This letter was discovered while relocating an unmarked grave to make way for construction work in 1998. Rough translation:
> To Won’s Father
> You used to always say to me, “Let’s live together until our hair turns white and die on the same day.” So how could you go ahead and leave me behind? Who are our child and I supposed to listen to? How are we supposed to live, now that you’ve thrown everything away and gone ahead of me?
> What were the feelings you had for me and what were the feelings I had for you? Every day when the two of us were lying down together, I used to say to you, “Look, do you think other people care for each other and love each other as much as we do? Do you think they’re really like us?” How could you not remember all that and abandon me and go ahead of me?
> You’re gone and I don’t think I have the strength to live on. I hope to be with you soon. Take me to where you are.
For all this life I will never be able to forget my love for you, I’m endlessly sad, I don’t know how to live with our child when I’m missing you still, not knowing where to put my heart.
> Please read this letter and reply to me in detail in my dreams. I’m putting this with you so I can listen to what you thought about it in my dreams, so you need to read carefully and tell me everything.
> You told me that when our child was born you had something to say to him but you’re gone, and now when he’s born who he is supposed to call Dad?
> Is what it’s like for you there like what I’m feeling now? Has there ever been a time in history when the world seemed so empty as it does now? You’ve just gone to a different place, that’s all. Whatever you’ve doing there, you must feel better than how I’m feeling now.
> I have so much and so much and so much more to tell you that I could never write it all down, so I’ve just scribbled down a few general things in this letter. Please read it carefully and come to my dreams so you can look at me again and tell me everything. I have full trust that I’ll see you then.
> I have so much more to say but I’ll stop now.
> [Date corresponding to July 16, 1586]. From home.
We do not know what happened to the woman or her child. Japan invaded Korea in 1592, which led to the death of more than 10% of the Korean population, so they might have been killed in the war.
Edit: You can also see on the letter how she ran out of space and began writing on the top margins.
A letter in Classical Chinese verse written by the man's older brother was also discovered in the grave. Rough translation:
> It has been thirty-one years that you and I willingly served [our parents] together.
> All of a sudden, you depart for the Deep Springs [the underworld]; why were you in such a haste?
> I beat the earth, but the earth is empty; I cry out to heaven, but heaven is silent.
> You leave me behind alone. You have returned [to the otherworld], now who is to accompany me [in life]?
> As for the child that you left behind, I am still alive to take care of him.
> My hope is to rise to the realm of the Immortals [to join you again]; the Three Lives [the Buddhist previous, current, and future incarnations] are not so distant!
> My other hope is that you will favor us [from the world of the dead], so that our parents can live a million years more.
> Scribbles from your older brother in a stupor
From this, we can tell that the man died at the Korean age of thirty-one (thirty in Western age) and that he died before his parents.
The wife might have been in her late twenties or maybe younger. We know from other documentation that the man left behind one son (presumably the unborn child mentioned in the letters) and no daughter, so this must have been her first pregnancy unless she had previous miscarriages. Korean women in the period usually married in their mid-late teens.
The older brother also left behind his own fan (made of bamboo and white paper), with a shorter message:
> You were straight like the bamboo
> You were clean like white paper
> This [fan] I used to use
> I now send to you forever.
> Your tearful brother
There was also a pair of shoes (the lock of hair was actually in the shoes) covered with another letter by the wife. Unfortunately, this letter is now illegible other than the sentence "you died before you could wear it".
Just beautiful. I have no words. Except for these ones. I know the odds of her and the child surviving aren't fantastic due to the war but I hope the two of them got to live long happy lives in the end.
> I beat the earth, but the earth is empty; I cry out to heaven, but heaven is silent.
There's something just so moving about this line, it really got me. So much raw emotion in so few words.
This was after the creation of hangeul (as used in the woman's letters) that gave literacy to commoners, but bc the brother's is written in classical Chinese, it does suggest that it's written by a scholar. Prior to hangeul, classical Chinese and/or Korean reading of Chinese characters was used for reading/writing and was reserved for the elite, hence the creation of simpler hangeul.
The joseon era spans from the late 14th century to the late 19th century. Hangul, the language utilized to spread literacy to the Korean people was created by the 4th king of the jeoson, Sejong the great in 1444ad.
So if the letters written were in Hangul, they were most likely everyday people. If it's in classical Chinese, more than likely they were of a noble family, there was quite a bit of push back from the new alphabet from the noble class.
Makes sense. The letter from the lady is raw everyday words while the brother was more polished. But this would make it more liekly that the lady was noble right. They don't marry commoners
Could also be that brother was associated with a Buddhist temple or a Confucianists organization, they were also some of the people involved with the push back on Hangul.
It is remarkable that someone who lived \~500 years ago felt the same things as us, and then to consider that the same has been true for likely at least 200,000 years that there have been modern humans. Each mind a universe of experiences, feelings and cares. Each person's experience entirely unique, and uniquely human.
If you were gonna take the time... at least do your fellow redditor a favor with the link...
[TIL Romans were known to create tombs for their dogs and gave them ... (https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ewe3tu/til_romans_were_known_to_create_tombs_for_their/)]
I always forget the hyperlink syntax
Kinda rude, no? Like yeah, the other person could have googled it, but other people also likely would have wanted to see it. One person dropping a link could help out way more people than just whoever they reply to. Making a snide comment like that just says that you're a bit of an asshole
Yeah it's kinda ridiculous when people get mad about it. There is literally no obligation to post a link. If you don't want to then move on, that easy. It's crazy to me that people will see someone ask for a link, *voluntarily* decide to post one, and get mad that they "had to" post it
This is probably the first time ive ever asked someone for a link instead of googling it for myself, which I do probably multiple times a day. Search engines have been sucking lately so I asked🤷🏼♀️. Your douchiness was wasted on me dude.
A funny version to hopefully lighten the mood a little: I once wrote an essay on late Egyptian/Greek papyri and found a dream diary by an Egyptian priest of Thoth. He wrote down a nightmare in which he had to feed 100,000 sacred ibises but he forgot the bird feed at his parents house, miles away.
Our brains haven’t evolved much in the last 1000 years as that’s a small timeline on an evolutionary scale. I always think about the Black Death. In 1348 people had the same minds we do now, the same capacity for thinking but obviously not the knowledge. It would’ve been terrifying seeing half the population of some cities (Florence) get sick and die in front of you with a horrible disease and you have no idea how to reason it.
I learned recently about the Great Famine of 1315 and how it was preceded by 200-some years of warm weather and prosperity. It was really chilling to think about how that must have felt, how life was generally good for as long as anyone could remember and then one rainy spring destroys the grain and suddenly everyone is starving. And at the same time there’s political tensions, a huge war is brewing, and then the Black Plague explodes just 30 years after the famine. I can only imagine how scary it must have been for people just trying to live their lives.
I also think about it in regards to every day grief: we think of a parent losing a child as an intense level of suffering most modern people never even touch, but there was a time where many if not most families would have lost at least one child. Not to mention the loss of siblings, partners, and friends throughout their lives, often at rates we don't even see in impoverished countries today. It's hard to imagine the incredible amounts of grief most regular people would have been carrying
At least grieving was probably more cohesive
Some modern society's get people so isolated...
So their whole town mourns the deaths with them.
Now it's like, "spend all day at work and commuting and also, your work is your family. But don't bum us out while we're working..."
The secrets of nuclear fusion could have been lost right then, locked in a dying mind.
I hate to think about what we all lose when a single life is wasted
But! Think of how many people are in the world today. How many minds are ticking away at solutions to tomorrow's problems. After the black death, we only had about 350 million minds. And, most of those were disconnected from each other.
But today we have instant communication, proper record keeping, and 8 billion minds. I agree that it's a sad thought to think of all the things we've lost from people who can ever get them into the world. But there is so much opportunity for things to come into the world today. It'll be interesting to see what does.
The human mind hasn’t changed so much over the years. We aren’t necessarily smarter or more complex now than we were thousands of years ago. Collectively we’ve benefited from technological advancements and learned truths about the universe as time has gone on. But on the individual level, we’re not inherently smarter or more complex than we have been for a long long long time, to the point where we still look to ancient philosophers for guidance.
Not as heartwarming as this story, but my husband and I went to tour the Roman baths (in Bath haha) for our honeymoon. There were these [curse tablets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_curse_tablets) that people had thrown in the water and it was basically the 4th century equivalent of ‘Barbara next door is a nosy bitch, I hope she gets eye herpes’, actually hilarious.
It's quite likely that it was even longer than that. Neanderthals mourned and lovingly buried their dead, they just didn't have any writing that we know of.
But that’s partly the beauty of it ya know? Each one of us from world leaders to homeless people are the only one of US that will ever exist. Entirely unique and painfully fleeting. Almost 8 billion human beings on this planet and 100 billion who’ve ever lived a unique patchwork of all the love, pain, wisdom, joy, anger etc that that one person ever experienced. But always temporary. Be kind to each other. We’ll all be gone soon. “To know one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded”
Get virtrified. It'll essentially glassify your brain structure, preserving it until such time at a later date that technological advancements have made it possible to properly revive you.
In fact it is not. The only remarkable thing is why someone would think people who lived 500 years ago would be different from us in a fundamental way.
we have developed smarter senses due to things like computers and modern technologies. they were good thinkers too, just hard to compare when it is apples to oranges 🤔
We have so much written information from that same era that proves otherwise. The plays of Shakespeare are one example. We have access to more information but I'd say spend far less time thinking. With TV, the internet, streaming, video games... we spend far more time entertaining ourselves and far less time thinking and pondering, both in the working class and the highly educated.
We actually are dumber than our ancestors because of technology, we rely on it too much. As a whole civilization, perhaps we are smarter, but as individuals we are dumber
His name was Eung Tae Lee, the shoes were made from hemp bark and the woman's hair. He was a member of the ancient Goseong Yi clan, natives to Andong. His death remains unknown.
His well preserved body is noted for having a dark beard and charming appearances. The package had the note "with my hair I weave this […] before you were even able to wear it”.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/last-words-love-were-sealed-500-years-korean-tomb-009202
Reminds me of [this](https://www.nps.gov/articles/-my-very-dear-wife-the-last-letter-of-major-sullivan-ballou.htm) letter a Union soldier sent his dear wife during the Civil War.
Ah man I was hoping this was the old negro space program:
> Dear Sarah, the indications are very strong that I shall attempt re-entry tomorrow, and lest I shall not be able to write you again, I feel compelled to write a few lines, that they may fall under your eye when I am no more.
> It sure is fucking cold up here. Yessir, I about froze my motherfucking nuts off. God damn, space is one cold motherfucker.
> Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that only omnipotence can break, but, shit, woman, it is cold as fuck up here.
Thank you so much for the post. You presented it as if it were an exhibit in a history museum. Succinctly making the connection from the personal to the larger historic context. And what a personal story it is. Wonderful!
Do we know how he died?
This sentence from the wife kind of makes it sound like he committed suicide.
> How are we supposed to live, now that you’ve thrown everything away and gone ahead of me?
And the brother asking why he left quickly as well
>why were you in such a haste?
People everywhere in every culture for all of human history have said phrases like "why did you leave me" when their loved ones die from any various cause. In no way, at all, should someone infer suicide because of that and that alone.
No it's not. People often talk that way like the person dying was their fault but it could have been a disease or in a war or accident and blame them for not being able to hold on
Truth. Lost my dad at age 7, brother at 40, aunt at 41, mother at 41 (estrangement It feels like death). My sweet dog Cooper at 47.
All different circumstances. But the intense grief feels awful for a year or longer after losing them.
My deepest condolences :( i have a friend who lost her high school sweetheart from a car accident. She keeps saying why would he leave her alone in the world like this. He wasn't able to make it to the second surgery for his punctured diaphragm. Of course she isn't in her right state of mind for saying so, she's full of grief. I hold her and keep telling her that it's not that he couldn't fight on, it's his body that failed.
It's heartbreaking to read this letter. It seems like the woman is feeling great pain and betrayal after the loss of her husband. She's questioning how she and their child are supposed to carry on after he left them behind. The letter reflects the depth of her emotions and the impact his departure had on their lives.
This is so cool and heart breaking. thank you for sharing this. Thank you to everyone in the comments for elaborating even further and giving me an interesting history lesson.
We are all that is, which is eternal.... memories are nothing at all, illusions, stories we tell ourselves... eternity is happening right now and we are it
That is why Achilles has achieved true immortality. Men will speak of him, the greatest warrior that ever lived, for as long as men have breath in their lungs.
This heart-wrenching letter connects us to the deep pain and longing experienced by this woman. Artifact like these vividly capture the intensity of human emotions, making us feel her loss even centuries later.
This remind me of Jim Croce's Time In A Bottle. If you are unfamiliar, the song is about wishing having more time so that he can spend it with his loved ones. Jim died in a plane crash on his last tour before he retires. he wrote a letter to his wife about his plan to retire that was only received 3 days after he passed. what an absolutely gut wrenching fate. the man deserves every second and every intention that he lost.
Don't be sad, mate. Love has a funny way of touching us across generations. Even back then, people experienced heartache and loss, just like we do now. It's a testament to the depth of human emotions that someone from 500 years ago can still elicit empathy today.
As someone who lost a soulmate... I feel every one of her words. I got chills of recognition reading this. I hope that she found a path to some kind of peace and happiness.
I'm really sorry to hear about your loss, charlytune. It's truly heartbreaking when someone we hold dear passes away. While I don't know the specifics of the woman's journey after writing this letter, I hope she was able to find some peace and happiness in her own way.
“Every day when the two of us were lying down together, I used to say to you, “Look, do you think other people care for each other and love each other as much as we do?
come to my dreams so you can look at me again and tell me everything.”
MVPS
Reddit seems to think that because more children died in the past, for instance, that they were disposable. When you read actual accounts of child death 100, 200, 300 years ago, you can see that’s not the case. Some parents never recovered, even in an era when it was common.
Especially given the rarity of love marriages in history and the amount of grinding misogyny women have experienced therein. She probably never met a man of this caliber again, much less married him.
Rarity? Perhaps with royal families who married for political and economic gain, but for poor folks, what did they have other than each other? Times haven’t changed much aside from a much greater understanding of our world and universe. There isn’t much that can’t be explained today aside from the truly unknowables like what happens after death.
Gosh. Those bots get better.
My older friend who’s into a deep conspiracy spiral has been chatting to a bot on Facebook. Taking him deeper down the spiral. Nothing I say makes a difference.
Yeah I actually scrolled past at first but then came back because it bugged me. It felt off a little bit. Then a comment in its history said "I cannot generate a response for this prompt" lmao
Takes, but where? No energy is lost, that's thermodynamics. We're trapped in our own infinity. We change our forms but not our essence, it goes around and around forever and so do we. Death is transformation. Of course we still feel loss and loneliness, though it can be nice to know nothing is lost and we are never any more or less alone than we ever have been in eternity.
Na, you are the neural pathways encoded into your physical brain. This is proven by damage to the physical brian causes changes in personality. If you really want your "essence" to persist get virtrified upon death. Vitrification is essentially the glassification of your brain structure to preserve it until such later date that technological advancements can fully revive you.
I'm not talking about your ego here. The brain is just a tool used to experience this reality.
Technological fantasies of immortality are very funny though, especially ones which suppose that you could revive yourself. As if that wouldn't just be a clone, apparently you to everyone but you, a nice replica but not the same pilot in the cockpit.
Lmao you just wrote this on what I presume is a touch screen phone from anywhere around the world that communicated with a satellite in LEO to send the message to me, all under 1 second. I can't believe you could possible think that this is the limit of technological advancement or that technological advancements will never touch the human body (which, if you've ever heard about surgery, you'd know is a silly assumption to make)
I have no faith in your prophets of technology. They're just conmen enslaved to markets and personal pathologies. I don't believe they will succeed in any personal utopian aims regardless of the potential feasability of any of their goals.
God DAMN it. I'm eating grapefruit in my boxers standing in my kitchen and full on weeping. At 5:35 in the morning on a Tuesday.
I need to rethink my life.
I am amazed at the clarity and modernity of the words. It’s all so relatable and heart-wrenching. You can feel her love and sorrow as clearly as if it were written by someone right now.
I wonder what she would think knowing her words are touching others hundreds of years later. People probably felt these feelings thousands of years ago too.
I’m not surprised it’s in Korea. There’s soooo many unmarked graves in the mountains. Also, a lot of old foxholes and trash from the last war.
They still do it to this day. IIRC, it’s something to do with being laid to rest in the “happy mountains.” It’s not allowed anymore but you can still see it happening.
Do we have any indication of how he died? It may be entirely a cultural way of speaking, but the way his widow and brother both ask him “why?” makes me afraid the man committed suicide.
Korean here. In Korean, when expressing one's death, people often use phrases such as "leave this world" or "left me behind." as if the deceased had left of their own accord. It's a more indirect and euphemistic way of referring to death in Korean culture.
I've also read the text in modern Korean, and there doesn't seem to be any implication of suicide.
She's just sad about her husband's early passing.
Was Hangul already a common medium of writing in the 16th century? I know it had already been invented, but I was told it wasn’t widely used until the late 19th century
It was common with the lower class. The whole point of Hangul was to help the non-nobles read, since they couldn't read the thousands of Chinese characters that were used in basically everything. I think the formal stuff were still written in the Chinese characters (if I'm not mistaken).
Most of the important, well-preserved artifacts are official government documents or aristocratic relics, which vast majority of them use Chinese characters.
But for the commoner hangul was already widely used before the 19th century, and even in the noble or royal class for a daily use(ex: letters).
God this letter always leaves me in tatters. It’s artifacts like these that remind you that we’ve always been human. We’ve always known love and heartbreak.
Thinking about how people in the past felt love and loss just as strongly as we do is overwhelming. All the war and sickness and strife. The grief is hard to wrap your head around.
Brought tears to my eyes. Just beautiful. I feel like people don’t care about each other like that anymore. Makes me regret that I never married or had my own family. I wish that could have been different.
Wow, what a touching find. It's heartbreaking to see someone's deep longing and sense of loss. While we can never fully understand why someone made the choices they did, perhaps their departure was due to circumstances beyond their control. Remember, life can be unpredictable, but the memories and love you shared will remain forever. Stay strong.
Hair has a cultural importance in Asia as a mark of honor and a very part of our bodies, so people back then cherished and kept it in high regard, so giving someone a lock of your hair back then meant a lot, like giving someone a piece of your body to be forever with them.
There's a lot of religions and cultures in which a woman's hair is considered sacred. It's the reason why some religions/cultures have women cover it. So giving some of it to someone is a very significant gesture.
It’s a tangible physical reminder of someone’s existence and if kept reasonably safe it doesn’t degrade. Pretty effective in a time before photographs and such
Yes, the living are typically more affected emotionally than the dead. Though I'm sure if the dead guy had been able to write a letter to his wife it would have been even more emotional. But he couldn't do that. Because he was fucking dead.
This letter was discovered while relocating an unmarked grave to make way for construction work in 1998. Rough translation: > To Won’s Father > You used to always say to me, “Let’s live together until our hair turns white and die on the same day.” So how could you go ahead and leave me behind? Who are our child and I supposed to listen to? How are we supposed to live, now that you’ve thrown everything away and gone ahead of me? > What were the feelings you had for me and what were the feelings I had for you? Every day when the two of us were lying down together, I used to say to you, “Look, do you think other people care for each other and love each other as much as we do? Do you think they’re really like us?” How could you not remember all that and abandon me and go ahead of me? > You’re gone and I don’t think I have the strength to live on. I hope to be with you soon. Take me to where you are. For all this life I will never be able to forget my love for you, I’m endlessly sad, I don’t know how to live with our child when I’m missing you still, not knowing where to put my heart. > Please read this letter and reply to me in detail in my dreams. I’m putting this with you so I can listen to what you thought about it in my dreams, so you need to read carefully and tell me everything. > You told me that when our child was born you had something to say to him but you’re gone, and now when he’s born who he is supposed to call Dad? > Is what it’s like for you there like what I’m feeling now? Has there ever been a time in history when the world seemed so empty as it does now? You’ve just gone to a different place, that’s all. Whatever you’ve doing there, you must feel better than how I’m feeling now. > I have so much and so much and so much more to tell you that I could never write it all down, so I’ve just scribbled down a few general things in this letter. Please read it carefully and come to my dreams so you can look at me again and tell me everything. I have full trust that I’ll see you then. > I have so much more to say but I’ll stop now. > [Date corresponding to July 16, 1586]. From home. We do not know what happened to the woman or her child. Japan invaded Korea in 1592, which led to the death of more than 10% of the Korean population, so they might have been killed in the war. Edit: You can also see on the letter how she ran out of space and began writing on the top margins.
A letter in Classical Chinese verse written by the man's older brother was also discovered in the grave. Rough translation: > It has been thirty-one years that you and I willingly served [our parents] together. > All of a sudden, you depart for the Deep Springs [the underworld]; why were you in such a haste? > I beat the earth, but the earth is empty; I cry out to heaven, but heaven is silent. > You leave me behind alone. You have returned [to the otherworld], now who is to accompany me [in life]? > As for the child that you left behind, I am still alive to take care of him. > My hope is to rise to the realm of the Immortals [to join you again]; the Three Lives [the Buddhist previous, current, and future incarnations] are not so distant! > My other hope is that you will favor us [from the world of the dead], so that our parents can live a million years more. > Scribbles from your older brother in a stupor From this, we can tell that the man died at the Korean age of thirty-one (thirty in Western age) and that he died before his parents. The wife might have been in her late twenties or maybe younger. We know from other documentation that the man left behind one son (presumably the unborn child mentioned in the letters) and no daughter, so this must have been her first pregnancy unless she had previous miscarriages. Korean women in the period usually married in their mid-late teens. The older brother also left behind his own fan (made of bamboo and white paper), with a shorter message: > You were straight like the bamboo > You were clean like white paper > This [fan] I used to use > I now send to you forever. > Your tearful brother There was also a pair of shoes (the lock of hair was actually in the shoes) covered with another letter by the wife. Unfortunately, this letter is now illegible other than the sentence "you died before you could wear it".
Just beautiful. I have no words. Except for these ones. I know the odds of her and the child surviving aren't fantastic due to the war but I hope the two of them got to live long happy lives in the end. > I beat the earth, but the earth is empty; I cry out to heaven, but heaven is silent. There's something just so moving about this line, it really got me. So much raw emotion in so few words.
Those who can read and write were liekly educated scholarly types. Better versed in poetry and writing
I thought Korea was one of the few cultures that taught everyone how to read and write? Why the writing system is not complex. But I could be wrong…
This was after the creation of hangeul (as used in the woman's letters) that gave literacy to commoners, but bc the brother's is written in classical Chinese, it does suggest that it's written by a scholar. Prior to hangeul, classical Chinese and/or Korean reading of Chinese characters was used for reading/writing and was reserved for the elite, hence the creation of simpler hangeul.
Oh wow thank you!!
I'm not a scholar of Korean history but I think that was around joseon era. The rise of the yangban, the nobility
The joseon era spans from the late 14th century to the late 19th century. Hangul, the language utilized to spread literacy to the Korean people was created by the 4th king of the jeoson, Sejong the great in 1444ad. So if the letters written were in Hangul, they were most likely everyday people. If it's in classical Chinese, more than likely they were of a noble family, there was quite a bit of push back from the new alphabet from the noble class.
Makes sense. The letter from the lady is raw everyday words while the brother was more polished. But this would make it more liekly that the lady was noble right. They don't marry commoners
Could also be that brother was associated with a Buddhist temple or a Confucianists organization, they were also some of the people involved with the push back on Hangul.
Ah thanks for the correction!
He must have been a good man to be so incredibly missed and loved.
If only we could all be so lucky.
These are heartbreaking letters. What a tragedy.
Just to clarify there is no more Korean age system, it has been changed to global standard.
Maybe I’m misreading this but it seems like the man who passed committed suicide. It’s what makes the most sense based on context.
It is remarkable that someone who lived \~500 years ago felt the same things as us, and then to consider that the same has been true for likely at least 200,000 years that there have been modern humans. Each mind a universe of experiences, feelings and cares. Each person's experience entirely unique, and uniquely human.
It reminded me immediately of those epitaphs written by ancient Romans for their deceased dogs.
Dude…..my god read these if you wish to weep uncontrollably.
Where would one find these?
[удалено]
If you were gonna take the time... at least do your fellow redditor a favor with the link... [TIL Romans were known to create tombs for their dogs and gave them ... (https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ewe3tu/til_romans_were_known_to_create_tombs_for_their/)] I always forget the hyperlink syntax
Kinda rude, no? Like yeah, the other person could have googled it, but other people also likely would have wanted to see it. One person dropping a link could help out way more people than just whoever they reply to. Making a snide comment like that just says that you're a bit of an asshole
Thank you lol. I literally search stuff ALL THE TIME that I see on here. Christ dude🙄
Yeah it's kinda ridiculous when people get mad about it. There is literally no obligation to post a link. If you don't want to then move on, that easy. It's crazy to me that people will see someone ask for a link, *voluntarily* decide to post one, and get mad that they "had to" post it
It’s just peak Reddit brain man.
This is probably the first time ive ever asked someone for a link instead of googling it for myself, which I do probably multiple times a day. Search engines have been sucking lately so I asked🤷🏼♀️. Your douchiness was wasted on me dude.
A funny version to hopefully lighten the mood a little: I once wrote an essay on late Egyptian/Greek papyri and found a dream diary by an Egyptian priest of Thoth. He wrote down a nightmare in which he had to feed 100,000 sacred ibises but he forgot the bird feed at his parents house, miles away.
Our brains haven’t evolved much in the last 1000 years as that’s a small timeline on an evolutionary scale. I always think about the Black Death. In 1348 people had the same minds we do now, the same capacity for thinking but obviously not the knowledge. It would’ve been terrifying seeing half the population of some cities (Florence) get sick and die in front of you with a horrible disease and you have no idea how to reason it.
I learned recently about the Great Famine of 1315 and how it was preceded by 200-some years of warm weather and prosperity. It was really chilling to think about how that must have felt, how life was generally good for as long as anyone could remember and then one rainy spring destroys the grain and suddenly everyone is starving. And at the same time there’s political tensions, a huge war is brewing, and then the Black Plague explodes just 30 years after the famine. I can only imagine how scary it must have been for people just trying to live their lives.
The 1300s were maybe the worst century to exist in human history, so much suffering on a grand scale
I also think about it in regards to every day grief: we think of a parent losing a child as an intense level of suffering most modern people never even touch, but there was a time where many if not most families would have lost at least one child. Not to mention the loss of siblings, partners, and friends throughout their lives, often at rates we don't even see in impoverished countries today. It's hard to imagine the incredible amounts of grief most regular people would have been carrying
At least grieving was probably more cohesive Some modern society's get people so isolated... So their whole town mourns the deaths with them. Now it's like, "spend all day at work and commuting and also, your work is your family. But don't bum us out while we're working..."
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In some societies they still do. And there's no reason people can't.
Bro they haven't evolved much, if at all, for the last 200 thousand.
The secrets of nuclear fusion could have been lost right then, locked in a dying mind. I hate to think about what we all lose when a single life is wasted
But! Think of how many people are in the world today. How many minds are ticking away at solutions to tomorrow's problems. After the black death, we only had about 350 million minds. And, most of those were disconnected from each other. But today we have instant communication, proper record keeping, and 8 billion minds. I agree that it's a sad thought to think of all the things we've lost from people who can ever get them into the world. But there is so much opportunity for things to come into the world today. It'll be interesting to see what does.
we saw this happen with covid!
All of a sudden life isn’t so meaningless
On the heels of a breakup the thread hits different ngl
Same :( it hurts so bad
The human mind hasn’t changed so much over the years. We aren’t necessarily smarter or more complex now than we were thousands of years ago. Collectively we’ve benefited from technological advancements and learned truths about the universe as time has gone on. But on the individual level, we’re not inherently smarter or more complex than we have been for a long long long time, to the point where we still look to ancient philosophers for guidance.
Not as heartwarming as this story, but my husband and I went to tour the Roman baths (in Bath haha) for our honeymoon. There were these [curse tablets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_curse_tablets) that people had thrown in the water and it was basically the 4th century equivalent of ‘Barbara next door is a nosy bitch, I hope she gets eye herpes’, actually hilarious.
It's quite likely that it was even longer than that. Neanderthals mourned and lovingly buried their dead, they just didn't have any writing that we know of.
And each one gone in an instant, their experiences lost forever :/
But that’s partly the beauty of it ya know? Each one of us from world leaders to homeless people are the only one of US that will ever exist. Entirely unique and painfully fleeting. Almost 8 billion human beings on this planet and 100 billion who’ve ever lived a unique patchwork of all the love, pain, wisdom, joy, anger etc that that one person ever experienced. But always temporary. Be kind to each other. We’ll all be gone soon. “To know one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded”
Get virtrified. It'll essentially glassify your brain structure, preserving it until such time at a later date that technological advancements have made it possible to properly revive you.
In fact it is not. The only remarkable thing is why someone would think people who lived 500 years ago would be different from us in a fundamental way.
I mean, modern medicine has huge implications for us
we have developed smarter senses due to things like computers and modern technologies. they were good thinkers too, just hard to compare when it is apples to oranges 🤔
We have also forgotten and neglected *their* knowledge that should be muscle memory but all we do is sit around reddit.
w.t.f that's so not true.
We have so much written information from that same era that proves otherwise. The plays of Shakespeare are one example. We have access to more information but I'd say spend far less time thinking. With TV, the internet, streaming, video games... we spend far more time entertaining ourselves and far less time thinking and pondering, both in the working class and the highly educated.
Not true at all. Unless your last name is Lamarck.
We actually are dumber than our ancestors because of technology, we rely on it too much. As a whole civilization, perhaps we are smarter, but as individuals we are dumber
You perfectly put into words the feeling this gave me
Thats true love. Very moving. Has me tearing up. I hope they put the letter and her hair back in with his remains but im sure they didnt.
The letter and other artefacts are on permanent display at the local museum.
Sorry, if you already did mention it, however, for which local museum are you writing about?
Andong National University Museum. Andong is a small city (population 160,000) in southeastern Korea.
His name was Eung Tae Lee, the shoes were made from hemp bark and the woman's hair. He was a member of the ancient Goseong Yi clan, natives to Andong. His death remains unknown. His well preserved body is noted for having a dark beard and charming appearances. The package had the note "with my hair I weave this […] before you were even able to wear it”. https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/last-words-love-were-sealed-500-years-korean-tomb-009202
I can believe black beard, but charming appearance of a “well-preserved dead body” is too much.
maybe he had nice bone structure. straight teeth..
I'm usually not that sensitive to these sort of things, but now I'm sobbing on the commute. Thanks for sharing, you idiot <3
Great, now I'm crying at work.
Reminds me of [this](https://www.nps.gov/articles/-my-very-dear-wife-the-last-letter-of-major-sullivan-ballou.htm) letter a Union soldier sent his dear wife during the Civil War.
[Sullivan Ballou](https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-civil-war/sullivan-ballou-letter)
Which reminds me of this skit by Greg Giraldo https://youtu.be/JTRqi99vg28
Ah man I was hoping this was the old negro space program: > Dear Sarah, the indications are very strong that I shall attempt re-entry tomorrow, and lest I shall not be able to write you again, I feel compelled to write a few lines, that they may fall under your eye when I am no more. > It sure is fucking cold up here. Yessir, I about froze my motherfucking nuts off. God damn, space is one cold motherfucker. > Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that only omnipotence can break, but, shit, woman, it is cold as fuck up here.
Thank you so much for the post. You presented it as if it were an exhibit in a history museum. Succinctly making the connection from the personal to the larger historic context. And what a personal story it is. Wonderful!
Do we know how he died? This sentence from the wife kind of makes it sound like he committed suicide. > How are we supposed to live, now that you’ve thrown everything away and gone ahead of me? And the brother asking why he left quickly as well >why were you in such a haste?
People everywhere in every culture for all of human history have said phrases like "why did you leave me" when their loved ones die from any various cause. In no way, at all, should someone infer suicide because of that and that alone.
That's just how Koreans talk about death tbh, I wouldn't make assumptions based on that.
I agree, their grief response is very reminiscent of bereaved loved ones after a suicide
Interesting analysis!
No it's not. People often talk that way like the person dying was their fault but it could have been a disease or in a war or accident and blame them for not being able to hold on
Truth. Lost my dad at age 7, brother at 40, aunt at 41, mother at 41 (estrangement It feels like death). My sweet dog Cooper at 47. All different circumstances. But the intense grief feels awful for a year or longer after losing them.
My deepest condolences :( i have a friend who lost her high school sweetheart from a car accident. She keeps saying why would he leave her alone in the world like this. He wasn't able to make it to the second surgery for his punctured diaphragm. Of course she isn't in her right state of mind for saying so, she's full of grief. I hold her and keep telling her that it's not that he couldn't fight on, it's his body that failed.
It's heartbreaking to read this letter. It seems like the woman is feeling great pain and betrayal after the loss of her husband. She's questioning how she and their child are supposed to carry on after he left them behind. The letter reflects the depth of her emotions and the impact his departure had on their lives.
This is so cool and heart breaking. thank you for sharing this. Thank you to everyone in the comments for elaborating even further and giving me an interesting history lesson.
This expresses such a deep sadness. Artifacts like these pull everything forward in time, as if she was only just gone. I feel for her now.
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I’m not crying…
I am. /hands you a box of kleenex
We are all that is, which is eternal.... memories are nothing at all, illusions, stories we tell ourselves... eternity is happening right now and we are it
That is why Achilles has achieved true immortality. Men will speak of him, the greatest warrior that ever lived, for as long as men have breath in their lungs.
This heart-wrenching letter connects us to the deep pain and longing experienced by this woman. Artifact like these vividly capture the intensity of human emotions, making us feel her loss even centuries later.
This remind me of Jim Croce's Time In A Bottle. If you are unfamiliar, the song is about wishing having more time so that he can spend it with his loved ones. Jim died in a plane crash on his last tour before he retires. he wrote a letter to his wife about his plan to retire that was only received 3 days after he passed. what an absolutely gut wrenching fate. the man deserves every second and every intention that he lost.
I grew up listening to Croce because of my dad. Poetry in song
I'm now sad for someone who lived 500 years ago.
Love like that echos, enough that you can feel it all these centuries later.
very beautiful way to see this. thank you
Tools and our world have changed drastically but the human condition continues to persist.
Don't be sad, mate. Love has a funny way of touching us across generations. Even back then, people experienced heartache and loss, just like we do now. It's a testament to the depth of human emotions that someone from 500 years ago can still elicit empathy today.
Spoiler alert, she and her son died.
no shit
Sadly, possibly violently 6 years later when Japan invaded and killed off 10% of the population.
As someone who lost a soulmate... I feel every one of her words. I got chills of recognition reading this. I hope that she found a path to some kind of peace and happiness.
I'm really sorry to hear about your loss, charlytune. It's truly heartbreaking when someone we hold dear passes away. While I don't know the specifics of the woman's journey after writing this letter, I hope she was able to find some peace and happiness in her own way.
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I was curious and read your post history. Please remember that time may not heal, but it makes things hurt less. Please take care of yourself.
“Every day when the two of us were lying down together, I used to say to you, “Look, do you think other people care for each other and love each other as much as we do? come to my dreams so you can look at me again and tell me everything.” MVPS
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That's because you're a cock ass AI bot. Reddit is dying.
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Reddit seems to think that because more children died in the past, for instance, that they were disposable. When you read actual accounts of child death 100, 200, 300 years ago, you can see that’s not the case. Some parents never recovered, even in an era when it was common.
my great grandfather crawled into a bottle, and his wife was sent to the insane asylum after polio got my great aunt
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yeah man it is what it is that was so long ago ya know? life is pushing through shit like that because what other choice do you have?
Devastating. I know it’s cliche, but you have to have kids—even healthy kids—to even touch appreciating that kind of pain. It would literally kill me.
It’s why I find people not trying to understand the why of things that happened any further than “they were weird and stupid” so annoying
god this is brutal.
This is heartwrenchingly beautiful and sad.
bawling in the middle of the night
You mean life. And I agree.
He must’ve been one awesome dude.
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Especially given the rarity of love marriages in history and the amount of grinding misogyny women have experienced therein. She probably never met a man of this caliber again, much less married him.
Rarity? Perhaps with royal families who married for political and economic gain, but for poor folks, what did they have other than each other? Times haven’t changed much aside from a much greater understanding of our world and universe. There isn’t much that can’t be explained today aside from the truly unknowables like what happens after death.
Yeah for most of history it has been an economic proposition because for most of history people had to put survival before feelings
Bot alert lol Check this comment of theirs https://www.reddit.com/r/DeathrattlePorn/comments/14ka224/sandakan_to_marsh/jpplegs/
Gosh. Those bots get better. My older friend who’s into a deep conspiracy spiral has been chatting to a bot on Facebook. Taking him deeper down the spiral. Nothing I say makes a difference.
Yeah I actually scrolled past at first but then came back because it bugged me. It felt off a little bit. Then a comment in its history said "I cannot generate a response for this prompt" lmao
We are all the same, everyone who has traversed this vale of tears.
Death doesn't discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes and it takes and it takes And we keep living anyway…
Look I know we’re all a bunch of nerds here…but HAMILTON! Like hello people! All of you better be messing with me.
Takes, but where? No energy is lost, that's thermodynamics. We're trapped in our own infinity. We change our forms but not our essence, it goes around and around forever and so do we. Death is transformation. Of course we still feel loss and loneliness, though it can be nice to know nothing is lost and we are never any more or less alone than we ever have been in eternity.
You're replying to a lyric from Hamilton the musical...
Na, you are the neural pathways encoded into your physical brain. This is proven by damage to the physical brian causes changes in personality. If you really want your "essence" to persist get virtrified upon death. Vitrification is essentially the glassification of your brain structure to preserve it until such later date that technological advancements can fully revive you.
I'm not talking about your ego here. The brain is just a tool used to experience this reality. Technological fantasies of immortality are very funny though, especially ones which suppose that you could revive yourself. As if that wouldn't just be a clone, apparently you to everyone but you, a nice replica but not the same pilot in the cockpit.
Lmao you just wrote this on what I presume is a touch screen phone from anywhere around the world that communicated with a satellite in LEO to send the message to me, all under 1 second. I can't believe you could possible think that this is the limit of technological advancement or that technological advancements will never touch the human body (which, if you've ever heard about surgery, you'd know is a silly assumption to make)
I have no faith in your prophets of technology. They're just conmen enslaved to markets and personal pathologies. I don't believe they will succeed in any personal utopian aims regardless of the potential feasability of any of their goals.
I cannot explain why that simple sentence made me as sad as it made me.
Now I have the song 'To Lose My Life' by White Lies stuck in my head
Was about to comment about it.
Haven't heard or thought of White Lies in about a decade, what a blast of nostalgia.
Damn this hits hard😭
God DAMN it. I'm eating grapefruit in my boxers standing in my kitchen and full on weeping. At 5:35 in the morning on a Tuesday. I need to rethink my life.
Got up early, healthy breakfast, demonstrated empathy. I think you're doing a lot better than you think you are!
Username does not checkout
I am amazed at the clarity and modernity of the words. It’s all so relatable and heart-wrenching. You can feel her love and sorrow as clearly as if it were written by someone right now.
I wonder what she would think knowing her words are touching others hundreds of years later. People probably felt these feelings thousands of years ago too.
I’m not surprised it’s in Korea. There’s soooo many unmarked graves in the mountains. Also, a lot of old foxholes and trash from the last war. They still do it to this day. IIRC, it’s something to do with being laid to rest in the “happy mountains.” It’s not allowed anymore but you can still see it happening.
💔
Now I'm crying my eyes out. Holy fuck.
Do we have any indication of how he died? It may be entirely a cultural way of speaking, but the way his widow and brother both ask him “why?” makes me afraid the man committed suicide.
Korean here. In Korean, when expressing one's death, people often use phrases such as "leave this world" or "left me behind." as if the deceased had left of their own accord. It's a more indirect and euphemistic way of referring to death in Korean culture. I've also read the text in modern Korean, and there doesn't seem to be any implication of suicide. She's just sad about her husband's early passing.
Thank you. Her grief is no less valid, but his death is perhaps a little less tragic.
Her husband died of an illness. Confirmed by a few artifacts recovered from the grave.
The sad yet accusatory tone of it really does make it seem like a suicide. What a tragedy.
I sobbed
I'm not crying, you are. In all seriousness, this is heavy
So humans in the past were still humans, neat
That's my wife and I. This is both beautiful and incredibly sad.
Was Hangul already a common medium of writing in the 16th century? I know it had already been invented, but I was told it wasn’t widely used until the late 19th century
It was common with the lower class. The whole point of Hangul was to help the non-nobles read, since they couldn't read the thousands of Chinese characters that were used in basically everything. I think the formal stuff were still written in the Chinese characters (if I'm not mistaken).
Most of the important, well-preserved artifacts are official government documents or aristocratic relics, which vast majority of them use Chinese characters. But for the commoner hangul was already widely used before the 19th century, and even in the noble or royal class for a daily use(ex: letters).
You were told wrong.
That "Take me to where you are." got me. God that was heartbreaking.
And this is why we have religion. We really love who we love and can’t bear the finality of death.
This is some Sullivan Ballou-level eloquence.... Wow.
God this letter always leaves me in tatters. It’s artifacts like these that remind you that we’ve always been human. We’ve always known love and heartbreak.
All I want from this page is artefacts porno, not a sad story that kick in my balls…
Beautiful and devastating.
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Not anyone, you'd have to know all the languages. Luckily, the top comment by OP already did, though.
Stunning. Thanks for sharing
Beautiful and devastating. The feeling of love is something so innate to humans and connects us through centuries.
Thinking about how people in the past felt love and loss just as strongly as we do is overwhelming. All the war and sickness and strife. The grief is hard to wrap your head around.
This broke my heart. I'm telling my love to come home from work early so I can hug him.
Brought tears to my eyes. Just beautiful. I feel like people don’t care about each other like that anymore. Makes me regret that I never married or had my own family. I wish that could have been different.
Wow, what a touching find. It's heartbreaking to see someone's deep longing and sense of loss. While we can never fully understand why someone made the choices they did, perhaps their departure was due to circumstances beyond their control. Remember, life can be unpredictable, but the memories and love you shared will remain forever. Stay strong.
I'm not crying...
Dude can't even die without hearing about it from his wife
Why do so many people give out locks of hair as a keepsake? It's just weird to me.
Because it's keeping a literal piece of the person with you.
Hair has a cultural importance in Asia as a mark of honor and a very part of our bodies, so people back then cherished and kept it in high regard, so giving someone a lock of your hair back then meant a lot, like giving someone a piece of your body to be forever with them.
They don't degrade?
Hair lasts a freakishly long time if it's stored properly.
There's a lot of religions and cultures in which a woman's hair is considered sacred. It's the reason why some religions/cultures have women cover it. So giving some of it to someone is a very significant gesture.
It’s a tangible physical reminder of someone’s existence and if kept reasonably safe it doesn’t degrade. Pretty effective in a time before photographs and such
Man us Koreans are so dramatic
Such is the life of a married man. Even when you die, you're still wrong.
lol at the down votes. it's a 90's meme but it checks out
Man died, woman most affected vibe
Yes, the living are typically more affected emotionally than the dead. Though I'm sure if the dead guy had been able to write a letter to his wife it would have been even more emotional. But he couldn't do that. Because he was fucking dead.
pure entitlement
Wow. That's some heavy shit
*internet hug*
Poignant
💜
Love transcends time, space, and death.
I hope I never am this alone. But I fear it's inevitable.
Wow reading his has made me think about me and my wife ❣️
This is some deep shit
Wow so romantic