Our Death - Jung Tae-chun

This song was created based on a sad news article I read when I was young.

When I first heard this song in the early 90s, I didn’t think much of it, but looking back now after raising a son of my own, I realize it is a song about a truly tragic event.

There are recent newspaper articles about it as well.
http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/opinion/column/813731.html

The song is as follows:

Narration) While a low-income working couple was away at work with their door locked, a fire broke out in their basement room. Their young children, playing inside, were unable to escape and died of suffocation.
When the fire started, the father, Mr. Kwon, was at his workplace in Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do, and the mother, Ms. Lee, was working as a housekeeper in Hapjeong-dong. To prevent the children from going outside, they had locked the room door from the outside with a padlock and also locked the main entrance. When Ms. Lee rushed home after being notified and opened the door, five-year-old Hye-young was found lying face down on the floor, and three-year-old Young-cheol was found dead with his nose buried in a pile of clothes. The room where the two children died was about 10 square meters, and the scattered clothes and furniture, such as a vinyl closet, were scorched along with burnt matches.
The couple had moved to Seoul in 1988 after failing to make a living farming 3,000 square meters of land in Geumdae-ri, Gyeryong-myeon, Chungnam. In October of last year, they rented the current basement room for a deposit of 4 million won. Ms. Lee wept at the police station, saying, ‘I usually locked the door because the kitchen had knives and the briquette fire was dangerous, and I was afraid they would get lost or kidnapped if they went outside.’
She said she used to prepare a lunch table and a chamber pot for the children before leaving for work. The house they lived in had a total of six basement rooms, each with an independent structure.

(Song) My young father goes to work at dawn
My mother also goes to work as a housekeeper to earn money
In a single basement room, the two of us little ones
Sit under the high window where the morning sun shines
The door is locked from the outside with a padlock, and at the top of the room are a cold meal and a chamber pot
Until Mom and Dad returned at night, we had nothing to do even if we were bored
During the day, there’s nothing on TV and we don’t know how to turn it on
The TV we watch at night is a world of another country
Mom and Dad never appear, and neither does our house or our neighborhood
The sunlight from the tiny window fades away, and we lie down all day staring at the ceiling
Falling asleep and waking up, not knowing if it’s a dream, we played with matches again

We finished the food before we even got hungry
We used the chamber pot even when we didn’t have to go
We had nothing else to do but things like that, since my younger brother can’t talk well yet
No one ever visits the secluded stairs, not even a thief or a robber
We don’t even know who lives in the next room; maybe it’s a cliff over there

The match fire accidentally spread to my clothes
It burned my eyebrows and my hair too
It spread here and there, blazing up, and in our startled hearts and eyes, it blazed up too
(Mom, Dad! When we were so scared like that
If only Mom and Dad had been there with us...)
The door was tightly locked and wouldn’t open, and white smoke filled the room
We just held each other and cried
Mom, Dad... Mom, Dad...

(Narration) That’s how we died
If only Mom and Dad had been there then..
No, if only Mom had been there with us..
No, before we huddled together and trembled in the smoke and flames of the room
Before we pounded on the door desperately because we missed Mom and Dad
Before we scratched the floor until our fingernails bled
Before my brother suffocated and collapsed first
If only Mom and Dad had been there then..
No, if only we could have lived happily as a family of four in the rural hometown we fled from one day..
No, if only this were a country that bestowed blessings even upon poor people like us...
No, if only this were a world where Mom and Dad were also masters..
Mom, Dad! Don’t be too sad
This isn’t Mom or Dad’s fault
We are leaving these small, scorched bodies behind, but
Mom, Dad! We are becoming angels now and going to heaven
But those angels can never come back down to such a sad world
Someday we will meet again in heaven
Mom, Dad!
We must say our final goodbye with the prettiest words we learned in this world
Mom, Dad.. Mom, Dad..
Now, goodbye... goodbye...