On Jan. 15, 1935, I was born to a rich landowner family. My official birth date is November 15, 1935 due to a clerical error. I was the third son of Kim Chang Lim and Kim Kae Dong. My father had three sisters - the youngest lived in Seoul. The second sister was married to a farmer, my Uncle Park from a revolutionary family. The third sister was retarded and was being taken care of by Uncle Park. Uncle Park cared for my grandma who occasionally stayed with us - but she did not get along with my mother. My grandpa, an impoverished carpenter, died many years before my birth.
Photo: My parents with my brother Ung Sik Kim
Kapsan is situated near Mt. Baikdu where Kim Ilsung's anti-Japanese partisans (guerrillas) were based. Mt. Baikdu is the tallest (9,003 feet above sea level) mountain of the Changbaik mountain range. The area around the mountain (some 20 miles in length) is inhospitable and uninhabited. A volcanic lake Chungji sits on top of the mountain.
Kapsan is famous for its remoteness and backwardness. Winters are cold and long. Its citizens were dirt poor. The nearest civilization is the border town of Hyesan-jin ("jin" stands for a port). Manchuria is on the other side of the Yalu River across a bridge at Hyesan.
My birthplace is referred to as Sam-su Kapsan - the worst place to be in all of Korea. It is Korea's Siberia. During the Yi dynasty, Kapsan was a border garrison town. Political prisoners and minor criminals were exiled there to man the fort. The fort, a large pile of stones about five stories high, was built about one thousand years ago to stop marauding bandits from Manchuria. My great grandfather was the last garrison commander. The garrison was disbanded in 1905 when Japan occupied Korea. His sword and helmet are still preserved in a shrine at our family burial ground near Kapsan.
Photo: My father and his sister, who lived in Seoul
Life was hard for most of the Kapsan inhabitants - starvation, extreme cold (how cold? If you peed into an open air, the urine would freeze by the time it hit the ground!), hard labor, tigers, wolves, the Japanese police, opium, poor sanitation and disease (only one Western medical "doctor", a medical school dropout, was in town) and a myriad of other curses killed the Kapsanese.
Particularly bad was the lack of personal hygiene and sanitation. Drinking water was drawn from open wells. People defecated into shallow holes dug into ground during the day (much like an American outhouse). During the night, night chambers were used for urine and feces. In the morning, the chambers were emptied into the yard or the street. My grandmother washed her face with her urine; she believed that it kept her face young and shiny. You were lucky to live beyond the age 50 in Kapsan.
My mother was 10 years older than my father, as it was the custom in the Yi dynasty days. Girls did not receive school education because the main reason for their being was to raise children and to do house chores for their husbands. My mother could not read or write. Until her marriage, she did not have a proper name either; Gae Dong was her nickname meaning dog shit. My father was her second husband, which fact was kept secret from us for many years. Her parents eked out doing tenant farming in a remote village, some 15 miles from Kapsan. I had three brothers Ung Sik, Sung Sik and Su Sik, and one sister Young Ja.
Photo: My sister Kim Young Ja.
Most roads in Kapsan were ox cart tracks in use since the days of the Huns many centuries ago. The vast majority of the Kapsanese had never seen a car, train, electricity or newspaper. More than 90% could not read or write. They were incredibly poor, eking out a sub-human living by clearing out (with fire - hence the term Wha Jung Min - slash and burn migrants) a small patch of shrubs. After a crop or two, they would move on to another patch.
Those lucky ones worked for rich landlords. Their lot was no better than that of a slash and burn farmer. The landlords literally owned the tenants. They had the police power and locked up any tenant failing to pay rent or debt. Farmers' daughters were married off early or sold into slavery (housemaids or concubines) to the Japanese and rich Koreans. Most tenants owed their landlord some 50 years of rent and had no hope of freeing themselves from their bondage.
Photo: Kim Chang Lim, my father
My father was a self-made businessman. He had received no formal education but taught himself how to read, write and speak Japanese, Korean and Chinese. He had been to Seoul, Tokyo and Kirin (Manchuria) several times. Early in 1930, he formed a land development company with a Japanese partner. But prior to that he was a Communist and led a farmers' uprising in Hong Won near Hamhung. After the uprising was crushed, he was on his way to Manchuria. By the time he reached Kapsan, he was starving and nearly froze to death. My mother's family took him in and saved his life.
While recuperating he saw a vision - why not take advantage of the Japanese and do some good deed for the farmers. The Japanese were eager to produce more foods and they were willing to help out anyone with food ideas.
The main business of my father's company was building irrigation canals to water lands that were too dry for rice crops. The water was taken from the Jangjing River, a tributary of the Yalu. Several thousands' acres of land, previously barren, were turned into rich rice paddies and other farms. The farms along with the farmers on them legally and physically belonged to my father.
Photo: My brothers - Sung Sik, Ung Sik, circa 1937 and me.
A huge sluice controlled the flow of the water from the river. It was lowered to reduce the flow and raised to increase the flow. Two wheels, one on each side of the sluice, were turned by a couple of strong men. The irrigation canals were several miles long. The canals were built above ground with dirt, rocks and cement. Extensive dynamiting was required at many locations.
The villagers along the canal did bathing, laundry and fishing in the canals - free. But the farmers had to pay dearly - 20-30% of their crops - for the water. Early in the fall, the sluice was lowered to the bottom and the canals were emptied for the duration of the winter. This was a feast time for the farmers for the fish - eel, crayfish, cat fish and carps - stranded in the canals were theirs for the taking.
Farmers lived in straw thatched houses while "rich" landlords lived in tile-roofed houses. A farmer's house was built of stones, clay and straws. Wooden beams served as the main framework. The roof was made of rice plant straws tied with ropes. Large stones were placed here and there to keep the straws in place.
The floor (on-dol) was made of flat stones covered with dirt and wax papers. Beneath the stones were six to ten trenches that conducted cooking heat and smoke into a chimney - and heated the stones (the only source of room heating). Meals were cooked over a wood-burning stove.
A farmer's wife cooked two meals a day - a breakfast (achim-bup) and a dinner (junyuk bup). A lunch was a leftover from the breakfast and there was no cooking involved. On special occasions, you got a midnight snack of cold noodles with kim-chee. Breakfast was the biggest meal of a day. A farmer went to work early with sunrise and he would fill his stomach before starting a day.
