Gyu, Called by the Name of Labor

Her name was Gyu. But in that house, her name was rarely just a name. “Gyu.” Whenever someone called her, work followed. Before she was old enough to understand the weight of being a daughter, she had already learned that a daughter’s hands were never her own. Her older sister, Young, and Gyu were the most dependable labor in the household. They were too young to be treated as adults, but never too young to work. They were girls, and for that reason alone, no one thought to spare them. The two sisters moved through the house like quiet extensions of their mother’s will. When the yard had to be swept before sunrise, they swept it. When water had to be carried, they carried it. When the rice fields needed hands, they stepped into the mud. When the farm work ended, the housework began. In that family, childhood did not disappear suddenly. It was taken little by little, one chore at a time. Gyu’s mother was known throughout the village as a sharp and capable woman. She was quick-minded, precise in judgment, and unwavering once she had made a decision. She was not talkative, but every word she spoke landed with weight. People said she was a woman who knew exactly what she was doing. In that praise, there was both respect and fear. She managed the household, the fields, the workers, the grain, and the endless rhythm of rural life. Though she was the mistress of a landowning family, she did not know how to live softly within wealth. If anything, she feared comfort. To her, abundance was not something to enjoy, but something that could make people weak, careless, and slow. Gyu’s father was a different kind of person. He had studied classical Chinese texts deeply and was especially fond of the Book of Changes. He rarely worked directly in the fields, but villagers came to him when important matters arose. He was known for reading water veins and choosing burial sites around the Gangneung area. It was his long-standing talent, almost a calling, but he never turned it into a real occupation. He did not need to. The family already had enough. Their grain storage was full. Their fields returned harvest after harvest. They owned land, and land meant stability. There was no urgent need to chase money. At least, that was how it appeared. The time was the Japanese colonial period. Later, history would cover those years with many stories, many wounds, and many judgments. But in Gyu’s childhood memories, the Japanese were not always remembered only as monsters. There were Japanese people in the village, and they lived among Koreans. There was discrimination, of course. There was an invisible slope of power. There were officials, rules, and the discomfort of being ruled by others. But in Gyu’s house, no one came to seize all their grain. No one confiscated their land. Japanese officials sometimes entered and left the house, but to the eyes of a child, they were not pure terror. They were strangers who spoke unfamiliar words and wore unfamiliar clothes. What Gyu remembered more clearly than politics was labor. It was an age that needed hands. There were no machines to carry the weight of the seasons. Plowing the fields, planting rice seedlings, pulling weeds, cutting rice stalks, tying bundles, carrying grain—everything was done by human hands. Fieldwork was the same. Work began before the sun rose and ended only after darkness had fallen. Labor was not a choice. It was survival. And survival belonged to the whole family. Gyu’s mother understood this better than anyone. That was why she made no distinction between the first daughter, the second daughter, and the third. Young, Gyu, and later their younger sister Won were all drawn into the work. Farming, housework, childcare, storage, cooking, cleaning—these became the natural duties of the daughters. There were separate expectations for a son, but until that son grew old enough to matter, it was the daughters’ hands that held the household together. Gyu always worked while watching Young’s back. If Young walked along the ridge of a rice paddy, Gyu followed. If Young lifted a bundle of rice stalks, Gyu lifted the same weight. If Young kept silent, Gyu learned to keep silent too. Their mother gave orders, but she did not explain them. “Why must I do this?” was not a question allowed in that house. A thing was done because it had to be done. That was all. So Gyu learned many things inside that silence. She learned the order of work, the movement of the seasons, the expressions on adults’ faces, and the things a child was expected to understand without being told. She learned how to read a room before entering it. She learned how to swallow words before they became questions. She learned endurance before she learned letters. When evening came and she returned home covered in soil and sweat, her father was often sitting on the wooden floor of the house, reading. Gyu would watch him from a distance. Her hands had grown rough. The soles of her feet had hardened. But the letters inside his books still belonged to a world beyond her reach. She did not know how to name the feeling that rose inside her. It was not hatred. It was not envy. It was something quieter and heavier. A small ache that settled somewhere deep inside her chest. As Won grew old enough to help, the household seemed to run more smoothly. Their mother no longer had to carry everything alone. Young, Gyu, and Won each took on their roles, though no one had formally assigned them. Their bodies knew what to do before anyone spoke. In the morning, their mother set the order of the day. The daughters moved within it. The house turned like a well-fitted machine. But inside Gyu, one feeling never disappeared. She had not been allowed to study. Her parents had not given her the chance. More precisely, they had chosen not to give it. In those days, in that household, a person was a pair of working hands. And working hands were property. The more land a family had, the more hands it needed. A child sitting at a desk was seen as a child not contributing to the house. Gyu understood this with her mind. Her heart did not accept it. Sometimes, while working in the fields, she would straighten her back and look up at the sky. For no clear reason, anger would rise in her. Then came sadness. Then shame for feeling sadness. Then silence again. There was no time to hold on to such feelings. There was always more work. Before sunrise, she went to the paddies. After sunset, she returned from the fields. She watered, weeded, carried, washed, cooked, and cleaned. After dinner, she often fell asleep before she could speak. Her sleep was deep and dreamless because her body collapsed before her mind could wander. One day pushed away another. Then came 1945. Adults began speaking of liberation. But for Gyu, liberation changed almost nothing. The Japanese flag came down. Familiar language replaced foreign commands. People spoke of a new era. Yet the rice fields remained rice fields, and the dry fields remained dry fields. Work did not lessen. The days did not grow shorter. In 1948, people said a new country had been born. The Republic of Korea. But in Gyu’s hands, there was still a hoe. Still a bundle of rice. Still a baby to carry. Still water to draw. Meanwhile, the family continued to grow. A fourth daughter was born, then a fifth. Each new child brought more crying into the house and more responsibility onto Gyu’s back. There were many days when she worked with a baby tied to her body. At last, a son was born. His name was Seong-gyu. He was the long-awaited boy, the youngest child, the one who made the family brighten for a moment. For the first time in a long while, Gyu saw light on her father’s face. Even her mother seemed to speak a little more. Outwardly, the house appeared peaceful. But that peace did not last. Around that time, Gyu’s father began to change. He had never needed to earn money. He had always stayed near the village, protected by inherited land and family standing. But one day, he began to leave home. At first, it was only for a few days. Then for weeks. He said he was looking at water veins. He said he was choosing burial sites. He said people needed him. He traveled farther and stayed away longer. Whenever he returned, he looked tired. He spoke less. Gyu’s mother did not ask. Instead, she took on more work. Gyu sensed it before she understood it. Something was beginning to break. While her father was away, the family’s assets quietly began to shrink. Grain disappeared faster than before. Pieces of land were sold or rearranged. Her mother did not speak of these things in front of the children, but she began sitting alone late into the night. Gyu saw her back in the dim light and said nothing. The child already had too much to carry. There was no room left for adult worries. Then came June 1950. Everything stopped. The news of war arrived suddenly. At first, the sounds of gunfire and bombing seemed like things that belonged somewhere far away. Then, in an instant, they were no longer distant. The village stirred with fear. Faces changed. Doors closed earlier. Voices lowered. From that day on, Gyu’s world was overturned again. The troubles of one household were no longer only household troubles. Survival itself had become the question. The Korean War split Gyu’s family in two. One day, her uncle was taken away among a group of people. Someone said he had been dragged north. That was all that remained of him. After that, his name became a quiet emptiness in the family. No one asked whether he was alive or dead. Even asking felt like a luxury. During the day, the communists came down. Some looked like soldiers. Some looked like starving men. Sacks of grain disappeared from the house. Chickens vanished with twisted necks. Pigs screamed as they were dragged away. What remained was an empty wooden floor and the smell of fear. From then on, Gyu’s family lived in the mountains by day and at home by night. Going up into the mountains was no longer escape. It became routine. Coming down at night was no longer ordinary return. It was survival. Gyu felt relief when darkness came. She felt fear when the sun rose. The world had turned upside down. In the mountain villages of Gangwon Province, the war was not always a continuous roar of gunfire like in the cities. Its cruelty was quieter. Everyone was obsessed with food. Ideology lost meaning before hunger. People chose potatoes before sides. One night, as the family came down from the mountain, Gyu saw a shadow in the yard. The figure stood still in the moonlight. He was not dressed like a proper soldier. He was a young man in loose northern-style clothes. His hands were raised. He had no gun. No knife. “Child,” he said weakly. “Water… please.” Gyu’s mother stopped. Her father pushed Gyu behind him. Young held her breath. The young man was trembling. He was not an enemy in that moment. He was a starving human being. Gyu’s father did not want to give him water. “If we give him water, he will come back tomorrow.” Her mother said nothing. She filled a gourd with water. That was the first time Gyu felt that saving a person and protecting one’s family could stand against each other. The young man drank. He emptied the gourd almost as if licking it clean. Then suddenly, he lowered his head. “Today,” he said, “they wanted to raid this house.” The air froze. “I knew there was nothing left here. So I only watched and passed by.” After saying that, he turned and disappeared into the trees. That night, Gyu could not sleep. The next day, while hiding in the mountains, the family saw smoke rising in the distance. A house below the village was burning. It was the house that had refused water the night before. Gyu’s mother said nothing. Her father lowered his head. And Gyu understood something that no child should have to understand. In war, the choice that keeps you alive often comes before the choice that is right. And the price of that choice is always paid by someone. When the armistice came in 1953, Gyu’s family did not celebrate. Her uncle did not return. There was little grain left. The habit of hiding in the mountains had entered their bodies. The war had ended. But inside Gyu, the line between day and night had already been drawn. For many years afterward, before trusting a person, she would first look to see whether that person was hungry. By the time Gyu turned eighteen, people had begun to speak of the war as if it were already a finished story. They used the word armistice. They returned to the fields. They rebuilt collapsed walls. They repaired roofs and ditches and tools. Life moved forward because it had no other direction. But in Gyu’s house, the end of the war did not mean freedom. The family had endured before the war. It endured during the war. And now, after the war, it simply had to endure again. Gyu’s family had once been rich. They had inherited rice paddies and dry fields. Some land had been worked by tenant farmers. Their storage had once been filled with grain. Their cowshed had rarely stood empty. The war had taken and damaged many things, but it had not destroyed the family at the root. Their wealth was not the money of a day’s labor. It was wealth gathered over generations. But wealth, Gyu slowly learned, was not always protection. Sometimes it was a burden that made leaving impossible. Her father had never been a merchant. He had never gone out to earn a living like other men. He had simply been born into the house and inherited its land. Yet even after the war, he could not stay home for long. Soon he began to leave again. His reasons were vague. He said he had someone to meet. He said he needed air. He said he had work to do elsewhere. He never clearly said where he was going or when he would return. His wandering did not come from the need to survive. It came from something inside him that could not remain still within the house. Ironically, the house continued to run without him. In fact, because he was gone, it had to run more precisely. Gyu’s older sister took on more outside work. Her younger sisters were still too young to carry their full share. Another baby sister had been born after the war. Some villagers whispered that a family must still be doing well if it could afford another child. Their words sounded like praise, but also like envy. With another child in the house, the work grew heavier. Being a rich household did not mean having less to do. It meant the opposite. There was more to manage, more to decide, more to protect. The share owed to tenant farmers, the amount of grain to release from storage, wages for workers, contributions to village events, repairs to the irrigation paths—everything came down to numbers, judgment, and responsibility. Gyu became the daughter who carried both the inside and outside of the household. She turned account books with the baby tied to her back. She left the fields to sit on the wooden porch and listen to the words of older men. No one cared that she was eighteen. In that house, age did not matter. What mattered was who could not leave their place. And that person was always Gyu. That autumn, a dispute arose in the village. The shared irrigation path had to be repaired. During the war, part of the bank had collapsed, and now money and labor were needed to rebuild it. Naturally, people’s eyes turned toward Gyu’s family. “That house should pay the most.” “They have the most land.” “They can afford it.” The village elders held a meeting, and someone came to Gyu’s house. Her mother was holding the baby, so Gyu came out onto the porch instead. “Your father is not home, is he?” “No,” Gyu answered. “Then you should speak for the house.” Gyu already knew. A daughter of a wealthy house had to become an adult faster when her father was absent. The demand was simple. They wanted her family to pay more than the official share for the repair of the waterway. The reason given was “because your household can manage it.” But beneath that reason was expectation. Beneath expectation was resentment. Gyu thought for a moment. Then she said, “We will pay according to the rule.” The air changed. “For a family with so much, you are very calculating.” “Your house was not like this before.” Gyu lifted her head. “It was the same before,” she said. “Only my father was here then.” After that day, people in the village began talking about her. Some said she was not easy to deal with, especially for a rich man’s daughter. Others said it was improper for a daughter to stand forward in a house without her father. A few nights later, the door of the family’s grain storage was opened. Some grain disappeared. Everyone could guess who had taken it. No one said anything. People only muttered, half joking, half serious, “A house with plenty should leak a little. That is how balance is kept.” Gyu heard those words clearly. That night, with her baby sister on her back, she stood in front of the storage room. The grain had decreased. But the house was still standing. And she understood. This house was not maintained by money alone. It was maintained by the strength of someone who stayed. Her father had inherited the name of the house. But Gyu was the one carrying its time forward. At eighteen, Gyu was the daughter of a wealthy family. Yet that wealth was not privilege. It was weight. It was the thing that kept her from leaving. And somewhere outside the house, her father was still wandering, leaving that weight behind.