A few days before Kwŏn's trial I was admitted to hospital with acute appendicitis, operated on, and kept in there for ten days. It proved to be a significant time, not only for curing my physical illness but also restoring my sanity by going through my thoughts tangled like a mop of hair with a fine-toothed comb.

During the two months while Kwŏn was held in custody awaiting trial, I had become extremely emaciated. Even though I was now being looked after with great care by my sister and my parents, I was thinner than I had been while I was suffering alone in secret. I had frequent stomach cramps and found it hard to sleep. In the night, thoughts that had been repressed during the day would spread their wings, and doggedly fly and hover about. Also I had got into the habit of self-persecution. Even though I was not confined behind bars, I felt like a prisoner bound by ropes of sorrow. I did not deserve a warm bowl of rice. How dare I sleep on a warm ondol floor? I should be on a concrete floor, and on bitter evenings let the chill freeze my flesh and penetrate my bones. That's what I deserved. As soon as Sŏnhi had tucked in my side of the quilt and fallen asleep, I kicked it off and rolled over to the cold end of the room.

At such times, the stories of my father and mother came back. In 1919, the year of the patriotic uprising of the Korean people, claiming their independence from Japan, my father had been a young man of nineteen. Because of his involvement in distributing handbills he was arrested and sent to prison for a year. While he was serving his sentence, we often heard, mother had put herself under self-inflicted torture. She never touched meat dishes, and allowed herself a lump of boiled millet a day, just enough to keep her alive. In the midwinter nights she slept uncovered at the coldest end of the ondol floor, curled up like a shrimp.