Bob Mount: South Korea redefined the word poor

I was born in 1931 shortly after my father had lost his job. He soon found another and earned enough to keep the family housed, clothed and fed. Things were going well until 1942, when at age 38 with a wife and two children, he received a “greetings letter” from Uncle Sam.

For the next three years, we lived in a government housing project. I worked after school every weekday in a drug store and on Saturdays in a dry good store. I gave Mother half my meager earnings, to supplement the one-hundred dollar monthly check she received from the government.

Using today’s standards, we would have been considered poor folks. Our evening entertainment consisted of listening to WSM-Nashville on an ancient Philco radio. But, like Pollyanna, having fewer material possessions and less money than most of my friends never bothered me, because so many were less well off than I.

I didn’t truly understand “poor” until I spent a year in South Korea, shortly after the war ended. After landing, Koreans were allowed to board our transport plane and remove any unwanted contents, including uneaten scraps of food. I was told they would boil chicken bones to make soup.

The country was in shambles; most of the residents were destitute. Human waste was used to fertilize rice paddies, and farmers transported their produce to markets with ox-drawn wagons. Aluminum from discarded beverage containers was fashioned into roofing shingles for dwellings.

All the Koreans I met were extremely hard-working and industrious, including Kim, the young man who tended the bar at the officers’ club. He attended school six days each week until he left to arrive at our compound at four o’clock. Sunday mornings he attended special tutorial sessions on advanced English. The only time during daylight hours he wasn’t working or being schooled was a few hours on Sundays.

I am pleased, but not at all surprised, that South Korea has become a thriving and prosperous nation. It literally pulled itself up by its bootstraps. Its residents can now afford to buy beef, pork and chicken.

* * *

Though not personally acquainted with any people of Chinese descent, as nearly as I can ascertain, they are strongly family-oriented, stern disciplinarians and eager for their children to succeed. One has only to study the performance of the Chinese students in Auburn’s schools to see that their parents are doing an exemplary job rearing their children. All parents would be wise to emulate them.

I do, however, have a gripe about Chinese, although not about those living in this country. In China, their fondness for turtle soup has resulted in the extirpation of the turtles that once inhabited the country’s rivers. Now, turtle catchers, legal and illegal, are supplying our declining turtle populations to the Chinese.
Please, Chinese, pay more attention to the detrimental effects your country is having on our planet’s wildlife.

Bob Mount is emeritus professor of zoology and entomology at Auburn University and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.