From the perspective of a foreigner, the fear of North Korea that a young girl in South Korea faces can be considered reasonable; technically, we are still in a war. But as a South Korean, I swear that the majority of people forget the fact that the armistice can break at any moment. Even if they do realize this distrustful relationship, the assumption of the impossibility of this war resuming is embedded inside their minds. The majority would not be intimidated by this relationship that seems to last forever. I, in 2016 as an eight-year-old girl, was not part of this majority.
“Joy, stop staring at the wall. There’s nothing on there. We were watching a film, in case you forgot,” said Eun with a hint of ingrained cockiness. Eun, the youngest daughter of the affluent family hosting the church group meeting, was a boastful girl just a year older than me. It was my first time meeting this girl, and I noticed that she seamlessly blended into the immaculate room that was pervaded by luxury and lavishness. Her long smooth hair clipped with a pearly hairpin, her plaid dress, her straight posture, and her unhesitating body language contrasted with my awkward posture, as well as my messy hair and smudged t-shirt from the school playground. When I turned my head to face her, she was pointing her bony index finger at the computer screen that had Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on. This was my first Harry Potter film.
A dry voice from my throat answered her. “Sorry.” The pale white wall was a canvas I used to draw and give colors to the pictorial representations of my fears. The wall was soon filled with pearly gray and steel blue. I barely managed to take my eyes off the wall.
Big words were swirling around my small brain, unable to find their place inside. Those words weren’t just big; they were rather violent: 4th and 5th nuclear tests, ballistic missiles towards the South, and man-made earthquakes. The words were dead and empty like a corpse, for they lacked meaning and were surely incomprehensible, but looked and sounded murderous and lifeless. Somewhat gray and metallic as well. The metallic and militant image I had in mind could have been the source of my cold, threatening nightmares of North Korean soldiers and their sudden attacks; these dreams were always dim and gloomy as if projected through a monochrome filter.
A huge slice of a fancy cheesecake appeared before me, which was graciously presented by an unfamiliar hand. Its velvety, neatly cut side was elegantly covered with a delicate layer of plastic and an exquisite brown ribbon bearing inscrutable French written on it; even my eight-year-old eyes could recognize the costliness of the cake. The golden glaze on top of the cheesecake that shimmered under the light reminded me of the piles of Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts Harry Potter had inside his vault. The vibrant colors of the movie pulsated on the burnished surface of the cake as it reflected the computer screen.
“Have the cheesecake. It’s all yours. Oh, I’m not going to eat it, it’s too sweet,” said Eun. I nodded, waiting for her to watch the movie again. As I stared at the cheesecake, I sensed the weight of her continuous gaze on my forehead. The cloying aroma of the cake stuck right beneath my nostrils as though I were to survive solely on the oxygen that remained inside me. Was she waiting for me to eat it?
I stared at the cheesecake, again. But this time, I felt a subtle turbulence inside my stomach. As a remedy, I quickly pushed a piece of cake into my mouth, which somehow made sense to me then. My stomach muscle began to stir what was in it, and as it gained momentum, nausea crept up my throat. Instead of puking, an ashy thought bubble came out of my mouth. Within the palpable confines of my thought bubble, a muted collection of footage from news and documentaries started to play, as if the slice of cheesecake was the triangular play button.
I saw hundreds of ladies of expressionless countenance arduously working in a factory. The distant murmur from the adults penetrated the wooden door. I saw people getting tortured and their silent shrieks resonating through the cold air. My ears started to ring. I saw poor children crying in the street with empty stomachs. The ringing instantly changed into a screech. People were forever imprisoned in labor camps, and some were futilely shot while they attempted to defect to the South. Engulfed with the cacophony of painful cries that only my ears could capture, I could feel the room spinning. As the thought bubble bumped into the wall of reality, it scattered back into ashes. Once the room was still, I suddenly felt an unpleasant sogginess on my tongue...
It was the cake. The piece of cheesecake I put into my mouth ages ago seemed to start swelling inside my mouth like a bubble, getting bigger and bigger as if it were trying to choke me. Soaked in my saliva, the cake felt mushy and disgusting; it was like chewing a mouthful of mud. Its uneasy texture mirrored the apprehension and the overwhelming amount of pity I felt toward all the people who disappeared into ashes a moment ago.
As if she hadn’t seen and heard any of it, which she probably hadn’t, Eun was composedly immersing herself in the film. Everything was perfectly still, exactly the same. It was petrifying that what happened right in front of my eyes did not affect a single thing around me.
The movie was way too good, the cheesecake was way too luxurious for me to justify the freedom of pleasure I was holding. I was sorry to be in a luxurious house, with a wealthy girl, eating a fancy cheesecake while watching a movie I wanted to watch. I wondered, for the first time, why they can’t have this when we are speaking the same language and sharing the same history. My eyes became a pool of unspoken bitterness, as the fear of borders turned into the guilt of privileges. Through my blurry vision, Harry on his broomstick, with his red Quidditch robe, made a bloody afterimage seeping into my tears that were barely clinging to my eyelashes.
