My mother’s house-name is 대흥댁 — Daeheung-daek — and every name on this farm comes from hers.
Where the Name Comes From
She was born in 1940 in Daeheung Village (대흥마을), Geumsan-myeon, Goheung, South Jeolla Province. In rural Korean tradition, a married woman takes her house-name from her birthplace — so when she came to this valley as a nineteen-year-old bride, the village knew her as Daeheung-daek: “the woman from Daeheung.”
大興 means great flourishing.
She Came to This Valley at Nineteen
She married into Daeyeo Village (대여마을), Nodong-myeon, Geumho-ri, Boseong — what is now Daeyeo Village. The life she entered was the traditional Korean sijip-sari (시집살이): a daughter-in-law’s years of service within her husband’s household. It was hard. But she has always spoken of her father-in-law’s warmth — a kindness she has carried across sixty years — and she tells her children: honour your ancestors.
Seoul, and a Long Life Away
In the early 1960s she moved to Seoul, part of the generation that left the countryside during Korea’s rapid industrialisation. She raised her family there over decades of city life. Her husband — my father, one year her senior — died at the age of fifty-nine.
After his death, in her early sixties, she made a decision: to go back.
Coming Home
She returned to the village where she had first arrived as a young bride — Daeyeo Village, Nodong-myeon, Boseong. For three years she rented an empty house in the village and waited.
Her son wanted to give her the life she had chosen. My grandfather had left land behind. On that land I built her a small house, and around it, slowly, we built the farm: the spring, the pavilion, the pool, the garden.
That land now holds more than the living. Above my mother’s house, on a gentle slope, lie the graves of her father-in-law and mother-in-law — the couple she had served as a young woman. The graves are laid flat in the Korean pyeongjang (평장) style, settled peacefully. She tends them.
Still Here
My mother is 85 years old. She lives on the farm she returned to. The spring carries her name. So does the farm, and the pavilion.
The woman who came to this valley at nineteen — and chose to return to it at sixty — is the source of everything called Daeheung.