The Korean War: Action and Reaction The most interesting fact that I learned recently is that my grandmother had gone through the devastating Korean War when she was only 9-year old. To me, who spent more than ten years of my childhood with my grandmother rather than my parents, the fact that my grandmother was once a war refugee did not match up with my depiction of her as an optimistic and dedicated pharmacist who loved helping other people. The general image of war refugees which i have built by watching movies and television programs is slightly depressed people who are trying hard to overcome their loss during the war, but from my childhood depiction of my grandmother, I could not find a single common feature between her and war refugees.
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Consequently, she did not really know anything about the Cold War and the tension between the capitalists and the Communists. My grandmother described that “the war started from nowhere.” She lived in the countryside of Korea so she was not really aware of the war until the North, with its support from the U.S.S.R. advanced towards the South. Although the war did not get her in the beginning, she started to notice differences in people’s lives and the difference started from her school and …show more content…
She explained how in the countryside where she lived, there were no strong enough buildings or air-raid shelters. Consequently, in order to be safe from the enemies’ attack, she and her family had to dig a hole in the ground and hide there. When she ran into a real air-raid, “I felt absolutely no emotion but fear,” she said. “In my mind, I had kept repeating ‘I am sorry,’ without even knowing whom to say sorry to and without even knowing what I did wrong. I just felt like people would stop bombing our town if I apologized.” To my grandmother, who was 9-year-old back then, the war seemed to give an impression of punishment because there was no way anyone would be so harsh towards others if no one had done anything wrong. By murmuring her apology that nobody would listen to, she may have wanted two opposing sides to reconcile and stop the war like
Consequently, she did not really know anything about the Cold War and the tension between the capitalists and the Communists. My grandmother described that “the war started from nowhere.” She lived in the countryside of Korea so she was not really aware of the war until the North, with its support from the U.S.S.R. advanced towards the South. Although the war did not get her in the beginning, she started to notice differences in people’s lives and the difference started from her school and …show more content…
She explained how in the countryside where she lived, there were no strong enough buildings or air-raid shelters. Consequently, in order to be safe from the enemies’ attack, she and her family had to dig a hole in the ground and hide there. When she ran into a real air-raid, “I felt absolutely no emotion but fear,” she said. “In my mind, I had kept repeating ‘I am sorry,’ without even knowing whom to say sorry to and without even knowing what I did wrong. I just felt like people would stop bombing our town if I apologized.” To my grandmother, who was 9-year-old back then, the war seemed to give an impression of punishment because there was no way anyone would be so harsh towards others if no one had done anything wrong. By murmuring her apology that nobody would listen to, she may have wanted two opposing sides to reconcile and stop the war like