Pain

Sunshine Lee's Culture Essay written in Poetry

Pain

After suffering from backache for several months, unable to take it anymore I finally got surgery.

That I have endured this far was beyond human limits. I’ve hurt my core and can barely move, so I am still suffering.

Just in time, Korea has reached the peak of the Covid-19 crisis. I can’t really process the news conveyed through TV, as I shouldn’t be lying on my side. Also, hearing about Covid-19 just adds to my stress.

As Covid-19 is raging inside and outside Korea, hospitals are less crowded than usual. Though sad, while being hospitalized for 2 weeks, I declined visits from my family and acquaintances, too.

But I couldn’t stop my caregiver from turning on the TV. Even good news would be hard to watch now, but every channel was broadcasting serious discussions on issues like the number of Covid-19 patients, people waiting in line for masks, the economic aspects of Korea, and the like.

And my young granddaughter Farrah sent me a picture via kakaotalk.

She said that she went to the post office to send a handwritten card with a picture that she drew herself and 100 choco pies to a hospital in Daegu.

On the card it was written: “Thank you for saving our country. I pray that God’s blessings be with you always! Farrah Chung.”

The kid who always does adorable things, expressed her adorable heart with her own hands for the medical staff toiling in Daegu hospitals.

I had wanted to avoid negative news coverage as I was suffering, but my granddaughter’s innocent heart made me ashamed. So, I tuned into news coverage on Daegu.

I have been to Daegu a few times, but I don’t have any personal ties with the city.

Daegu reminds me of my friend Jeongju, with whom I went to junior high, high school and university. She transferred to Ewha girls’ middle school from a school in the countryside in Daegu when we were in the eighth grade. She took my place at the top of our class, a position I had maintained since the second semester of seventh grade when we entered the ninth grade.

I was innocent and gentle then, so I wasn’t really competitive and didn’t begrudge the fact she beat me. Though her air was different then, her sincerity, patience and devotion which she inherited from her mother were exceptional. The school we went to was a missionary school, so a lot of us memorized Bible verses and worshipped mechanically, but she was a natural.

And I am also reminded of hometown stories of poet Jong-gil Kim and Nam-jo Kim who gave me much love and help.

How sad would those living in Daegu and those who left their hometown of Daegu feel now?

Many medical staff as well as volunteers from all over Korea are rushing into Deagu. At this time when I would expect people to run from fear of infection, they are instead voluntarily rushing to patients in Daegu saying that the reason they became doctors was precisely for times like this – their devotion is amazing.

Even though I can barely roll over, I looked up some news about Daegu. And one article that comes to my attention was an interview by ABC, a US news organization. The correspondent reports that in Daegu, which has been declared a “special management zone”, there is no panic or rioting, and that instead there is a stoic calm and quiet. I also listened to an interview of the director of Keimyung University Dongsan Hospital, a Christian institution. As trying to save lives non-stop for 24 hours, he says: “I think this hospital is the Noah’s Arc to save Daegu citizens. This is not that bad of an infection. We can win this fight.”

The message of the director of Dongsan Hospital, broadcasted through ABC of American Broadcasting Company, will move the world, as it has already moved me.

A sudden national crisis reveals the class of the country and its citizens.

About nine years ago, in March, there was a great tsunami in Japan. I remember the whole world admiring that the Japanese were “the progress of the humankind”. I pondered if the same thing had happened to us if we Koreans could have done the same that moment. The electricity and gas were cut off, essential items like food were out of stock for more than a month, but they stood in line for hours, received the food and passed them to people behind. Class doesn’t necessarily follow wealth.

Now world media reports that citizens of Daegu are quietly demonstrating self-control, and I am truly thankful and proud.

In fact, there is a saying that circumstances that arise from fear, not the disease itself, are a more serious problem. Even though Korea, geographically close to China, the country of Covid-19 outbreak, has a lot of confirmed cases and we are undergoing humiliation as many countries are banning entry of Koreans, I am starting to have faith that the city with so many Covid-19 patients isolated is ‘Noah’s Arc’, and that their devotion will contribute to covid-19 eventually being contained. I came to reassess Daegu which I only knew as a city of tasty apples.

And as I witness Daegu’s crisis and its solid faith, I naturally think of my friend Jeong-ju Kim, professor emeritus of Yonsei University, who is actively involved in Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and is fulfilling her duty as someone more well-off than others. 

Now I have the homework of recovering from the surgery that I went through after enduring for a long time. And I have come to have faith that this pain (touched by a noted doctor) will abate, that I can win this, and that from now on I will live the true chapter of my life.

Mask crisis

Medicalstaff of Daegu