KOREA FOUNDATION

Moon Young-sook
Chairperson of the Choi Jae-hyung Memorial Association

In 2019, I visited Central Asia along with delegates from the Presidential Committee to Commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the March 1 Movement and the Establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (chairperson Han Wan-sang). On the last leg of a long trip covering Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, we visited the Arirang Nursing Home.

The nursing home is on Alisher Navoiy Street in Ashmadyashai Village, some 30 kilometers southeast of downtown Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. On both sides of the street, from Lotte City Hotel Tashkent Palace to the nursing home, lie limitless cherry farms and the occasional field of golden wheat. The vast, fertile land must have been tended by the local goryeoin (ethnic Koreans), I thought.

The nursing home was operated by the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH), affiliated with the Ministry of Health and Welfare. In 2006, one year before the 70th anniversary of the forced migration of Koreans (who would later be known as goryeoin) to Central Asia, the governments of Korea and Uzbekistan agreed to construct a nursing home for senior goryeoin who lived alone. The agreement came to fruition in March 2010 when the Arirang Nursing Home officially opened. With over USD 600,000 in funds from the Overseas Koreans Foundation (OKF), the nursing home is said to have been equipped to be the best institution of its kind in Uzbekistan.

Upon arrival at the nursing home, we were welcomed by Director Kim Na-young. Kim introduced herself as a social worker who had graduated from Ewha Womans University’s Graduate School of Social Welfare. Working at social welfare centers in Seoul and other parts of Korea before coming to Uzbekistan to volunteer for senior goryeoin living alone, she said that she had arrived as a 30-something but was now in her 40s. As I saw her bright, cheerful smile, I trusted that the seniors at the nursing home were in good hands.

The nursing home’s front drive looked clean and newly paved. Many of the furniture items and appliances seemed new and the facilities were equipped with CCTV and other high-tech equipment. Director Kim wore a big smile as she explained why everything looked new and up-to-date. In April 2019, when Korean President Moon Jae-in paid a state visit to Uzbekistan, First Lady Kim Jung-sook had decided to pay a visit to the Arirang Nursing Home. Upon learning that she would be coming, Uzbek First Lady Ziroatkhon Hoshimova personally instructed Tashkent’s city administration to update the old facilities and equipment. Upon our visit, the garden was full of beautiful flowers — to enhance the residents’ quality of life and overall happiness, Director Kim said brightly.

There were 38 first-generation goryeoin — 25 women and 13 men — living in the nursing home. Their average age was 86. Two of the residents were 96 years old; they could remember the circumstances surrounding their forced migration quite clearly as they were 14 years old at the time.

When the chief delegate in our party expressed appreciation for the residents “for having lived with all their might,” the two women, in tears, responded immediately: “We didn’t know where we were going. We were abandoned like we were burdensome. Many people died, and those left alive were scattered and kept on living because they couldn’t die. But now, aren’t we proud to be alive like this? Thank you very much for not forgetting us and coming to see us.”

When Director Kim asked the two to sing, they started singing as if they had been waiting for the chance. In trembling voices and in the manner of young girls, they sang lyrics heavily laden with the exhaustion of their lives and their longing for their home country:

The moon is bright. The moon is bright. In the clear sky, the moon is bright.
Why does the moon not grow old like me?
Why am I this old?
The moon is bright. The moon is bright. In the clear sky, the moon is bright.
The flowers bloom for only 10 days and I grow old in a moment.
The moon is bright. The moon is bright. In the clear sky, the moon is bright

No sooner had the first woman finished singing, the other 96-year-old resident followed with a song that she used to sing while working at a kolkhoz (collective farm):

Scatter the seeds briskly.
Spring has come to this joyful village,
Rushing us into sowing.
Tt-rak-ttor tt-rr-rrung, plow the field.
Kun-drr-rum jan-drr-rum, let’s farm quickly.
E-he-ra, scatter.
Scatter the seeds briskly.
Let them suck up the earth’s milk and
Grow — wassak wassak — without a hitch.

Seeds scattered in this vast paddy field
Return in the fall of bumper harvest
Golden, golden ears of rice
Billow thick and grow thicker.
E-he-ra, scatter.
Scatter the seeds briskly.
Let them suck up the earth’s milk and
Grow — wassak wassak — without a hitch.

The women had such great memories that they sang without missing a single word. We asked Director Kim if they had any secrets to maintaining their health. She said that the residents’ health conditions were unpredictable and that the most important thing was laughing with them, listening to them, and being always close to them like a friend or daughter. I had a strong urge to record all the vivid stories the women remembered before they leave this world for good. I was also reminded of the African proverb that when an elder dies in a village, it is like a library burning down. I prayed for all the residents at the Arirang Nursing Home to live for a long, long time.

Sadly, I have heard that the two women have since passed away. Their songs still ring in my ears as we commemorate the 84th anniversary of the forced migration of goryeoin to Central Asia this year.