Guilt Payment (1983)

Ty Pak's collection of stories about the Korean War and the Koreans it scattered to Hawaii and the American mainland was published by Bamboo Ridge Press in Honolulu. In the title story a University of Hawaii English professor, asked by his daughter Mira to pay for singing lessons in Florence, recalls the summer of 1950, when he hid in the attic of his Seoul house from the occupying People's Army while his wife Yoomi gave birth. (Open Library)

Watches

Omega (unidentified model): Hiding in the attic through the summer of 1950 while Yoomi, anemic and newly delivered, keeps the household alive, the narrator watches their possessions go one by one: the stereo and records, the clock and radio, the guitar and accordion, even the harmonica. Then it is the turn of their wedding gifts, her half-carat diamond ring and his Omega, which they had sworn never to sell; the food they buy lasts a week. The narrator, who tells the story, is not named. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: The time had come to part with our wedding gifts, her half-karat diamond ring and my Omega watch, which we had sworn never to sell. (Ty Pak, Guilt Payment, scan cataloged as Bamboo Ridge Press, 1983, p. 9, in the title story, which runs from p. 5; the week the money lasted is on p. 10 and the copyright page gives 1983; Internet Archive scan OCR)