7.3 Determination and insight

If I started to cry, I didn't stop in just an hour. So I had a nickname, "day-crier." Because it took me a day to finish crying, I got that nickname. I wanted all of the old people in the town to come out and see me cry. I cried to make the whole town start talking and to even make those asleep wake up. I didn't stay still and cry by myself. I continued crying as if something terrible had happened. My throat would hurt and I would get a frog in my throat, so I couldn't even speak afterwards. And I didn't just sit down and cry. I ran around, would get hurt and start bleeding so I was covered in blood. You can tell what kind of personality I have, then. (50-292, 11/08/1971)

I didn't yield to others. Even if I would break a bone, I wouldn't yield. I would never yield to another. This was before I knew how the world worked, before I was even in my teens. If my mother did something wrong and then gave me advice, I would say, "No!" If I was told that I shouldn't just do things my way, I would stand up and fight. It was quite something. I never gave up. (136-132, 12/22/1985)

It was the same with my grandfather. My grandfather heard advice from me. He once said something to me with his cigarette in his hand, trying to educate his grandson, and I said to him, "How can a grandfather educate his grandson with a cigarette in his hand? Is that our family tradition?" So what could he do? He had thought I was just a silly kid, but when I said that, he said, "You are right. I'll put it away." (210-372, 12/27/1990)

It was said that the small kid in the house in Osan would do anything if he put his mind to it. It was said that he would burn his house if he decided to. If he wanted to cut down a wooden column, he would. He could kill a cow if he wanted to. Anything he said he would do, he did. So if I said something, everyone had to surrender. I was satisfied only when the three generations, up to the grandparents came and surrendered to me. (56-279, 05/18/1972)

Once a kid gave me a bloody nose and ran away. So I waited in front of the guy's house for thirty days and finally got an apology from his mother and father. I even got some rice cake to take home with me. (46-161, 08/13/1971)

I used to be very good at the picture-card game. Do you know that game? We also played a game where we threw coins up against a wall and saw how far they could go. I was a champion at that, and at making a hole and throwing coins into it. (221-90, 10/23/1991)

I never lost in an arm wrestling match when I was young, and I never lost a wrestling match. There was someone three years older than me in town and I lost in a wrestling match against him once. People who live in the country should know. The water comes up in an acacia tree in the spring, so if you take off the bark, it comes off as well as the bark of a pine tree. So in the spring when the water comes up, if you bend the wood, the bark falls off, you just get all the bark off and the tree is really tough. After I lost, I wrestled with such an acacia tree for six months. I would say to the tree, "You! I won't eat until I sit on you!" So for six months, I slept only after having bent the tree over so I could sit on it. I forgot about eating and sleeping. That's how serious I was. (139-52, 01/26/1986)

In the old days, when I wasn't even ten years old, all the kids within an eight kilometer radius were afraid of me. I would get the guys together and we would go and fight with the neighboring village kids. I even did that kind of thing. If another kid was angry and crying because he had been hit by some kid in another village, I would go alone to the other village, even without sleeping that night. I went and called the culprit out. "Hey, you're the one who hit so and so, aren't you? How many times did you hit him? Hey, you!" Such were my dealings. (183-250, 11/02/1988)

When I was young, if I said it was going to rain, it rained. If I said that within a week someone in town was going to die, or an old lady in another town was going to die, it happened. There were many such stories. (113-236, 05/08/1981)

I was quite different. If I sat down in town and said, "Today so-and-so uptown is not alright, he'll be sick," that's what happened. I knew everything. From when I was eight years old, I could tell which couples would make a good match. If I looked at two pictures and thought these two people wouldn't make a good couple, I was right. All such marriages failed miserably. I have this kind of a history (162-290, 04/17/1987)