27
The Sick Notices on the Board, 1974~1981
Pageboys and girls had been racing to and from the newsroom and linotype room, mounting and dismounting the stairs, until a fresh new method of plying the proofs was worked out. Time reduction process was needed. Some smart guys came up with a bizarre idea of tunneling up and down stairs rooms. The newsroom floor just around the proofreading desk was bored into the ceiling of the linotype room through which the proof-containing boxes were plying between the two rooms. It's just like they were drawing water from a well.
A hell-raising routine almost always began with a spine-shaking yell of the editor in chief. As the thundering whiffs were blowing from the editor in chief's desk, fanning out in all directions with the corresponding turf power. The political and economic desks were always hit the hardest and the proof desk was the meekest. The position of each desk said it all, of which the proof desk positioned itself at the entrance of the room by which it symbolized the bottom line of responsibility in the production of a newspaper. Whenever the plastic box containing the manuscripts lowered into the pit, they rang the bell, exclaiming "We are sending them down." And the linotype people did the same sending them up to the newsroom.
Even in the whirlpool of a day's rat race toward the deadline, Dano was an odd man out. He had not been "officially" employed. He was particularly recruited by the editor in chief. He was not a college graduate nor a English major. He was a freak from savagery who happened to step in the civilized society of the urban sophistication. Although he scrubbed himself up and changed from night-shift clothes, his coworker Mr. Yang in his thirties, during day-shifts, was heard to whisper, from time to time, to Tony somebody's ears, "That guy stinks."
"It's a karma," I was startled to realize one day during the job, and one day many years later, just out of the blue, that it was a karma at work. The image of myself was that I was, just like my father Don that had been, digging something from the "pit." My father had been digging coals, as a coal miner of the colony of the Imperial Japan, I myself was digging the typed news articles from the pit of the linotype room.
Anxiety used to be a persistent sword which had been dangling above the ceiling of the room in which the Dano-Tschai pair had lived. The pair had to pack and move to another rental place if and when the land lord had come to them and solemnly declared: "You have to be moving!" At that time the prices of the real estates in Seoul had been actually skyrocketing so the land lords had been domineering like tyrants. The pair had more often than not been startled to sit up with spontaneous shrieks of nightmares.
Anxiety was contagious just like colds. Three son children, including the one which had been born at the Black Rock Town in the year 1978, when moving to new places, had to be scared at the entrance of a new house until the land lord said "O.K." They were usually scared, casually looking askance, and getting feverish at times.
Particularly Kyo, the third and last son, developed an odd convulsion. His vulnerability got his parents in no particular time racing in all directions for any hospital in an exact category. Kyo once succumbed to kyonggi, or children's convulsion, which had astonished his parents to no end. The pediatric doctor they consulted recommended that the parents prepare emergency aspirin and abdominal irrigation syringe.
Tschai had not succumbed to any illness. Me Dano had not gotten sick during my term of office, either. Ironically, the sick leave notices of the desk reporters had been posted every other day, exaggeratingly speaking of course, on the bulletin board of the news room. Whenever the names of the hospitals and its room numbers, at which the reporters had been seeking asylum from the editor in chief's tyranny, remained affixed to the board, I took a visit to the hospitals and inquired after their health. I was reciprocated in later years by their thank-you calls when I was forced to quit the company in the year 1981. They had been a very appreciative lot, feeling grateful for what they had owed, such as it had been.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Chapters 25.26:In Front of the Teletypes
25
Decked with Chrysanthemums, 1972
One of the colleagues was inquisitive about me Dano: Where he had been, what he had been doing, how he had come to join them, and what he would do. He was not being hilarious about the food thing. He was being serious. Others concurred; They were not insinuating anything; They were just curious about Dano's job shift from an elementary school teacher to a newspaper "reporter." The proofreader was referred to as "reporter."
Dano defined his erstwhile experiences as a man of default, or a "default man." They wanted to know what he meant by a default man. He blandly explained to them the person in question as a human being who had made various attempts but achieved virtually nothing. His occupational journey after he had left pedagogical job for good in the year 1971 included a mineral water and insurance salesman. He did not dare mention his stunt in judicial examination, that is, the Korean version of Bar Exam.
There had been family accidents and catastrophes during the launching years of the 1970s. Ilseo, Dano's next immediate brother, had had his legs broken in a demonstration of a special alpine training course in the Nth Division in some place, the U.S. Armed Forces Korea. He had been a rock climbing instructor for the U.S. Army officers. Dano's sister, who had been born in Sun Valley after the Korean War, had left home to become a Buddhist nun.
Tschai, vulnerable to Dano's whims, had been thrown off guard on and off. Although inwardly terrified at first of all the unwholesome situation about her, uprooted and without resources, she had outwardly remained calm and composed. She had always gotten herself prepared to face the harsh realities by opening the seamstress' shop, lest "the spider should build webs on the mouths" of her family.
-----------------------
Mrs. Euiseong Kim was a mystery to Tschai since Tschai had made an encounter with her after her marriage to Dano. The scene, in which her grandmother-in-law had been confined, was a shock to her because, although her grandmother on her father's side had also been suffering from Alzheimer's disease, nobody in the family had gotten her grandmother caged and nobody had ever thought of keeping their beleaguered elderly in captivity. What had shocked her more than anything else was that her unfortunate grandmother-in-law had recognized her at first sight. Tschai, who had been forced to live, albeit for the time being, at Oksan, had once stopped by to look after her grandmom, who, when seeing her, had brightened her face and astonished her with her sane recognition and the exact guess by saying "Have you been to the bazaar to buy salt?"
------------------
On an autumnal night of October 1972, Dano's grandma had passed away with a great cry that could have torn the air into pieces. On that very day she had been uncaged. Dano had wondered why the sky didn't fall down. It had stayed bright and clear. The sky had been so studded with stars that it had appeared to pour them on earth. The chrysanthemums in the rear garden had been in full bloom and the moonlights on them had been shining blade sharp.
My cousins and me had had the coffin decked with the solemn flowers. I wondered aloud what had caused Grandma to shut down the gate to her memory. Grandma had stayed so sharp in her prime years that she had even composed sadonji, or the letter written on the scroll and sent to the parents of the bride or bridegroom as a token of gratitude or celebration.
To her darling grandson, Mrs. Euiseong Kim had been a best cook. She had had a good memory for various recipes. Any food material she had touched her hands on changed into a gourmet food. She had also been a great doctor having the profound knowledge of the alternative medicine. Whenever I had been sick, she had been on the prowl for medicinal herbs in the woods and mountain hills. On the starry night under the shimmering moonlight before the flower-decked coffin of his dear grandma, Dano had still wondered what kind of memory his grandma had tried to bury and flee from it. I endear so deeply to my grandmother that, in my mind's eye, she is always standing on the hill top waiting for the late- coming grandchild holding the lamp aloft.
26
Before the Teletype Printers, 1975~1980
Years were a bliss. The fleeting passage of time was a healing factor. The scars and traumas, which I had suffered in the sorrow over the loss of my grandmother, appeared palpable at first and then progressively got sunk in my mind scape.
My apprenticeship period of three months was over but my take-home pay envelope turned out thin still. My wife Tschai still went to her seamstress' workshop to supplement his low income so that our two sons, who hadn't gone to kindergarten or children's house or something, were left in their own brand actions of hazardous character. Naturally the apprehensive pair of us had always been on edge in our work places. Luckily enough, my two sons never brushed with the police.
I also volunteered to do the night shift work to lighten Tschai's toilsome burdens. As I was adjusted to the nightwork and developed familiar relationships with the other coworkers, I had the opportunities to go to the wire room upstairs, where the teletype printers were disgorging the articles, which was a really captivating scene.
It was surreal. No man at work seen. The printers themselves were rattling off words on the long scroll papers on which meaningful sentences were being formed which made eloquent paragraphs. The hues and cries of the disgorged articles were of catastrophic context: The Chun Doo Hwan clique, which had masterminded the coup in the year 1979, would incapacitate the civilian supremacy to establish the military dictatorship. The hues were suppressed and the cries were of course stifled by the intelligence agencies like KCIA. The foreign news articles were censored by them and the press of Korea at large collaborated with them by truncating or blacking out the articles at issue.
It was the seas over which I could hear the uproars of the decimated people and frustrating incidents. The bouncing beats of the teletypes at the wire room from time to time sounded to me just like Grandma and Mom pounding on the dadimidol, or the rock board used for spreading the dried laundry. It sounded at times a night-long gun battle on the hills of Sun Valley. Or air-splitting shrieks of the drowning refugees on the Cheongdo River. I fantasized over the teletype writers across the Pacific and Indian Oceans who were punching the desperate keys and warning the Korean people of an impending dictatorship by the Chun Doo Hwan coup cabals.
----------------
The encounter with the teletype machine gave me a wonder, bordering on a shock. Two mechanical hands were at work but the body and the face were invisible. A ghost materialized, finessing typing human languages. The cling clang of typing sounds by the invisible human being gave me surreal imagination of people and things. It was not just a curiosity about the person across the seas who was now sending human messages but was a curiosity about the technology which was enabling the people to send meaningful messages across the seas thousands of miles away.
The mechanical noises evoked memories of which some had been pleasant and some others horrible. The nagging grandma and weeping mother materialized. They were pounding a long winter night away with the metronomic cadence on a rock board. Shrieks followed. The downpours beating on the tent. The tent leaking. The rains coming all night. Shaking the body all over with the chills from the leaks. "Help!" somebody drifting along.
Decked with Chrysanthemums, 1972
One of the colleagues was inquisitive about me Dano: Where he had been, what he had been doing, how he had come to join them, and what he would do. He was not being hilarious about the food thing. He was being serious. Others concurred; They were not insinuating anything; They were just curious about Dano's job shift from an elementary school teacher to a newspaper "reporter." The proofreader was referred to as "reporter."
Dano defined his erstwhile experiences as a man of default, or a "default man." They wanted to know what he meant by a default man. He blandly explained to them the person in question as a human being who had made various attempts but achieved virtually nothing. His occupational journey after he had left pedagogical job for good in the year 1971 included a mineral water and insurance salesman. He did not dare mention his stunt in judicial examination, that is, the Korean version of Bar Exam.
There had been family accidents and catastrophes during the launching years of the 1970s. Ilseo, Dano's next immediate brother, had had his legs broken in a demonstration of a special alpine training course in the Nth Division in some place, the U.S. Armed Forces Korea. He had been a rock climbing instructor for the U.S. Army officers. Dano's sister, who had been born in Sun Valley after the Korean War, had left home to become a Buddhist nun.
Tschai, vulnerable to Dano's whims, had been thrown off guard on and off. Although inwardly terrified at first of all the unwholesome situation about her, uprooted and without resources, she had outwardly remained calm and composed. She had always gotten herself prepared to face the harsh realities by opening the seamstress' shop, lest "the spider should build webs on the mouths" of her family.
-----------------------
Mrs. Euiseong Kim was a mystery to Tschai since Tschai had made an encounter with her after her marriage to Dano. The scene, in which her grandmother-in-law had been confined, was a shock to her because, although her grandmother on her father's side had also been suffering from Alzheimer's disease, nobody in the family had gotten her grandmother caged and nobody had ever thought of keeping their beleaguered elderly in captivity. What had shocked her more than anything else was that her unfortunate grandmother-in-law had recognized her at first sight. Tschai, who had been forced to live, albeit for the time being, at Oksan, had once stopped by to look after her grandmom, who, when seeing her, had brightened her face and astonished her with her sane recognition and the exact guess by saying "Have you been to the bazaar to buy salt?"
------------------
On an autumnal night of October 1972, Dano's grandma had passed away with a great cry that could have torn the air into pieces. On that very day she had been uncaged. Dano had wondered why the sky didn't fall down. It had stayed bright and clear. The sky had been so studded with stars that it had appeared to pour them on earth. The chrysanthemums in the rear garden had been in full bloom and the moonlights on them had been shining blade sharp.
My cousins and me had had the coffin decked with the solemn flowers. I wondered aloud what had caused Grandma to shut down the gate to her memory. Grandma had stayed so sharp in her prime years that she had even composed sadonji, or the letter written on the scroll and sent to the parents of the bride or bridegroom as a token of gratitude or celebration.
To her darling grandson, Mrs. Euiseong Kim had been a best cook. She had had a good memory for various recipes. Any food material she had touched her hands on changed into a gourmet food. She had also been a great doctor having the profound knowledge of the alternative medicine. Whenever I had been sick, she had been on the prowl for medicinal herbs in the woods and mountain hills. On the starry night under the shimmering moonlight before the flower-decked coffin of his dear grandma, Dano had still wondered what kind of memory his grandma had tried to bury and flee from it. I endear so deeply to my grandmother that, in my mind's eye, she is always standing on the hill top waiting for the late- coming grandchild holding the lamp aloft.
26
Before the Teletype Printers, 1975~1980
Years were a bliss. The fleeting passage of time was a healing factor. The scars and traumas, which I had suffered in the sorrow over the loss of my grandmother, appeared palpable at first and then progressively got sunk in my mind scape.
My apprenticeship period of three months was over but my take-home pay envelope turned out thin still. My wife Tschai still went to her seamstress' workshop to supplement his low income so that our two sons, who hadn't gone to kindergarten or children's house or something, were left in their own brand actions of hazardous character. Naturally the apprehensive pair of us had always been on edge in our work places. Luckily enough, my two sons never brushed with the police.
I also volunteered to do the night shift work to lighten Tschai's toilsome burdens. As I was adjusted to the nightwork and developed familiar relationships with the other coworkers, I had the opportunities to go to the wire room upstairs, where the teletype printers were disgorging the articles, which was a really captivating scene.
It was surreal. No man at work seen. The printers themselves were rattling off words on the long scroll papers on which meaningful sentences were being formed which made eloquent paragraphs. The hues and cries of the disgorged articles were of catastrophic context: The Chun Doo Hwan clique, which had masterminded the coup in the year 1979, would incapacitate the civilian supremacy to establish the military dictatorship. The hues were suppressed and the cries were of course stifled by the intelligence agencies like KCIA. The foreign news articles were censored by them and the press of Korea at large collaborated with them by truncating or blacking out the articles at issue.
It was the seas over which I could hear the uproars of the decimated people and frustrating incidents. The bouncing beats of the teletypes at the wire room from time to time sounded to me just like Grandma and Mom pounding on the dadimidol, or the rock board used for spreading the dried laundry. It sounded at times a night-long gun battle on the hills of Sun Valley. Or air-splitting shrieks of the drowning refugees on the Cheongdo River. I fantasized over the teletype writers across the Pacific and Indian Oceans who were punching the desperate keys and warning the Korean people of an impending dictatorship by the Chun Doo Hwan coup cabals.
----------------
The encounter with the teletype machine gave me a wonder, bordering on a shock. Two mechanical hands were at work but the body and the face were invisible. A ghost materialized, finessing typing human languages. The cling clang of typing sounds by the invisible human being gave me surreal imagination of people and things. It was not just a curiosity about the person across the seas who was now sending human messages but was a curiosity about the technology which was enabling the people to send meaningful messages across the seas thousands of miles away.
The mechanical noises evoked memories of which some had been pleasant and some others horrible. The nagging grandma and weeping mother materialized. They were pounding a long winter night away with the metronomic cadence on a rock board. Shrieks followed. The downpours beating on the tent. The tent leaking. The rains coming all night. Shaking the body all over with the chills from the leaks. "Help!" somebody drifting along.
Chapter 24:At the Korea Times
24
At The Korea Times, 1974~1980
In the stillness of night when the other coworkers had returned to their homes for peace and rest, I savored the loneliness in the company bedroom. There were a few other boarders almost each night from the brother vernacular newspaper who had lost the last traffic going back home while boozing with office buddies. There arose physiological odors and snoring noises. I climbed up to a top bunk to a fitful sleep.
Grammarian Lee, proofreading desk chief, who had been so named after his habit of keeping an old Japanese grammar book which had been worn out, said to me Dano at the time of business shift, "Report for work tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Park." "Why, sir?" I asked. "Because Mr. Kim will call in sick."
The Seoul air of the early winter morning in the periphery of the Korea Times was chilly enough. Dano's bus ride to his residence at Heuksok-dong, Dongjak-gu by No. 84 city bus was a painful reminder of the frustrated college life he had failed to consummate. He himself did not understand why he had rented his house at the Black Rock Town of all the places.
The homecoming route from the Heuksok-dong bus terminal to his rented house on the hilltop was a knee-hurting job: He had to negotiate an uphill slope. Tschai was about to leave the den after setting up a modest breakfast table for her husband with a few side dishes. He recently found out that Tschai had opened her seamstress' workshop at a corner of the town bazaar. The increased sickoo, or the "eating mouths" of four by two son children, who had been born in the 1970s at an interval of two years, had driven Tschai out of the house. The take- home paycheck envelope of a rookie newspaper proofreader just out of a three-month apprenticeship was too thin to support the family of four.
Taking care of the two sons was not a major problem. Tai, ages 5, the older of the two, was getting along well with the village boys who had not gone to kindergarten just like him and Hua, ages 3, the younger of the two, had gone to his mother's workshop, clinging to his mother's apron strings.
When I stepped in the newsroom on the third floor, I found the conversations, which had been going on around the entrance of the door, suddenly got stopped short. The atmosphere was that I myself had been an object of a back talk. Usually, it was time culture desk chief Ahn had been bragging about last night's money job of translating English novels.
Hardly had an intuition that I had made a fatal mistake or two last night struck me Editor-in-chief Chung somebody waved me over to his table. "Good afternoon, sir!" I said. Chung, a gentle-mannered man in his fifties, who had recruited me above the protests of the others, looked mischievously at me, and said, "Is the night shift too hard for you?" "Not at all, sir!" I replied.
"Compare the proofs with the original manuscripts more carefully, will you?"
"Sure, I will, sir!"
"And you are supposed to do day shifts instead of nights from now on."
"But for how long, sir?"
"Indefinitely."
How lucky of one to have such considerate and benevolent gentleman as Editor Chung and Grammarian Lee as one's superior, Dano always appreciated that. Lee and two other proofreaders were at their desk already. Lee suggested to Dano they have coffee breaks "down there." They climbed down the stairs of the company building and walked down the alley slope along the Japanese Embassy, stepping down to the Hankook Dabang.
The coffee shop was always packed with reporters and their visitors. When they were seated, a waitress asked for orders. All four of them ordered coffees. After having some sips, I wanted to know about my mistakes of the previous night. The chief and all the three colleagues beamed. Lim somebody explained to me that an opinion column contributor had pointed out one proof error on his article.
A lot of readers had also questioned the validity of the word food printed in the newspaper: "I leave Korea for food." The right statement should have read: "I leave Korea for good." By the proof mistake made by me Dano, South Korea was listed in such impoverished countries as DPRK whose people had been in famished state.
At The Korea Times, 1974~1980
In the stillness of night when the other coworkers had returned to their homes for peace and rest, I savored the loneliness in the company bedroom. There were a few other boarders almost each night from the brother vernacular newspaper who had lost the last traffic going back home while boozing with office buddies. There arose physiological odors and snoring noises. I climbed up to a top bunk to a fitful sleep.
Grammarian Lee, proofreading desk chief, who had been so named after his habit of keeping an old Japanese grammar book which had been worn out, said to me Dano at the time of business shift, "Report for work tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Park." "Why, sir?" I asked. "Because Mr. Kim will call in sick."
The Seoul air of the early winter morning in the periphery of the Korea Times was chilly enough. Dano's bus ride to his residence at Heuksok-dong, Dongjak-gu by No. 84 city bus was a painful reminder of the frustrated college life he had failed to consummate. He himself did not understand why he had rented his house at the Black Rock Town of all the places.
The homecoming route from the Heuksok-dong bus terminal to his rented house on the hilltop was a knee-hurting job: He had to negotiate an uphill slope. Tschai was about to leave the den after setting up a modest breakfast table for her husband with a few side dishes. He recently found out that Tschai had opened her seamstress' workshop at a corner of the town bazaar. The increased sickoo, or the "eating mouths" of four by two son children, who had been born in the 1970s at an interval of two years, had driven Tschai out of the house. The take- home paycheck envelope of a rookie newspaper proofreader just out of a three-month apprenticeship was too thin to support the family of four.
Taking care of the two sons was not a major problem. Tai, ages 5, the older of the two, was getting along well with the village boys who had not gone to kindergarten just like him and Hua, ages 3, the younger of the two, had gone to his mother's workshop, clinging to his mother's apron strings.
When I stepped in the newsroom on the third floor, I found the conversations, which had been going on around the entrance of the door, suddenly got stopped short. The atmosphere was that I myself had been an object of a back talk. Usually, it was time culture desk chief Ahn had been bragging about last night's money job of translating English novels.
Hardly had an intuition that I had made a fatal mistake or two last night struck me Editor-in-chief Chung somebody waved me over to his table. "Good afternoon, sir!" I said. Chung, a gentle-mannered man in his fifties, who had recruited me above the protests of the others, looked mischievously at me, and said, "Is the night shift too hard for you?" "Not at all, sir!" I replied.
"Compare the proofs with the original manuscripts more carefully, will you?"
"Sure, I will, sir!"
"And you are supposed to do day shifts instead of nights from now on."
"But for how long, sir?"
"Indefinitely."
How lucky of one to have such considerate and benevolent gentleman as Editor Chung and Grammarian Lee as one's superior, Dano always appreciated that. Lee and two other proofreaders were at their desk already. Lee suggested to Dano they have coffee breaks "down there." They climbed down the stairs of the company building and walked down the alley slope along the Japanese Embassy, stepping down to the Hankook Dabang.
The coffee shop was always packed with reporters and their visitors. When they were seated, a waitress asked for orders. All four of them ordered coffees. After having some sips, I wanted to know about my mistakes of the previous night. The chief and all the three colleagues beamed. Lim somebody explained to me that an opinion column contributor had pointed out one proof error on his article.
A lot of readers had also questioned the validity of the word food printed in the newspaper: "I leave Korea for food." The right statement should have read: "I leave Korea for good." By the proof mistake made by me Dano, South Korea was listed in such impoverished countries as DPRK whose people had been in famished state.
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