The Hidden Box of Love Letters

by Janet Kwak

1.

After my grandmother passed, we cleared out her belongings and emptied a 반다지 bandaji (blanket chest) that she had next to her bed. At the bottom of the chest was a mulberry box where I found more than a hundred love letters tucked away, written during the Japanese occupation of Korea, when she was separated from my grandfather. Some of the envelopes had deteriorated badly, but all of them housed a letter inside.

No one had known of its existence; she had never mentioned this to our family. For a year, I translated them line by line, tracing her words through old postmarks and forgotten places until they led me back to her hometown. Standing before the house to where the letters were once sent, I got to meet my grandparents again, not as my halmuni and harabuji, but as a young couple, writing their way through longing and love. The letters were placed right next to her bed, where she would lay her head to sleep at night, and it comforts me to know that she kept her love story close to her for her entire life.​

2.

My grandparents were married in the 1940s, and this is their wedding day photo. During my trip to Korea, with the help of researchers, I discovered that my grandmother's childhood house and my grandfather's childhood house were a short walking distance apart, which made them neighbors! It was something my family never knew about. We surmise that the people who gathered [in the photo] were neighbours and family members. I was told that it was not common to marry for love (연애 결혼) back in those days, but it warms my heart to know they were neighborhood sweethearts.

​I grew up in my grandmother's care while my parents worked long hours to build a new life in America. At the time, I didn't realize how much of her story I carried — the sacrifices, the resilience, and the loneliness of leaving a home behind.

3.

My grandfather was a college student at the time some of the letters were written. He studied architecture and was on an educational track at Seoul National University, which was transitioning from Keijo Imperial University, after being taken over by the US Army. This allowed him to study English. He had a curiosity for languages and was fluent in four: German, Japanese, English, and Korean.

​I started using my grandfather's handwriting, lifted from his love letters, in my ceramic pieces as a way to keep their stories alive. Every piece I shape now feels like a small love letter. My hope is that when someone uses Ollo's pieces, they feel that same thread of warmth and care.

4.

I worked alongside a team of Korean professors and historians who helped me trace the addresses and places mentioned in my grandparents' letters. Through their research, they led me to my grandmother’s high school, and an archived gallery with her graduation photo! For the first time in my life, I learned that my grandmother dreamed of becoming a doctor. That dream was never realized; occupation forces took control of her school and turned it into a labour camp, and she spent the remainder of her high school years digging ditches for the Japanese military.

5.

This is the port of Busan, where I learned my grandfather had once been forcibly conscripted into the Japanese military. Before that, he had worked on building the same port, believing it would one day become a gateway for Korea to connect with the wider world. Being there, on the other side of the Pacific, I could almost feel his pride and heartbreak intertwined. The vision of what he had hoped Korea would become, and the reality of what history demanded of him instead.

6.

In many of my grandfather's letters, he asked about the persimmon tree in their yard. It seemed to anchor his longing as a symbol of home he could hold onto when the world around him fell into uncertainty. While visiting the burial sites of my ancestors with my uncle and cousin in Jinju, we walked by homes lined with persimmon trees. Now, whenever I see them, I think of my grandparents' survival, of a love that was carried through war, and the same sweet fruit I grew up eating. It always brings me back home.
Janet Kwak is a ceramicist and former TV news reporter whose work centers on home, heritage, and handmade living. Her storytelling is now rooted in family history, Korean culture, and exploring how home is built by both a physical space and inherited stories. She also creates content on @ourhanokhome that celebrates Korean-American identity and her rural hanok dreams.