Prologue

Prologue

This is a modest record of primitiveness to civilization. I say modest because I am too common a grassroots guy to be recorded even in the local Who's Who. But I have long been tempted to put in writing what I have witnessed. Though the experiences might have turned out to be trite and trivial, I thought then and there and I think just now that if global citizens were to get intrigued to what I am now about to relate, it will be worthy of a try.

This is a sober record of things past in which a rustic rough life had unveiled its uncultured features in the raw. For example, the country women then had gone out with their breasts bare at which no guys had thrown dirty sidelong stares. So casual. What is meant by primitive? To what extent had the South Korean rustic folks been primitive excepting for what the women folks had had the custom of revealing their breasts?

I had my ears bombarded as a kid with my grandma nagging my mom for fire preservation efforts. "Keep fire seed alive!" she had warned. And when my mom had made a mistake, against her persistent warning, of killing the seed of fire, my grandma had blurted out all kinds of bad words toward my mom. My poor mom had sobbed so often, for which she had been cursed.



This is also a record of my gratitude, enormous gratitude, that is. Could there be any thanks more meaningful and more profound than the benefaction of my birth into this bright world? My father had kept his son and family safe and sound through all his life and through all his efforts, as a poor citizen of the ruined country and as a coal miner of the Imperial Japan.

What an idiot of me not to have known about my father's grueling job of crawling in the coal pit with his hands and feet for quite a few years before the Liberation of 1945. He had vaguely mentioned his previous job as a miner in a district of Japan by the name of Nagasaki but he had not specified what category of a mining work he had been engaged in. Nor had I pursued further as a kid and as years passed by, my otherwise serious inquiry got it lost somewhere along the route.



I find the road to civilization from uncivilization lined with all the gamut of contrasts, contradictions and conflicts. The excitement, which my family had had when Dad had bought home a box of stick matches from a local bazaar, not just gave us convenience but the fear of a fire accident. The older family members had seen to it that my toddling brothers do not touch it.

I discovered that early literacy had often found itself into the chill of fear. Just like the kids, who, playing with fire during the day hours, will probably have "to wet the pajama while sleeping," the joy of reading The Story of Three Kingdoms, which had been serialized then in the Dong A Ilbo newspaper, had more often than not given me a chill and/or a nightmare.

Hardly had night fallen and the scattered cottages been shrouded in darkness when the lights of kerosene lamps glimmered like glares of wandering ghosts, I was wondering then that village dogs might have been so scared of darkness or that they had witnessed so many rampaging ghosts they were barking furiously. I was also wondering from time to time with cold chill running in my spine whether Tsao Tsao's army troops were invading the village, butchering and vandalizing with impunity.



Grandma had been a lily. Like a mountain lily, she had been long and tall. She had been so long in her lonely widowhood she was strict and harsh toward my Mom. She had been long in herbal medicine which had been used in treating her weak grandchild. She had been long in gourmet cooking which had been used in nourishing her dear family.

Grandma had been a paragon of familial civilization and culture. She had been so versed in letter writing that she had done the toiling of long letter- writing between family clans. The lengthy epistles had been written on paper scrolls and sent from the one patriarch or matriarch of a family clan to that of the counter family clan which had eventually been, or would be, connected each other with marriage...and delivered by a family servant on behalf of or for the sake of the illiterate senior family members of the clan for herself so often.

Grandma had been a power, a formidable power, that is. She had been domineering especially over her captive daughter-in-law, my poor mom, that is. One unfavorable condition for Mom was that her husband had opted to keep mum about the whole situation and the other aggravating condition was that her dear grandchild had opted to side with the power, opting to ignore his poor mom. Why? Because by doing that he had been able to dine with his grandma on the same dining table, such as it had been, on which meat and fish had been put, infrequently as they had been, though.

I had been such an easy prey for all kinds of illnesses, say, malaria, against which Grandma had turned out a family doctor, that is, a doctor of the alternative medicine. I had had lots of falls to each occurrence of which my grandma had raced with helping hands with comforting words. Which had been one of major reasons I had not been able to face up to Grandma to protect Mom, for which I have harbored the guilty feeling for Mom for the whole life of mine. Grandma had also done the trouble of waiting every night by herself, holding a kerosene lamp, for the late- coming grandchild for a long while on the top of the pine hill.



This book or novel or something is designed to record every conceivable gamut of fear, ranging from Grandma's nagging to startling nightmares to persistent bullying I had once gone through and to provide the ways and means by which I had at least had to alleviate and further to eliminate it.

Time heals. Grandma is long gone and Mom is 93 years old as of July, 2009. In her later years Grandma had been remorseful, and after she had gone to her oldest son's house to prepare for her last days, she had been very nice to her hitherto patient sermonee, a tolerant listener, a tearful nagee and a subservient daughter-in-law. But the days of her belated niceties had been too short: She had been confined in captivity in a small patio because of her severe senile dementia, or Alzheimer's disease.

I find myself a double sinner both to my grand mother and my mother. I should have earlier expressed my sincere gratitude for Grandma for her endless love of her grandchild who had needed protection and endorsement. In the same context, I should have been more considerate of her. So I should have been nicer to her with grateful words and hilarious anecdotes which could have made her laugh. When I found myself hugely indebted and I'd have to pay even for one thousandth of the debt I had owed her the debtor is gone forever.

On the other hand, the coward in me had made my lonely mother lonelier than ever. My mother had actually been robbed of the affection for her son, which he should have realized. That is, her mother-in-law had expropriated the parental love by her daughter-in-law. As a result, my mom had found no opportunity to express her love to her son, which had been deemed improper of her to do so.


Civilization was thought to be a whole process in which "marginal actions are disrupted and brand actions are created." The marginal actions, which could be profiled as clinical or categorized as superstitious, had been disrupted by science. For example, Grandma's knife- throwing and spirit-cursing was replaced by the medication of quinine. The canine consumption of human feces was no more in sight since the mean treat around the year 1949 in which the distant aunt of the family clan had let her husband slyly consume rice meal while she had served the coarse barley meal to their inviting young nephew.


"Figuratively speaking, civilization could be defined as a pollination process, that is, a human pollination process," I myself thought aloud. The Western thought, technologies and languages are bees and butterflies which are deemed essential for the social and cultural pollination. Suppose civilization was to be defined as a sophisticate interactive process, which could be compared to the pollination made by the external medium, and the bully nation of DPRK should deserve the designation of an incestuous sovereign entity.

The English language, which had been transmitted to the North America by the Puritans and which had undertaken a great metamorphosis that could deserve a fresh linguistic identity as the American language, was a major mechanism needed for the process of the civilization or the Westernization of South Korea. The foreign language had been very strange at first, very awkward to get started with, and has been very difficult to get familiarized with, like we go often through intricacies of the Western table manners.



The veneer, or facade seemed to take its precedence at every inception of civilizational activities. Hardly had I said a few hellos to the personage of the American language when I found the addresser impersonating himself as her best friend. A bizarre footage was that I, or the impersonator of the American language, was carrying the TIME magazine wherever I went.

It was since 1959 when I had run into her at my freshman year of Andong Normal School. I had just turned 17. She was sitting daintily at The School Book Store. She was a real beauty. She made her presence especially felt by her beautiful red borderline. I remember I had a crush on her from the very moment of "our encounter."

But the impersonation was a behavior of pretension at best, and one of a hoax or scam at worst. I didn't know her actually well but I kept posing as her best friend. I hadn't actually had a semblance of her knowledge. Nevertheless folks around me had taken me for her boyfriend, or a real wizard of the English language. I enjoyed hearing the folks talking behind me, saying among themselves in subdued whispers, "There goes English!"

“Vociferous are beginners!" so goes an old wisecrack. A just-married couple are conspicuously active. The religious beginners, say, especially Korean believers in Christianity, are cantankerously ubiquitous in various areas of human activity. They more often than not will stop your progression and hand out religious leaflets.

"Believe in Jesus," they whisper to your otherwise restful ears. "Or, you'll plunge into the labyrinth of Hell," they publicly threaten you in a bloodshot voice with bloodshot eyes. You know you have to be obliging, pretending to be eager and accepting their fanatic leaflets. Cornering the street and making sure you are not being seen, you must decide to keep, or dump them on a garbage can along the way.

Thing is that some people are easy to deal with, and the others are difficult to handle, in this whole wide world. On the one hand, there had been clay cottages in which I had been given a barley treat, while a mutt had been consuming human dung. and there should be high rises in which a vintage treat will be available. There is easy English, that is, easy American, and difficult English, that is, difficult American, of course. I used to be stunned finding myself shrinking at the level of difficulty ratings, say, in TIME articles. Some marveled at me seeing me holding the TIME magazine, saying "Are you a TIME reader yourself?" "Yes?" I replied in an unconvincing voice, inwardly startled.

I have not been a TIME reader these quite a few years but when I had taught the TIME articles, 20-some years ago, to a group of college students during their summer and winter recesses, I had professed from time to time ignorance about some specific passages or paragraphs, or about the whole exposition. Then and there a disappointing audience of mine had thrown a disapproving stare toward me, protesting "How dare you not know it as TIME instructor?"

Profession of ignorance is better than the false veneer of knowledge. I think that you shouldn't be ashamed of yourself, admitting your ignorance to a specific private citizen or to non-specific groups. It's your privilege to do so. No. The linguistic pretension is not a mere bad habit but a cultural chicanery or a crime.

I am hard of hearing a little bit. And I so often feel dizzy at the speed of a bullet with which the dialogues between the respectful Hollywood actors and actresses are done. I do not wear a hearing aid yet, which is considered a show of an old dad's vanity.

I won't forsake the privilege of a skeptic. I'll keep asking until my linguistic doubts will have been solved. I'll always prepare some notepads and Staedtler ball point pens for my linguistic search, tormenting interviewer. If these humble and coarse works of mine were to see a bright sunny day of a global publication, it would be mainly thanks to the great help of the esteemed Google Corporation, especially through Google's image searches. (www.google.com/images)

I think a national delegate sitting for a trade negotiation should not have to pretend to know everything, that is, every prose document. So a vainglorious nodding by an ignorant negotiator or two in a false recognition of the confusedly complicated exposition, which should have taken its place on a topmost level of the difficulty rating, would definitely result in perfidious national harm.

National snobs, please get out, who have been used to approvingly nodding something they actually were ignorant. Get in the ignorant, who are armed with courage who can honestly say they don't know. South Korea should have to crush its infamy as “a nation of misinterpreters or mistranslators.”In short, the so-called translators' prevarication by equivocation should not have to be tolerated any more.

A social farce is being enacted on both aides of cultural activists. On the one hand, the poor readers of the Korean version, whenever they were faced with translators' uncommunicative ramblings which were symptomatic of misinterpretations, they know it's time they had to be tolerant of the interpreters' linguistic faults, saying "Translation is called another creation," giggling away. On the other hand, the so-called translators, whenever they were faced with head-turning discourses of top-notch difficulty rating, they keep scribbling mantras of the wonderland, praying to the wizard of words "May the readers of the Korean version be infatuated with the incomprehensibility of the magical wording."

Translation, an embodiment of civilization activities, isn't another creation. It can't be. Impotent translators shouldn't have to make such crafty and groundless excuses as a shield against their own ludicrous misinterpretations. In the similar context, the readers shouldn't have to be tolerant of the interpreters' failings. We're sure to get to the objective of complete interpretation with perfect semantic understanding. The interpreters should seek out perfection through the sophisticate works of notes and subnotes and lastly through email efforts with the author.

The key to seek out perfect understanding and communication lies in your ability to paraphrase and rewrite the original scripts. and the key to paraphrasing and rewriting lies in how much you are expertly trained at synonymic expressions. In a larger context, the English language is construed as a synonym structure. I adore [The Synonym Finder] by J.I.Rodale and its peers.

I think the criticism of ragtag translations should have to be distinguished from a mere triviality of finding fault with interpretational errors or gossip- mongering about rambling translators, much less from a sheer act of vilification. My principle is that there should lie responsibility where there are bucks, huge bucks, that is. In other words, you should take responsibility to the degree for what you have made money.

A small responsibility for small bucks, and a great responsibility for huge bucks. An intermediate conclusion: The publishers and translators, who have sold millions or tens of millions of copies, should not have to sleep on the huge amount of money they've earned from the error-ridden Korean versions. Why not post corrections or erratums on the appendices of every additional publication just like the venerable New York Times have been doing.

I still ask myself this moment whether I am civilized enough, "Ain't I roughing it up no more?" I am not squatting on a dirt room floor reeking of kid urine anymore. I live in a modest apartment house in Seoul City, which is being listed on hourly news- and weather forecasts of CNN.


Granted that the global human society has pursued the comforts and conveniences of its members, a proper attention and energy should also be paid to the commitment to the constant ideals of loyalty to the sovereignty, the fidelity to the family virtues and the integrity to the local community at large. As a mean-spirited coward, I had given up on Mom, opting to dine with Grand Mom on her dining table, leaving poor Mom to eat on the corner of the room floor. Mom, punish your nasty son for his unforgivable crime that he had opted to ignore your plights.

Granted that the United States has turned out to be the nation of immigrants, it's been a deplorable trend for them to take advantage of their newly acquired American citizenships for the sake of their individual comforts and conveniences, forgetful of their allegiance to the great country of America. The main proposition: The citizens of the United States should have to be loyal to the adoptive nation above all the other nations. Otherwise, the great country of the United States would not be able to play the pivotal role any more as the citadel of the free democratic countries, with the great rampart destroyed.


It might have been very preposterous of me to confess now at this stage that this writer is at a loss how to define or categorize this humble work of his. Could this be a novel? Though Author Jane Smiley, through her book entitled Thirteen Ways of Looking at Novels this writer had come by at Bandi and Luni's Bookstore at COEX Mall, Seoul, had given me an encouraging patting on the shoulder (ibid, p.11, p.15, p.21,p.22), he's still at sea how to name it. So if you readers were patient enough to go further with the humble book pages of mine, I'd rather settle on a fresh new publicational format. which could be designated as an autobiographical novel, or novel essay, that is, a non-fiction made by borrowing a fictional mode.