User:Zuhui/✍️/Bean Sprout Soup and Dignity

I keep thinking about one of the last conversations I had with my mother over dinner before I left Seoul. She has never been very expressive of her emotions, nor does she talks much. It’s always been kind of difficult to know what’s on her mind or how she feels. Being her daughter I’ve accepted this as just part of her personality - stoic, resilient, someone who quietly accepts the reality as it is and keeps her thoughts close.
During that dinner, however, she shared something that happened when she was a teenager. Now I come to think of it, this incident must have had a big impact on the person she became.

For some context, she was born in the mid-60s and she spent her youth in the turbulent 80s - a time when Korea was still recovering from colonization and war, trying to rebuild a sense of normalcy. But the country soon fell under a dictatorship which lasted over decades, with democracy only beginning to take shape in the end of the 80s. Still, some traces of that period affects our society today.

The teacher

When my mother was 13, a young teacher, probably in her mid to late 20s, was newly assigned to her school. She remembers the teacher as a passionate, intelligent young woman, and they quickly bonded over their shared love of books. Not long after, the teacher started a small book club which my mother immediately joined.

She and four other students from the club met weekly to read authors like George Orwell, Erich Fromm, Lao Tzu’s commentaries and so on. My mother told me how proud she was to be part of the club, describing it as a kind of secret society, a privilege to be in the teacher’s circle, who she had grown to admire.

Then about a year later, the teacher suddenly disappeared without a word. She just stopped coming to school. There was no explanation, no goodbye - just her sudden absence. A couple of weeks after her disappearance, a group of men showed up, going around school and asking questions about her: how she had behaved, what kind of things she said, whether she had been involved in any “abnormal" activities, or if she displayed any “suspicious” behaviour.

After these men discovered that the teacher ran a book club at school, my mother and the other club members were called in for questioning one by one. She said It was more like an interrogation than questioning, and it went on for days. Each morning, she would arrive at school, only to be summoned shortly after to a small office space to meet with these men. The same thing happened to four other students in the book club.

I asked what the hell the other teachers and the school committee were even doing. How could they just stand by and let 14 year old girls, be pulled out alone from their classrooms, go through these interrogations? These kids were their students who needed protection, and the adults should have stepped in to put a stop to this. But it was the opposite. She watched as the ‘mighty’ school principal offering up the small office space in the corner for the men to do their work, even asking if he could provide any further assistance, she could sense how far this hierarchy stretched beyond the school.

In the interrogation, these men were clearly looking for something specific. They asked my mother what books the teacher had shared, what kinds of discussions had taken place, and whether there was anything subversive in their conversations. At first, my mother didn’t know what to say. To her, it was just a simple book club - a place to talk about the books they read together, share small snacks, and chat. Only thing she could think of during the questioning was that her teacher must be in serious trouble, or worse, in grave danger to have pissed off these men in power.

Then came the questions that made her stomach churn: “Was there any anti-government content in your discussions? Did the teacher ever say anything that made her sound like an enemy of the current regime?” My mother, just 14 at the time, was terrified and confused. She had no idea what it even meant to “sound like an enemy of the regime”. She replied with an honest “I don’t know,” but the men kept pressing. They didn’t care how frightened this 14 year old kid was, they were just determined to extract whatever information they were fishing for. The longer it went on, the more afraid she became. She just wanted it to end. Eventually, desperate to escape this whole situation, she uttered the word “maybe.” That one word seemed to satisfy the men. They had found what they were looking for. After a short while, they left.

The book club

On the days that followed, my mother spoke to the other students from the book club. They too, had been interrogated, and their answers were pretty much the same - vague, confused, and scared. And of course, none of them had ever seen their teacher again.

As time passed, and as my mother tried to make sense of everything that had happened, she began to realize that her hesitant “maybe” had likely been used against the teacher, twisted into so-called evidence of subversion or rebellion. It became quite clear to her that the teacher had almost certainly been involved in activism against the dictatorship at the time, and that her passion for literature might have been accused of being a cover for something much more dangerous.

Rumors spread through the school. There were whispers of what might have happened to the young teacher. Some said she had been arrested and went to court, and some others speculated much worse. Meanwhile, my mother noticed the other teachers began to speak badly of the young teacher, distancing themselves from any association with her. They implied that whatever had happened to her was her own doing, as if she had brought it upon herself.

The five students including my mother, who were part of the book club, went completely silent. They stopped talking to each other, the shared guilt was just too much for these 14 year old kids to face. My mother knew, as did the others, that their words - however innocent or confused - had been twisted into something dangerous. And somewhere, in some dark room or cold prison cell, their teacher had paid the price.

It was not only the guilt but also shame that followed - the feeling that, in some small but undeniable way, she had helped seal the teacher’s fate. That perhaps her “maybe” had been just enough to condemn her.

Bean sprout soup

Bean Sprout Soup Serves: 2-3 Total Time: 10-15 minutes Ingredients * 120 g / 4.2 oz soybean sprouts * 4 1/2 cups dashi soup stock * 1 Tbsp green onion, thinly sliced * 1/2 tsp minced garlic * 1/2 tsp fine sea salt Instructions 1. Prepare Bean Sprouts * Sort through the sprouts, discarding any bad beans. Rinse under running water. * Optional: you can trim the roots, though they are nutritious and trimming can be time-consuming. 2. Boil Soup Stock * Pour the dashi stock into a pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. * Tip: You may substitute plain water, though stock adds more flavor. If using water, add extra salt or soy sauce to taste. 3. Add Ingredients & Simmer * Once the stock boils, add bean sprouts and cook for 3-4 minutes. * Add garlic, salt, and green onion. Boil for 1 more minute, then remove from heat.

My mind keeps wandering back to something seemingly trivial of her story: a bowl of bean sprout soup. Bean sprout soup is such an ordinary dish. I know it well. It’s kind of an everyday meal at home - it’s simple, quick, and inexpensive. It’s a comfort food. Even good for hangovers. I can easily recall its taste, its smell, and the way it looks.

During one of the interrogation sessions, the men ordered the soup for her since the questioning ran into the school’s lunch break. They didn’t let her go to eat her own lunch but instead had a meal delivered to that cramped corner office at school.

I keep picturing both her untouched lunchbox sitting in her bag and the steaming bowl of soup placed before her by those men. For me it’s such an odd image, that simple, silly bowl of soup sitting in that room. And my mother sitting in front of it, scared.