Walking Among the Ruins
I once visited the old labor party building in Cheorwon, Gangwondo, near the Korean DMZ. It had stood there for decades with a hollowed spine, its concrete ribs exposed to the wind. During my visit, Mr. Seo, my guide and a retired school teacher, pointed to the corners where bombs had punched holes into the stone. He said the real horror wasn’t what we could see, but what still lay beneath: the tools of torture — iron hooks, wooden clubs, shattered teeth — were still buried in the soil. They’re still digging them up. Still counting the suffering.
I remember feeling a sudden chill, though it was summer. I could almost hear cries between the cracks of the walls. I imagined the faces of those who were once there, their desperate hands reaching out to me, uttering prayers that would be never answered.
When I found a photo of my grandmother in her teens last month, the trip to the DMZ flashed through my mind — the traces of bombing engraved in the building, the visceral horror I felt. In the photo, she’s standing on a narrow dirt path with a friend. The war had just ended; people were starting to build new lives amidst the ruins. My grandmother’s face is unreadable: composed but distant, her gaze turned slightly away from the camera, as if looking toward something she couldn’t name. A faint smile, or perhaps the absence of one.
I stared at that photo for a long time, trying to imagine what she had lost. I knew only the basics: her parents were killed in the war. Only she survived. She went back to her uncle’s home where she spent her childhood. She wore fine hanbok and helped raise her cousins. She went into college. She got married and had children and never spoke of her grief.
Sometimes I think I, too, am walking among the ruins. Not visible ones — but emotional left-over, relational wreckage, dreams that collapsed under their own weight. The void after someone leaves you cold. The quiet voice of an “I’m sorry” that never came through. The ache that settles in your heart like wintery snow.
My grandmother walked among the ruins, too. Not with defiance, not with clarity, but with a kind of sorrowful endurance. Together, we carry our doubts, our mourning, our questions about God and the world. We keep standing, however. We hold umbrellas in case it rains again. We carry beautiful wildflowers in our hands. And bravely, we take the next small step.
