount of wealth. However, when liberation suddenly came, it is said that he exchanged all his wealth into gold, put it in a bag, and boarded the return ship. At that time, the return flight was completely chaotic… I endured it and arrived in Busan.

……Nothing?

In the end, it is said that he fell into despair and spent the rest of his life drinking while teaching local children before passing away early. Meanwhile, the family completely collapsed. It is said that the angry grandmother burned all the writings that the grandfather left behind when he passed away.ㅡㅡ

r 2008/04/21 17:50
I think I would be so discouraged that I would lose motivation in life; I offer my sincere condolences.

Clyde 2008/04/21 21:11
The article about a grandmother from a prestigious family is similar to the story of my maternal grandmother.

My maternal grandmother was the daughter of a nationwide-level conglomerate family. As it happened, when she was born the family’s fortunes started rising, so she was doted on as a “lucky charm.” At school, while the other children wore traditional chima-jeogori, she alone wore a wool dress, and in an era when snacks were scarce, she would hand out bread scraps to her friends and act as the ringleader. The family donated a lot to the school, and one time, when they donated a piano, the principal, the teachers, and the entire student body bowed down to my grandmother -_-; Since it was the Japanese colonial era, it was probably a Japanese-style gesture of thanks. She had a leisurely life, like going window-shopping at department stores on her way home from school, but because she was away from her family, attending school while living at a relative’s house in Seoul, she was emotionally unstable. Unusually for a woman of the time, she even went on to university. Her dream was to become a politician, but given the era, she had no choice but to settle for the home economics department.

There were many educated people in the family, so the whole family leaned leftward, and up until the Korean War my maternal grandmother even served as the chairperson of the Women’s Union (I think it was the Korean Democratic Women’s Alliance), but after the Korean War the family completely collapsed. On top of that, because she was a daughter she received no inheritance, and my maternal grandfather wasn’t well-off either, so it seems she spent her whole life obsessed with money. They say there was even a time when she ran off because my maternal grandfather’s salary wasn’t even enough to cover her monthly allowance.

Chrn 2008/04/21 21:49
Looking at the comments, it seems like my family has nothing worth bragging about…

The one fortunate thing is that my grandmother’s older sister (my great-aunt) was made to do labor in a factory instead of being taken as a comfort woman, and my grandmother was ‘too young’ at the time, so she wasn’t dragged off… Hearing that story, I remember feeling chills whenever I’d see people going on and on about loli stuff…-_- I don’t know what it was like back then, but the thought of “what if loli tendencies had been even stronger…” crossed my mind.

Well, other than that: During the Korean War, my grandfather returned safely except for being shot in the leg (he told me about it a little before he passed away…ㄷㄷ), and the bit of land we had in Busan (farmland, that is) was swindled away by one of Kim Jong-pil’s people.

I was honestly a little surprised that my grandmother spoke somewhat positively about Jeon Doo-hwan (“Jeon-ttaeng”). She said that thanks to him reining in prices and the gangsters, it was a bit easier for those without means to get by…

Um… 2008/04/21 22:10
The story of our family

To be precise… I’ve heard it about three times at some point, so it’s a bit hazy, but my family is an old (pre-1886) Catholic family.

My reasonably well-off ancestors embraced Catholicism, and about 200 years ago the family itself was -_-;; utterly torn apart and ruined: it is said the whole household was slaughtered, and only three ancestors of ours (said to be about 9 or 10 years old at the time) barely managed to escape, then lived in hiding on the boundary between villages, working as potters.

I heard that of the three who fled (three siblings — two male, one female), two passed away not long after, and only one (my family’s direct ancestor) worked as a potter to escape the persecution and keep the faith.

Since then my family has produced priests and members of religious orders, and I, the one writing this now, am also walking my own path in my own way.

Of course, my ancestors’ names aren’t on the list of the 103 Martyr Saints, but in their own way I’m proud of them.

However, what is unfortunate is that currently in my family, there are very few people who have reached their generation and live a religious life ㅠ_ㅠ;;

Ah… of course this story isn’t told in the cathedral -_-;; If I say this, people will hate me for no reason;;

r 2008/04/22 09:46
I feel like this is the most impressive story among the comments posted here. Thank you for the article.

Hmm 2008/04/22 03:29
Oh, my aunt lived in Pyongyang before the war and then came to South Korea. She said she actually saw Kim Il-sung give a speech in Pyongyang.

The men grumbled that Kim Il-sung was too young, while the women completely fell for him because he was handsome.

By today’s standards he’d be a total “ulzzang” (good-looking guy). They say his looks could hold their own against any male celebrity in the country at the time — by the standards of the day, of course.

In the end, being popular with women was one of the foundations of power.

After all, lookism only produces bad results.

Well 2008/04/22 16:35
What I heard is that when Kim Il-sung was giving a speech, everyone thought of Kim Il-sung, an old independence fighter. When I went there, I saw a young, young person with the same name..;;

Simonan 2008/04/22 18:18
The original Kim Il-sung was a general long before that, and Kim Seong-ju was It is said that he later worked under the pseudonym Kim Il-sung. So there was a rumor that Kim Il-sung was a fake, but it was in Manchuria. It is true that they engaged in anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare, so ‘the name is the same, but They say it is right to recognize them as ‘someone else’.

After what I’ve done, it’s not a big story.

asdf 2008/04/23 22:41
My late grandmother was also there to see Kim Il-sung’s speech in Pyongyang.

They say they’ve never been so handsome and have a loud voice…

dhdhf 2009/04/19 10:52
Kim Il-sung is the human Kim Il-sung I’ve heard quite a bit that he was a very attractive person. From what I can see, he was quite handsome for that era. I heard there were a lot of people who liked it because it was big and generous. So when the short and ugly Kim Jong-il first appeared as the successor, It was said that a secret atmosphere of wondering what he was doing was forming;; …They said Kim Jeong-sook was a bit ugly. Although he was quite devoted to Kim Il-sung;; what;;;

What 2008/04/22 08:34
This is not a modern story, but a story from a genealogy book, but our ancestors were originally from Southern Song (China), but when the Liao Dynasty of the Jurchen tribe moved south from the north, they fled to Goryeo and lived on the Korean Peninsula. Now that I think about it, my ancestors were not born in China because they fled to Goryeo. I really appreciate that.

Simonan 2008/04/22 18:08

As expected, our country has many stories about the Japanese colonial period / the time around liberation, including the Korean War. If I may add a few footnotes…

1. In fact, it is said that 625 itself was one of the most ill-mannered wars in world history. It is said that many unprecedented massacres and atrocities occurred that cannot be found in other wars. (Well, you probably know a lot of people who come here) So, it is said that the order of manners was Chinese Army»US Army (+UN Forces)»North Korean Army»ROK Army. First of all, the Chinese army had many commanders whose manners were ingrained in them as they had been engaged in guerrilla warfare for a very long time. It is said that the US military lacked understanding of Korea, but they had good manners in many ways. And the North Korean army was trained for a long time and was created with the motto “the people’s army.” Damage to the public was strictly prohibited. Of course, if we start working to find reactionaries among local residents, The story is different though. The most pitiful was the ROK army. A large part of it was hastily thrown together, lumping in the right wing, the far right, pro-Japanese collaborators, fascists, and reformed leftists alike, so the army itself would have been hard to hold together without strong discipline, they say. It was an extreme situation in which, between control and laissez-faire, they had no choice but to pick control. And with all sorts of people crammed into such a coercive army, it was inevitable that all sorts of incidents would happen (the National Defense Corps incident, the large and small mutinies just before the Korean War, etc…).

2. Kim Il-sung is actually very handsome. (If you look on the Internet, you can see that it was taken right after returning to Korea.) You can see a photo of a slim Kim Il-sung who has not gained weight yet) Moreover, most of the political leaders at the time after liberation were older. When Kim Il-sung, a young man in his 30s, appeared like a comet, most people said that it felt new and novel. Moreover, the legend of Kim Il-sung that was exaggerated by the media was amazing. There are differing opinions on this point For one, he was one of the capable guerrilla commanders in Manchuria, but his actual military achievements are said to have been not all that many. The most popular figure among the left wing in Korea was Yeo Woon-hyung, and the most famous figure among the right wing was Cho Man-sik. Kim Il-sung actually benefited greatly from the Soviet Union. Compared to Park Heon-yeong, the most obscure character in modern Korean history, it’s like winning the world. Well 2008/04/25 17:56
   Honestly, it’s funny to find manners in war;; Rather than saying that the ROK military was ill-mannered and vicious, You could say that the situation was bad. It was a massacre. The North Korean army also did it (Seoul National University Hospital massacre). The U.S. military also did it (Nogunri civilian massacre), Both the Chinese army and the ROK army were present, with only slight differences. I think it’s best if there is no war

Skynet 2008/04/22 18:49
Speaking of the Bodo League, one more thing came to mind. Those who are cousins of the above grandfather who served in the military twice… At the time, he was somewhat of a landowner. Before and after the outbreak of war, from the village people I saw face to face every day. Even relatives who were dissatisfied with the distribution of property. It is said that the ugly atmosphere filled with propaganda has not stopped. In the next village, they set fire to the house and dragged out the owner. There is a story that he was stoned to death. It wasn’t to that extent…

It is said that people on the Bodo League rolls periodically held strange assembly drills. (Was it part of the preparations for war?) Every weekend and holiday, when you hear the bell ringing at the village hall, The task was to prepare and line up in two rows in front of the village hall. Ironically, after the war broke out, related information leaked out. It is said that it was used as a fake by the South Korean military to single out people from the Bodo League. After the bell rang, they took away everyone who had gathered — straight into that scene from the film Taegukgi…

Clyde 2008/04/23 13:38
Come to think of it, my grandmother lost her birth money because of Chun Doo-hwan; I tried to prepare for retirement by purchasing a commercial building with the money I had saved, but the commercial building is owned by Odaeyang Co., Ltd. -_-; If it was a simple bankruptcy, the person who took over the building could handle it, but since the Odaeyang incident was political in nature, it seems that it was difficult to get money. They say they just gave up because they didn’t have time to pursue lawsuits for years. I heard this story from my mom very recently, and Chun Doo-hwan is a bad guy.

Neidhardt 2008/04/23 23:17
Well… it’s not about my family… it’s about the Honda president…

When I was attending a private academy, my math teacher received an offer from Grandpa Hong Seong-dae, saying, ‘Would you like to write a book together?’, but he turned it down.

z0 2008/04/24 00:33
My great-uncle was a well-educated person in the neighborhood, so he passed the draft. But my maternal grandfather was conscripted, escaped, endured it by eating raw potatoes, and finally returned home. But soon, the Korean People’s Army came down and killed all the people doing business in the neighborhood. My maternal grandfather was also doing business, but happened to be in a different neighborhood when the People’s Army came. He survived… and his father’s hometown was close to Mt. Jiri, so they say the task of hunting down partisans was great… Those who say they caught some partisans at that time say that power was no joke…

Mayura 2008/04/25 18:01
My great-uncle studied at Waseda University during the Japanese colonial era. While everyone else was busy with independence movements and the like, he alone went around making a string of girls cry, until he abruptly died during sex…

As a result the family fell on hard times, and my grandfather went to Japan to work, where he met my (Korean) grandmother and married her~ Simonan 2008/04/26 22:33

If you look through magazines from the Japanese colonial era, you can find articles harshly criticizing students studying abroad in Tokyo or Seoul, just as 2580 airs a program called “Shock! Days and Nights of Early Study Abroad Youth”…

Elephant Elisa 2008/05/02 10:25
Although connected a little differently, it is mentioned in a magazine of that era. There is also a thing called ‘Modern Girl’, which is in line with today’s soybean paste girl. It’s all just a cute story now, hehe.

ㅇ 2008/05/02 02:50
My mother told me that her siblings were originally seven, not the current six. When she was young, her eldest brother was killed in an explosion while playing with an unexploded shell left buried from the Korean War… He died as a child, the family was struggling at the time, and the other siblings were either too young or not yet born and so have no memories of him… so it is an incident that hardly ever comes up. For some reason, that made me feel even more sad.

TheInferno [FAS] 2008/05/06 22:46
I’ll share it on pgr21.com~

Myoguji 2008/05/31 05:54
Oh, there’s a lot of really interesting content. I would like to add this too. My grandfather said that he went to Japan during the Japanese colonial era and made money. According to my grandmother, he did something like dealing in scrap, but surprisingly the Japanese didn’t look down on him much, and he earned a decent amount of money. On the other hand, when they returned to Korea, they said that the cattle and rice were stolen and the uproar was not the usual one. So even now, my grandmother says that the Japanese are vicious people… But during the Korean War, she lived in a completely rural area in the mountains of Gyeongju, so even when the war broke out, she barely knew what was happening. They knew about the United States through rumors, but they didn’t know anything about the Soviet Union. However, it is said that there was a neighbor who was executed for giving food to partisans… In the case of my maternal family, my maternal great-grandfather was a monk, but many men were taken away during the war, so he suddenly married(…). Thanks to this, my maternal grandfather’s family became a truly devout Buddhist family… My maternal grandfather was conscripted in his youth (did he say he was deceived by propaganda?) and flew fighter jets in the Japanese army. But I’m not sure if he actually fought or just trained. Anyway, after World War II and during the Korean War, he worked in military uniform and was said to have been told by soldiers not to wear uniform. At that time, there were not many work uniforms as good as military uniforms, but because of civilian identification, the government banned civilians from wearing military uniforms. After the war, he studied a lot while he was in Japan, so he founded a school and became its principal. He retired long ago, but I vaguely remember going to his retirement ceremony when I was in kindergarten. Oh, and by the way, my younger maternal granduncle simply settled down in Japan, and his descendants are still there today. The fact that turbulent times created relatives living abroad…somehow it feels strange.

rhflffk 2009/01/17 08:53
While backtracking for the first time in a while, I came across this thread, so I looked it up, read it, and belatedly left a comment.

My great-grandfather was a royal physician during the reign of King Gojong. On the ancestral tablet for the rites, it’s written as “Gungnaebu Jusa Bugun” (an official of the Office of the Royal Household). Among the royal physicians, he specialized in particular in women’s diseases. He completely cured Lady Eom, the Imperial Noble Consort Sunheon (birth mother of Crown Prince Yeongchin, Yi Eun), who became a royal consort after Empress Myeongseong’s death and had been suffering from a gynecological illness, and received a great reward. At that time he was granted a large flowerpot; the pot itself is gone, but its stand is still at home. After leaving the palace, he opened an oriental medicine clinic in the heart of Gyeongseong (Seoul). It was so famous that patients came from the provinces, and there were always patients staying at the house for several days waiting their turn, so they say several mal (a large traditional volume measure) of rice were used every day just to feed them. Because my grandfather was an only son and born very late, my grandmother, even as the eldest daughter-in-law, was treated like a complete child and a young mistress and barely did any kitchen work. After my great-grandfather passed away during the Japanese colonial period, the clinic was taken over by a relative who had trained under him, and the property my grandfather inherited was managed by the elders, so he couldn’t really look after it himself — and most of even that was lost during the war. It is said that during the March 1st Movement, the bottom of the blanket was doubled and the Taegeukgi was stored there and then distributed to people who came out on the streets. It is also said that some of the property was exchanged for gold bars and sent to the Manchurian Independence Army. One day, my father thought about applying for him as a person of independence, but he gave up because he was worried that he would be accused of being pro-Japanese for no reason after hearing from my grandmother that he had to treat Japanese officials and military police appropriately because he was from a wealthy family that was quite famous in the center of Gyeongseong.

rhflffk 2009/01/17 09:05
Meanwhile, my father was a soon-to-be-discharged sergeant in the military when Kim Shin-jo and his band came down. They say that in the dead of winter, the bed of a senior sergeant nearing discharge was the warmest spot, right next to the pechka (a Russian-style masonry stove). So even in winter he could sleep with his thermal underwear off. That day too, he was sleeping next to the pechka when an alert went off before dawn. Figuring it was just another drill, and that they’d only do a head count and send everyone back in, he sauntered out without even putting his underwear on properly, grabbing his gear half-heartedly — when out of nowhere they issued live ammunition, and he ended up wandering the mountains for several days and nights, having a far harder time of it than the junior soldiers under him.

2009/02/06 06:33
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2 2009/03/07 04:37
My maternal grandmother’s cousin was Yu Gwan-sun.

My hometown is Cheonan… My maternal grandmother is a native of Byeongcheon… (Yoo Gwan-sun’s hometown is also Cheonan Byeongcheon…)

When I asked him to tell me about that time, he said he was too young to remember much, only that he had been carried on his back once. He said he remembered it.

If I told this to my friends, they wouldn’t believe me haha.

ㄴㄴ 2011/01/04 14:08
Whoa, there is a person who goes to our church who is said to be Yu Gwan-sun’s cousin or maybe her own younger sibling.. The name is Yu Haeng-sun.

ㅁㅁDad 2009/07/05 09:37
Everyone who left comments went through hardships, but shouldn’t we be telling stories from the Japanese colonial period?

My grandfather…

During the “Waejeong” (his own word for it was always “Waejeong,” a derogatory term for Japanese colonial rule!!), he was forcibly taken away for labor,

and around the time he was plotting an escape with his friends before being loaded onto a ship,

one group tried to escape and every last one of them was shot dead…

After that, taking advantage of the moment when the Japanese let their guard down, assuming the frightened Koreans wouldn’t dare escape, he succeeded in escaping.

For my grandfather, who faced Japanese colonial rule after his own great-grandfather died young and the family had fallen into ruin,

it’s said he spent his youth in hardship and adversity,

but this life-or-death moment of his life was the most vivid memory of all, they say.

It’s already been 20 years since my grandfather passed away…

Holla 2009/07/12 18:43
This is super late to the party, but

my grandfather lived in North Korea, but after liberation, fed up with the communists and the Soviets running wild, he came down to the South. Not long after, the Korean War broke out and he enlisted and fought. He was even selected as a person of national merit for his wartime achievements at the time. After the war he stayed on as a soldier for a while, then was discharged and lived farming in the countryside. But you could receive a military pension if you’d served as a soldier for at least a certain length of time, and I heard my grandfather served exactly one year short of that. So he sometimes jokes, “If only I’d held on just a little longer before getting out.”

asdf 2009/08/08 01:51
My eldest paternal uncle was taken away and badly beaten during the May 18 Gwangju Uprising… After getting a call from the police station, my youngest uncle brought him home in a handcart(!), and his entire body was covered in bruises except for the wrist where he wore his watch.

xxx 2009/11/13 23:52
I’m reading it slowly, bit by bit, while driving backwards. This article is really very impressive I had fun reading it^^

It’s behind, but 2009/12/31 19:37
My maternal grandfather was held as a prisoner of war by North Korea for three months during the Korean War. He said he felt embarrassed and did not register as a person of national merit, so my grandmother, mother, uncles, and aunts received no benefits and could not study as much as he wanted to. When my grandfather passed away, no one in my family cried.

Ine 2010/01/09 16:04
It’s late, but I’m posting this as a new comment for 2010. In my family, my paternal grandfather came down from North Korea to avoid conscription during the Korean War. My maternal grandfather fought in the Korean War as a South Korean soldier and lost one eye. (He was a man of merit). But isn’t it amazing that my father and mother got married? ^^; Well, my paternal grandfather wasn’t a North Korean soldier. My grandfather and grandmother are a full twelve years apart (18 and 30 at the time of their marriage). According to my grandmother, it was because there were no men after the war; My regretful memory is that I didn’t have a genealogy book at home, so I had trouble doing homework related to it or when people asked questions. My grandfather didn’t know much about it. Except for the Jeonju Lee clan. Every time someone asks me which-generation descendant I am, it’s awkward… It’s okay to say you don’t know at this age, and it’s okay to talk about the circumstances;; Plus, just because my maternal grandfather was a person of merit, I didn’t get any benefits when going to college.. Ugh. I don’t know what it’s like these days ^^;

Modern Man 2011/10/13 14:45
I think it would be good if it continues to be updated. This is one of those posts where I read all the comments every time I go back several times.

My maternal grandmother did the Soshi-kaimei (adopting a Japanese-style name under colonial rule), they say. She still remembered that name from back then, but I don’t remember it well^^;; The Japanese phrase she did remember was “kitanai chosenjin” (dirty Korean).

She said the Japanese would say it the moment they laid eyes on a Korean..

It felt a little bitter.

fff 2012/02/03 21:26
Since my family is native to Busan, I have heard almost nothing about the war. My father did his military service in the combat police during the Park Chung-hee era. Back then everyone in the army was hungry and the mess food was on the level of garbage slop, but the unit my father served in had to guard the president, so bread and chicken soup came out every single day — it was no joke. Supposedly, to maintain combat readiness, all the bread that came out had to be eaten that same day, so all the mountains of bread in the unit ended up falling on the privates. In those hungry times, my father’s unit got so sick of bread that they wouldn’t eat it… Even now it seems the combat police often get bread rations… though the meaning is probably different from back then.

They say regionalism in the military at the time was no joke either. It’s said the platoons split apart along regional lines, cutting across rank. During a baseball game between the Haitai and Lotte teams, a senior soldier from Jeolla Province started hazing the Gyeongsang Province juniors over it, so my father, a mid-ranking soldier, rose up and fought back, and it blew up into a brawl involving the whole platoon. At that time my father was beaten by that Jeolla senior, and all his teeth were broken and his gums split open, so he ended up wearing dentures from a young age.

Also, at the time they made everyone box, supposedly to build fighting strength, but it wasn’t taught systematically — it was just mindless beating and stomping — and one day my father was knocked down and came down with what might have been meningitis, and nearly died. Back then it was said to be close to an incurable disease. But a new drug had just come out, and with that lucky timing he survived…

My father is still in business with a man who was his army classmate back then, and every time I see that man, he tells me… [Your father was a truly great man…]