Prologue: A Chronicle of the 1950s - From the Korean War to the Armistice

Ⅰ 6.25 Story

1.
We moved that day
* On the way to the riverside… June 25, 1950
* Air combat
* Modern countries
* A guest who came at night
2.
The Bundang-ri in my head is... June 28th - early July
* Unidentified explosion sound
* News of UN forces' participation in the war
* Han River crossing acrobatics
* Watermelon from someone else's field
* Battle of Jeongjari
* Enemy using the same language
* The Bundang-ri I saw at that time
* The plane trees on Wonhyo-ro that day
3.
Blackout season… June 25th – September 28th
* That summer's heat
* Burning City
4.
The national anthem changed every three months
* Nationality changes in three days
* Hide people
* Shadow of the translator

Ⅱ 1.4 Retreat … … January 3-22, 1951 Seoul–Gunsan

1.
Evacuation route
* Crossing the Han River on foot… January 3, 1951
* Diaspora … … January 4, 1951
* The suffering of those who have gone before
* Sohan Day… January 5, 1951
* Oga's Night
* A cart full of blood
* Hongseong 3rd Dynasty
- The meaning of order
- A reunion of separated families
- Handcart
* Inhaejeontak Sanjo

Ⅲ. The special features of Busan, the temporary capital

1.
Busan pointillism
* Skirt with rain
* Seo Min-ho incident… May 1952
* Marian Anderson … … Summer 1952
* Moonlit night in Silla… … Chuseok, 1952
* Currency reform… February 1953
* Priority of evacuation packages
2.
"Hyangsu-dong" (novel)

Ⅳ My Freshman Years… …1952

1.
Gudeoksan Campus
* Long, long vacation
* Tent classroom at the foot of the mountain
2.
Coeducational - Parallel Pooley
3.
ocean

V My Dongsoong-dong Days… October 1953 – March 1956

1.
June 25th at the boarding house
2.
Dongsoong-dong Campus
* The relaxed atmosphere of the campus
* Monsieur and Mademoiselle
* part time job
3.
Campus Couple
* The meaning of a long vacation
* Toy play
* 50s style love
* Accompanying the writer
* Oh! Season, Castle!

Ⅵ The College of Liberal Arts during the Dongsoong-dong era

1.
Department of Korean Literature
* Our Private Library - Professor Jeong Byeong-uk
* A gentleman with a Western appearance - Mr. Jeon Gwang-yong
* Passionate Mountaineer - Mr. Lee Seung-nyeong
* Dusi Eonhae and Yangju-dong teacher
* A sumptuous meal at the home of Mr. Ilseok
2.
French literature department
3.
English Department

Epilogue: Building a House with Earth

No one's life is special in the face of history.
Everyone's life is connected to history through 'his own specialness'.

There is an average in the lives of ordinary people.
Because there is an order that supports universal life.
In an emergency, there is no such thing.
Society is fragmented, order is collapsing, and tomorrow's survival is threatened.
In such times, humans are largely left standing alone.
So each person has their own experience.
I crawled across the Hantangang Bridge when I was thirteen.
(···) I could not forget my own emergency experience during that period.
It wasn't something that was catastrophically tragic, but it wasn't something that everyone experienced either.
However, that doesn't mean I was the only one who suffered this disaster.
My experience was connected to a group of people who had chosen to abandon everything and come south, to middle school students who had never learned Korean history because they had no textbooks, and to sickly and sensitive girls going through puberty during wartime.
The most personal stories were intertwined with the stories of many other people.
(From the prologue, 'Chronicle of the 1950s')


1.
'I crawled across the Hantangang Bridge when I was thirteen.'
Living from a girl to a woman in the 1950s,
A delicate restoration of another tragicomedy of the Korean War, which we have overlooked.

“We were like those flower trees on the battlefield.
I became mature too early,
Children who have become mentally deformed because they cannot properly grow up to be adults.
“We graduated from puberty early and the aftereffects still remain with us.”

This book is a record of the author's delicate and sensitive portrayal of the human-filled world of life amidst the chaos of the 1950s, breaking away from the rigid historical and social flow of previous memoirs of the Korean War.
The first thing that comes to mind when we think of the Korean War is the acrid sound of shells filling the battlefield and the bloody battle between the South Korean and North Korean soldiers with guns, but in the end, this was also a time when people lived.
The author tells the story of the Korean War, a story that only a woman who lived through the 1950s can tell, a story we have never heard before.
The dialects, recipes, clothing, and house structures that he experienced while fleeing throughout Jeolla and Gyeongsang provinces are the stories of people's lives in and outside of his hometown.
It contains not only the way of life, but also the priorities of various lives seen as refugee bundles, the hearts of women read from the hems of their skirts, and the first experience of co-ed school life at the foot of Gudeoksan Mountain in Busan.


2.
The teachers of the era that laid the foundation for Korean intellectual history in the ruins of the 1950s
A vivid recollection of the Dongsoong-dong College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Seoul National University, where the vitality for academics was burgeoning.

“A generation that welcomed its youth on a pile of rubble in ruins······.
(···)
Poems that sing of the moon and the wind, poems that sing of the state of a fairy living leisurely in the embrace of nature
It was so far from our reality.

We were the inhabitants of Pompeii, with fire pouring down from the sky and nowhere to run or even a cave to hide in.

So, I couldn't empathize with the poem unless it was a scream that was spit out like blood in despair.”

The generation that 'stole books' from empty houses they stopped by on their way to refuge, reading whatever they could find, and reading in the dark to avoid blackouts until they lost their eyesight - they are the students of the 1950s.
Even in these tense times, when people were desperately trying to save their lives, students thirsty for knowledge took notes by hand, creating textbooks, and waited patiently for their turn to borrow books.
For students embarking on an intellectual journey on dry soil, the teachers on campus were like a spring of water.
The episodes from Dongsung-dong, which allow us to feel the deep affection, exchanges, and human aspects shared between students by the great scholars who left their mark on Korean intellectual history, evoke the image of the foundation of our scholarship being laid amidst the ruins.
From Professor Jeong Byeong-uk, who became a private library for students wandering around looking for something to study, to Professor Lee Seung-nyeong, a pioneer of modern Korean language studies, Professor Yang Ju-dong, a free-spirited genius, Professor Jeon Gwang-yong, who wrote 『Kkeoppi-tan Lee』, Professor Son Woo-seong and Kim Boong-gu of the French Literature Department, and Professors Ko Seok-gu and Lee Yang-ha of the English Literature Department······.
The latter part of the book vividly brings to life the teachers depicted in black-and-white photographs, who were the foundation and starting point of Korean intellectual development over the past 60 years.

3.
As the classmate, lover, and spouse of Lee Eo-ryeong, the 'intellectual of the times'
Kang In-sook, a literary critic and director of the Youngin Literature Museum who lived in his shadow all her life
A Chronicle of the Korean War and Youth in the 1950s, Filled with Personal Confessions

“He wrote me his first letter that day.
The letter began with, “I am writing this while drunk at 30 degrees.”
At the end, 'I will give you the work.
Even though it ends with a polite and businesslike tone, saying, 'Please see it soon and return it to me,'
For some reason, something urgent and urgent was conveyed.
I think it was something like loneliness.

That loneliness brought him closer to me.
(···)
I remember writing in my diary three days later, “I still feel drunk from the two glasses of alcohol he drank.”

The name Kang In-sook has been largely obscured for some time.
Although she herself is a prolific essayist and literary critic, and is the director of the Yeong-in Literature Museum, Korea's leading literary museum, she has spent most of her life behind the shining sun of her husband, Lee Eo-ryeong, the "intellectual of the times."
This book is the essence of the 'Kang In-sook Essay', which contains the most honest personal confessions among the books published so far by the author, who was a classmate of Lee Eo-ryeong in the Korean Literature Department at Seoul National University, then a lover, and then a lifelong companion, hidden behind her husband for over 60 years, and is an experiential historical record of the Korean War.

Beginning on June 25, 1950, when the war broke out, and covering the period before and after the armistice, this book is a chronicle of the 1950s, moving through the whirlwind of time from the refugee journey across the Han River on foot, to school life in a tent school, and college days that began in Busan and moved to Dongsoong-dong. It is also the story of a child who lived through the chaotic 'emergency period' of the Republic of Korea when fire rained down from the sky, growing into an adult over the course of 20 years, a long and arduous, but beautiful and warm final passage.