"Mommy and Daddy are right here — don't you worry."
A scene I witnessed at the park last weekend still lingers before my eyes.
A young couple, beautifully dressed, strolled along with graceful smiles. The stroller they were pushing gleamed dazzlingly, as though strung with pearls — one of those strollers I had only heard rumors of, the kind said to cost millions of won.
Again and again the couple peered inside, murmuring, "Mommy and Daddy are right here, don't worry," as if soothing their child. They were a fair distance away, so the child's voice never reached me.
What sort of child, I wondered, gets to ride in such splendor? My curiosity got the better of me. Before I knew it, I had risen from my seat and was following them.
And then came the shock. Why — sitting inside the stroller were two dogs!
What's more, the dogs sat there with perfect composure, gazing out with lively interest at the passersby and the unfamiliar scenery. To anyone's eye, they were people. Not dogs. It would have been easier to believe they were people in dog costumes — no, better to say they were dogs made up as people. I honestly could no longer tell what was dog and what was human.
More astonishing still were the clothes they wore — unmistakably a luxury fashion label.
Watching all this, I felt admiration, alarm, and something harder to name colliding within me. When I thought back to the stroller worth a few tens of thousands of won in which we raised our own children, a pang of something like self-reproach crept into a corner of my heart.
These past several years, COVID-19 has battered economies the world over. Is this what they mean by "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"?
Watching the couple and their "children" recede into the distance, I found myself muttering,
"Those dogs certainly found themselves good parents..."
The world keeps on changing — but how are we to meet that change without losing hold of what we value?
Of course, I have no wish to blame that couple for the love they showed their dogs. They were simply lavishing love and devotion on the companions they cherish.
It called back a memory from my childhood.
My grandmother, coming home worn out from the fields, would catch sight of our yellow dog, Nureongi, sprawled out at his leisure on the earthen porch, yawning — and grumble, half to herself:
"Well, well — a dog's life is better than a man's."
Sources
Every factual claim above is traceable. We do not translate articles — we gather facts from multiple outlets and write them ourselves.
- 허허, 개팔자가 사람보다 낫네 — 청람서루 · Kim Wang-sik
