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I love to get my parents talking about their childhoods. Understanding more about their definitive experiences helps me understand more about where I come from. The last few years, it has been harder to see them as they have been in Korea. Last week, we were lucky enough to have them for a few days and enjoyed the time we had together with our own children. One of the things I have been meaning to ask them was their experience on and around June 25th, 1950.

June 25, 1950, or "Yuk - ee - oh" (6 - 2 - 5) as it is called in Korea, is the day that the North Korean army, under the guise of a counter attack, invaded the South. Caught by surprise, the South Korean forces were quickly pushed back until the entire country except the port of Pusan was under North Korean control. My father was a week shy of 12 years old and my other mother was 10. My father's fled into the mountains traveling atop a train...yes, the trains were so full, that some people (including my father's family) had to crawl on top of the train. My grandfather, following an old prophecy by an ancient who correctly predicted the war, led his family to a place in the mountains the same prophet prescribed as the only safe place to be.

My mother's family scrambled to find help to flee. Their journey south was delayed by a few days and so she has a vivid memory of the North Korean army waltzing into town. They initially went on foot to the outskirts of Seoul before pitching in with several other families to rent a big van to take them south.

Both my parents spoke of North Korean and communist-sympathetic men that had been waiting patiently in the mountains for the North to attack. These men were much more deadly than the North Korean army. They were angry and bitter. They gathered all the children around each evening to force them to learn and sing a song dedicated to the Northern leader, Kim Il Sung. Both my parents still remember the song and started singing it to us.

My father's family had only recently fled the North a few years before. His grandmother still had a strong North Korean accent. These North Korean men that had been waiting in the South had particular disdain for former Northerners that had fled to the South and so my grandfather was afraid he would be targeted if discovered. He forced my grandmother to remain mute for months on end so that no one would suspect them. Indeed, they had every right to be worried, my mother remembers a wall outside of their refuge where these Northern men would gather 'enemies of the State' to execute them. She was forced to witness such horrible events.

Worried that he would lose both heirs to the horrors of the war, my grandfather told my father that he could not go to school that year. There was a country school organized for refugees but only my uncle was allowed to attend. My father, a very ambitious student, was disappointed but stayed home and more than diligently studied for his exams on his own.

There are many more stories from their childhood that are humbling. I write this post in my plush office chair, in my air conditioned house, with a fridge stocked with food, a neighborhood free of invading armies, and fretting over how to improve my average mile time in preparation for a half marathon. While I certainly don't believe we have to purposefully seek to put ourselves in such awful circumstances in order to appreciate what we have, I do believe that looking back at where we came from is an absolutely necessary perspective to more fully shape our futures.