At Joongang University

18
At Joongang University, 1967


Dano went to college. That meant a greater event than the one that his family had moved to a great place from a remote mountain valley. Meant more than he had gone to Andong Normal School from a rustic village to become an elementary school teacher. It meant more than the sea change that the Toung Doung family had started using stick matches, getting rid of the flints. That meant that Dano had started doing away with primitiveness, entering into civilization.

The college was a sequence of novelty and wonder: a grand edifice flaunting its academic history, a college campus, adorned with well- groomed green grass and dotted with young folks, chatting and discussing on the lawn. Joongang University looked to be a paragon of the prestigious metropolitan academia, nestled in the sunny environs of Dongjak-dong on the Han River commanding the gorgeous view of a historic flow. Dano felt immensely proud of each step of his in the campus and every move from one auditorium to the other. Dano, who had been an army veteran, ages 25, in a casual clothing, looked a little awkward among the younger academic crowds.

Once Dano stepped into the college campus or into the classroom, he used to unplug. He felt he was getting himself unplugged. Unplugged from the family and worries about them. No, he tried to get himself disconnected from the sad images of dear grandmother who had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease, mother's worrisome faces and father's toilsome features who had been sweating himself under the heavy load on a wooden A-frame. The Joongang University campus was a great lake where there was no wind which stirred its surface. The lake was calm. All the noises of the outer world were cut off. Time stopped passing. The hours in the campus were euphoria itself.

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Dano's decision for the college attendance had been motivated by his academic curiosity and his determination made during his service in the army. Three full years' service in the Korean army gave him magnitude, of course. Magnitude in the scope of geographical experiences, and in the expanse of relationships. It was really great for the lonely boy of a remote mountain valley. The barracks life gave him a kind of verve, too, which helped him get over anxiety disease to a certain degree. But as he was discharged, the duct of timidity, trivialism and anxiety was newly connected, the knot tied again, and the cable plugged afresh. Grandma Mrs. Euiseong Kim, who had gone to her oldest son, began to show an early sign of nomang, senile dementia: Her memory flickered, which made her watchers worried. He wanted to run.

But craving for a collegial study, however strong, could not guarantee his attendance. Tuition and attendant fees were a big problem. Dano well knew his parents were short of resources, that is, strapped in cash. He had to earn his livelihood in the first place by returning to the teaching job which had been suspended by the army service, helping his parents with family livelihood. So he had gained a job at Jumgok Elementary School as teacher. West, who had been a financial manager at the Board of Education at Euiseong County, used his clout so that Dano might regain his teaching post at Jumgok-myon which would enable him to commute to and from the school by foot.

Toung Doung was taken aback when he was tipped off via his wife Boolim Lee on his son's intention to go to college. He felt a strong sense of betrayal. How did the goddamned son think and act like that? A goddamned son of sheer egoistic freak. "Please think how we are in, and in what way your mom and me have been living. Haven't you ever had any pity on the family?" deplored Toung Doung, with Boolim Lee silently wiping her tears.

Fall semester of Jumgok Elementary School had just ended when Toung Doung and his son Dano temporarily compromised on Dano's college attendance. "Parents will not prevail in the race against their offspring!" was comforting words for Toung Doung himself. The aspiring college was decided on as Joongang University, and the subjects, which Dano would have to take in his entrance exam, were: the English language, the Korean language, Korean history and social studies including economics. Two months plus some days seemed so short for the preparation for the college exam, so Dano decided to leave the subject of English out from his exam preparations. (There goes English!)

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Toung Doung built a wooden-pillared and tile-roofed four-room house of his own for the first time in his life. He had never been a carpenter himself but he did every bit of a carpenter work with precision. Which was divinely amazing on the one hand and frustratingly mysterious on the other for Dano, who was so poor at hand job that he could neither build a kennel himself nor erect a wooden pole straight up.

Toung Doung had earlier made a wish that he would have a house of his own making, and he did make his dream come true. He sawed giant pines at Sun Valley, scraped bark off them and carried, on his A-frame carrier, four or more meter-long lumbers with ample enough diameter for becoming a house material all the way to his water mill house through seven or so kilometers' distance, one at a time for the period of a month or so, a Sisyphean toil by a herculean man, indeed.

He then scrubbed the surface of each lumber with a scrub plane, measured them, etched lines with Indian ink, made dovetail joints, and chiseled holes to fit wedges. He did them all by himself. The one thing that was missing in this great job of building a nice house, though, was a decent family livelihood with a decent income from a decent job--It was Dano and Dano's teaching profession which had been supposed to bring it. Dano insisted on going to college, nevertheless.

His determination approved by his parents, yet grudgingly, Dano launched on the project with verve. It was drawing to December, so study schedule was organized very tightly because time was running out until the examination day. It had to be a kind of crash course which could cram up the three subjects with a bang. To stave off drowsiness, he kept the room "cool" enough, so cool that the boarder could be frozen. He saw to it that the heating system by the ondol floor heating would not be at work. He shortened the sleeping hours to two, or two and a half each day and when he slept he kept the room open so that the seeping chill could keep him from deep sleep. He always imagined his name placed high up in the list of successful applicants. So exciting.

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The city of Seoul was not a nether world, but it had been a stopover place most of the time in which he had made, during the term of his army service, some casual visits. Now Dano stepped into the inner bowels of the capital and started living it, in which the merry accents of young collegians were ringing in his ears and in which Sorbonne-educated Mademoiselle Kim was toiling over how the French word 'regardez' should be pronounced differently from the English word 'regard'.

The cafes in the perimeter of the campus were bustling with eager faces of which some were beaming in his direction when Dano stepped into it, They often addressed him as Mr. Wang or "Big Brother" from time to time. Professor S.K. Paik of politics, in which Dano was a major, who had been in his fifties with stout build and resonant voice, one day after an intermediate exam taken before the summer recess, called Dano in his research room, saying "Nice having you here as my student. You're the first I've ever given you full marks." He did not stretch out his hand to shake hands but threw a casual remark, saying "Are you married?"

It stirred his mind not a little bit that a renowned university professor had the question as regards a matter of intimate concern directed at Dano himself. "No, I am not, sir," Dano said, "but I have a girl friend in my home town." "That's good for you," Professor Paik said, giving Dano a beamy stare. Dano said it, which surprised himself and raised the fresh question of surety. He wondered about her existential meaning not once, not twice, but a very few times.

Willowy was his girl friend, yes, wasn't she? She was also an elementary school teacher. She thought too much. She was a woman of medium height, round beamy face and a low voice. She was a few years younger but she was more mature in character and behavior than Dano himself. Her penmanship was great on the verge of being perfect, distinguishing itself on the classroom blackboard, on the students' record papers, and on her lettering words sent to Dano.

Ambiguity might have been the very word defining their relationships. She did neither allow him any room for closer contact, nor give him any sure commitments. To have second thoughts, there might have been one, though. Correspondence, if any, was not voluntary on her part, but grudgingly responding. Dano had once missed her very much to a fever pitch. He did not dare to ask her but he wished she had been coming to Seoul to meet him during the summer recess that year of 1967. He more often than not had raced, in the streets of Seoul, to the women with similar dimensions in green jacket, to meet with startling faces. He had been crazy.