In the past, residing in a cluster of rented rooms symbolized a weary urban life whereas families sharing space under a single roof conjured up heart-warming images. Today, with high-rise units as the most common housing style, those rented rooms are where nostalgia lingers.
My parents started their married life in the front room of my uncle’s house. That was about 50 years ago. Then, when my older brother was born, they moved into a rented room in a neighbor’s house. The house had a large front gate and a yard with rooms on three sides. The landlord’s family used the main wing and rented out the two side wings. My family lived in the room at the end of the right-hand wing.
Mother still talks about those days: “The only kitchen goods we had were a shoddy cupboard made of plywood and a kerosene stove.” To this she adds without fail that the landlady and all of the other female lodgers were fond of my brother and eagerly took turns carrying him on their backs.
I was born in that house. Sometimes, I try to imagine the day I arrived. It was toward the end of February so no coal briquettes would have been spared to keep the room warm as the due date neared. Who was the first person to receive me from my mother’s womb? What did people think when they heard me cry?
“Jungnim-dong, Seoul” (1990) by Kim Ki-chan Jungnim-dong, located near the old city center of Seoul, retains the look and atmosphereof a typical 1960s neighborhood in this photo dated 1990. Narrow alleys and steepstairways still remain, making carts and strong bodies the only means of moving items. © Choe Gyeong-ja
The Communal Tap
When I think of that old house in Suwon, the capital of Gyeonggi Province, the first image that comes to mind is the water pump in the middle of the yard. It was a communal tap. Mother would prime the pump, using all her might to move the handle up and down. When the water came gushing out, pushed up from underground, all the female lodgers would sit around it in a circle and do their laundry. I liked to sit on the narrow deck and watch them. Waiting our turns at the pump, we all washed our faces and brushed our teeth. But it was such a long time ago that I’m no longer sure if these images stem from an accurate memory or an illusion, the result of s of other images that have accumulated over the years.
I took my first steps in that yard. Then I toddled around until I could run. I would sit in the yard, drawing pictures in the dirt with my fingers, so my clothes were perpetually dirty. I also remember crying when the neighborhood boys went to play on the hills behind the house and refused to take me with them. My brother, after glimpsing the landlord family’s television, would head straight for their room as soon as he woke up in the morning. When Mother went to fetch him at night, he often embarrassed her by kicking up a fuss and crying because he didn’t want to come back to our room.
The year we moved into that rented room, Mother opened a five-year savings account. The next year she opened a four-year account, the following year a three-year account, and so on. When five years passed and all five savings accounts came due on the same day, she withdrew all of her money and our family bought a house. Her dream was thus realized: our old neighborhood did not have an elementary school and she had vowed to move before my brother reached school age. “We may have scrimped and saved, but we still fed you an egg each and every day,” she reiterated to me and my brother more than a hundred times.
Mother’s Wishes
“Jungnim-dong, Seoul” (1980) by Kim Ki-chan Girls sing and play elastics in a neighborhood alley, a rare after-school sight these days. © Choe Gyeong-ja
Our new home was so close to our school that we could go home during break times to fetch anything we had forgotten. I faintly remember the day we moved into that house. The front gate opened onto the yard, which had neither trees nor grass. It simply had an outhouse in one corner. While the adults were busy carrying our things into the house, I stood and imagined the yard with a big tree and a swing. I also imagined tending flower beds with my mother. I believed that my parents would soon make these things happen for their beloved daughter.
But that’s not the way real life turned out. My parents cleared the yard and built a shop. The house was divided clumsily in half and Mother started a restaurant in the shop. My disappointment did not stop there. The house had three rooms and yet I was not given one of my own. My parents slept in the room off the restaurant, and my brother and I slept with Grandmother in the main room. The other two rooms were rented out. The couple who lived in the smaller room had a newborn baby. By the time the baby had mastered crawling and began walking, but not yet running, around the wood-floored hall, the family moved out.
Mother’s restaurant was a success. We bought a television; we also bought a refrigerator. Then a few years later, a second floor with three rooms was added to the shop. The storeroom located to the left of the front gate was torn down and another room was built there. My parents became full-fledged landlords. They went on to put up another building next to the restaurant and a carpenter’s workshop moved in. The carpenter made me a wooden sword and I walked around with it stuck in my waistband. I played in the school playground until dark, so again my clothes were always dirty. Mother would slap my bottom and scold me for being sloppy. But I liked it when she did that. She wasn’t really spanking me; she was trying to beat the dirt off my pants.
Those who rented rooms at our place came from all over the country. I would ask them where they came from and then look up those places on a map. Everyone used the outhouse in the yard, so naturally we all bumped into each other coming and going. If I were to choose the most memorable tenant, it would be the drunkard – no question about that. His eyes were constantly bloodshot, and in summer he wore nothing more than a white singlet and ramie shorts. When our eyes met, he would give me a friendly greeting. And now and then a woman, seemingly his wife, came to see him and they would quarrel all through the night. The man died in his room; it was my first sight of death.
My dream was to move from one house to another. I always envied the new students who had just moved into the neighborhood. Going to a new school, making friends all over again, walking into the classroom with the teacher and introducing myself to unknown classmates – the mere thought of it was frightening. But it was something I ached to do at least once. I lived in the same house all through elementary, middle and high school. As a university student I had to live away from home for a while, but eventually I returned.
Those who rented rooms at our place camefrom all over the country.
I would ask themwhere they came from and then look up thoseplaces on a map.
“Haengchon-dong, Seoul” (1974) by Kim Ki-chan In the early years of industrialization, one of the most common dwellings was a house that had several families occupying a rented room each. These houses generally had a communal water tap and a terrace for condiment crocks in the yard.© Choe Gyeong-ja
My Dream
After my brother married and got his own place, my father moved into my brother’s old bedroom. Then when I moved out about 10 years ago, he moved into my old bedroom. My brother’s room became storage. I realized that only when their children had moved out, one by one, did my mother and father each have a room of their own. Mother, one of eight siblings, had never had a room for herself, and it was the same for Father, one of five siblings. Afterwards, when I saw people my parents’ age on the street, I often wondered to myself: When did these people come to have a room of their own? Were they born in large families like my parents, and did they too start married life in a rented room, then have children, and then work their fingers to the bone to give their children their own bedroom? Did they buy their children books such as “World Classics for Boys and Girls”? Some people may have never had a room of their own in their whole life of 70 or 80 years. Some people may have first begun to use a room by themselves only after their spouse passed away.
My parents still live in the same house. It’s an ungainly house, as rental rooms were added whenever my parents had accumulated enough money. The neighborhood is old and run down now, so it isn’t easy to find lodgers. I often go to have dinner with my parents. For many years I spent New Year’s Eve at their place. I wanted to wake up in the morning and make my traditional New Year’s greetings: “May the New Year bring many blessings!” But that didn’t last long. I became more and more comfortable staying at my own place. And these days I rarely sleep over at my parents’ house.
I lived in that house until I was 40 years old, but strangely enough I can only recall my childhood days there. I remember the day I was playing elastics in the alleyway with the other kids when my brother came up to me and whispered in my ear, “It’s here.” The color television we had been waiting for had arrived. I can still clearly remember the happiness of that day. I ran home as fast as I could. It seems as if the child panting for breath as she watched the new color television still lives in that house.
Seeds of Stories
Those who moved in and moved out, those who fought and got divorced, those who stole away at night without paying their rent, those who were dragged away by the police – such people were my neighbors. The front door of my old house was made of glass with a bubbly surface. When I looked out, it always seemed as if a dozen more people were coming. The people I watched through that glass became the seeds of my novels. In that way I crafted my stories.
한국국제교류재단
