1 In Korea, it is a custom for a just-released prisoner to eat tofu. They say this will prevent him from going back to prison again.
2 A neighborhood in Seoul.
3 The word “Jun Woo” means a fellow soldier or a “war buddy” in Korean. The Hwarang cigarette was a brand of cigarette specifically supplied to the military. There is a famous song from the fifties that ends with the following lyric: “My dear fellow soldiers [jun woo] who disappeared into the smoke of Hwarang cigarette.”
4 In Korea, some elder women are referred to with the name of her hometown, not by their own names. Soonchun is the name of a small city in South Korea.
5 A letter from Rosa Luxemburg to Sophie Liebknecht, dated February 18, 1917.
6 A poem by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, quoted in a letter from Luxemburg to Mathilde Jacob.
8 A traditional Korean grave is a dirt mound with grass growing on it. The fancier the grave, the higher and larger the mound.
9 Chun Doo Hwan, the army general who became the fifth president after the Kwangju Incident, held an election by committee and an inauguration at a gymnasium. Hence, he was nicknamed Gymnasium President.
10 A neighborhood in Seoul where the Anti-Communist Department of Public Safety Division was located.
11 There is a Korean folk tale about a green frog who never listened to his mother.
12 In March 1982, protesting the US support of the Chun military regime, three student activists (two of them women) set fire to the American Cultural Center in Busan, the second largest city in South Korea. Inadvertently, another South Korean student was killed, and three were injured.
13 A Russian word meaning “spark.” It was the title of a political newspaper published by Russian socialists.
14 Many cafés or teahouses in the rural area (called Da Bang) double as brothels. Such practice became prevalent in the eighties.
15 An establishment for men where they can play the game of Go.
16 Chun Tae Il (1948-1970) was a factory worker and a labor activist who set himself on fire in protest of working conditions at an industrial complex. He is considered to be a pioneer of the Korean labor movement.
17 Kwon In Sook was a young college student who was arrested in June 1986 for using a fake ID to work at a factory near Boochun. While in custody, she was sexually harrassed and physically abused by the police. In July, she was able to get her story out to a group of lawyers, who pressured the government to prosecute the police. In 1989, Moon Kwi Dong, the policeman who was the principal offender, was sentenced to five years in prison.
18 There is an old Korean saying that men are not allowed in the kitchen.
19 In 1990, a rally for the reunification of the Korean peninsula was held in the North with attendance by Koreans from around the world. The South Korean government refused to recognize the event and went on to arrest hundreds for their suspected involvement.
20 Käthe Kollwitz, Die Tagebücher (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1989), p. 586.
22 Bertolt Brecht, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, trans. by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman (David R. Godine: Boston, 1976), pp. 72-73.