Love of Street Vendor Couple
"When every festive season comes along, the disabled family counts on us coming, so we can't stop ourselves from visiting them despite the poor living conditions."
In the morning of February 15, without a doubt, a one-ton truck with a placard proclaiming, 'Instant fresh baked walnut cookies' arrived at the 'House of Peace' welfare facility for the mental disabled in Hwa Myeong Dong, Buk Gu.
A couple in the vehicle vending business, Kim Heong Tae (53) and Park Geum Sook (53), sell six or seven different fresh baked cookies including walnut and chestnut cookies. They visit the place once a month, bake cookies and share them with the disabled.
Snack time starts at 2:30 pm, but to deliver freshly baked cookies, they prepare ingredients the night before their volunteer service day and rush themselves from very early in the morning. To offer two packets of cookies to over ninety people, including sixty handicapped people, volunteer workers and employees, the couple usually spends at least six to seven hours at the facility. Especially, on this day of service, which is just before the lunar New Year, they packed more ingredients for peanut and chestnut cookies and Kim's hands were much busier than usual.
Calling Kim and Park with different titles like, 'Mum', 'Dad', "Uncle', 'Aunt' and so on, some of the residents approach them early enough to sneak a taste of steaming hot cookies.
Family member at House of Peace Choi Wan Suk (44) said, "Cookies made by Uncle taste like heaven." He put his thumb up when he said, "I know that they have to invest a lot of effort to make cookies for us, but I wish they could visit us more often."
It was some time in November 2005 when the couple started their first volunteer service at this place. They were selling cookies near a fitness center in Hwa Myeong Dong where they often bumped into the disabled from the facility who deliver some goods to the fitness center and started to give them a bag of cookies.
Kim said, "I talked with my wife that no matter how much we try, we won't be able to gather the big money so why not help others? All we could afford is baking cookies, so we try to make it here at least once a month."
To be honest, the living condition of Kim and Park is no better than others. They had to face a massive bakery business bankruptcy in Daegu during the cold wave of IMF and closed down the business, which made them to move to Busan for new work. They live through life in a home, paying a monthly rent. To earn several thousand won by working days and nights, they jump up and down, but it is difficult for them to sum it up for as much as 30,000 won a day. However, they have never missed a day for the service that occupies their resting day once a month for just buying the ingredients for others.
"How can we miss all these, can you see how much they mean to us? Looking at families eating my cookies happily, I would like to come here more often, but I just feel sorry that I can't be here as much as I want to."
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 / 입력시간: 2007. 02.20. 08:17
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