The Taste of Chocolate: A Child of the Korean War Remembers

The Shin Family Orphans

My own grandmother, Shin Jeong-pil, was only a toddler during the onset of the war and tells similar stories from her life in her southern hometown of Daegu. She, too, recalls sweet memories of American chocolate and the struggles of growing up in a war-torn environment.

Like many Korean children in the 1950s, my grandmother, her four siblings and five cousins all became orphans when their fathers died in the war and their widowed mothers left their families to remarry.

The “Shin family orphans” were left in the care of my great-great-grandmother, who suddenly found herself having to operate an orphanage of sorts for her 10 grandchildren.

This was an overwhelming responsibility for my great-great grandmother. Although she did her best to attend to all 10 of her grandchildren, it was a difficult upbringing for her grandchildren; my grandmother has the physical scars to prove it.

With the attention of my great-great-grandmother stretched thin, my grandmother − a toddler at the time − managed to crawl up a window into the kitchen and toppled over into a boiling pot of water. Her head fell into a floating gourd atop the water, sparing her face, but her hands and arms were fully submerged, leaving her with severe burns.

Today, my grandmother is handicapped as a result of the incident, and her scars are a reminder of what the Korean War took from her: the care and oversight of her parents. My great-great grandmother saved my grandmother’s life by pulling her out of the boiling water in time, but neglect was an inevitable result of my grandmother’s circumstances, with no one to blame but the war that took the lives of over two million Korean civilians.

Finders Keepers

Hunger was also a problem. With no male figure in the family, it was very difficult for my great-great-grandmother to provide for the grandchildren.

Unfortunately, the Shin orphans were not the only hungry children in Daegu. My grandmother recalls that the streets were filled with war orphans living like beggars, without food to fill their stomachs and without shoes to cover their bare feet.

In the midst of these painful memories, however, my grandmother also remembers an occasional delight: treats from the American soldiers.

Whenever American soldiers drove by, the children would swarm towards them, yelling “Hello! Hello!” using the minimal English they knew to try to catch the soldiers’ attention. The soldiers would throw treats like chocolate, gum and candy to the children, and the children would scramble to grab a treat: finders keepers.

It was chaos. The stronger, older children would successfully grab more treats than the weaker, younger children. My grandmother, pointing to a scar on her forehead, said that small children like her often suffered injuries as they tried to keep up with the bigger children, scrambling for those delicious American treats.

Maija Rhee Devine married an American soldier and is now a proud citizen of the United States.

My own grandmother survived her hunger-filled childhood and now spends her time cooking for the homeless and hungry in her neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea.

Her scarred forehead, hands and arms, despite her insistence on hiding them under makeup and long-sleeve shirts, shine as a reminder of the difficulties my grandmother was able to overcome − both during and after the Korean War.

Sharon Lee is pursuing a B.A. in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with minors in Legal Studies & History and Environmental Studies. She is a staff assistant intern at the Wilson Center’s Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy.

Follow the Korea Center on Twitter @Korea_Center or on Instagram at @wilsoncenterkorea.

The views expressed are the author's alone, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government or the Wilson Center. Copyright 2020, Asia Program. All rights reserved.