Free Sad Peninsula by Mark Sampson Page A

inspects their wares.
    She’s so authoritative; I wonder how on earth someone like this could fall for one of Rob Cruise’s lines. While she’s busy, I look off to the side and see a crowd of people amassed in front of a large food stall with a man dressed entirely in white standing in its window. “What’s going on over there?” I ask and she turns to look. “Oh, Michael, you must see this.” She takes my arm and leads me over to join the crowd. We watch as the man in white raises up a large, thick roll of what looks like dough and begins spinning it wildly in his hands, playing it like an accordion.
    â€œIt’s almost hypnotizing,” I say. “What’s he making?”
    â€œPumpkin candy,” she exclaims. “Here, come with me.”
    We push our way up to the front where chunks of the white candy are sitting on a sample tray. Jin hands me a piece and I place it in my mouth. The candy is hard and chewy, like taffy. It is sweet, with a mild, pleasant pumpkin flavour.
    â€œIt’s good, yes?”
    â€œVery good.”
    â€œI’m going to buy a box to take home to my father,” she says. “He’s addicted to this stuff.”
    Her purchase comes in a small cardboard box quarter-folded at the top. She tucks it into her purse and we walk on.
    â€œSo what does your father do for a living?” I ask.
    â€œHe’s a project manager for Samsung,” she replies. “It’s about as glamorous as it sounds. Typical Korean businessman, he works all the time — about ninety hours a week. I hardly ever see him.”
    I think of Justin and the father of his private, Jenny. “And your mother?” I ask. “What does she do?”
    Jin snorts. “What does she do?” She flashes her fingers in derisive quote marks. “She’s a ‘homemaker.’ What to say — we are a traditional Korean family. My mother cooks and cleans and does the laundry, goes shopping for hours at a time, has lunch with her girlfriends just so she can gossip about me. Plus: she is always buying the latest household appliances and having unwholesome relationships with them.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œDon’t laugh. I suspect she talks to the washing machine when we’re not there.”
    â€œYou’re making fun of your umma ,” I chuckle.
    â€œI am making fun of her. I probably shouldn’t. She’s the reason I speak four languages. When I was kid, she would — what do you say in English? — micromanage my education. Made sure I was in all the best hagwons and forced me to study very hard. I guess I owe her that.” She turns to me. “So what do your parents do?”
    â€œMy parents are dead.”
    â€œOh,” she says, lips forming a gentle little O of surprise. “Michael, you’re an orphan?”
    â€œI am. I’ve been once since I was twenty.”
    â€œYou’re an orphan .” She nods, as if this explains so much about me.
    We move along the cobblestone street, taking in Insadong’s atmosphere, until we come across a hole-in-the-wall shop that catches my interest. In its dark window there’s a display of old Asian coinage and paper money, ancient books, and tobacco paraphernalia. We go in and are greeted by an elderly Korean woman, an a’jumah . I bow a hello in her language, then take a respectful stroll through her shop. I leaf through a wooden box full of old South Korean money from just after the war. I pick up a bill inside a plastic sleeve and show Jin the ancient bearded face on it.
    â€œKing Sejong,” I say.
    Jin smiles. “Yes. He created the Korean alphabet many hundreds of years ago. How do you know King Sejong?”
    â€œMy students talk about him sometimes — especially when arguing with me about why Korean is so much easier to learn than English.”
    She moves on, begins browsing through a row of crumbling old books, and soon