Sellyong was a carpenter and a good Christian. Every Sunday, he went to a small Presbyterian church in his hometown, wearing a well-worn black "durumagi" (Korean-style overcoat), which he had worn for years without ever having it laundered.
Sellyong was a shy man in a crowd. But his shyness disappeared in the company of just a few people and he talked for hours and made his friends laugh. Naturally, his small audiences enjoyed listening to him.
When people at his church needed a carpenter, they always called on him. He never told them how much he wanted for his work. He did the best job he could and took whatever people paid him. No matter how small the sum, he did not even once complain.
Sellyong had a wife and a daughter and they lived in a house that looked more like a small dusty warehouse. His wife was a good-hearted woman but a terrible housekeeper. In fact, it would have been hard to find a woman more sloppy than the carpenter’s wife in all of Korea.
But, they were peaceful people. His neighbors never heard them argue or quarrel. All they heard from the house of cobwebs was merry laughter from inside.
Even a good-natured man such as Sellyong began to worry when his only child turned 21 years old. He was unable to send his daughter to school, so she was illiterate. His daughter was a pretty and healthy girl, but like her mother she was not skilled in the ways of running a house. In fact, her domestic talents consisted of cooking rice and carrying water from the neighborhood well.
Sellyong worried that his daughter would have a tough time finding a good husband.
One day, Sellyong had a visitor a matchmaker. The man told him that a young man who worked at the railway station wanted to marry his daughter. Sellyong told the matchmaker to bring the young man so he could see for himself and make a decision.
When the young man came, Sellyong asked a few questions and agreed to give his daughter away. He told his neighbors: "The young man was good. So, I gave him my daughter."
Within a few weeks, there was a simple wedding ceremony and the young man took Sellyong’s daughter to his home. He was happy because his wife was a beautiful woman.
As time went on however, the young man began to grow tired of his wife’s physical beauty, and began to long for the intellectual beauty which he couldn’t find in her. He became abusive. When he came home from work, he beat his wife, even on the feeblest of excuses. But the young woman said nothing.
One afternoon, when her husband came back from work, he began to hit her for no reason and ordered her to get out of the house and never to return. She obeyed. For the first time, with tears in her eyes, the young woman returned to her parents’ home.
When she told her parents why she had come, Sellyong sighed and said, "What can we do? Stay here." Neither the young woman nor her parents spoke a word about her husband, however.
The sad news spread quickly in the small town.
A few weeks after her return home, a rich bachelor merchant heard about what had happened to Sellyong’s daughter. He paid Sellyong a visit. He proposed to marry the young woman right then and there and promised to make her happy.
A couple of weeks later, there was a big wedding ceremony, with countless people invited to join in the celebration.
The woman’s former husband, too, had heard the news. So, on the wedding day, he went up a hill in the eastern side of town to watch. When he saw a lavish wedding procession, with roses and forget-me-nots decked out, parading through the main street of the town, he cried. The woman he had abused and abandoned was being treated like a princess by another man.
For years after that, women folks in the town talked about a young man who was crying at home every day. They sympathized with him, but none tried to find out why he was crying.
Sellyong and his wife, being the kindhearted people they were, didn’t volunteer the information. And, they continued to live peacefully in that dusty house of theirs.


Joo Han Kang, who ran a business in San Francisco, previously taught English at the Seoul National University and German in other institutions in Korea. He died in May 1998.