17. A Book about the World

One day, father bought me and my brother books. He bought my brother “The Three Musketeers” and “General Yoo Shin Kim,” and me “Les Miserables”(kid’s version) and “Robinson Crusoe.” I read all four of them and fell in love with the reading. There were lots of books at home. We also had kids’ version of 50 world literatures. I began to read them. My favorite was “Two Years’ Vacation.”

 

Once I came home at Gu Pa Bal, I began to read the books. We had large volumes of Korean and World literatures. I read Kapka, “Tess,” “The Red and the Black,” other classic books, and Korean literatures. 

 

Traveling foreign countries was very rare then. A guy, Chan Sam Kim, traveled the world and published the books. His books had many pictures and the story was refreshing and eye opening. He was a frequent guest at radio and TV shows. I learned many different worlds existed out there. 

 

When the school year ended, my sister and brother brought home text books for the next semester. I read them before the vacation was over. I did not understand the math book. Korean language, history, nature, biology books all fulfilled my desire to learn. 

 

They televised educational program on TV every weekday morning. They covered nature, science, history, and etc. I watched these programs every day. They had music class at school and also taught songs. I learned them from my siblings. I knew most of the songs.

 

I anxiously waited for week-ends and vacations. When there was no school, my siblings became my friends. Teachers requested kids to make the daily planning and keep the regular schedule during the vacation. I made the planner, too. The schedule would dictate our activities throughout the day. We could stick to the schedule only for few days. 

 

In the afternoon, five of us got together and played card games. My sister taught us many new games. 

 

I told father I wanted to learn more. He suggested I study Chinese characters. He wanted me to study astrology and become a fortune teller. There were a few famous fortune tellers with the disabilities. He bought me Cheonjamun, which contained one thousand commonly used Chinese characters. After that, he just gave me a dictionary and asked me to memorize it. Well, that’s my father. He should have bought me actual text books. I would have continued to study Chinese characters. I memorized few pages of the dictionary and soon stopped it all together. 

 

Then, during the winter vacation, I learned English from my sister. I started with the penmanship workbook. 

 

She taught me how to use and look up the words in the dictionary. Pronouncing the new words was difficult. I made a list of new words, asked my sister when she returned from school, and wrote down the sounds in Korean next to each word. When my sister went to the college, I was able to translate her English books and helped her with her assignments.