Fifty Years of the American Dream (3)

Song of the Student Movement Monument

Gwangju Seo Middle School has a tradition of the student independence movement from the Japanese colonial period. It shares the same campus as Gwangju First High School. The March First Movement took place in 1919, and ten years later, in 1929, alumni of Seo Middle and First High School launched the anti-Japanese independence movement; truly, there is deeply meaningful history on the campus of the school I attended. In 1957, the year we graduated, a monument was erected, and it was a deeply moving moment in my life when, upon graduating, I wrote a poem (a song) for the monument and it was published in the graduation program. From that time on I loved to write.

Deep-rooted monument / standing firm and tall / the Hwarang spirit stirred / in blood-hot hearts
/ they gave their lives and their youth / to save my country / flickering before the wind.
The blood of Dangun flowing in the white-clad people / not even Japanese guns and swords could violate / in every corner of the three thousand ri
/ crying out "Long live independence" / they carried the rose of Sharon, the Republic of Korea, to all the world.
Today is Students' Day, the third of November / gathering young strength swelling with hope / let us follow our elders and press steadily on / on the right path, our path, the torch is burning.

While I attended Seo Middle and First High School, our family went through a hard period of overcoming the poverty of the war. My father would sometimes put it this way: "Our country is lying in the emergency room, barely alive on the strength of the nutrient drip America has put in." My mother set up a shop under the stairway of a girls' school, and I carried goods morning and evening. Even amid such hardship,

My Brother Enters the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the Top of His Class

my parents encouraged me to take part in a variety of activities. Through the habit of reading the newspaper every day, they helped me see the world. At school I was class president from an early age, and from middle and high school I attended faculty meetings as student representative and also helped the teachers. I remember being a student council delegate, company commander in military training, a member of the school judo team, a choir member, head of the drama club, and so on. At the graduation ceremony I was already in Seoul to take the Korea Military Academy entrance exam, so only my parents attended to receive my diploma; they heard my name called eight times and received eight awards, and the memory is still fresh of how the two of them shed many tears at the ceremony in front of the teachers and students. My brother passed the entrance exam for Seoul National University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences with the top score, setting a Seoul National University record as the first graduate of a provincial high school to do so. Around the time my brother finished the premedical program at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and graduated from the College of Medicine, I finished the architecture program at the College of Engineering.