[imText1]Son, you are my mentor. You teach me the abstract meaning of happiness as if it is nothing but concrete solid. When I see your pure smile, only the core essence of happiness comes to me. Your singing becomes the echoes of happiness, your hops the motion of joy itself. I realize now that the weight of happiness is twenty-five kilograms. When you dash over to me and jump into a hug, that blissful litheness! As you get heavier, the weight of my happiness will, too, grow. One day, when I won’t be able to bear your limber weight, then maybe I will be saddened by the thought, just for a tiny moment.
Son, you are my mentor. You engrave so clearly and deeply in me the abstract meaning of agony. It has been four months ago… I had been to the middle of hell by you. When I saw your tiny body sucked in under a tire, I became a mere animal. Even to this day, it gives me chill just to think of it. Ah… just thinking of it sends me to the misery of pure hell, brute and evil.
Son, thus to me, you are a mentor. You teach me both the meanings of happiness and agony. Not that I don’t think of it time to time, but nowadays, having seen the movie, “Crossing,” I always have it in mind. No… the thought comes to me. Not even that, I cannot escape from the thought.
My son, I cannot bear the thought of poor Junee. How much he must have missed his father when he fell asleep in the desert. How scared he must have been. He was your age when he crossed Tumen River, and your big sister’s age when he died in the middle of Mongolian desert.
Chul Min… Chul Min was his name. The kid who wandered around the east-north Chinese continent, looking for his dad, and had to die in Mongolian desert, only after coming so close. Chul Min… Junee is a friend to the countless Chul Mins who had to die; he is a son to all of us.
How about when I was young? Perhaps because it’s been a long time, or because I am a dad now, I don’t seem to empathize with Junee and Chul Min all that whole-heartedly. But when would I be able to recall the father who stood still in rain at the Ulaanbaatar Airport without this sadness? How can he live now? How will he live with his son buried in his heart forever?
Hundreds and thousands of Kotjebi. And their dads, moms, neighbors, and the most people of North Korea… Losing parents, losing their children, how will they live in the unbearable pain of not being able to feed their little ones?
The movie was placid for all the intensity of the sadness I felt. The director must have intended it. Sure, it would not have been easy to portray the reality so harsh. Anyhow, my son, I am paying all my respect to the director and the actors for the film. A movie I paid to watch with my money and time, and left me with intense grief—and I am thanking them for it.
This is how a human life should be. Can there be hope in a society when a person has died in Gwangju and there is no poet, singer, novelist, and a film-maker to grieve for it? Can there be hope in a society when there are people in insurmountable agony in enormous time and space, and there is no artist to sympathize for their pain?
To the film-makers, who brought Chul Min back to life for us, I have several reasons to be thankful for. One of them is for finding us the basis of hope. I have discovered that in this country I love— love because it is a country you will live in— there are cinematic artists who reside in true love for human race. I have discovered artists who know to gaze upon insuperable human agony with an honest eye.
My son, my mentor, please understand me. Have an understanding for your father who can’t give you a full attention and cannot, no matter what, forget so many Chul Mins, Junees, and the fathers. You asked me once, “Why don’t we have a car, dad? Let’s get a car!” Remember the awkward smile I gave you as I held you up on my shoulder? It was because I wanted to be another testimony for hope, although now I think it might have been too great to be.
I love you. With all my soul.
