The Safety House

Although I have never met the newly elected president, Park Keun-hae,
 I have seen her quite a few times.

The Korean-style house, in which I lived with my parents for many years has significantly shrunk because of the expansion of the roads around the house. Back in the day when the old house was set back deep inside the garden, there was a second-story Western-style house near the front gate. From the terrace of my room in the second floor, I used to observe the former president Park Jung-hee and his daughter at close range, just a stone’s throw away.

That was after the moment when I heard a gun shot while watching President Park make a congratulatory speech marking the Liberation Day in 1974 on TV. A moment later the first lady Yuk collapsed and passed away.

The house across street from my house, Pirun-dong 90, belonged to the older brother of first lady Yuk, He was Congressman Yuk In-soo, and the mother-in-law of president Park lived there.

I visited that house a few times. There was a garage downstairs and once you climbed up the outside stairs, you reached the front door and entered the living room.

I used to see President Park and his daughter climbing up those stairs 

Every time the president visited, the guards barricaded both ends of the several-hundred-meter-long road in front of the house. I got the distinct impression that these guards were lax. They would buy candies at both ends of the alley without noticing the fact that I was there looking down at the president and his daughter right in front of them.

Soon after that time, I went to Washington to study and while adjusting to the new country and my studies, and working and living there, I completely forgot about that scenes.

I came back home to find that the house across the street had become the Indian Embassy and then turned into nine villas afterward. After all these years, however, I clearly recalled the scene I had forgotten about for so long: how the president and his daughter climbed up the stairs step-by-step.

Whenever I looked at the place, whether leaving or coming back home, I remembered the scenes vividly as if it were only yesterday.

One spring day last year around half past five in the afternoon, I was walking by that house and remembering the scene again. Suddenly, my cell phone rang. “This is Park Keun-hae” said the voice. Although I know of her, I was uncertain that she could possibly know about me. And yet there I was talking to her as naturally as if we had met back then at those scenes that I had been remembering for several decades and was recollecting right at that moment.

“As it so happens, Pirun-dong is where my uncle used to live” she said, delighted.

She was reminded of the good old days.

Then I realized that I had forgotten to ask an important question “By the way, may I ask what this call concerns?” 

She told me that she was moved by my poetry book ‘Breathtaking’

I was amazed that she read poetry at all, for it was a complicated period due to the conflicts surrounding Sejong city. I was even more amazed that I found it so natural to talk to her in person about that scenes for the first time, which had only been a personal experience and I had never shared with anybody. It seemed as if that whole conversation was fated.   

The evening on the day after she was elected, despite cold weather, I walked down my neighborhood, passing along the long stone wall of the Gyeongbok-gung Place and rambling along Mugunghwa Hill in front of the Blue House.

That was where the safety house was and it was where former president Park passed away in 1979.

The first thing former president Kim Young-sam did after being elected was tearing down the safety house, plant a great number of Mugunghwa flowers, and open it to the public.

It was also there that I took a walk with my mother for the last time in the summer of 2003.

 I was pushing the wheelchair of my poet mother who had published five books of poetry all entitled Mugunghwa and we watched the fully bloomed mugunghwa flowers together

Gazing upon the silent traces of the safety house and the Blue House, I thought about the new president. On the way out from the Blue House, if you turn left, you will face the Mugunghwa hill right before you step into Hyoja-dong.

Just as I think of my mother when I arrive at that place, she also would have mixed emotions looking at that hill, thinking of her own father.

And she would swear that she would overcome the time of that president.