10. Military Coup

Since I, their first son, became crippled, my parents wanted another boy. They decided to have a baby. It was a girl. She was such a good baby and never cried much. Her name was ‘Eun Hee,’ but no one called her by that name. Everyone called her ‘a good child.’ She thought it was her real name until she entered the elementary school. My parents tried one more time, and it was a daughter again. That’s how they got five kids, two sons and three daughters.

 

My father was a colonel and he expected to be a general. He was doing well until then. Political turmoil changed everything for him. There were April 19 Revolution and May 16 Military Coup.

 

Our house was located on a high hill and could look down the city of Seoul. On April 19, 1960, we could see black smokes rising here and there in the city. There was a corrupt council man living in our neighborhood and we could hear a group of students shouting and banging on his house gate. We feared they might come to our house.

 

Korean Army led May 16 Military Coup and they succeeded. There was some discussion of a coup among Marine Corp, too. They were small in numbers and they let the Amy lead it.

 

If Marine Corp started the Military Coup, my father’s luck would have changed, too. Father completed his assignment as a commanding officer for the regiment and was removed from the field assignment. He was assigned to the military school as an instructor. He was anxious to return to a field assignment. He was told that once he completed his assignment at the military school, he would be returning to the field again. Instead, they sent him to a lame position in the headquarter. He realized the chief commander would not keep his promise. He felt his days with the Marine Corp was ending. One day, he armed himself with a hand gun and visited the chief commander. An officer was not allowed to be armed when they face the chief commander.

 

He made a demand to him. He asked for a vehicle, a driver, and pay checks for a year. After a year, he would retire. The chief commander gladly accepted the term. He had been agonizing over my father. Father was from the north and they did not want to promote him to the general rank. He did not know what to do with him and father gave him the solution.

 

Father thought there was some money saved. He was going to open his own business. There wasn’t any saving. The house was all he had. For the rest of his life, father thought his father-in-law took his savings. I think there is some truth to it. Grandfather never had a real job. Nevertheless, he bought and collected antiques and old coins.

 

He sold the two-story house in Ga Hei Dong and bought a smaller house in Ik Sun Dong. Grandparents bought a small house in Kwan Hoon Dong and moved out. I went with them. It was a very small house, but still had three small rooms. There was a semi-basement storage shack in the enclosed yard and laundry lines were on top of this structure. Grandmother climbed the stairs to hang the laundry. I could see her cooking in the kitchen thru a small window on the wall of the room.

 

Running water and the sewer were in the yard. Most homes had one facet and one sewer line in the yard. There was no running water in the kitchen or the outhouse. People had to carry the water to the kitchen. We washed and cleaned at the faucet in the yard. In the winter, we had to heat the water on top of the charcoal stove.

 

Outhouse had an underground tank with an opening on the floor. Once it if filled, we called a vendor who would empty it. Later, they used a vacuum hose to empty it. Initially, they used a large can attached to a long wooden pole to scoop the feces. They filled the large metal bins and carried them. When the vendor came, several homes in the neighborhood emptied their outhouses. Men hurried around the alleys with bins filled with feces.