Yoon Sik Kim
When I was in the third grade, I vividly remember being in an essay contest while growing up in South Korea. That day was Teachers’ Day, a national holiday in Korea; therefore, the theme of the essay was about the importance of teachers and the all-consuming education. Sprawled on the cold dilapidated wooden floor, for we did not have enough chairs to go around in the village school, I wrote my barely legible Korean, chicken paws scratched on a piece of paper—biting the broken butt of the lead pencil, trying to remember adult conversations I heard, in general, and their idiomatic expressions, in particular, for their use of language had already started to catch my young fancy. Although I was wet-behind-the ears, I often enjoyed memorizing certain idiomatic expressions, for the power of words had begun to enthrall my growing imagination. When I dashed off the essay, first among the students, I turned it in. The teacher, for having little to do while proctoring the contest, glanced at my essay with a wry grin, recognizing a few clever turns of phrase in my expression. Then to my utter shock, he decided to read it aloud in front of the whole class. I felt my heart palpitate in my mouth, for I was a big-time third grader, who revered my teacher like God.
No. I did not win the contest: I was not even close. But his reading of my essay in front of the class impacted me like a bomb. That day my universe changed: the humble teacher helped me discover my life, unawares. From that day on, I wanted to become a writer. Nothing more, nothing less. That was about thirty-seven years ago in a nameless village in Korea. That humble teacher in my village school, a thatched roof drowned among rice paddies, is responsible for my majoring in English. That teacher is responsible for my traveling, while in college, hundreds of miles to meet W. H. Auden, in person, at Seoul National University in 1977. That teacher is responsible for my Ph.D. in English. That teacher is responsible for my numerous publications in The New York Quarterly, among others. And that teacher is still responsible for my first collection of poems. That teacher discovered for me my raison d’être—the what-essence of what I am.
