๋๊ณผ ํ๋ฌผ๊ณผ ์ง๋ฌผ์ด ๋ค์์ฌ ๋์ ํ ๊ทธ์ ๋งจ๋ฐ์ด ์ ์ด ๋ฒ๋ค๊ฑฐ๋ฆฐ๋ค. || His bare feet, sticky with a mix of sweat and blood and ooze, glisten.

September 11, 2019
From ritual to requirement, from tradition to suffocating constraint. What one may or may not wear on the feet entangles the relationship between custom and absurdity in Wei Ye’s self-translated short fiction from the Korean.
As the fourth installment of the Transpacific Literary Projectโs Slipper folio, Wei Ye’s depiction of shoe choice delivers a criticism of the claustrophobic institutional spaces in Korean society.
Jump down to read the English version below.
ํตํ
์ด๋ฅธ๋ฐ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด๋ผ๋ ๋ณ์นญ์ด ์ต๋ณ์ ์ผ๋ก ๋ฐ๋ ๊ณ๊ธฐ๊ฐ ๋, ์ด์ฐ ๋ณด๋ฉด ๊ทธ์ ํ์์ ๊ฑธ์ณ ์ง์ ๋์ด ์จ ๊ฒ์ด ํฐ์ ธ๋ฒ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ๋ง ์ฌ๊ฑด์ด ์์๋ ๊ทธ ๋ , ๊ณ๊ธ์ฅ์ ์๋๊ธฐ ์ธ ๊ฐ๋ฅผ ๋จ ์ง๋ ์ด๋๋ง ์ ๋ฌ์ด ์ง๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋์ ์ด๋ ํ๋ผ์คํฑ ์์์ ์์ ์ค๋ฅธ์์ผ๋ก ๋งจ๋ฐ๋ฐ๋ฅ์ ๋ฒ ๋ฒ ๊ธ์ด๋๋ ์ค์ด์๋ค. ์๋ดํ๋ก ๋ณด๊ธ๋ฐ์ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ ๊ทธ์ ๋ฐ์น์ ๋ด๋๋์ด์ณ์ง ์ฑ์๋ค. ์ ๋ฆฌ๋ฌธ์ ์ง๋ ์กฐ๊ทธ๋ง ์๊ณจ ๋ฒ์คํฐ๋ฏธ๋์ ์ด๊ธฐ๋ก ํ ํ ์ฑ์ฐ๊ณ ์๋ 8์์ ํ๋น ์์์ ๊ทธ์ ๋ฐ๋ฐ๋ฅ์ผ๋ก๋ถํฐ ๋จ์ด์ง ์ํ์ ๊ฐ์ง ๊ฐ๋ฃจ๊ฐ ๊ณต๊ธฐ ์ค์ ๊ฐ๋ ฅ๋ถ์ฒ๋ผ ํฉ๋ ๋ฆฌ๋ ๊ฒ์ ๋ณผ ์ ์์๋ค. ๋ฒ์ค ์๊ฐ์ ๋ง์ถฐ ๋์ฐฉํ ๋ค์์ ๋ ธ์ธ๋ค์ ๋ฌด์ฌํ ํ์ ์ ํ๊ณ ์์์ผ๋, ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ๊ณ์ํด์ ๋ฐ๋ฐ๋ฅ์ ๊ธ๊ณ ์์ผ๋ฉฐ ๊ทธ์ ๋ฐ์์ ๋จ์ด์ง ๊ฐ์ง์ด ๋ค์์ธ ๊ณต๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์์ ์ด ๋ค์ด๋ง์๊ณ ์๋ค๋ ๊ฒ์ ๋ถํํ๊ฒ๋ ์ธ์งํ ์์๋ ์์ด ๋ค ๋คํ๋ฆฌ๋ ์ญ๊ฒจ์์ ์ฐธ์ ์ ์์๋ค. ๋๊ตฐ๋ค๋ ๋ํฉ์ค ์์ ๊ณต๊ธฐ๊ฐ ๋์ ๋๋ ๊ฒ ๋ณด์ผ ๊ฒ๋ง ๊ฐ์ด ์ ์ฐํ ๋ฐ๋์๊น์ง ๊ฐ๋ํ๋ค.
๋์ด ์ฐผ๋์ง, ํ๋ฅ์ง๊ทผํ ์คํ์ ๊ณต๊ธฐ์ ๋ด๊ฐ์ง ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋ฐ๋ฐ๋ฅ์ ๊ทธ๊ฐ ์ฌ๊ธฐ์ ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๊ธ์ด๋๋๋ผ ๋ฐ์ ๊ฐ๋๋ฅผ ๋ฌ๋ฆฌํ ๋๋ง๋ค ๋ค๋ฅธ ๋ถ๋ถ์ด ๋ฒ๋ค๊ฑฐ๋ ธ๋ค. ๋ณด๊ธฐ๋ง ํด๋ ๋๋ํ ๊ทธ์ ๋ฐ์ ์ถ์ถํ๊ฒ ์ ์ ๊ฒ์ ๋น๋จ ๋๋ง์ด ์๋์๋ค. ์ญ์๋ ๋ถ์พํ ๋์ด ์๋ฉ ๋ฐฐ์ด๋์จ ์๋๊ณผ ์ํฑ ๋ฐ์๋ง์ ํ์ฐ ๊ฐ์ง ๊ฐ๋ฃจ๊ฐ ์๋ฉ ๋ฌป์ด ์์ ์ ๋๋ก ๋ฐ ๊ธ๋ ์ผ์ ์ด์คํ๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋ฐ๋ฐ๋ฅ ํผ๋ถ ์ค ๋ช๋ช ์์ ๋ถ๋ถ์ ์ด๋๋ง ๋ฒํฐ์ง ๋ชปํ๊ณ ๋ฒ๊ฒจ์ ธ ์ง๋ฌผ๊ณผ ํ๋ฌผ์ ํ ํด๋ด๊ณ ์์๋ค. ๋ฒ์จ ๋ฒ๊ฒจ์ง ๊ณณ๋ค์ด ์ฐ๋ผ๋ ค ์๊ณ , ์ผ๋ง ์ง๋์ง ์์ ๋ ๊ณ ํต์ค๋ฌ์์ง ๊ฒ์ ์์์ง๋ง ๊ทธ๋ผ์๋ ๋ถ๊ตฌํ๊ณ ๊ทธ๋ ๊ธ๋ ๊ฒ์ ๋ฉ์ถ์ง ๋ชปํ๋ค. 10๋ ๊ฐ๊น์ด ๋์ฐํ ๋ฌด์ข์, ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ํ์ ๋์ ์์กฑ๋คํ์ฆ์ ๊ฒฌ๋๋ฉฐ ์ด์์ผ๋ง ํ๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์๊ฒ ์ด ๋ ํ๋ฃจ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ ์ฐจ๋ฆผ์ผ๋ก ๋ฌผ์ฒญ์๋ฅผ ํ๋ฉฐ ๊นจ๋ํ์ง๋ ์์ ๋ฌผ์ ์ข ์ผํ ๋ก ๋ถ์ด ์์๋ ๋ฐ๋ฐ๋ฅ์ ๊ทธ๋ ๊ฒ๋ ์ฐธ์ ์ ์์ ์ ๋๋ก ๊ฐ๋ ค์ ๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค.
์ด๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ด๋ฏธ ์ํฌ๊ฐ ํฐ์ง๊ณ ํผ๊ฐ ํ๋ฅด๊ณ ์๋ ๋ถ๋ถ์ ๋ฌด์ฌ๊ฒฐ์ ๋ค๋ฅธ ๊ณณ๊ณผ ๊ฐ์ ์ธ๊ธฐ๋ก ๊ธ์๋ค๊ฐ ๋ด๋ฉด์์ ์์๊ณผ ํจ๊ป ๋น๋ช
์ ์ง๋ฌ๋๋ฉฐ ํ ๊ฐ์ง ์์์ ๋ ์ฌ๋ ธ๋ค. ๊ทธ๊ฒ์ ๊ทธ๊ฐ ๋์จ ๊ณ ๋ฑํ๊ต์ ๋น์ ์ฌ์งํ๋ ๊ต์ฅ์ ์๊ฐ๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ ์ฐข์ด๋ฒ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ๊ทธ๊ฐ ํ๋ฃจ ์ข
์ผ ์ ์๋ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ๋ชฉ๊ตฌ๋ฉ์ ์ค์
๋ฃ๋ ๋ชจ์ต์ด์๋ค. ์ค๋ฌด ์ด ์ดํ ์ฌ์์ ๋ํ ์ํ์ ๊ฑฐ์น๋ฉฐ ํ๋ฆฟํด์ ธ๊ฐ๋ ๊ธฐ์ต์ด์์ง๋ง, ๋ฆ์ ๋์ด์ ์๊ทผ์๋น์ญ์ผ๋ก ์
๋ํ ๋ค ๊ทธ๊ฒ๋ ๊ตฐ๋ ์ํ์ด๋ผ๊ณ ๋ฌด์ข์ด ์ ์ ๋ ์
ํ๋จ์ ๋ฐ๋ผ ์์ฆ ๋ค์ด ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์์ ์ ๊ณ ๋ฑํ๊ต ์์ ์ค ์ด๋ค ์๊ฐ๋ค์ด ๋ ๋ก ์ ๋ช
ํด์ก๋ค.
์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ์์ธ๋ก ์จ ๊ฒ์ ๊ทธ์ ๋์ด 16์ธ์ ์ผ์ด์๋ค. ์๋ฐํ ๋งํด ๊ทธ์ ์ถ์์ง๋ ์์ธ์ด์์ง๋ง ์์ธ์ ์ด์๋ ์ ๋ ๊ธฐ์ ๊ธฐ์ต์ ๊ทธ์๊ฒ ์์๊ณ , ๊ทธ๊ฐ ๋ ์ฌ๋ฆด ์ ์๋ ์ธ์์ ๊ฐ์๋์ ์์นํ ํ๊ฐ์ ์์์ง ๊ทผ์ฒ ์ด๋ ์์ ๋ง์์์ ์์ํ๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ๊ฐ์ฅ ์ด๋ฅธ ๊ธฐ์ต ์ค ํ๋๋ก์ ๊ทธ์ ๋๋ฆฌ์ ์์นํ ๊ฒ์ ํํ์ด์ด๋ก ์์ฑํ๊ฒ ๋ง๋ค์ด์ง, ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ์์นญํ๋ ๋ฐ์ธ๊ฐ๋ฅผ ์ ๊ณ ๋์๋ค๋๋ ์๋ฒ์ง์ ๋ฐ์ด์๋ค.
์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์๋ฒ์ง๊ฐ, ๋ํ ๊ทธ์ ์ด๋จธ๋๋ ํํ์ด์ด๋ก ๋ง๋ ๊ฑฐ์ง ๊ฐ์ ๋ฐ์ธ๊ฐ๋ฅผ ์ ๊ณ ๋ค๋ ๋ค๊ณ ๊ทธ๊ฐ ํน๋ณํ ๋น๊ณคํ ์ ์๋ ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋๋ค๊ณ ์๊ฐํด์๋ ๊ณค๋ํ๋ค. ๋๋ํ๊ธฐ๋ง ํ ํํธ์ด์๋ค๊ณ ๋งํ ์ ์๋๋ผ๋, ๊ทธ ํํ์ด์ด ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ ํ์ค์ ์กฐ๊ฑด์ผ๋ก๋ถํฐ ๊ธฐ์ธํ ์ด์ฉ ์ ์๋ ํํ์ ์ฐ๋ฌผ์ด ์๋๋ผ ๊ทธ์ ๋ถ๋ชจ๊ฐ ์ฑํํ ์ผ์ข ์ ์์์ด์ ์๊ธฐ ์ ์ ์ ์ ์ด์๋ค๊ณ ํ ์ ์๋ค. ๋ค์ฏ ์์ ๋ถ๋ถ, ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ๊ทธ๋ค ์ฌํ์ ์๋ ์ผ๊ณฑ ๋ช ์ผ๋ก ๊ตฌ์ฑ๋ ๊ทธ ๋ง์์ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์๋ฒ์ง๊ฐ ์ฃผ๋ํด ๊ฑด์คํ ์์ โ๊ณต๋์ฒดโ์๊ณ , ๊ทธ๊ณณ์ ์ฑ์ธ๋ค์ ๋ง์ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ๋๋ ์์ด ์ด์ ๊ฐ์ ๋ฐฉ์์ผ๋ก ์ฌ์คํ๊ณ ๋ ์ ์นํ ์ฌ๋ฌ ์ ์น์ ํจ์๋ฅผ ํ์ถํ๊ณค ํ๋ค. ๋น๋ก โ๊ณต๋์ฒดโ ์ฃผ๋ณ ์ด๋ฝ์ ์ ๋์งธ ๊ฑฐ์ฃผํด์จ ์์ฃผ๋ฏผ๋ค์ ๊ทธ๋ค์ ๋น์๊ฑฐ๋ ์ฌ์ง์ด ์ ๋์ํ๊ธฐ๊น์ง ํ์ง๋ง ๋ง์ด๋ค.
์ด๋ ค์๋ถํฐ ๋ชธ์ ์ด๊ณผ ๋์ด ๋ง์๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ๋ ๊ทธ๊ณณ์์๋ ๊ฑฐ์ ์ฌ์์ฌ์ฒ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ์ ๊ณ ๊ณต๊ต์ก์ ๊ฐ์ญ์ด ์ต์ํ๋ ์ฑ, โ๊ณต๋์ฒดโ๊ฐ ์ค์ง์ ์ผ๋ก ๋ถ๊ดดํ ๋๊น์ง ์ฃผ๋ก ๊ณต๋ ์์ก ๋ฐ ๊ต์ก์ ๋ฐ์ผ๋ฉฐ ์ฑ์ฅํ๋ค. โ๊ณต๋์ฒดโ์ ์๊ตฌ์ฑ์๋ค์ ๋ถ๊ดด๋ฅผ ์ ํํ์ฌ ์ธ๋ถ์ธ๋ค๊ณผ ์ฌ์ ์ผ๋ก ๋ง๋๋ ์ ์๋ฆฌ์์, ๊ทธ ์๋ฆฌ์ ๋์ํ์ง ์์ ๋ค๋ฅธ ์ด๋ค์ ์น์ด๋๋ฉฐ โ๊ณต๋์ฒดโ๊ฐ ๋ด๋ถ ๊ฐ๋ฑ์ ๊ฒช์ ๋ค์ํ ์ด์ ๋ฅผ ์ ์ํ๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ค์ด ๋ด๋๋ ์ค๋ช ์๋ ์์ปจ๋ ์ฌ์ฑ์ฃผ์๋ ์์ฝ์๋ํค์ฆ, ์ฌ์ง์ด ๊ทธ ์์ ์์๋ ์ด๋ฏธ ์ง๊ตฌ์์์ ์ฌ๋ผ์ง ์ง 10๋ ๋ ๋์ ์๋ จ์ ์ฌํ๊ตฌ์ฑ์ฒด์ ๋ํ ์๊ฐ์ฐจ์ฒ๋ผ ๊ฑฐ์ฐฝํ ๋ ผ์ ๋ค์ด ๋ค์์ผ ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฐ๋ฐ ๋งํ๋ ์ด๋ค๋ ๋ฃ๋ ์ด๋ค๋ ์ด์ฐจํผ ์ ์๊ณ ์๋ ์ฌ์ค์ด์๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ์ด์๋์ง๋ ๋ชจ๋ฅด์ง๋ง, โ๊ณต๋์ฒดโ๊ฐ ๋ชฐ๋ฝํ ๊น๋ญ์ ๊ทธ๋ค์ด ๋ด์ธ์ด ์ด๋ฅธ๋ฐ ๋ฐ์ ยท๋ฐ์๋ณธ ์ ๊ธฐ๋๋ฒ ์ฌ์ ์ด ๋ฐ์๋ณธ์ฃผ์๋ผ๋ ๊ธฐ์น์ ๋๋ฌด๋ ๊ณต์ธ์ ์ผ๋ก ๋ณต๋ฌดํ ๋๋ถ์ธ์ง ์ข ๊ตญ์ ์์ต์ฑ์ ์ฐจ์์์ ์๋ฒฝํ ์คํจ๋ฅผ ๊ฑฐ๋์๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ์ด๋ผ๋ ๊ฒ์ ์ธ๊ธ๋์ง ์์๋ค.
๊ทธ๋๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋ถ๋ชจ์๊ฒ๋ ์์ด์ด ๋ฐ๋๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ค์ ์ด๋๋ง ๋์์ ๋ง์๊ณต๋์ฒด ์ด๋์ ์ ๊ตฌ์๋ก์ ์์์์ ์๋ ค์ง๊ธฐ์ ์ด๋ฅด๋ ๊ณ , ์ฌ๋ฌ ๊ถ์ ์ฑ ์ ์ฐ๊ณ ์๋ฏผ ์ด๋ ์ง์์ ๊ธฐ์๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ๋ฉฐ ์ ๋นํ ์๋ฆฌ๋ค์ ์ก์ ์ ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ๋ํ ์์ ๊ทธ๋ค์ ๋จธ๋ฆฌ ์๋ก ๋ถ์ ์์ ๋ถ์ด์ฃผ์๋ ๋ง๋ฅดํฌ์ค์ ๊ฐ์ง๋ ์ด ์๋์๋ ๋น์ ๋ฐํด, ๊ณผ์ฐ ๊ทธ๋ค์ ์ฌ์ ๋ ๊ทธ๋ค์ ๋ฌผ์ ์กฐ๊ฑด์ ๋ฐ๋๋ค. ๋น๋ก ๋ด์๋ ์ง์ค๋์๋, ๊น๊ณ ๊น์ ์๊ธฐ ๋ฐ์ฑ ๋ฐ ์ฐ๋ฏผ์ด ์ง๋๊ฐ ํ์์ผ ๊ฒฐ๋จํ ์ ์์๋ ๊ฒ์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํ์ง๋ง, ์ด์จ๋ ํ๋ค๋ชปํด ์ฌํ๊ณผํ์ ์ ๋ก๋ฅผ ์ ํ ์ ์๋๋ก ํ๊ธฐ ์ํด์๋ผ๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ด๋ฆ ์๋ ์ธ์์ธ ๋ํ์ผ๋ก ๋ณด๋ด์ผ ํ๊ฒ ๋ค๋ ๊ฒฐ๋ก ์ด ๋ด๋ ค์ก๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค.
์ด๋ฐ ๊ณ์ ๋ก ๊ทธ๋ค์ ์ค์ ์์ธ์ ์ค๊ฐ์ผ๋ก์จ ๋ฐฅ์ ๋น์ด๋จน๊ณ ์ด๋ฉด์๋ ๋ ์ด์ ๊ณต๋์ฒด ์๋ โ๊ณต๋์ฒดโ๊ฐ ๋ฉ์ฉกํ ๊ธฐ๋ฅํ๊ณ ์์์ ๋์ธ์ ์ผ๋ก๋๋ง ํ๋ฐฉํ๊ธฐ ์ํด ์ผ๋จ ๊ฐ์๋์ ๋จ์์ผ๋ฉฐ, ๊ธฐ์์ฌ๊ฐ ์๋ ์์ธ์ ์ด๋ ์์นญ ๋ช ๋ฌธ ์์ฌ๊ณ ์ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ํ๋ก ์ ํ๋ณด๋๋ค. ์๋๋ ๊ฒ์ ์๋์์ผ๋, 10๋์ ์ง์ ํ ํ์๋ 24์๊ฐ์ ๋๋ถ๋ถ์ ๋ถ๋ชจ ๊ทผ์ฒ์์ ๊ณผ๋ณดํธ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ์ผ๋ฉฐ ๋ณด๋ด์ผ ํ๋ ๊ทธ์๊ฒ ์ด๋ ์์ฃผ ์๋กญ๊ณ ๋ ์ผ์ ๋ถ๋ถ ์ฆ๊ฑฐ์ด ๊ฒฝํ์ด์๋ค.
๊ทธ๋ฐ๋ฐ ํ ๊ฐ์ง ๋ฌธ์ ๊ฐ ์์๋ค. ํ๊ต์ ๊ต์น์ ๋ชจ๋ ํ์์ ๊ตฌ๋๋ฅผ ์ ๊ณ ๋ค๋ ์ผ ํ์ผ๋ฉฐ, ํฌ๋ง ํ์์ ํํด ์ ์ฒญ์๋ฅผ ์ ์ถํ๋ค๋ ์์ ํ์๋ฅผ ํตํด ํฉ๋ฆฌํ๋๋ 0๊ต์ ์์ต๊ณผ ์ผ๊ฐ์์จํ์ต ์๊ฐ์ ํฉ์น ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ํ์์ด ํ๋ฃจ ๋์ ๊ตฌ๋๋ฅผ ์ ๊ณ ์์ด์ผ ํ๋ ์๊ฐ์ ์ต์ 14์๊ฐ์ด ๋์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋ฐ์ ๋ณดํต ํ๋ฃจ ์ข ์ผ ์ฒ์ฒํ๊ฒ ์ ์ด ์์๋ค.
๊ทธ๋ผ์๋ ๋ถ๊ตฌํ๊ณ ๊ทธ๋ ํ๋์ ๊ตฌ๋๋ฅผ ์ ๋ ์ผ์ด ์ฆ๊ฑฐ์ ๋ค. ๋ฌผ๋ก ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๊ตฌ๋๋ ๊ธฐ๊ปํด์ผ ๋๋ฆฌ๋ผ๋ฆฌํ ์์กฐ์ ์ด์ค๋ฌ์ด ๊ต๋ณต๊ณผ ํจ๊ป ์ ์ด์ผ ํ๋. ๋ ์ด์ค๋ฝ๊ณ ์๊น๋ง ๋ฌด๊ดํ์ ์คํ์ดํ ๋๋น์์ฆ์ ์ง๋์ง ์์๋ค. ๋ค๋ง 80๋ ๋ ํ์ ์ด๋๊ถ์ผ๋ก ์ถ๋ฐํด ์ฌํ๊ป ๋น์ทํ ์ถ์ ์์ํ๋ฉฐ ๋น์ทํ ๋ถ๋ฅ๋ค๋ผ๋ฆฌ๋ง ๊ต๋ฅํ๋ ์ด๋ค์๊ฒ์๋, ์์ ์ ์ทจ๋ฏธ๊ฐ ์ฌ์ธํ์ง ๋ชปํด ๋ฐ์ํ๋ ์ฌ๋ฏธ์์ ๊ฒฐํ์ ๊ณผ์๋ ์๋น๋ฌธํ์ ์ด๊ตญ์ ์๋ณธ์ ์ 3์ธ๊ณ ์ํ๊ณผ ํ๊ฒฝ ํ๊ดด ๋ฑ์ ๋ํ ์ฃผ์ฒด์ ๊ฑฐ๋ถ๋ก ํผ๋ํ๋ ์ผ์ด ์์ ๊ด์ฐฐ๋๋๋ฐ, ์ด๋ฌํ ์ฐฉ๊ฐ ์์์ ์์ก๋ 10๋ ์๋ ์ ๋์๋ ๊ณ ์ ๊ต๋ณต ๋ธ๋ ์ด์ ์ ๋๋ ์์ฐ๋ ๊ตฌ๋๋ง์ ๋ ๊ทน๋๋ก ์ธ๋ จ๋๊ณ ์๋ฆ๋ต๊ฒ ๋ณด์๋ค.
๋์ ์ ์ ์๋ง์๋ ์ธ๊ตฌ๋ ค ๊ตฌ๋์ ์ผ์์ฝ์ด ๋ฌป์ด๋์๋ค. ๊ณฐํก์ด์ฒ๋ผ ์ฌ๋ผ์จ ๊ฒํธ๋ฅธ ๋ฐ์ ๋ค์ด ์๋ ์๋ง์ ๋ ์ด์ ๊ทธ์ ๊ธฐ์์ฌ ์๋์์ ๋ ์ด์ ์ฐพ์ ์ ์๊ฒ ๋์์ ๋ฌด๋ ต, ์ฌ๋ฆ์ด ์ฐพ์์๋ค. ํ๊ต์์ ๊ฐฑ์ง๋ก ์ธ์ํด ๋๋ ์ฃผ๋ ์ ์ธ๋ฌผ์ ๊ทธ์ ์์ ๋ช ์ฐจ๋ก ํ๋ฉด ๋ฌผ์ ๋ด๊ฐ๋ค ๊ฑด์ง ๊ฒ์ฒ๋ผ ์จํต ์ธ์ด ๋๋๊ฑฐ๋ ธ๊ณ , ์ฌํ ๋๋ ๊ตฌ๋ฉ์ด ๋๊ฑฐ๋ ์ฐข์ด์ง๊ณค ํ๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ์ ๋๊ป ๋ฌด์ข์ด๋ ๊ฒ์ ๊ฐ์ ์ ์ผ๋ก๋ง, ๊ทธ๊ฒ๋ ๋๊ฐ๋ ์์๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ๋ก๋ง ์ ํด๋ณธ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์์ ์ ๋ฐ๊ฐ๋ฝ ์ฌ์ด ํผ๋ถ๋ฅผ ๋ณ๋ค๋ฅธ ๊ณ ํต ์์ด ๋ฒ๊ฒจ๋ผ ์ ์๋ค๋ ๊ฒ์ ๋ฐ๊ฒฌํ๋ค. ์ฌ์ ํ ๊ทธ๋ ์ฌ๊ฐํด์ ๊ตฌ๋ ์ธ์ ๋ค๋ฅธ ์ ๋ฐ์ ์ ์ ์๊ฐ์ด ๋ค์ง ์์๋ค.
์ด๋ฏธ ํ๊ต์์ ์ง๋์ ๋๋ก์ ์์จํ์ต ๊ณํ์ ๋ฐ๋ผ ์ ๋ช ๋ฌด์คํ ๋ฟ์ธ ์ฌ๋ฆ๋ฐฉํ์ด ์์๋๊ธฐ ์ผ๋ง ์ , ๊ธฐ๋ง๊ณ ์ฌ๊ฐ ๋๋ ๋ ์ ์ผ์ด์๋ค. ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๊ธฐ์์ฌ ๋ฃธ๋ฉ์ดํธ๋ ์ผ๊ตด์ด ํ์ฌ๋ฉ๊ฒ๊ณ ๊ธธ์์ผ๋ฉฐ, ๋ชธ์ ์ ํ ํ ๋ ๋ก ๋ง๋ผ ์ ๊ทธ๋๋ ํฐ ํค๊ฐ ๋ ๊ธธ์ญํด ๋ณด์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ ํ์ ๋ชฉ๋์์ ์ด์์ผ๋ฉฐ ๊ทธ ๊ณต๋ถ๋จธ๋ฆฌ์ ๋นํด ๋ถ๋ชจ์ ๊ธฐ๋๊ฐ ๊ณผํ ๊ฐ์ด ์์ง ์์ ๊ทธ ๋๋ ๋จํ์ ์น๊ณ ์กฐ๊ธ์ ์ ๊ฒฝ์ง์ ์ธ ์ฑ๊ฒฉ์ ํ์์ด์๋ค. ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ์ค์๋ฅผ ํ๊ณ ๋์ ์นจ๋์ ๋์, ๊ทธ๋ ํฌ๋๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ๋ ์ดํฌ๋ก ๋ฐฉ์์ ๋ฐ๊ผฌ๋๋ด๊ฐ ๋๋ค๊ณ ํ๋ค. ๋ง ์ป๊ณ ์จ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ผ๋ก์๋ ์๊ฐ, ์ค๊ฐ๊ณ ์ฌ๊ฐ ๋๋ฌ์ ๋์ ๋ง์ฐฌ๊ฐ์ง๋ก ๊ทธ๊ฐ ์์๋๋ ๊ธฐ๋ง๊ณ ์ฌ ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ๋ก ์ธํด ๊ดํ ์ง์ฆ์ ๋ด๋ ๊ฒ์ธ๊ฐ ์ถ์๋ค. ํ์ง๋ง ๊ทธ๋ ์์ธ์ ์ฌ๋ผ์จ ์ด๋ ์์ฌ๊ณ ์ ๋ค๋ฅธ ํ์๋ค์ ๋ํ์ฌ ๋ด์ฌ ์์ถ๋์ด ์์์ผ๋ฏ๋ก ๊ทธ๋ฌํ ์ธ์์ ํ์ถํ์ง ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ ์ถ์ ๋ฌธ ๊ทผ์ฒ์ ๊ทธ๋๋ก ์ ์ฑ ๋์์ ๊ทผ์์ ์ฐพ์๋ณด๋ ค๋ ์๋์ด๋ผ๋ ํ๋ค๊ฐ ๊ทธ์ ๋ถํ์ ๋ฌด์ํ ์๊ฐ์ด์๋๋ฐ, ์ ๋ฐ์ฅ ๊ทผ์ฒ์์ ๊ฒฐ์ฝ ๋ฌด์ํ ์๋ง์ ์๋ ๋์์ ๊ทผ์์ ๋ฐ๊ฒฌํ๋ค. ๊ทธ๊ฒ์ ๋ค๋ฆ ์๋ ๊ทธ์ ๊ตฌ๋์๋ค.
์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ์์ ์ ์ตํ ๋ฐ์ ๊ดํ์ฌ ์์น์ฌ์ ๋๋ผ๊ฒ ๋ ์ผ์ ์ด๊ฒ๋ง์ด ์๋์๋ค. ๊ธฐ๋ง๊ณ ์ฌ๊ฐ ๋๋ฌ์ด๋ ์ผ์๋ ๊ณ์๋์๊ณ , ์์ต์ค์ ์์ด์ปจ์ ๊บผ์ ธ ์์๋ค. ์๋ฒฝ๋ถํฐ ๋ฐค๊น์ง ์์ด์ปจ ๋ฐ๋์ ๋ง์์ผ ํ๋ ๋ค๋ฅธ ํ์๋ค๋ก์๋ ๋ฐค์ด ๋๋ฉด ์ ์๋๋ง ์์ด์ปจ์ ๋๊ณ ์ถ์ ๋ฒ๋ ํ๋ค. ํ์ง๋ง ์์ด์ปจ์ ๋๋ ์๊ฐ๋ถํฐ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๊ณ ๋
ํ ๊ณ ํต์ด ์ฌ๊ฐ๋์๋ค. ์ฐจ๋ผ๋ฆฌ ์์ด์ปจ ๋ฐ๋์ ์์กฑ์ด ์ฐจ๊ฐ์์ ธ ๊ฐ๊ฐ์ด ์์ด์ง๋ ์ผ์ด, ๋์ด ๋์ ์ง์ฒ๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ๋ค ๋ชปํด ์ด์ด ์ฌ๋ผ ํงํงํ ์๋ฐ์ ๊ฐ๋ดํด์ผ ํ๋ ์ผ๋ณด๋ค ๋์๋ค.
๊ทธ๋ ๊ฒฌ๋๋ค ๋ชปํด ์ฑ
์ ๋ฐ์์ ๊ตฌ๋๋ฅผ ๋ฒ์๋ค. ์๋ง๋ ๋ฒ์ด์ผ ํ๋ ๊ฒ ์๋๊น ์๊ฐ์ด ๋ค์์ ์ฆ์, ๋์ฐ ๊ทธ์ ์ ์๋ฆฌ์ ์์ ์์๋ ์ฌํ์์ด ๋ฅ์ ๊ทธ์ ํ์ ์ก์๋ค. ์๊ฒฝํ ์ด๋ ๋ง๋
ํ ์น๊ตฌ๋ ์์ด ํ๋ก ๊ณต๋ถ์ ๋งค์งํ๊ณ , ๋๊ตฐ๋ค๋ ๋์์ ๋๋ ์ฌ์์๋ ์ ํ ์ฐ์ด ์์๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด์๊ธฐ์ ๊ทธ๋ ์์ค๋ผ์น๋ฏ ๋๋๋ค. ๊ทธ๋
์ ์ผ๊ตด์ด ๊ทธ์ ์ผ๊ตด ๊ฐ๊น์ด ๋ค๊ฐ์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋
์ ์จ๊ฒฐ์ด ๋ชฉ๋๋ฏธ์ ๋๊ปด์ง๋ ๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ์๋ค. ๊ทธ ์๊ฐ, ๊ทธ๋
๊ฐ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๊ท๊ฐ์ ์์ญ์๋ค.
โ์ ๊ธฐโฆ ๋ฏธ์ํ๋ฐโฆ ๊ตฌ๋ ์ ์ด์ฃผ๋ฉด ์ ๋ ๊น?โ
์ด ์์ํ ์ฌ๊ฑด๋ค๋ก ์ธํด ๊ทธ์ ๊ฐ์์ฑ์ ๋จ๊ฒจ์ง ์ํ์ด ์ด๋ค ๊ฒ์ด์๋์ง ์ค๋ช ํ๊ธฐ๋ ์ด๋ ค์ด ์ผ์ผ ๊ฒ์ด๋, ๋ฐ๋ก ๊ทธ ๋ค์ ๋ ๋ถํฐ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๊ฒ์ ๋น๋๋ด์ง ํ๋๋ฅผ ๋ค๊ณ ๋ฑ๊ตํ๋ค. ๋ด์ง ์์๋ ๊ธฐ์์ฌ์์ ์ ์ผ๋ ค๊ณ ์ง์์๋ถํฐ ๊ฐ์ ธ์จ ํํ์ด์ด ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๊ฐ ๋ค์ด ์์๋ค. ๊ต์ค ์์ ์์ ์๋ ๋์ ์๋ฌด๋ ๊ทธ์ ์ ๋ฐ์ด ๋ฌด์์ธ์ง ๊ด์ฌ์ด ์์๋ค. ๊ณ ๋ฌด ์ฌ์ง์ ๋ฐ๊ฐ์ด ๋ฐ์ ๋ฌ๋ผ๋ถ์๋ค ๋จ์ด์ง๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ๋ณตํ๊ณ ์ผ๋ง ์ง๋์ง ์์ ๊ทธ๊ฐ ํ๋ฆฐ ๋์ ์์ด ์ฆ๋ฐ๋์ ์๋ํด ์ฝ์ฌ๋ฆฌ ์ฌ๋ผ์ง์ง ์๋ ๊ตญ๋ฌผ์ด ์์ฑํ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ์์ ๋ฐฐ์ด๋์ค๊ฒ ๋์์ง๋ง, ๊ทธ๋ผ์๋ ๋ถ๊ตฌํ๊ณ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๊ฐ ์ฃผ๋ ์ผ๋ง์ ํด๋ฐฉ๊ฐ์ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์๊ฒ ์์ง ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฌ๋ ์ํ๊น์ด ์ผ์ด ๋ฐ์ํ๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ ์ฌ๋ ์๊ฐ์ ์์ ์ด ๋ฌด์์ ์ ๊ณ ์๋์ง๋ฅผ ๋ง๊ฐํ ์ฑ ํ์ฅ์ค์ ๊ฐ๊ธฐ ์ํด ๋ณต๋๋ก ๋์ฐ๊ณ ์ด๋ ๊ต์ฌ์๊ฒ ๋ฐ๊ฐ๋์ด ๊ต๋ฌด์ค๋ก ๋๋ ค๊ฐ๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค.
๊ต๋ฌด์ค์์ ๋ค๋ฅธ ๊ต์ฌ๋ค์ ๊ฐ์์ ํ ์ผ, ํน์ ๊ฐ์์ ๋ฌด๋ฃ์ ๋งค์งํ๊ณ ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ ๊ณต๊ฐ์ผ๋ก ๋ค์ด๊ฐ๊ฒ ๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์๊ฒ๋ ํ๋์ ํ์ค๊ฐ์ด ๋๊ปด์ง์ง ์์๋ค. ์ด์ฐจํผ 5๋ถ ์ ๋๊ฐ ์ง๋๋ฉด ๋ค์ ์ข ์ด ์ธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ , ๊ทธ๋ ์์ ์ ๋ฃ๊ธฐ ์ํด ๊ต์ค๋ก ๋๋ ค๋ณด๋ด์ง ๊ฒ์ด์๋ค. ๊ต์ฌ๋ ๊ต์น๊ณผ ์์ ๋ช ๋ฌธ๊ณ ํ์์ ํ์๋ฅผ ๋ค๋จน์์ง๋ง, ์ฌ์ค ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ ๋ฐ ์์ฒด์๋ ๋ณ ๊ด์ฌ๋ ์๋ค๋ ๋ฏํ ๋งํฌ๋ก ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋ํ๋ค. ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ์์ ์ ์์กฑ๋คํ์ฆ์ ํธ์ํ ๊ฒ, ํ์ํ๋ค๋ฉด ๋ณ์์์ ์ง๋จ์๋ผ๋ ๋ผ์ด์ค๊ฒ ๋ค๊ณ ๋งํ ๊ฒ๋ ์ค์ ํฐ ๋ฌธ์ ๋ ์๋์๋ค. ์๋ฐํ ๋งํด ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ ๋ฐ์ ๊ต์ฌ์ ํ์ ์ฌ์ด์ ๊ด๊ณ๋ฅผ ์ ๋ฆฝํ๊ธฐ ์ํ ํ๊ณ์ ์ง๋์ง ์์๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ์ด๋ค. ๋ค๋ง ๊ทธ๋ ์ด ๊ณผ์ ์์, ๊ต๊ถ์ ์ํธ๋ฅผ ์ํ์ฌ 1ํ๋ ์์ ์๋๋ก ๋ฒ์ด์ง๋ ์ด ๋ฏธ์์ ์ด๊ณ ๋ ์ผ๋ฐฉ์ ์ธ ์์ปค์ค์ ๋ค๋ฅธ ๊ต์ฌ๋ค๋ ๋ด์ฌ ์ฃผ์๋ฅผ ๊ธฐ์ธ์ด๊ณ ์์์์ ์์ง ๋ชปํ๊ณ , ๋ฌด์ฌ๊ฒฐ์ ํ ๋ง๋ ๋ง์ ํ๋ ธ๋ค.
โ์ ์๋๋ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ ์ ๊ณ ๊ณ์๋ค์.โ
โ์ผ ์ด ์๋ผ์ผ!โ
๊ทธ ์๊ฐ, ํฝ ํ๋ ์๋ฆฌ์ ํจ๊ป ๋ฌด์ธ๊ฐ๊ฐ ๋ ์์ ๊ทธ์ ๋ฑ์ง์ ๋๋ ธ๋ค. ๊ทธ์ ๋คํธ์ ์์ ์์๋ ๋ค๋ฅธ ๊ต์ฌ๊ฐ ์์ ์ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ๋ฒ์ด ๋์ง ๊ฒ์ด์๋ค.
โ๋ค์ ๋งํด๋ด, ์ด ์๋ผ์ผ.โ
์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๊ทธ๋ ์ ์ฌ์๊ฐ๊น์ง ๊ต์ค๋ก ๋์๊ฐ์ง ๋ชปํ๊ณ , ๋ค์๋ ํ๊ต์์ ๊ตฌ๋ ์๋ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ์ ์ง ์์์ผ๋ฉฐ, ํ๊ต ๊ฑด๋ฌผ ์์ ์๋ ๋์์ ์ ์๋๋ง ๊ตฌ๋๋ฅผ ๋ฒ๋ ์ผ์กฐ์ฐจ ์์๋ค.
๊ณ ๋ฑํ๊ต์์์ ์ํ 3๋ ์ ๋ง์น์, ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋ฐํฑ๋ง์ ๋ ธ๋๊ณ ํ์๊ฒ ๋ฌ ์ฌ๊ฐํ ๋ฌด์ข ํ์๊ฐ ๋์ด ์์๋ค. ์ฌ์ง์ด ๊ทธ๋ ์งํ์ ํฌ๋งํ๋ ๋ํ์ ๋ค์ด๊ฐ์ง๋ ๋ชปํ๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ ๊ณต์ ์ธ ์๋ฅ์ ๊ธฐ์ ๋๊ธฐ์๋ ๋ฌด๋ฆฌ๊ฐ ์๋, ์ฌ์์์ด๋ผ๋ ์ ๋ณ์ ์ํ๋ฅผ ์ง๋ ๊ณ ์กธ ๋ฐฑ์๋ก ๋ฐฉ๊ตฌ์์์ ๋ฐ๋ฐ๋ฅ์ ๊ธ์ด๋๋ฉฐ 20์ธ์ 1๋ ์ ๋ณด๋๋ค. ์ด๋ฌํ ์ํฉ๊ณผ ์์ง๋ ๊ฐ์๋ ๋ฒฝ์ง๋ก ๋์ด ์๋ ๊ทธ์ ์ฃผ์์ง๊ฐ ๋ง์๋จ์ด์ ธ, ๊ทธ๋ ์ง๋ณ๊ฒ์ฌ์์ ์๊ทผ์๋น์ญ ํ์ ์ ๋ฐ์๋ค.
์ฌ์ ํ ๋ํ์ ๋ค์ด๊ฐ ๊ทธ๋ ์ ๋ณด๋ค๋ ๋ ๋งนํ๊ณ ์ซ๊ธฐ ์๋ ์ฑ๊ฒฉ์ ์์ ์๊ฐ ๋์ด ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฌํ ์ฑ๊ฒฉ์ผ๋ก ์ธํด ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋จ๋ค ํ๋ ๋๋ก ๋ณตํ์ด๋ ์ทจ์ ๊ณํ์ ๋ง์ถฐ 20๋ ์ด์ ์ ๊ตฐ์ ๋๋ฅผ ํ์ง ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ์ ์๊ฐ๋ง์ด ์ด๋ฒํ๊ฒ ์ง๋๊ฐ๊ณ , ์ฌํ์ ์ ์์ฐ๊ธฐ ๊ธฐ๊ฐ์ด ๋ค ํ๋ฌ๊ฐ ์ง ์ค๋์ธ๋ฐ๋ ์กธ์ ์กฐ์ฐจ ํ์ง ๋ชปํ๋ค. ์ด์๋ถ์ ์ง๋ด๋ ๊ทธ์๊ฒ ์ ์ ์์ฅ์ด ๋ ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ ๊ทธ๋๋ง ๋คํํ ์ง์์ ํ๋ฃจ ๋ค ์ฐจ๋ก ๋ค๋๋ ๋ฒ์ค๋ฅผ ํ๊ณ ๊ฐ ์ ์๋ ๋ถ๋์ ์ ๋ํ๊ฒ ๋์๋ค.
๋จผ์ ๋ฐํ๋์๋ฉด, ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ๊ตฐ๋์์ ๊ต์ฅํ ์ํนํ ์ฒ์ฌ๋ฅผ ๋นํ๋ ๊ฒ์ ์๋๋ค. ๋ค๋ง ์ค์๋ฅผ ํ๊ฑฐ๋ ํ ๋๋ฅผ ์ ์ธํ๋ฉด ๋๋ค์ ๋ฐ์ด ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ ์๋ ์ ํฌํ์ ๊ฐํ ๋ฌด์ข์ด ๋ ์ ํ๋๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค. ์๋ดํ๋ก๋ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๊ฐ ์ง๊ธ๋์์ง๋ง, ์ด๋ฆ ๊ทธ๋๋ก ์๋ดํ๋ ๋ด๋ฌด๋ฐ ๋ด์์๋ง ์ ์ ์ ์์๋๋ฐ, ๋ด๋ฌด๋ฐ ์ํ์ ํ์ง ์๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ผ๋ก์๋ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ์ ์ ์ ์๋ ์ผ์ด ์์ ์๋ค์ํผ ํ๊ณ ์ ํฌํ๋ ๊ตฌ๋๋ณด๋ค๋ ๋ ํต๊ธฐ์ฑ์ด ์ข์ง ์์๋ค.
๊ทธ๋๋ ์ก์ฒด์ ํญ๋ ฅ์ ์ธก๋ฉด์์ ๊ตฐ๋๊ฐ ๊ทธ๋ฅผ ๋ํ ํ๋๋ ์คํ๋ ค ๊ณ ๋ฑํ๊ต๋ณด๋ค ์ ์ฌ์ ์ด์์ผ๋, ๊ทธ๋ ์ด๋ฆฌ๋ฐ๋ฆฌํ ์๊ทผ์๋น์ญ์ด์๋ค. ์ผ๊ณผ ์๊ฐ ํ์๋ ๋ถ๋์ ๊ฐํ ์์ด์ผ ํ๋ ๋ณดํต์ ๋ณ์ฌ๋ค ์ค ์ ๋ ๋ค์๊ฐ, ์ฃผ๋ก ํ์ ์ ๋ฌด๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ค๊ฐ ์ ๋ ์ด๋ฉด ๋ถ๋๋ฅผ ๋์ ์ง์ ๊ฐ๋ ๊ทธ์๊ฒ ์ด๋๊ฐ ๋คํ๋ฆฐ ์ฌ์ฌ๋ฅผ ๋ณด์ ํ๊ฒ ๋๋ ๊ฒ์ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋ฐ์ ๋ฌด์ข์ด ์๊ธด ๊ฒ๋งํผ์ด๋ ์์ฐ๋ฐ์์ ์ธ ์ผ์ด์๋ค. ๋๊ตฐ๋ค๋ ์ด๋ฆฌ๋ฐ๋ฆฌํ๊ธฐ๊น์ง ํ๋ ๊น๋ญ์, ์ง์ ์ ์ธ ๊ฐํน ํ์๋ ์์๋๋ผ๋ ๋ค๋ฅธ ๋ณ์ฌ๋ค์ ์๊ทผํ ๊ทธ๋ฅผ ๊ฑฐ์ ์๋ ์ฌ๋ ์ทจ๊ธํ๋ฉฐ ๋ฌด์ํ๋ค. ๋ฌผ๋ก , ๊ทธ๊ฐ ๋ด๋ด ๋์น๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ฉฐ ๋ฐ์ ๊ธ๋ ์์ผ๋ก ๋๋๋ฆฐ ํค๋ณด๋๋ฅผ ๋ง์ง๊ณ ์ถ์ดํ๋ ์ฌ๋์ด ์๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค.
๋น๋ก ๋ฉด์ ์์ ๋ถ๋ฆฌ๋ ์ผ์ ์ ์์์ง๋ง ๊ทธ์ ๋ณ๋ช ์ธ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ๋น์ ๋ถ๋ ์ ๋ถ์๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์ค๋ช ํด์ค ์ ์์ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค. ์ฌ์ค ๊ทธ์ ๋ณธ๋ช ์ ์ต๋ณ์ผ์ด์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฐ๋ฐ ๊ทธ์ ๋ณธ๋ช ๊ณผ ๊ทธ์ ์งฌ์ ์ธ์ ํ์ง ์๊ฒ ๋ค๋ ๋ถ์๊ธฐ๊ฐ ํฉ์ณ์ง ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ, ๊ทธ์ ๊ณ๊ธ์ด ์ด์ ์๋ณ์ ๋ค๋ค๋์์๋ ๋ถ๊ตฌํ๊ณ ๊ทธ๋ ์ฌ์ ํ ๋ค์์๋ ์ฝ๊ฐ์ ๋น์์ ์๋ฆฌ์ ํจ๊ป ์ผ๋ช ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ผ๋ก ํต์ฉ๋๊ณ ์์๋ค. ํ์๋ค๋ง์ ๊ทธ๋ฅผ ์ฌ์ค์ ์ ์ ์ทจ๊ธํด์ฃผ์ง ์๋ ์ผ์ด ๋น๋ฒํ์ง๋ง, ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ ์จ ๋ด์ํ์ง ์์๋ค.
๊ทธ๊ฐ ์๋ณ์ผ๋ก ์ง๊ธํ์ง ์ผ๋ง ์ ๋์์ ๋ฌด๋ ต์๋ ์ด๋ฐ ์ผ๋ ์์๋ค. ์ถ๊ทผํด์ ๋ณด๋ ๊ทธ์ ์๋ดํ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๊ฐ ์์๋ค. ์์ ๊ทธ์ ๋ก๋ง์ ์ด๋์ CBI๋ฅผ ์ ์ฑ ๋ง์ปค๋ก ์จ๋๊ธฐ๊น์ง ํ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ์์ผ๋, ๋จ์ ์๋ดํ์ ํท๊ฐ๋ฆด ์ผ์ ์์ ํฐ์๋ค. ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๊ทธ์ ํจ๊ป ์ฌ๋ฌด์ค์์ ์ผํ๋ ํ ๋ณ์ฌ์๊ฒ ํน์ ์์ ์ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ๋ณธ ์ ์ด ์๋๊ณ ๋ฌผ์๋ค. ๋ง ์ผ๋ณ์ด ๋ ๋ณ์ฌ์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ ์ ์ ๋๋ต์ ๊ณ ๋ฏผํ๋ ๋ฏํ ํ์ ์ ์ง๋ค๊ฐ, ์์๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ํ๋ฆฌ๋ฉฐ ๋๋ตํ๋ค.
โ์โฆ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ ์ ๋๋ก ๋ชป ์ฑ๊ธฐ์ จ์ต๋๊น?ใ๋ด๋ฌด๋ฐ ์ํ ์ ํ์์์์. ๊ทธ๊ฑฐ ํ์ ์์ผ์ค ๊ฑฐ ๊ฐ์์ ์ ๊น ๋น๋ ธ์ต๋๋ค.โ
์๊ฐ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ํ์ ์ ๊ฒฝ์ง๋์์ง๋ง ์ฅ๊ต๊ฐ ๋ค์ด์จ ๋์ ๋ํ๋ ๊ณ์๋์ง ๋ชปํ๋ค. ๋ฌผ๋ก ์ฅ๊ต๊ฐ ๋ค์ด์ค์ง ์์๋ค ํ๋ค ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ๊ทธ ์๊ฐ ๋๋จํ ๋์์ ๋ณด์ฌ์ค ์ ์๋ ์ธ๋ฌผ์ ์๋์๋ค.
๊ฒฐ๊ณผ์ ์ผ๋ก ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์์ ์ ์๋ดํ๋ฅผ ๋๋ ค๋ฐ๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฌ๋ ๊ทธ๊ฐ ์ํ๋ ๋ฐฉ์์ผ๋ก ๋๋ ค๋ฐ์๋ ๊ฒ์ ์๋์๋ค. ๊ทธ์ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ๊ฐ์ ธ๊ฐ๋ ์ผ๋ณ์ด ์ง๋ด๋ ๋ด๋ฌด๋ฐ์์ ๋ฌด์ข์ด ๋๊ธฐ ์์ํ๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค. ๋น์ฐํ๊ฒ๋ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ์๋ํ ๊ฒ์ ์๋์๋๋ฐ, ๋ค๋ฅธ ๋ณ์ฌ๋ค์ ์์ ์ ๋์ฑ ์ฌ๊ฐํ๊ฒ ์ฐจ๊ฐ์์ก๋ค. ์ด์ ๋ฐ๋ง์ถฐ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋ถ๋ ์ ๋ฌธ์ ๋์ค ๋๋ง๋ค ๊ฐ๋์นจ์ ๋ฑ์ผ๋ฉฐ ๋ฎ์ ๋ชฉ์๋ฆฌ๋ก ํผ์ ์ฃผ์ ๋ฆฌ๋ ์ผ์ด ์ฆ์์ก๋ค.
โ์ด๊ฑฐ ์ด๋ ๋ถ๋์ผ? ํด๊ฐ ๋์์ด? ํด๊ฐ ๋์์ด๋, ๊ตฐ์ธ์ด ์ฐ๋ ๋น ์ฐ์ฐ ๋๊ณ ๋ค๋ ๋ ๋๋? ์ด๊ฑฐ ๊ตฐ๊ธฐ ๋น ์ ธ๊ฐ์ง๊ณ .โ
๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ์ง๊ธ, ๋ฒ์ค ํฐ๋ฏธ๋์์ ๋ถ์ฝฐํ๊ฒ ์ทจํ ํ ์ฌ๋ด๊ฐ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์๊ฒ ์๋น๋ฅผ ๊ฑธ๊ณ ์๋ค. ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๊ณง์ด๊ณง๋๋ก, ์ด์ฌํ ๋ณ๋ช ํ๋ ์ด์กฐ๋ก ์์ ์ ํด๊ฐ ๋์จ ๋ณ์ฌ๊ฐ ์๋๋ผ ์๊ทผ์๋น์ญ์ด๋ผ๊ณ ์ค๋ช ํ๋ค.
โ์ด๋ ๋ถ๋์ผ? ์ง๊ธ ์ด๊ฑฐ ๋ฏผ์๊ฐ์ด๋ค ์ด๊ฑฐ? ์ฌ์ง์ด ํด๊ฐ๋ ์๋๊ณ , ์ด์จ๋ ์ฉ๊ตฐ์ธ ์๋ ์ฉ๊ตฐ์ธ.โ
โ๊ทธ๊ฒ ์ฌ์คโฆ ์ค๋ ์ ๊ฐ ๋ถ๋์์ ๋ฌผ์ฒญ์๋ฅผ ํด์, ๋ฐ์ด ๋๋ฌด ๊ฐ๋ ค์์ ๊ทธ๋ฌ์ต๋๋ค. ์ฃ์กํฉ๋๋ค.โ
โ์ด๋ ๋ถ๋์ธ์ง ๋ถ๋ฅด๋ผ๋๊น! ์ ์์ ๊ทธ ๋ฒ์ค ํ๊ณ ๊ณ ๊ฐ ๋์ด ๋ค์ด๊ฐ๋ ๊ทธ ์ฌ๋จ, ๋ง์ง?โ
โ์ ๊ฐ ๋คํ์ฆ์ด๋ ๋ฌด์ข์ด ์ฌํด์โฆโ
โ๊ตฐ์ธ์ด ๊ทธ๋ผ ๋ฌด์ข ๊ฑธ๋ ธ๋ค๊ณ ์ฐ๋ ๋น ์ ๊ณ ์ ์ํ๋? ์ง๊ธ ๋ถ๊ดด๊ฐ ์ณ๋ค์ด์ค๋ฉด, ์ ํฌํ ์ ์ ๊ณ ์์ด์ ์ด๋กํ ๋, ์?โ
์ฌ์ ํ ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ ์ทจํ ๋จ์์๊ฒ ์ค์ํ ๊ฒ์ ๊ทธ๊ฐ ์ ๊ณ ์๋ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ ๊ทธ ์์ฒด๊ฐ ์๋๋ผ๋ ๊ฒ์ ์ดํดํ์ง ๋ชปํ๊ณ ์๋ค. ๊ทธ๊ฒ์ ์์ ์๊ฒ ๋ฐ๊ฒฉํ๋ฆฌ๋ผ ์๊ฐ๋์ง ์๋ ์๋์๊ฒ์ ์ฐพ์๋ธ ํธ์ง๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ์ ์ง๋์ง ์๋๋ค. ๋ฐ๋ก ๊ทธ๊ฒ์ ๋ชฐ๋๊ธฐ์, ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ด ๋ ์ดํ ๋ ์ด์ ์ต์ผ๋ณ ์๋ ์ต๋ณ์ ์ด๋ผ ๋ถ๋ฆฌ๋ฉฐ ๋ช ๋ฌ ๊ฐ ๋ถ๋ ๋ด์์ ํ์๋๋ค๊ฐ, ์ง๊ธ์ ๋ถ๋๋ฅผ ๊ตฌ์ฑํ๋ ๋ณ๋ค์ด ์ ๋ํ ํ์๋ ๋จ๋ค์ ๊ธฐ์ต ์์์ ์ฌ๋ผ์ง ๊ฒ์ด๋ค. ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ๋, ํ ๋ง๋๋ฅผ ๋ ํ๋ค.
โ๋ด๊ฐ ๋คํ์ฆ์ด ์๊ณ ์ถ์ด์ ์๋.โ
โ๋ญ๋ผ๋ ๊ฑฐ์ผ.โ
โโฆ๋ด๊ฐ ๋ฌด์ข์ด ์๊ธฐ๊ณ ์ถ์ด์ ์๊ฒผ๋๊ณ .โ
โ๊ตฐ๋ฐ๋ฆฌ ์๋ผ ์ด๊ฑฐ ์ ๋๊ฒ ๋ค! ๋ณต์ฅ ๋ถ๋์, ๋ฏผ๊ฐ์ธ ์๋๋ก ํ๋ ๋ถ๋์โโ
์ทจ๊ฐ์ ์ฐจ๋ง ๋ง์ ๋ง์น์ง ๋ชปํ๋ค. ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ด ๊ทธ์ ๋ฏ์ง์ ์๋ดํ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ์ ํต์ผ๋ก ์ง์ด๋์ก๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ์ด๋ค. ์ฐ์ด์ด ์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ฌ๋ด ์์ ์ฌ๋ผํ ๊ทธ์๊ฒ ๋ช ๋๋ฅผ ๋ ๋ฆฌ๊ณ , ๋ค์ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ์ฃผ์์ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ก ๊ทธ์ ์ผ๊ตด์ ํ๋ ค๊ฐ๊ธด๋ค. ๋๊ณผ ํ๋ฌผ๊ณผ ์ง๋ฌผ์ด ๋ค์์ฌ ๋์ ํ ๊ทธ์ ๋งจ๋ฐ์ด ์ ์ด ๋ฒ๋ค๊ฑฐ๋ฆฐ๋ค. ์์ผ๋ก ์์ผ์ฅ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ์์๋ ๊ทธ๋ง์ด ๋ค์ ์ ์๋, ์ฐ๊ฑฑ๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ๋ ์๋ฆฌ๊ฐ ๋๋ค.
์ต์ผ๋ณ์ ์ฌ๋ฆฌํผ๋ฅผ ์ฌ๋ด์ ์๊ฐ๋ฆฌ์ ์ค์
๋ฃ์๋ค.
๋ฒ์คํฐ๋ฏธ๋์ ํตํ์ด ์ ๋์ง ์์๋ค.
Ventilation
On the day that would initiate a momentum of change in his appellationโfrom so-called โPrivate Choiโ to โFuckhead Choiโโon the very day of this incident, a flare-up of what had perhaps been accumulating for the whole of his life, Private Choi, who had three months ago acquired three bars on his insignia1, was scratching hard on the bare soles of his feet with his right hand. In the glare of an August sunlight that had been streaming through glass doors and stuffing its heat into the stiflingly small rural bus terminal, one could see powdery expulsions peeled from his plantar calluses so white, fluttering in the air like a cloud of strong flour. Many old people who had arrived on time for their buses held a look of indifference on their faces, yet a few, those unfortunately aware of Private Choiโs incessant foot scratching and of their inhaling bits of his scaling skin in the air, could not hold back a stomach-churning disgust. The waiting room, on top of it all, was permeated with a foot odor so vivid that the air might have seemed yellowish.
Presumably covered in sweat, different parts of Private Choiโs soles glistened each time he changed the angle of his feet, scratching here and there. And it was not only sweat that clung to his clammy and visibly sticky feet: some tiny parts of Private Choiโs sole could endure no longer and, while he was so deeply absorbed in scratching that a layer of pale powdery dead skin smudged across his fingertips and beneath his nails that were themselves bedewed with foul sweat, peeled off and began vomiting out an ooze of blood and pus. He could not stop scratching, despite the peeled away parts already hurting and the knowledge that they would, not much later, only grow more painful. Having suffered from dreadful athleteโs foot for nearly 10 years, and from palmoplantar hyperhidrosis all his life, Private Choiโs soles, soaked all day in not even clean water while doing a water wash-down with slippers on, were just that intolerably itchy.
A sudden vision then came to Private Choi as he was shrieking silent curses after unintentionally scratching with equal intensity a section of bloody burst blisters. It was an image of himself tearing open the piehole of the principal of his former high school and shoving the pair of slippers he wore all day down his throat. Into his late twenties now, memories of high school had been gradually dimming throughout his extra year of preparing for the university entrance exams and then those years spent in the university. And yet these days, enlisted late for his age in the Full-time Reserve Service2 with a worsening athleteโs foot, though one could hardly call it a tough army life, Private Choi was nevertheless recalling some moments from his high school years more vividly by the day.
It was at 16 that Private Choi came to Seoul. Although heโd been born in Seoul, strictly speaking he had no memories of his infancy spent living there, while the world he could recall began in a small town situated in Gangwon-do, near the upstream section of the Han River. One of the earliest memories nestled in his mind was that of his fatherโs feet, wrapped in sloppy shreds and patches of scrap tire that claimed to be a pair of slippers.
One should not think that Private Choi went through an especially poor childhood, though his father and mother both did in fact wear the impoverished feet wraps made out of scrap tire. And it would likewise be inappropriate to simply call them a well-to-do family, though those scrap-tire slippers could be seen as a kind of demonstration and tactic of self-expression that his parents elected, not the result of an unavoidable compromise with the material conditions of reality. The community in which he grew up, composed of five couples and seven children under their parental roofs, was the soโcalled Commune, built through leadership of Private Choiโs father. The adults of the Commune would endlessly express a multitude of political undertones in profound yet puerile ways. Native residents who had been living in hamlets around the Commune for generations would jeer at or even show animosity toward them.
Private Choi, whose body from childhood onward would easily get hot and sweaty, grew up mainly under communal custody and education, wearing slippers for almost every season of the year with minimal interference from the public education system, until the Commune effectively crashed. Closely before and after the breakdown, original members of the Commune brought forth various reasons for the Commune’s inner conflict at private rendezvous with outsiders, which included drinking. Their accounts were a mess of tangled grandiose issues: including feminism, eco-anarchism, even differences in opinion over the social formation of the Soviet Union, which had then been absent from Earth for over 10 years. Perhaps because it was such a well-known fact to both speakers and listeners, it was never mentioned that the Commune was ultimately brought to ruin because it harvested an impregnable failure on the horizon of profitability; possibly by virtue of their so-proclaimed Anti-imperialist and Anti-capitalist Organic Farming Work that served so offensively under the banner of anti-capitalism.
It was nonetheless good luck for Private Choiโs parents. By word of mouth, they drifted into notoriety as pioneers of the Alternative Village Community Movement and could get decent positions, writing several books and snooping around movement camps of the upright citizens. The cunning of Marx, which had poured the red spirit onto their heads in college, continued to emit its light at this time as well, and their consciousness was indeed determined by their material conditionsโalthough such determination was only made possible after passing the stage of deep, deep self-reflection and pity for their own sincerity. The decision that Private Choi should be sent to a renowned In-Seoul3 university, at least in order to let him encounter the liturgies of social sciences, was set regardless.
His parents thus remained in Gangwon-do, albeit earning their living by frequenting Seoul, so as to at least outwardly claim that the Commune, which was no longer a commune, was still functioning normally, and sent Private Choi away by himself to a self-styled prestigious autonomous private high school4 with dormitory in Seoul. It was, though not intended, quite a new and somewhat enjoyable experience for him, who had previously spent most of his 24-hours at his parents side and under their overprotection even as a teenager.
There was one problem, however: under the school regulations, all students were required to wear dress shoes for school attendance, which was more than 14 hours a day if one factored in the zero period self-studying session and the nighttime self-studying session, which were justified by the formality of a registration form that was supposed to be submitted only by students who wished to do so. On top of that, Private Choiโs feet were usually soaking wet all day.
He enjoyed wearing dress shoes for quite a while, nevertheless. Private Choiโs dress shoes were surely nothing more than a supplement to very out-of-date yellowing school uniform and pair of matte black square-toe derby shoes, more out-of-date than the uniform. Yet for those who started out as student activists of the 80โs, leading all-the-same lives, and only associating with all-the-same types of people, a confused eye for beauty was often the case, a confusion resulting from the blunt taste for an independent rejection of the excessive culture of consumption and exploitation of the Third World by transnational capital, environmental destruction and et cetera, such that a mere school uniform blazer and mass-produced dress shoes seemed extremely polished and beautiful to the eyes of a teenage boy nurtured in such a confusion.
His socks, wet with sweat, had been stained by the dye from his cheap dress shoes. Around the time it grew impossible to find socks without mold-like black and blue blotches in his drawer at the dormitory, summer came. Handouts printed on newsprint paper and disseminated at school became crumpled messes after just a few moments in his hands, soaking as if just fished from the water, and when it was severe, they would tear or rip into pieces. Private Choi, who had up to then only learned of athleteโs foot in roundabout ways, mostly with him as a laughing stock, discovered that he could peel off the skin between his toes without any pain. Still, he seldom thought of wearing other shoes than dress shoes.
It happened on the day when the final exams were over, not long before the start of a nominal summer vacation that included a plan of self-study prescribed by the school. Private Choiโs dorm roommate had a long face of milky complexion and his body had progressively thinned throughout the semester, making his tall stature appear even longer. He had lived all his life in Mok-dong, and when compared to other male students his age, was a bit sharp-tempered from his parents expecting too much of him given his scholarly abilities. As Private Choi stepped out from a shower and went over to lie on his bed, the roommate grumbled that their room stank of feet. Private Choi, who had just freshened up, supposed that his roommate was just on edge from waiting for his final exam results, just as he had been after the midterm exams. He did not express such an impression yet, since he had been inwardly cowered by the other students of the autonomous private high school ever since his arrival in Seoul. He intended to ignore the complaint, after at least simulating an attempt to look for the source of the smell where he was by the door. But he then discovered the source of the smell by the shoe cabinet, impossible to ignore: it was none other than his dress shoes.
This was not the last incident in which Private Choi felt shame for his damp feet. Even after the final exams were over, nighttime studying sessions continued while the air conditioning was turned off in the study hall. It was quite probable that other students who had to face the wind from the air conditioning from dawn till dusk, would want to turn it off for a little while at night. The moment the air conditioning was turned off, however, Private Choiโs solitary agony recommenced. It was better to lose feeling in his hands and feet, numb from the cold wind of air conditioning, than having to endure his fiery temperature, not only damp and sticky, but also feverish.
He could stand it no longer and took off his dress shoes under desk. As he considered also taking off his socks, a female student seated next to him in the study hall grasped his arm unexpectedly. He almost jumped from his chair as he had been so thoroughly absorbed in studying alone, without any proper friend, let alone any acquaintance with city girls his age, since arriving at Seoul. Her face approached his. Given the distance between them, he could feel her breath on his neck. She whispered into his ear.
โUm, Iโm sorry, butโฆ could you put your shoes on?โ
It would be hard to describe the scars left on his sensibility due to these petty incidents; Private Choi, anyhow, began to carry a black plastic bag with him to school the next day. Inside the bag was a pair of scrap-tire slippers, which he had brought from home to wear in the dormitory. Nobody cared what shoes he was wearing while he sat in the classroom. Their rubber soles stuck to and separated from his feet over and over again, and soon his perspiration exceeded the evaporation; accordingly, a liquid not easy to conceal, began to drip from the sloppy slippers; the slight sense of liberation offered by the slippers was not insignificant to Private Choi. Though an unfortunate event took place when he stepped out into the corridor to go to restroom during recess: having forgotten what was on his feet, he was detected by a teacher who dragged him into teachersโ room.
In the teachersโ room, the teachers were focusing on their own works or tediums. When thrust into the room, Private Choi lost his sense of reality for a moment. In about five minutes, the bell would ring again and he would be sent back to the classroom anyway. The teacher, though bringing up the school regulations and so-called dignity of a prestigious high school, in fact seemed indifferent to Private Choiโs shoes themselves. That Private Choi appealed to his palmoplantar hyperhidrosis and said he could get a medical certificate from the hospital if necessary, was neither an important matterโthe reason being that, strictly speaking, Private Choiโs shoes were nothing but a pretext for establishing a relationship between teacher and student. In the course of this event, however, unaware that other teachers were also paying attention to this microscopic yet unilateral circus enacted against freshmen to bolster the teachersโ authority, he let a few words slip out.
โYou are wearing slippers too, sir.โ
โHey you, little bastard!โ
In an instant, something smacked him on the backโanother teacher behind him had taken off his slippers and thrown one at him.
โSay that again, you little bastard.โ
Private Choi could not return to his classroom until lunch that day, and he never wore slippers for his dress shoes in school again. There was not even an incident in which he took off his dress shoes for just a moment while in the school building.
After three years of high school life, Private Choi became a victim to severe athleteโs foot, with even his toenails turning yellow and white. Worse, he could not enroll in the university he wished to go to. He, a jobless high school graduate, spent the twentieth year of his life in a corner of his room scratching the soles of his feet. His personal status as a repeater of the university entrance exams could not be easily written on public documents and due to this situation, in keeping with his place of residence which was still supposed to be backwoods in Gangwon-do, he was found suitable for the Full-time Reserve Service in examination of conscripts.
Entering college on his second try, he was a person of even more dense and shy character than before. Such a personality hindered him from entering the military in his early twenties, while everyone else does so in order to work toward their plans for post-graduate study or a job. Time passed mutely by, and he could not graduate despite the period of Conscription Postponement for Students coming and going. Draft notice reached him while he was idling away his time. Fortunately, he was called to serve in a troop situated close enough to his home that he could go by a bus that ran four times a day.
To say upfront: Private Choi did not experience uncommonly cruel treatment. It was just that his athleteโs foot worsened, as his feet were again confined in combat boots instead of slippers, except for occasions such as taking a shower. Slippers were given as in-barracks shoes, which could only be worn in the barracks as the name implied; and for Private Choi, who did not live in the barracks, there was almost no occasion to wear slippers, and combat boots were even less breathable than dress shoes.
In terms of physical violence, the manner with which the military treated him was rather gentlemanly when compared to that of his high school, but he was a clumsy soldier for the Full-time Reserve Service. It was as spontaneous as his outbreak of athleteโs foot that the absolute majority of common soldiers, who had to stay confined to camp even after working hours, got to have somewhat twisted feelings toward him, who generally looked after administrative works and then left camp to go home in the evenings. And since he was clumsy, other soldiers ignored him stealthily as if he was a non-existent person, although there was no immediate cruel treatment. Of course, there was no one who wanted to touch the keyboard that he had been tapping with his hands, with which he had been scratching his feet while studying othersโ expressions.
His nickname, Private Choi, could explain the atmosphere within the troop even though it was rarely used in his presence. His real name, as a matter of fact, was Byeong-il Choi5. Incidentally, his real name plus the atmosphere of refusing to acknowledge his time served in the army, led to him being called Private Choi behind his back and with a bit of sneering despite his rank now having reached specialist status. There were frequent cases in which his juniors did not even regard him as their senior, but Private Choi put himself out of the way to pocket his feelings.
Something happened around the time he was promoted to specialist. When he reported for duty, his in-barracks slippers were not there. Even his Roman Alphabet initials, CBI, were written on the side of the slippers with permanent pen so they could not be confused with someone elseโs in-barracks shoes. He asked a soldier who worked with him in the office whether he had seen his slippers. He was a soldier who had just become a private. He briefly made a look as if he had been struggling for an answer, and then answered with a smirk.
โOhโฆ You couldnโt even check your slippers properly, sir? You donโt live in the barracks. I presumed you donโt need them, and so borrowed them for a little while.โ
Private Choiโs facial expression stiffened instantly, but the conversation could not go on since an officer came in. Even if the officer had not come in, Private Choi was not a person who could take a severe action in that moment, of course.
Private Choi got back his in-barracks shoes eventually. He did not, however, get them back in a way he wanted. In the barracks where the private who had taken his slippers lived, athleteโs foot began to run rampant. This was not something Private Choi intended, naturally, but the looks from other soldiers grew gravely cold. Alongside this incident, every time Private Choi left the camp through the main gate, he would come to hawk more loogies and more frequently ramble to himself in a low voice.
โWhich troop is this? On leave now? Even if you are on leave, can a soldier be scuffing on sreppa? Not a damn bit of discipline here.โ
And now, a ruddy drunken man picks a fight with Private Choi. Private Choi, taking it literally, explains that he is not a soldier on leave but a soldier for Full-time Reserve Service, in an eagerly apologetic tone.
โWhich troop? This deserves a civil complaint, no? Not even on a leave. Anyway, you are a pure soldier, no? A pure soldier.โ
โThe thing isโฆ I did a water wash-down in the camp today, so my feet were too itchy. My apologies, sir.โ
โJust say which troop you belong to! That division out front oโer there, where you get to ride a bus oโer the hills, right?โ
โSir, I have a severe case of hyperhidrosis and athleteโs footโฆโ
โIf so, a soldier with athleteโs foot goes to war with sreppa on? If North Korean scums come right now, what will you do with no combat boots, huh?โ
Private Choi still does not understand that what matters to the drunken man is not the slippers themselves he is wearingโthey are nothing more than something to quibble over, but the discovery in oneโs opponent an assumption that he is incapable of fighting back against one. Because he did not know that very thing, Private Choi will be called Fuckhead Choi instead of Private Choi after this day and be the talk of the troop for some months; and after the soldiers of the current troop are discharged, he will be gone from othersโ memories. Private Choi, again, lets a few words slip out.
โYou think I wanted to have hyperhidrosis.โ
โWhat are you saying?โ
โโฆIโm asking, did I want to have athleteโs foot.โ
โYou helpless little shitbag! Poorly dressed, poor attitude toward civilianโโ
The drunkard cannot finish his words: the reason being that, Private Choi threw his in-barracks slippers right into his mug. In a breath, Private Choi mounts the man and gives him several blows, again picks up the slippers, and gives him a good thrashing with them in the face. His bare feet, sticky with a mix of sweat and blood and ooze, glisten. Held tight in his hand, the slippers make squeaking sounds which only he can hear.
Private Choi shoved the slippers into the manโs piehole.
The bus terminal had bad ventilation.
1Three bars on insignia stands for specialist rank in the Republic of Korea Army.
2 Unlike most South Korean young men who are drafted into the Republic of Korea Armed Forces to serve in the ranks, those enlisted for this service are not required to remain in camp after working hours. South Korean soldiers are confined to their barracks even after working hours, unless otherwise permitted.
3Referring to universities situated within Seoul. Academic cliquism and credentialism is one of major social problems in South Korea, and one may be discriminated according to whether s/he went to college/university, and which college/university s/he graduated. Universities in Seoul are seen as prestigious, in general.
4Autonomous private high school is a type of high school in South Korea, granted more autonomy than others. Its tuition tends to be higher than that of usual high schools, and some of such high schools are often criticized for their elitist, college-entrance-focused education.
5Byeong-il, โPrivate(Il-byeong),โ and โFuckhead(Byeong-sin)โ share a phonetic resemblance in Korean.