Across the Tumen by Moon Young-sook

Author:Moon Young-sook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seoul Selection

The Elderly Acupuncturist

After Yeong-dae’s muscles relaxed, his left ankle started to throb. Mr. Choi noticed him massaging his ankle and went to get a small box on the shelf.

“You said you sprained your ankle, didn’t you? Let me take a look at it,” the elderly man said, reaching for Yeong-dae’s foot.

Yeong-dae was taken aback. He didn’t understand why the old man wanted to look at his foot.

“Mr. Choi said he will put some needles in you,” Nam-sik explained. “I told him all about your ankle.”

Yeong-dae flinched at the word “needle.” Nam-sik went on to say Mr. Choi was a highly regarded acupuncturist in the village.

The man examined Yeong-dae’s left ankle, pressed firmly around the joint as he looked for the place to insert the needles. Each time he applied pressure, Yeong-dae’s ankle throbbed. Trying to get his mind off the pain, Yeong-dae gazed around the room. The old couple didn’t have a lot of furniture, but they did have a television.

Meanwhile, Mr. Choi was pulling the needles from the box.

“You need to be patient for a little while,” he told Yeong-dae. “You’ll get better soon after I put the needles in you. These needles are from South Korea. They’re very good quality.”

The word “South Korea” got Yeong-dae’s attention.

Just then, the acupuncturist’s wife turned on the TV.

“Darn it, I missed the beginning of the soap opera!” she said. “Take a look at that. That’s Seoul.”

Seoul? Yeong-dae wondered what country that was in.

“Mrs. Choi, where’s Seoul?”

“What do you mean, where’s Seoul? Seoul is Seoul, in the ROK.”

“What? ROK? What’s that?”

The old man and woman had a good laugh when they heard Yeong-dae’s question.

“Huh, I guess you North Koreans probably refer to it as ‘South Korea,’” Mrs. Choi said. “‘ROK’ stands for the Republic of Korea. That’s South Korea. Seoul is the capital of South Korea. Do you understand now?”

Yeong-dae’s body tensed again when he heard that Seoul was the capital of South Korea. The television set showed a young man wearing a fancy suit walking along the banks of a river with a woman who was slimmer than his sister Yeong-ran. In the next scene, another young man—this one as good-looking as Chang-u—was walking into a huge building.

“You should study hard so that you can become as successful as that young man,” the old woman said as she tousled her little grandson’s hair. “If your mother and father earn a lot of money in South Korea, we’ll be able to enjoy as good a life as anyone else has. Until that time, though, you have to study harder. That’s how you can make your parents feel better.”

Yeong-dae realized that the Joseonjok couple envied the lives of South Koreans. The image of South Korea he saw on the TV was the exact opposite of what he’d been taught in school. At first, it was so hard to believe that he thought the show was all a lie.

But they couldn’t have faked the mountains and fields on the TV. And it wasn’t just the fashionable clothes that the actors were wearing, either.

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