[Book Sip] Late Lee O-ryeong Teacher: "'Goodbye, Take Care' Is Not the Final Farewell"

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of the book itself, while others instantly reach the reader's heart and create a connection with the book. Here, we introduce such meaningful sentences excerpted from the book. - Editor's note

“I am certain that parting is not the end, and that 'take care, goodbye' is not the final farewell. I deeply contemplate in my heart that an eternal time awaits us, one that transcends both death and life.” This book records the last words left by the late Lee O-ryeong for future lives yet to be born.

How I experienced these five things?monkey, apple, banana, train, airplane?what those words mean and my relationship with them, I want to share these stories as a farewell to you today, so that you can clearly see the meaning of the era we have lived in, as if looking with your own eyes, and read the footprints we have left behind.

Now, the apple has become a global apple and has become a keyword symbolizing America. In a world without me, in a future without me, what will happen to this apple? What will happen to the peach? What will be the representative food? What will Steve Jobs' Apple transform into? Isn't that fascinating?

I also wrote about bananas in When a Single Leaf Shakes. I went to the town, and someone bought me a banana. They said Mr. So-and-so’s father bought it for me. How happy I must have been! But as I was bringing the banana, the young me dropped it. It was so precious, and it wasn’t about apples or anything else. When I picked up what had fallen, it dropped again. The bunch scattered, and when I placed the small pieces on my hand, they fell again and again. In the end, I threw away all the bananas and came home crying with empty hands. People didn’t understand why. I was so happy to have a banana, but when I entered the house, my hands were empty.

As we part, what I want to say to you like a last will is the restoration of the peninsula’s identity. The restoration of the peninsula’s identity can never be achieved between the sea faction and the land faction. The past history was like grass in an elephant fight or shrimp in a whale fight, unable to endure. What can break through and penetrate this is precisely the restoration of the peninsula’s identity. It can be achieved not by horse riders or sailors, but by those who cultivate the fields of the heart.

Life capital. This is what I offer you, a civilization approaching our tomorrow, still incomplete and whispered secretly in your ear. Like fossil humans, like living fossil humans, the haenyeo divers and simmani herbalists remain in our abandoned culture. The simmani, who are unique in the world, and the haenyeo’s breath, the sighs of breath. The breath held back after picking the last abalone, the strength in that breath. The pain endured and the breath exhaled upon surfacing. That breath, along with the cry of “Simwatda” (I found it), overcoming the hardships of the whale fights, becoming the protagonists of a new reversal drama and a remarkable new history. If you think of this as the moment of farewell I dream of and rejoice in as I part with you, I would be grateful. Thank you.

Farewell | Written by Lee O-ryeong | Seongandang | 144 pages | 14,000 KRW