Farewell to a Gentle Revolutionary

He was known as a revolutionary, but the quality that shaped his life most deeply was gentleness.

The writer first remembers him from a university common room in the early 1980s, where senior student activists lectured younger students about repaying the social benefits of higher education through struggle for the people. He sat at the corner of the central table, quieter than the others, with a soft smile. Whenever their eyes met, he greeted the writer first: “Hey, Sang-hyo, hello!”

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Hey, Sang-hyo, hello!

They met again in 1987, during the presidential campaign, at a rally for Kim Young-sam. Among hundreds of thousands of people, the writer heard the familiar voice beside panels filled with photographs of the 1980 Gwangju massacre. He was shouting, “Let’s not forget Gwangju!” To someone newly discharged from the military, he seemed like a distant revolutionary, too imposing to approach.

They crossed paths again in 2007 in a university corridor. The same expression and voice remained, though the former activist now wore the checked shirt and casual jacket typical of a university lecturer. Later, while hiking together, the writer learned that he had been imprisoned for a long time as a political prisoner. After his release, he chose to study linguistics, entering graduate school as a student while former juniors had already become professors. He was appointed to a university’s general education faculty after turning 50 and taught writing to freshmen.

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Let’s not forget Gwangju!

On their mountain walks, he taught the writer to notice plants: the modest snowbell tree whose flowers hang downward, the purple bush clover blooming between spring’s brilliance and autumn’s loneliness, and the difference between a tree peony and a herbaceous peony. The writer privately wondered whether such careful attention to plants came from the long years he had spent in confined spaces.

Many former students attended his retirement ceremony and remembered him as a kind teacher. Fellow professors also came, some fighting back tears as they recalled how he had always led campaigns against unfair treatment of general education faculty. The writer concludes that his revolution was ultimately a revolution for gentleness, and waits for the day when, beneath a humble snowbell tree in the early summer mountains, he will once again say, “Hey, Sang-hyo, hello!”

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Meeting someone else while that man is in a place where he can do nothing would not be right. Even if I meet someone through an arranged introduction, it should be after he comes out. It would be fair to give him a chance to say something, too.