My father-in-law recently celebrated an incredible anniversary with his former high school classmates. They came together and recognized their 70th year since graduation. Now, between you and me, I can barely remember much at all of the six middle and high schools I attended, much less most of my classmates, but for this particular class, there was much reason to gather and remember. You see they entered Seoul Middle School in 1950, the year the Korean War began.
This was a group of young students who’d lived their entire lives under Japanese colonial rule—and had even been forced to take Japanese names—but had since just 1945 lived for the first time as … well … Koreans. What a promising new world for those children. What endless possibilities they must have looked forward to. What futures must they have dreamt of after falling asleep each night.
Yet within a single year, those children would be thrust into the middle of a brutal war. Their homes destroyed. Their families shattered. Their dreams burned away by the all-consuming destruction characteristic of warfare in the modern age. Everything they’d come to know and cherish would be swept away in an orgy of fire and blood.
One of the members of that reunion, now in his late 80s, carried with him a class picture from the elementary school many of them had attended. A huge 6th Grade class of several hundred students, modern day family and friends marveled at the image it conveyed and the emotions triggered. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder how many of those 12-year-olds perished the following year, either in the invasion or the purges carried out upon families by communist North Korean and Chinese troops. My wife’s own grandfather was taken away by North Korean occupiers, never to be heard from again. Leaving no gravesite to visit on Chuseok.
While the reunion in Seoul was a joyous affair for the participants, that picture haunted me. The light in the eyes of those children would be extinguished well before they had a chance to take another such photo marking their first year of high school. Some would, by the war’s end, find themselves conscripted, by one side or the other, too young to fight yet forced to do so all the same. Others would stand by helplessly as their families and all they possessed were torn to shreds.
It’s sobering. The thought that so much hope and expectation could disappear so quickly and completely in such a short period of time. Yet the very fact of that reunion, taking place in 2025, bears out a reason for celebration. Many of those children did indeed survive that crucible of fire. Many made it through, despite all the odds stacked against them.
And not only survived, but several of these kids thrived in the post-war period. Successful military officers, founders and presidents of companies, and at least one tenured professor in the United States. The kids in that old, black-and-white picture somehow managed to hold onto the one thing they needed to make it through … hope.
Hope for a brighter day. Hope that enduring those tribulations would make them stronger in the future. Hope that everything lost could be rebuilt. And with that hope, they emerged from four years of conflict stronger and even more determined to find success.
I find the story at once sad and uplifting, the kind of human tragedy that brings tears to the eyes. Both for the difficult journey the children in that picture were destined to take, but also for the fact that so many were able to rise above it and build better lives for themselves and their families.
The light in the eyes of those children wasn’t extinguished after all, it seems. That spark of life never left them, though the darkness of the times likely obscured it from the vision of others. Yet for them, the drive, the motivation to push through adversity made them who they are today, and the modern, thriving South Korea I see around me is the result.
Sad? Yes. But encouraging as well, leaving a critical lesson for future generations. No matter how difficult a time you’re going through, never let the darkness take away your light. Your hope for a brighter tomorrow. Follow the example of those children, destined to face appalling tribulation. Never give up! Dig in hard and fight your way to a better future. It’s always worth it!
M. G. Haynes