Jisoo+Jean+KRW+Interview

= Korean War Oral History Project - Jisoo Jean =



**Interview Questions**
1) Please introduce yourself; what is your name? Age? 당신에 대한 소개를 해주세요. 이름은 무엇입니까? 나이가 어떻게 되십니까?

2) How old were you when the Korean War started? 전쟁이 시작할 당시에 나이가 어떻게 되셨나요?

3) How did school life change for you? Did you stop going to school? What changes took place? 전쟁으로 인해 학교생활은 어떻게 변했나요? 학교를 다닐 수 있었나요? 어떤 변화들이 일어났었나요?

4) How did family life change for you? Did your family go through some changes in relationships? House? What did you do as a family? 당신의 가정생활에는 어떤 변화들이 있었나요? 당신의 가족은 가족관계에 일어났던 변화들을 어떻게 겪으셨나요? 집 건물은요? 가족으로서 어떻게 하셨나요?

5) How was everyday life like during the war? 전쟁동안은 일상생활은 어땠나요?

6) What did you notice about the people around you? How did their lives change? 당신 주변사람들에 대해서 어떤 점들을 알게 되었나요? 그들의 삶은 어떻게 변했나요?

7) What was the hardest thing to bear about being in a war? 전쟁중에 제일 견디기 힘든 것이 무었이였나요?

8) What was the overall mood of your town like? Was it chaotic? Stressful? 당신의 마을의 전체적인 분위기는 어땠나요? 매우 혼란스러웠나요?

9) Did your family flee to the South? Where were you originally living? 피난은 가셨나요? 원래 어디에 사셨었나요?

10) Do you think that the Korean War impacted your adult life? How? 당신은 한국전쟁이 어른이 되어서도 인생에 영향을 주었다고 생각하나요? 영향을 주었다면 어떤 점이 있나요?

11) Do you think that you were disturbed as a child from what you saw of the war? 어렸을때 전쟁을 겪었음으로 인하여 당신에게 어떤 어려움이 있지 않았나요?

12) Could you describe some of the scenes you saw from the war? 당신이 전쟁을 겪으면서 인상적이였던 아니면, 잊을수 없는 장면들을 설명해 줄 수 있으시나요?

13) What were some of the worst memories from the war for you? 전쟁중에 당신이 가장 불행했던 기억은 무엇인가요?

14) Can you tell us some stories about the Korean War? For example, things that happened to your family or your relatives? 한국전쟁중에 일어난 일들중 몇가지, 예를 들면 당신 가족이나 친척중에 일어났던 일들을 말해주실수 있나요?

15) How do you think that the Korean war has affected North-South relations in the recent generation? 당신은 한국전쟁이 남북한 현세대에 어떤 영향을 주었다고 생각하시나요?

Interview Podcast
Part 1: media type="file" key="Asian Interview Part 1.mp3" Part 2: media type="file" key="Asian Interview Part 2.mp3" Part 3: media type="file" key="Asian Interview Part 3.mp3" Part 4: media type="file" key="Asian Interview Part 4.mp3" Part 5: media type="file" key="Asian Interview Part 5.mp3" Part 6: media type="file" key="Asian Interview Part 6.mp3" Part 7: media type="file" key="Asian Interview Part 7.mp3"

Summary Podcast: media type="file" key="Interview Summary.mp3" Summary Script:

I had an interview with my grandmother, Jung-Ryul Yoo, and she was thirteen years old when the Korean War struck. She had originally lived at the center of Seoul, and had lived with her father, mother, and siblings. She told me that although she was very young when she went through the war, she remembers everything, since she received a lot of shock while experiencing the war. I asked her about the changes that happened in her school life. She told me that she was unable to attend school because of the war, and that because of this, she was held a year back because she had missed out on her studies when the society had recovered a little from the war. Also, she told me that the soldiers made them come to school, and taught the students the songs that they used to sing. However, she told me that she did not attend these meetings. I asked her about the changes that occurred in her family life. She replied that her father and brother had been called to the army, because they were relatively young, so they had to immigrate first to Pusan. Then, she explained to me that only her mother and her sisters and her were left in their house, but when the soldiers came, they had to immigrate to Suwon, because the soldiers did not attack Suwon. She told me that they had to immigrate to Suwon by walking all night, and that she saw many other people like herself, immigrating, on the way to Suwon. I asked her about the people of her town; I asked about what happened to them, and what things happened in her village. She told me that some South Korean soldiers came one day, and rounded up some people for being communist. Then, a high-ranking soldier came and shot them one by one. She told me about how the villagers were terrified at the thought of being shot. Then, she went further on to describe the food shortages that they experienced, and how everyone was desperate to find food. I asked her how the Korean War has affected her adult life. She told me that it has affected her life an incredible amount. She told me that because of what she saw during the war, she feels terrible whenever she hears about a war going on in the newspapers or in the news. She also told me that she cries whenever she sees the family-finding programs on television that work to reunite families that have been separated by the Korean War. I asked her if she could describe some scenes from the war, and she described many for me. For example, she told me about the South Korean soldiers rounding up suspected communists and taking them all around the village, telling the villagers that they were prisoners who had committed sins, and killed the suspected communists in front of their eyes to give a warning as to not turn communist. I asked her about whether she was disturbed as a child from the Korean war, and she replied that she had been affected deeply. She told me that she had been affected in many ways, and that she was disturbed by the scenes of shootings that she saw as a young child during the Korean war. She told me that she was especially disturbed by the case of her uncle, who lost his children and wife from the war, and was so mentally shocked that he had to live as a mentally disabled person for the rest of his life. I asked her about how she thinks the Korean War has affected North-South Korean relations in today’s generation. She replied that she thinks that it is the reason that many families have been separated, and that she feels that both sides are the victims. She told me that it was such a tragic event, and that she never wants to experience such things again. She concluded the interview by telling me that she hopes that I can live in a war-free world.

Analysis Questions
1) How does your interviewee's testimony fit in with what you have learned about the experience of civilians?

My interviewee was my grandmother, and she told me many storied about her experiences that she went through during the Korean War. Many of the stories displayed the facts that we learned in class, and the things she described were very realistic, and somewhat similar to the account in //Still Life with Rice//. For example, she told me an experience where the South Korean soldiers came to her town, and rounded up some people, and accused them of being Communist. Then, a high-ranking soldier came, ordered the other soldiers to arrange the suspects in lines, and then shot them with his gun, in front of all the other villagers. This was a real-life example of how the South Korean soldiers just rounded up random men, accused them of being Communists, and killed them without fair trials. Also, she told me her experience of immigration; she had to immigrate too, and each member of the family had to take their own share of clothes and money, in case of separation, like we learned in class from the book, //Still Life with Rice//. The things we learned in class were incorporated into real-life experiences that I was able to hear from my grandmother. The testimony was just like putting the facts into real-life scenarios that actually took place.

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?

Living through a war is certainly not easy, and for my grandmother, I think that life would have been extremely difficult, and that she would have lived in severe anxiety, since no one knew what was going to happen at what time, and what they had to do in order to survive. My grandmother was affected directly by the major events of the war, such as the 1-4 retreat; she lived in the center of Seoul, so she had to immigrate further South, where the soldiers did not bother the civilians. The major events of the war were mostly about which side won over Seoul and the Han River, so it directly affected by grandmother's life, by making her immigrate when the North took over Seoul. The events that took place made her life even more miserable by putting her life in danger, and even more terrified of the soldiers.

3) Hypothesize or explain how your interviewee was able to stay out of danger.

My grandmother told me about how she was able to avoid death or persecution during the interview. She told me that she was, in a sense, very lucky. Her father and her brother had immigrated to Pusan, before them, so she was left with her mother and sisters at their home. However, when the 1-4 Retreat occurred, she had to flee to Suwon on foot. She arrived at Suwon, fortunately not separated with her mother, and lodged in an empty house, and ate the leftover kimchi and food that was there. The soldiers did not strike Suwon, and went past the city, so my grandmother and her sisters were able to stay safe. Luckily, her house back home in Seoul had not been damaged at all, so they went back there went all the fighting had ceased, only to find her brother and her father, so her family all came back together safely. However, her uncle's family was not as fortunate; they had lived in Yongsan, and her uncle was looking for a way to immigrate, and came back home when the sun had set, only to find his house bombed down. His wife and children had died when the house had been bombed.

Concluding Essay
Analyze the historical significance of your interview, how has the interview added to your understanding of the war, and how you think it will help us better understand the Korean War in a 1.5 page essay.

For the Korean War Oral History Project, I did an interview with my grandmother, Jung-Ryul Yoo, who was thirteen years old when the Korean War struck. During the interview, she was able to share many of her experiences of the war, and some stories about some real-life situations that took place during the war with me. I asked her some questions about her personal experiences, and she explained to me very clearly about what she experienced, and what some people around her experienced. The interview has helped me to actually understand the affairs of the war better; when I learned about the Korean War through textbooks and primary sources, I was not able to actually visualize or contextualize the things that were said to have happened in the texts that we explored in class. However, when I listened to my grandmother speak about the war from the point of view she experienced it from, I was able to visualize the things that happened as real situations in my head. She told me her accounts of immigration, and how she immigrated when the 1-4 Retreat struck. Her accounts of events which corresponded with the events of the Korean War that I had learned made things so much more life-like in my head, and it let me imagine the horror of it all, something I had not been able to do by reading just text. Her descriptions of the scenes that she saw of the immigrations and the bombings made the whole event seem so much more realistic, as well as horrifying. Often, when we learn about events that have occurred in the course of history, we are unable of contextualizing the information that we learn about. For example, I was unable to imagine the events actually happening, although I had learned that it had all been a part of reality. The descriptions that we hear while doing or listening to the interview makes the whole thing seem so real, as if we had experienced it ourselves. This interview is very significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is a primary source; it is an interview with a person who directly experienced the war. Secondly, there are many real-life descriptions of things that happened during the war, so it not only provides factual information, but also real-life, not-said-in-the-textbook accounts of some brutal things that occurred. This interview can teach us an incredible amount about the Korean War; because it is an interview with someone who directly experienced the war, it portrays the mental shock that the interviewee received from the war, and it clearly shows the aftermath of the war. For example, my grandmother told us the story of her uncle, who lost his children and wife because of the bombs during the war. By listening to the accounts of the real stories that are unlike the rigid information in textbooks, our understanding of the Korean War can be furthered, and we can contextualize the war more easily.