‘When I was a child, I lived with my maternal and paternal grandmothers in my hometown, Jincheon. The reason why I got to live with my two grandmothers was because of the Korean War. During the January-Fourth Retreat, when the UN forces, who had advanced as far as the Yalu River, were pushed back by the intervention of the Chinese army. My parents and their family abandoned their hometown, Sariwon, and joined the evacuation procession toward the southern part of Korea.

By the time they reached Pyeongtaek, artillery shells began to fall here and there before their eyes. They abandoned even the essential belongings they had been carrying and desperately ran southward, only to find themselves stuck and unable to go any further. At that moment, my grandmother spoke up. "You all must leave here quickly and head south. Surely, they won’t harm an old woman like me," she said. With her decision, my father and mother, who were in their twenties at the time, tearfully looked back repeatedly as they left with only my older sister on their back to continue their escape.

Upon arriving in Jincheon, which was both a refuge and my mother's childhood home, my father did whatever he could to provide for the family, taking on any hard work without hesitation. My mother took care of my sister while also assisting my father in their struggle for survival. 

After several months of this, my father eventually found a job as a civil servant at the Jincheon County Office, bringing a gradual sense of stability to their lives. As their lives became more stable, my father grew increasingly concerned about the grandmother they had left behind in Pyeongtaek. Both my father and mother asked every refugee coming from the north if they had seen a woman matching her description, hoping against hope for news of her. This anxiety, longing, and sense of guilt kept them awake many nights for several months.

Then one day, an elderly refugee woman appeared in Jincheon, begging. My mother immediately recognized her — it was my grandmother. Our family's dramatic reunion happened just like that. My maternal and paternal grandmothers shared a room and lived like friends, and I was born a few years after the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. I grew up in Jincheon, with both grandmothers watching over my childhood.

Growing up in Jincheon, which had been still a battleground until then, I received various forms of education related to weapons. In elementary school, soldiers would display unexploded grenades and other ordnance on the school grounds, warning us never to touch them. On one occasion, a hidden unexploded mortar shell that lodged in a thatched roof in the period of the Korean War fell and exploded during a roof renovation, tragically killing a friend's younger sibling who was playing in the alley. When I was in the sixth grade, a teacher discovered an unexploded mortar shell during a field trip to Bonghwasan Mountain, causing the trip to be canceled.

Now, I am nearing seventy years old. All of my family members — my paternal and maternal grandmothers, my father, and my mother — have passed away without ever having a chance to visit their hometown. The inter-Korean border, solidified by the Korean War, remains firmly in place, and the standoff between the North and South persists. As we commemorate the Korean War, I deeply miss the family who shared those times with me. I earnestly long to visit my father's hometown in a unified Korea.