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Wieners
Canned fruit
Crackers
Soluble coffee
Milk powder
Granulated sugar
Tin of jam
Cookie sandwich
Fudge
or
Radish Soup
Birthday Seaweed Soup
Pan-fried Spam with kimchi
Strictly lard
so
What did General Fatty eat?
From Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Don Mee Choi. Used with the permission of the author and Wave Books.
The westerly wind blows across a patch of desert outside my apartment window facing north: the Deutschland Radio, the ever-spinning ring of Mercedes Benz, and the metal fences set up for the construction of new housing. Only the fences remind me of home—the endless barbed wire across the waist of a nation. A cooler temperature expected this morning before the heat wave arrives in a day. On 28.6.1950, in Seoul, three days after the war had begun, my father washed his face and looked up at the stars on a clear night, then decided to head out to the city center.
I grew up in South Korea during the US-backed military dictatorship. I was born a year after General Park Chung Hee led a military coup and came into power. My father filmed the day of martial-law declaration in front of Seoul City Hall. Back then, he worked as a freelance photojournalist for UPI. The saluting lieutenant general is one of Park’s collaborators. The man in the background below the window, holding a small camera in front of his face, is most likely a police or intelligence officer. My father is at the bottom left, holding his film camera.
---------------Marfa, Texas
30.3095 north