During dinner tonight, my parents and I got to talking about some really interesting family history:

Somehow during the Japanese occupation, my grandfather (my dad's dad) learned english. Not fluently, of course, but enough. After WWII, he worked in a "gang" to catch "reds", i.e. Communists. The way my dad describes it, they were killed, though I don't know if these gangs did the killing themselves. If so, that's more violent than I would wish it was. Anyway, this came about when I was asking my dad what Grandpa did for a living before he joined the army. For about five years after WWII and before the Korean War, Soviet Communists were coming in and people, especially in the South, tried to resist and ferret them out. So Grandpa was part of those toughs that would go around rooting up Communists and beating them up. (What's really sad about this part is that it was Koreans vs. Koreans, which is essentially what the Korean War ended up doing.) They were paid by the politicians of the newly setup post-occupation government.

Once the Korean War was declared (June 25th, or yook-ee-oh which means six-two-five) then the Communists in hiding started cropping up even more, and the whole gang was threatened. So they packed up the families plus supplies (in a GMC truck) and moved south. Later, my grandpa walked to join his family. How scary is that?

So during the Korean War, the US Army needed translators and they were recruiting anybody who could do any sort of translating. So thus began my grandpa's army career. He was a lieutenent colonel when he left.

Then this led to a discussion about how my parents studied english in school, which I won't go into now, but it kinda brought up something. I could make some major dough teaching english in Korea. Even for just a short while. Considering my jobless state, I am seriously tempted.