Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim Page A

everything, including the degree of nobility in their backgrounds. Although her Yoon clan had originated from the ancient region of Papyeong in Gyeonggi province, she was born and raised in Seoul, as were her parents. The Pap-yeong Yoons were known for their queens. Often the bride of the future king was selected from faded noble families who lacked ambition, since those holding power in the court tried to guard against anyone who might usurp their power. Her preoccupation, however, was with more recent family history.
    As my mother tells it, June 25, 1950, was a quiet Sunday. She was just four years old, although she remembers it all as if it happened yesterday. That was the day when North Korean bombs first fell over the southern capital of Seoul. That day marked the end of a childhood that never really had the chance to begin.
    So it goes like this, our conversation.
    The bombs were coming, and we ran, my mother says. She is not sure if she heard them, but she knew they were coming because everyone in the neighborhood was fleeing.
    Where were you going? I ask.
    Her reaction then is always the same—incredulous at being asked something so obvious.
    To the south, of course! Anywhere, so long as it was toward the south. We knew that if we stayed there, we would die. At least that was what my mother said when she was packing.
    Her father is away on a business trip to Busan at the southernmost tip of the country. This is unusual. He is an administrator at the local community center—not a job that requires business travel. But the family is lucky that he was sent south, not north, for work. An overnight trip north, a couple of hours away, and some families are separated forever. The war announcements must be airing on the radio because almost no one has a telephone or TV. The mood is urgent, panicked even, and my mother remembers a sudden cold breeze sweeping across the living room, even though it was summer and humid. The neighbors have begun fleeing, carrying their possessions on their backs, checking in to see what Mrs. Yoon is up to, why she has not left yet.
    “ Palgengis (the Red) are coming!” they scream. “There’s war!” These people have lived through the Japanese rule. They are accustomed to catastrophe.
    My grandmother must make the decision alone. The children must be fed and dressed, and the youngest one will have to be carried. My mother is a quiet child, but she is even quieter than usual; she can tell something big is about to happen. My grandmother tells the children to start packing. They all gather their things frantically.
    Five children in total, but not really.
    What do you mean, five children, but not really?
    My mother would pause here. She might be in the midst of cutting up daikon or roasting seaweed for my lunch box. She might be getting ready for a night out with my father, standing before a dressing mirror in her green silk wrap dress and matching leather gloves. I can still see her reflection in the mirror, her hair blow-dried into a windswept Farrah Fawcett do, not a trace of the war-fleeing child visible. She modeled once, in the sixties, for a Japanese photographer who spotted her in a restaurant in Seoul because of her striking resemblance to a Japanese movie star. This resemblance inspired a Korean TV producer to pursue her for months and cast her in a weekly soap opera, but the week before filming she took off on a seaside outing with my father and never showed up. She was not irresponsible by nature, but she wasn’t sure what a model or an actress did because in postwar Korea, TV and magazines were still new and mysterious. At the moment, her beauty seems even more exaggerated as she pauses and gazes into a distance. My mother is still young. Just barely in her thirties, the wound still raw.
    What do you mean, not really five?
    You see …  there were nine originally. Four died in infancy. Babies didn’t always live back then.
    This part always mystifies me. I am a child, and