In the winter of 1970 I
went to Korea, a country still recovering from a terrible war. The
Peace Corps sent me there to teach English at a middle school in the
central mountains, near the DMZ, where a fragile armistice was not
always honored. The winter was colder than what I had known, learning
the language was difficult and in those early months I was often ill.
But the true challenge was witnessing a kind of cruelty that most
Americans today would call child abuse. For my part, I had been
raised in an Irish Catholic environment, so I was no stranger to
corporal punishment; indeed, I had my own vivid experience, both at
home and in school. But nothing prepared me for what I saw at my
school in Chunchon, and I reached a moment when I doubted I could
stay.
The students were all boys
and ranged in age from eleven to fifteen, and while some were still
small, even diminutive, others were gangly and tall for their age.
There were sixty to seventy boys in each classroom, and the boys were
as full of energy as boys in any country, and some boys were always
getting in trouble. It was understood that in the fullness of time,
all these boys would serve their three years in the Korean Army, very
likely on the front line a short bus ride from where they sat
learning their lessons, so they might as well get ready for it now.
The rules were strict, and the discipline was swift and
harsh,
and the boys were expected to take their punishment in stride.
The usual scene for these
dramas was the teachers’ room, where the boys were brought for
their punishment. We teachers all had our desks in this large room
where our seating was assigned by seniority, with the vice principal
and senior teachers at the head of the room, closer to the stove, and
the younger teachers (and I was youngest) at the far end. Most of us
would gather in the teachers room for the few minutes between class
periods to warm ourselves briefly, have a quick cigarette, and take a
look at the chalkboard for any new announcements. The teachers were
almost all men and they, too, were Army veterans and had seen their
share of discipline, both given and received. Everyone took it for
granted, it was the nature of things, part of life.
Punishment for the first
year boys was not very severe; typically teachers beat the little
boys with a bamboo switch across the calves, and for certain
infractions the boy was told to hold up his pants legs so the switch
could smack on bare skin. For second and third year boys, the
punishment was more severe. Whatever the age of the boy, the
punishment was preceded by the teacher berating the student, and
while I was still new to the language and comprehended little of what
I heard, the harsh tone echoed the scoldings of my own boyhood. The
teacher’s voice would rise in volume and grow in heat and pitch
as he built up to the climax, and then his open hand would make a
loud smack on the boy’s cheek, and this might be repeated for
emphasis, depending on the nature of the infraction or the teacher’s
mood. The boys were expected to take it stoically. Crying out —
or worse yet, shedding tears — was considered bad form. I saw
these scenes so often that it began to wear me down. The difficulty
of adjusting to the harsh reality of my new life — the climate,
language, diet and every circumstance so very different from my
college life a few months before — was compounded by the near
daily sight of this cruelty.
By late March, I was ready
to quit and go back to America. It was springtime by most people’s
reckoning, and the snow had melted on the steep hill behind the
school where, I was told, the first forsythia buds would soon appear,
but the wind still blew down from Manchuria and the air was bitterly
cold. Was this part of my misery? Did the grim chill make that
morning’s spectacle in the teachers room even more appalling
than usual?
By then, some teachers
could see that the sight of these beatings upset me and they tried to
distract my attention, talking to me about some unrelated thing. One
time a teacher even took the boy out to the hallway for punishment,
out of my sight, but I could still hear what I could not see. In
retrospect, my visible distress at these episodes very likely was
seen as an implicit criticism, and even though I never spoke of this,
some teachers may have resented what appeared to be my judgement of
them. But in true conscience how could I say anything? How could I
criticize a practice which had been part of my own childhood, when
the only difference was degree?
That day, I had no notion
of what the boy had done to deserve his beating, but really, nothing
could deserve it. He was a third year boy, what we would call a ninth
grader or high school freshman, a big fellow who stood to attention
and took his beating with a stoicism I’m certain I never
possessed. His seeming indifference appeared to drive the teacher to
strike with even more force. By now the others in the room were not
watching the punishment and instead were looking at me. And then the
teacher, between slaps, turned and looked directly at me, and I
imagined him thinking, This is how we do this, this is our
custom!
Hardly aware of my
motions, I stood up and left my desk, went out into the hall and
walked down to the exit leading to the outside stairway. I stood
there on the landing, looking far away and down the hill to the
valley below and the fields bare and dun, the rice paddies not yet
planted this early in the year and I thought, How
long can I
stay in this place? How long can I watch this? And
then I thought, But where will I go? I
don’t know
how long I stayed there, looking away to the distance and imagining
myself…where? Perhaps it was no more than a few
minutes, and then I went back to the teachers room, where the
atmosphere was now more subdued. That day, no one said anything and I
never discussed this with any of them, but from then on, something
was different. It was nothing I noticed at first, or even for a
while. After all, how do we know something has changed if we don’t
see it? The beatings did not stop, but they were certainly less
frequent and perhaps even less severe, but the problem did not end,
my misgivings never went away.
And yet I didn’t
leave, I stayed. I made myself think of at least one thing I liked
about my situation, and I realized that there were several positive
things. Most people at school and in the town were kind, even
solicitous of this stranger in their midst. Also, I admitted that the
language, which was so difficult — indeed, one of the most
difficult languages for a native speaker of English — was a
severe but intriguing mental challenge, and I had formed friendships
with a few of the teachers, men who were always ready to answer my
questions, apparently because they thought the questions themselves
were interesting. Aside from the English teachers, there was a Korean
language and literature teacher who said that my questions gave him
insights into his language that he had not considered before. So I
decided to focus on things like this, and not long after, I realized
that there were other things, too.
In long retrospect I can
say that the sight of the boys’ suffering affected all my
relations at school. The teachers with whom I formed friendships were
the ones who never hurt a boy, while the cruelest disciplinarians
were those to whom I showed what could best be described as polite
reserve. I shared a workplace with those men, too, and kept up a
pretense of amicable feeling, but I never forgot what I saw them do.
And now, fifty years later, I still remember.
There were valuable
lessons in all this. I learned to hold back my judgement in new
situations, to question how much I knew or truly understood, and to
ask myself, was my perspective any better? In the many months that
followed, two years in all, I learned much more about the life
experiences of my colleagues, especially their wartime suffering and
personal loss, those terrible years of adversity which placed school
time hardships in a wider, historical context.
I learned to push myself
past the first doubts, to make myself succeed, to cope with the day’s
circumstance, whatever it might be. As for the physical and mental
difficulties I experienced in those years, these, too, had intrinsic
value and served me well in years to come. Afterwards, and for the
rest of my life, I never doubted my ability to do anything. Faced
with any challenge or any new experience, a new environment, some
task never before met, I could always tell myself, truthfully, I’ve
done harder things than this.
And I have. Long ago, in a
far away place and a harsh circumstance, I learned to stay.
