Susan+Park+KRW+Interview

==KOREAN WAR   == ==INTERVIEW   == == By: Susan Park == 




==<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; color: rgb(83, 11, 106); text-align: center; display: block;">**Interview Questions** == <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> > > > > > > >
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> First, tell us your age right now, and what your age was at the beginning of the war?
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">What were you doing when South Korea first got attacked? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">How were you affected by the violence? Did you see everything first-hand?
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">What did you find most helpful to you for your family's protection? For example, were you given the benefit of transportation? Did you know anyone who could shelter you?
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Since there was a scarce amount of food at that time, how did you manage to eat? What did your families do to avoid starvation?
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">What happened to your houses? Were they destroyed? Bombed?
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Do you know anyone directly that was killed in the duration of the war? Family? Friends? Neighbors? If so, how did this make you feel? How did this affect you?
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">After the war ended, what happened to you and your families? Did you go back to your homes? Did you start a new life?
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">What happened to your families during the war? Did you have to face tragedies such as death? Separation?
 * 5) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">If you were separated from your families at one point, how did you reunite?
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Where and when did you flee? Why did you flee at that time? Did anyone try to come and find you? Whose houses did you stay in?
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">How were your family's situations? Were you better off? Worse off? If you were better off, were you able to help others? If you were worse off, were you able to receive aid from others?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">**<span style="display: block; font-size: 110%; text-align: center; color: rgb(91, 17, 116);">Extra/ Interesting POV question ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Are you for or against the unification of North and South Korea? Why or why not? Do you think Korea would become a communist country as a whole?

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> ==<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(88, 15, 107); text-align: center; display: block;"><span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; color: rgb(83, 11, 106);"> Video Interview & Translation written portion  ==

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Kyung-seung: Gwe-rae soldiers, what we called North Korean soldiers back then, came down near our neighborhood with huge guns strapped to their shoulders with wood sticks and leaves attached to their helmets marched down to the streets. Back then, my family couldn't flee due to lack of time, so we were in our houses and the soldiers came to force us to hang red flags on our houses. They slaughtered mass amounts of people, but thankfully we had a basement in our house where we hid.

Susan: What did you find most helpful to you during the war?

Kangho: Back then, we were too young so nothing was really helpful. All we could do is flee

Kyung-seung: I was really young and not important in the society so all I could do was flee. However, other people who were important and famous were less fortunate than I was because they had so much political influence, they were more vulnerable to death.

Susan: Did you constantly flee?

Both: Yes, of course

Kyung-seung we went from this house to that house. We went everywhere

Susan: Whose houses did you go to?

Kyung-seung: I was too young to know whose specific houses I went to

Susan: Oh, but they were all your relatives houses?

Kyung-seung: Yes for example I went to my great grandmother's friend's house. And my grandmother's brother and...

Kangho: Ah why are you making it so complicated..

Susan: Back then, you know how there wasn't much food?

Kyung-seung: Yes?

Susan: How did you manage to eat?

Kyung-seung:When the war was going on, we had no food. But in the case of me and your grandfather, we had a lot of money and our households were well off because we lived in the heart of Seoul. So anyway, we traded our sewing machines, radios and even our tailored clothing, which were very expensive back then, with rice in the countryside.

Kangho: We ate them in small amounts so we wouldn't run out

Susan: Were you always hungry?

Kangho: Yes of course

Susan: How many times a day did you eat

Kangho: Of course we ate 3 meals per day, it's just that we couldn't eat one full bowl of white rice per person. We had to make porridge and share.

Kyung-seung: We never starved.

Susan: So you ate everyday?

Kyung-seung: Yeah but we didn't eat as much as we did before the war began.

Susan: What happened to your house?

Kangho: Oh oh for me, my house was blown up and bombed by an american missile aircraft

Susan: Your house?

Kangho: Yeah all of it was gone

Kyung-seung: Yeah grandpa's house was bombed, but mine was left untouched

Susan: Wasn;t there anyone in the house?

Kangho: Yeah my mom and my siblings were there but none of them died Susan: How?

Kangho: The Americans bombed it but my mom and siblings escaped right before it was destroyed. So my family members didn't die, but a lot of our neighbors and other people died. A lot.

Susan: What were you doing when your house got bombed?

Kyung-seung: He was a student back then

Susan: Were you at school?

Kangho: I was in grade 7. when they bombed my house, i was out playing with my little brother. when we came back, our house was completely gone.

Susan: So how did you find your parents?

Kangho: Well, our house was gone when we came back, so we went to one of our relatives houses, and that's where we found our family there.

Kyung-seungs: A lot of my dad's friends were also kidnapped and were taken to North Korean territory

Kangho: Back then, american aircraft came and bombed houses, which is how the homes got pulverized

Kyung-seung: Yeah because the north koreans occupied the lands by occupying the houses and the only way the US could get rid of them was by bombing the houses

Kangho: Yeah so my house got burned down and i had to flee to another person's house

Susan: What was the scariest experience?

Kyung-seung: It was the scariest when they dropped bombs

Kangho: yeah, when the airplanes bombed us

Susan: That was the most scariest?

Kangho: Yeah because a lot of people died and all the houses were on fire. we had to escape in between the burning houses

Susan: When did you flee?

Kyung-seung: 3 months after the war started, we fled

Susan: Why did you go at that time?

Kangho: Because that was when the communist regime was being practiced, so we fled

Kyung-seung: As china came down to attack, we tried to run as far as possible to the south, so we went to Pusan. Everyone went to Pusan. It was very cold..

Kangho: Yeah on the way there, so many people froze to death on the streets

Kyung-seung: It was much colder than it is right now. it was so cold that the han river turned into ice

Kangho: The river was frozen so we walked over the river to get to the other side

Kyung-seung: But your grandfather and i, rode a truck because our grandfather's friends were soldiers in the military and they also had relations with a news paper reporter so we had transportation by truck, so we didnt have a hard time getting to Pusan. When we were getting prepared to escape, i was really excited. Our family would gather together to make rice cakes to eat along the way because there weren't any restaurants where we could stop by and eat in. I thought we were going on some road trip because i was young. I was also excited because not only because of the huge rice cakes, but also because three families were in one truck together.

Susan: did you ever want to go to north korea?

Kangho: No, never never. They are very bad people. They are communists and communists are very scary people

Susan: You are in favor of unification?

Kangho: Of course. unification of the two countries are good. that way, all the koreans can live together as one.

Susan: How old were you after the war?

Kangho: I was 17, Your grandma was 13. But all of us who used to live back then are a very unlucky generation because so many people died

Kyung-seung: yeah one of my best friends fathers was taken away to North Korean territory so she lost her dad and her mom had to become a merchant in order to support her family

Kangho: Because of the war, houses were burned, people died, factories were destroyed, so Koreans went through a lot of hardships.

Kyung-seung: Unfortunately, for some people, they still can't see their families because they are across the border. You can see people advertising to find their long lost children or parents on the news right? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(88, 15, 107); text-align: center; display: block;">

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(88, 15, 107); text-align: center; display: block;"> ==<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(88, 15, 107); text-align: center; display: block;">Release Form  == ==<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(88, 15, 107); text-align: center; display: block;">  == <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">

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==<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(88, 15, 107); text-align: center; display: block;">Analysis Questions  == <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> 1) How does your interviewee's testimony fit in with what you have learned about the experience of civilians? After reading the packets of the civilians such as Hyongyoung and her children, it was even more evident just how difficult it was to endure the Korean War. My grandparents were young and vulnerable at the time of the war, and they were terrified of what they had been going through and because of the shift in lifestyles; and because they were young they did not realize how much agony their parents were going through, which is what Hyongyoung was going through. Although it is hard to fit their testimony in with Hyongyoung's because Hyongyoung's story was in such great detail, one of the main similarities I noticed between my grandparents and Hyongyoung was how they both had first hand experiences of bombings, shootings and etc. Also, they were all in constant fear of death. Although I can never know for certain, my grandparents probably did lose hope of living at one point, just as Hyongyoung did. Everyone at the time of the war were afraid.

2) Using your background knowledge try to contextualize their testimony. How do you think major events of the war affected their life at the time? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Throughout the interview, my grandmother went off topic and kept trying to fit in tid-bits of history of the Korean War. First, the fact that they are aware of all of the reasons why the Americans attacked, why the North and South were separated, who was in an alliance with who, and etc. even though they were young, means that they have purposely learned about the war after it ended. Second, considering the war during their lifetime, my grandparent's stated that they had to go to the South because the Chinese were attacking them from the North. This is one of the major events that I had learned in class; many of the South Koreans were forced to flee to the South where Pusan and Daegu are to escape from the attacks from the North. These major events did not merely affect their lives, but controlled them. Because America started to help South Korea, my grandfather's house got bombed. Because China attacked Korea, they had to flee to the south. The real truth is that these people that have written about past experiences have faced terror. They are people who have been affected by the historical decisions made by the political and militarical power, and my grandparents just prove how much these decisions can control the life of an individual.

3) Hypothesize or explain how you interviewee was able to stay out of danger. As my grandparents stated over and over again, the only things that matter to save your life during a time of war are connections and escaping. My grandparents would constantly refer back to how they had to flee from house to house. Although this must have been hard on them, this was the only way they could stay alive, and out of trouble. Also, my grandparents both had good connections. Their families had realtions to the soldiers in the military who were able to help them with transportation and at times, shelter.