Between the Diaspora of War and the Embrace of Hope

"The twenty-first reunion continued until 2018, but only 2,000 families from the north met with family members from the north." ¹

I always loved reading books and historical articles about the Korean War, so I had to read Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's The Waiting, a picture book that highlights an almost neglected section of the archives of the tragedies suffered by Korean families who survived the remnants of war from the Japanese occupation to the division of the country. I realized that I had only seen the facts and information superficially and did not delve into the impact of the war on individuals and families who were displaced, separated from each other and forced to build a new life in a place far from their homes, clinging to the hope of meeting and scattered memories contained in the south.

Personalities:

Author Jina: From a feisty little girl to a sympathetic daughter since discovering the secret her family has kept.

She is a character who closely simulates the details of writer Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's life, from being a writer, to the details of the family to her move to Kanghwa.

Mother Gwija: She did not live an easy life and was forced to flee the war with her family, taking it upon herself to find her family members.

Grandma Jeong-soon: A neighbor who lost her sister during the war and is about to meet her again.

Taking the drawings and pages of the book from the hopes of the present to the harshness of the past, I felt that I was reading the events of Korea's past from a different perspective from history books, familiar novels or monotonous essays.

I read that writer Keum Suk Gendry-Kim was inspired by the personal experience of her mother, who lost her sister to war, and there has already been an agreement between North and South Korea to reunite families separated by the war under the coordination of the Red Cross in a moving meeting more than 65 years later at Mount Kim Gang in 2018. According to an article by Yonhap News Agency², eighty-nine South Koreans, mostly in their seventies and over, met about 180 members of their families, who were parents, brothers and sisters who were separated from them and had to stay in North Korea.

The author chose to embody the separation of Korean families from each other through the character of the writer's daughter "Jina", who documents the life of her mother, "Gwija", a girl who grew up in a simple house in Hamgyong Province, shared it with her father, mother and siblings, grew up and married at an early age to protect her from exploitation or recruitment into the ranks of the occupation. We find ourselves living her memories from an early age to her old age, moving from the bereavement of the pain of the past to the hope of her present days that she will one day meet those she lost during the displacement of her family from the fields of war.

I think the author kept the plot of the book somewhat open for readers to decide for themselves if the ending was rather sad or if there was hope to meet again, even if the family reunion was of another nature.

How did the graphics add their touch to the details of the events?

What attracted me to the book too, the book's drawings are black ink on white paper in a style devoid of excessive artistic decoration but adequately expressive of miserable feelings, places and expressions. You may think for a moment that the presence of images may spare you from unleashing your imagination, as some of the scenes drawn seem to be accurate in detail in some pages of the book, but they added another dimension to the events that words alone are unlikely to be enough to describe, making the reader think about the depth of the feelings that the characters feel: for example, drawing the two united trees as an expression of the sympathy of the two neighbors for going through the same experience of separation, or how the son's sad expressions were painted on the last memory that the mother kept before they parted, and the drawings poignantly captured scenes of the sisters meeting again and how they dated with a mixture of hope, banter and despair to meet when the two Koreas were united.

"How can I live to a hundred years? If I had the luck and lived until then, would the two Koreas unite before that?"³

¹ The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, translated by Maryam Madi -  Page 195

²  KNA Yonhap article dated August 20, 2018, https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20180820000653315