Once you pass the bus terminus, past the ‘Hello, Eunpyeong-gu’ and ‘Gyeonggi-do in the World’ signs hanging side by side on the front and back, past the now-renamed Combat Police Unit and past the Saemaeul flags fluttering in a row, you will inevitably see those heavy things. It started.
A huge chunk of concrete placed on top of a four-lane road. Although local government promotions and children’s clothing brand advertisements were written in large letters, it was too thick to be a billboard and had nothing connected to be an overpass. Who on earth would leave a crosswalk and climb up that thing to cross from the greenhouse village to the mountain? To me, that huge wall was our neighborhood’s biggest mystery.
Of course Dad knew the answer. ‘Anti-tank protection wall’. It was said that if the North Korean army invaded, it was a wall that would be torn down to block the roads so that tanks could not enter Seoul. But it was made to be destroyed? It was a difficult contradiction for me as a child. However, there was a faint impression that remained. It’s like a premonition, ‘If the North Korean army comes, they will probably pass by my house.’
It has never led to concrete imagination. The protective wall, which was nothing more than a useless-looking concrete block and not as grand as the four main gates of the old Hanyangdoseong Fortress, was never out of sight as it grew up in the city.
It wasn’t just the protective wall. When I went to school in the morning, the kids who lived in the military apartments were always the first to get on the bus. On weekend mornings, short-haired riot police walked in groups of twos and threes to the local bathhouse. If I fell asleep on the bus on the way back from going to the city, I would pass one stop and wake up hearing the announcement, “This is the entrance to the clock, the front of the store, and the checkpoint.”
The front of the unit is the name of the neighboring town, the soldier is the father of a classmate, and the checkpoint is the wrong bus stop. Although it was neither a front line nor a border area, children on the northern border did not feel uncomfortable in military facilities.
![Where the anti-tank defense wall was collapsed[소소칼럼]](https://dimg.donga.com/wps/NEWS/IMAGE/2024/11/12/130408732.1.jpg "Where the anti-tank defense wall was collapsed[소소칼럼]")
When I visited the neighborhood again a few years ago, the heavy protective walls had all disappeared or been replaced with ‘ecological bridges’. It was only after reading the explanation, “It connects a pass that had been cut off for 37 years, allowing animals and people to move together,” that I realized that the protective wall was 37 years old. The idea of planting local tree species on top of a high bridge was a bit awkward, but I liked it. It’s been a few years since we entered the 21st century.
Times have changed a lot. But it hasn’t changed like I imagined the 21st century would be. Since then, North Korea has been firing missiles from east to west every year. The protective wall did not disappear because war would not break out. Even if North Korea invaded, it was beyond the point of buying time by tearing down that wall.
Times have really changed. Sitting in my Gwanghwamun office, I read an article about North Korean troops being dispatched to Russia, and I see our government openly contemplating whether to give lethal weapons to Ukraine. Times have changed so much that even in the Middle East, where people are dying indefinitely, the name North Korea comes up all over the place. North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, which help each other, are no longer the ‘axis of evil’ but rather the ‘axis of resistance’ and the ‘axis of cataclysm.’
Last month, I went to my cousin’s house in Yongsan to see my nephew who had just passed the 100-day mark. Times have changed in many ways, so my older brother decided to take parental leave until the end of the year and my step-sister went to work six days a week until then. My older brother, whose hair had grown arbitrarily long and strands were soaked with sweat, stuck out his tongue and said, “I have tasted the taste of single parenting.” The baby, who had gradually begun to take shape as a human, was stretching out his legs and trying to walk.
It was only after the four of us worked together to tease, feed, and put a child to sleep that we were finally able to eat something like rice. While we were talking quietly in an old apartment with a view of the US military base site in the distance outside the window, my brother said something in passing.
“Do you know what we’re talking about these days? This house is ‘all or nothing’. “If I live, I will live until the end, but if I die, I will die first.”
In that neighborhood, where the President’s Office, the President’s Residence, the Ministry of Defense, and major national facilities are close by, my brother said that with a smile. If North Korea invaded, if war broke out again, we would move on without any sense of crisis, saying things like, “I guess that’s true,” in the familiar assumption that has been our habit for decades. Even though Sae-geun knew that it was a joke that shouldn’t be told with a newborn baby in the next room, even though he knew that it wasn’t actually a joke and was quite serious.
A lot of time has passed, but the most important thing has not changed.
[소소칼럼]is
a light text that talks about things happening around us or our little tastes. To ensure that simple and sweet feelings are not lost on us, reporters take turns writing about the little things that appeal to us.
Am really exhausted. It used to be just the two of us, and now it’s all about the baby’s schedule.” The demands of parenthood had turned their home into a whirlwind of diaper changes and midnight feedings. I could see how the pressures of contemporary life were reshaping family dynamics, with his focus shifting entirely to his new role as a father.
As I held my sleeping nephew in my arms, I couldn’t help but reflect on how much life had changed since my own childhood. The once palpable fear of conflict with the North, which had shaped much of my youth, seemed to have morphed into a different kind of anxiety. No longer was it just about walls and barriers; now it was a more global concern, intertwined with international politics and alliances.
My nephew stirred, a little whimper escaping his lips. In that moment, I thought of the wall that once stood as a symbol of division, now replaced with ecological bridges, and a sense of hope. The protective measures set in place with the intention of defense seemed paradoxically to give way to initiatives fostering connection—between people, wildlife, and communities.
While the world around us continues to shift unpredictably, witnessing new forms of solidarity and alliances in the realm of international affairs, I wonder what kind of world my nephew will inherit. Will he grow up in an era where military might is less celebrated than diplomatic nuance? Will ecological preservation become paramount over old paradigms of defense? As I gently rocked him back to sleep, I hoped that the future brought more bridges than barriers, an interconnectedness that transcended old animosities.
Regardless of the uncertainties, I felt a flicker of optimism. The past cannot be erased, but the future remains unwritten, animated by the choices we make. And perhaps, just maybe, we are on the cusp of a transformative era, driven by the next generation—my nephew included—who may forge a world of peace and understanding.