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 Remembrance Day: Chungmi Yim

It was a beautiful summer day in Seoul, South Korea on June 25, 1950 and thirteen-year-old Chungmi Yim wanted some popcorn. “I walked to the market, but it was very strange. Merchants were closing their stores and the air was filled with papers. I caught one and ran home to show my mother.” The delicately beautiful 73-year-old Korean Canadian woman shakes her head and continues, “The papers all said the same thing North Korea had declared war.”

For the next three years, from the age of 13 to 16, Yim’s life was controlled completely by the Korean War, “a living nightmare” that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 10 million people including 516 members of the Canadian Forces. A few days after the first tanks rolled into Seoul Yim was told that she should return to school. “There were no streetcars so I had to walk many miles to reach the school. Everywhere there was blood and death. The dead bodies were piled up like sandbags,” Yim’s gentle face creases as she remembers. “All I could think was this is somebody’s son, somebody’s father, I had to close my eyes. I did not go back to school for the next three years.”

Once the United Nations began bombing Seoul, much of Seoul, including Yim’s house was destroyed. “Whole neighborhoods were gone, thousands were killed,” says Yim. “My father and I were walking to where our home once was, to salvage what we could from the remains. I saw a huge truck coming towards us surrounded by men, throwing things. They were throwing body parts onto the truck, legs, arms, many were children and old people.” She pauses covering her eyes with her tiny, gnarled hands, “My father didn’t think I should see this so he covered my eyes and told me not to look. I never got it out of my head though, I can still see them in my mind.”

After the section of Seoul that Yim, her four younger sisters and her parents lived in was bombed, the family found shelter in a cave dug years earlier by the Japanese in the Second World War. “It was a very nice cave,” says the tiny woman seriously. “If you ducked your head you could stand up. We lived with about 40 people, four other families, and some soldiers. The soldiers were very young, and scared. They had no guns, no boots, it made me sad to look at them.” The months spent in the caves were hungry ones for Yim and her family, food was scarce and the family had little money. “Most young people do not know what hunger is, how painful it is. We did not have much to eat, but when you are starving, every meal is delicious.”

Yim immigrated to Canada in 1967 and though she still remembers the horrors of the Korean War, she is no longer hurt by them. “War is a terrible thing, it hurts the people who survive it for a very long time. I used to dream that soldiers chased me. I would wake up covered in sweat and feel so afraid.” She pauses her eyes crinkling up into a smile, “I don’t have nightmares any more. I have a beautiful family, a wonderful church, and many friends. Bad memories cannot hurt me any longer.”