Free Somebody's Daughter by Marie Myung-Ok Lee

dollar plus change, for a whole green tin decorated with pictures of Korean medicinal herbs. I took the candy as an apology.
    A shrill cawing from above us made me jump. I expected something big and black, Poe-ish, but a dove-sized bird, blue and white colors clean as a school mascot’s, landed at our feet.
    â€œDo you know what that is?” Doug asked.
    â€œA bird.”
    â€œIt’s a
kach’i
. They’re a sign of imminent good fortune.”
    â€œHow do you know all this?”
    â€œI suppose my mother must have told me.”
    â€œIt’s funny.” The last vestiges of my anger melted away with the
mok kehndi
. “I never cared about Korea before. When I was in high school, they had these summer camps for adoptees to learn about Korean culture, but I never considered going. I mean, what did Korea have to do with
me
and my life? But now I kind of wish I’d gone, learned at least a little about Korea.”
    â€œIt’s not too late to learn,” he said. “That’s why you came on the Motherland Program, right?”
    â€œI’m not sure why I came. Semester at Sea was a close second.”
    â€œWell, here, I can teach you a song about the
kach’i
. No, wait, that’s just for the Lunar New Year. How about
‘San Toki’
?”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œThe little mountain rabbit song. Every single Korean kid knows it.”
    San to-ki, To-ki ya
,
    O-di ro ka nyu nya?
    Kkang chung kkang chung kkang kkang chung
    ko geh ro
…
    The third time, he asked me to join in. I tried, then stopped.
    â€œWhat’s up, don’t you like the song?”
    â€œI don’t know what I’m singing.”
    â€œ
San
is mountain and
toki
is rabbit.”
    â€œTo-ki,”
I repeated.
    â€œ
O-di ro ka nyu nya
is ‘where are you going.’”
    I repeated.
    â€œYeah. And
kkang-chung, kkang-chung
is the sound of the rabbit hopping.”
    â€œGang-chung.”
    â€œKkang-chung,”
he said. “Put a little more emphasis on the first ‘kk’ sound.”
    â€œGgang-chung,”
I gagged.
    â€œBetter.”
    He started again. Into my head came a picture of a rabbit hopping.
    We sang together, softly at first, but then louder, finally with gusto, as if “Little Mountain Rabbit” were a sea chantey. The Sound of Music hikers stopped on their way to the
yak-su
to observe us, puzzled by two adults braying out a children’s song. One of the old men, however, clapped approvingly when we finished.
    O-di ro ka nyu nya?
    I sat back on the rough-hewn bench, savored the breeze. So this was springtime in Korea, a place that was both polluted and beautiful, with the smells of industrial pollution mixing with that of a living earth warming, of flowers and fertile insects. I looked past the smog to the overhead sky: intense, Windex-blue, once again almost close and solid enough to touch. The sight of it set off an intense feeling of longing—but for what, I didn’t know.
    I glanced over at Doug Henderson, planning to make conversation to fill up the empty spaces. His face was also tipped up toward the wispy clouds. He was singing, silently, to himself and suddenly I knew he was no longer here, but somewhere far, far away. Had he, too, come to Korea to search for something? Was he like me and perhaps didn’t even know what that something was and was hoping that in time, it would make itself clear?
KYUNG - SOOK
    Enduring Pine Village
    1993
    The river of memory flowed on. Its sights and sounds became particularly vivid to Kyung-sook in the quiet of the late afternoon, when a kind of calm settled over the market. By then, the most serious customers had come and gone, so the merchants, stomachs heavy from their lunch of cold noodles or dried-cabbage-leaf stew, stretched out for a nap. Cooking Oil Auntie snored from a bench in front of her black-and-white TV. The medicine seller ducked