By Nancy Cho Auvil
M y story begins on November 6, 1961. I was born in Busan, South Korea at Il Sin Women’s Hospital (today known as Ilsin Christian Hospital), which was founded by Dr. Helen Pearl Mackenzie and her sister Catherine, a nurse, both of whom were daughters of Australian missionaries in Korea. My Korean birth mother, Cho Keum Ok met my dad, Arthur H. Auvil, in 1960. He told me she was from Pyongyang. She and her two sisters and youngest brother fled North Korea during the Korean War. They walked from Pyongyang to Seoul when she was fourteen years old. During this journey, her little brother stepped on a land mine and died. She and her sisters had no choice but to continue their journey on foot to cross the DMZ.
My dad was a captain in the USMC and retired from the Marine Corps in 1957. He went on to work for the Vinnell Corporation of Southern California. At the time he met my mother, he was working with the Army Corps of Engineers as a contract worker to assist in rebuilding post-war South Korea. He was also married with a family that had remained in the U.S.
When I was fifteen years old, my dad told me that when my Korean mother, Cho Keum Ok was six months pregnant with me, she was hit by a car. She was probably about twenty-four years old. She went into pre-term labor and was admitted to Il Sin Women’s Hospital, where I was delivered by Dr. Helen Pearl Mackenzie. Although my dad told me that I was born three months early and weighed two and a half pounds, I discovered recently that I was actually born four weeks early and weighed just over three pounds. I was able to confirm these facts by contacting Ilsin Christian Hospital, which still had my birth information on record.
I was born at noon, then later, according to my dad, at 8:00 pm that evening, he came to visit my mother and to meet me. He asked her where I was. My mother told him in broken English, “I not know, they take baby away, not bring baby back to me.” Dad was livid. He asked to speak with the personnel who were present at my birth. They gave him the runaround. He then asked to speak with the hospital administrators, only to be further stonewalled and lied to. He informed them that if they did not find me, he was going to tear the place down, brick by brick, until he found me because, “By God, the child is an American citizen and she had damn well better be treated like one.” The hospital administrators and the attending physician knew he was not going away until I was located. They led him downstairs to the hospital morgue where he saw me for the first time, lying on a cement slab, naked, cold, and dirty from the afterbirth, but still alive. He said I was so premature that my skin was transparent, and my organs were visible beneath the skin. He demanded that I be placed in an incubator, and reminded them of my American citizenship. They again tried to stall him by claiming that there were only two incubators in the entire city of Busan. He reiterated the point about my citizenship, and he said that he would be notifying the U.S. Embassy. He also informed them that he would be back in the morning.
Dad did come back the next morning. By then I had been placed in an incubator, with IVs in my wrists (I still have the scars to show for it) because I was not yet able to swallow. He told me my Korean grandmother was also there. She had very lovingly placed a blanket over the side of the incubator so I would not see the baby next to me, for that baby had died sometime in the night.
I lived with my birth mother for about a year. Dad would visit her, and paid her monthly support to help care for me. He also made sure I was placed in her family registry. However, he did not know what to do with me. He considered putting me in an orphanage because my birth mother told him that she was going to turn me loose on the streets when I turned two years old.
During this time, he was leading a double life. He already had a wife and three sons who had no knowledge of my mother or me. My dad’s youngest son, who was around twenty years old, was in the Air Force and stationed in Tokyo. He had obtained a personal leave from there to fly into Korea, as his mother was flying in to see Dad. While visiting, his mother found a train ticket that was previously thrown in the trash. This was a train ticket for my dad, my umma, and me. Dad admitted to having a relationship with Umma and to being my father. Shit hit the fan, and she gave him two options:
1. She would give him a divorce. He would be charged with adultery but free to marry my Korean mother.
2. She would adopt me and raise me as her own.
Dad chose option 2. (Smart man).
When we left Korea, my Korean mother gave me gifts to take to America: a baby quilt, a necklace, and a bracelet, which she had bought for me. She also made sure my dad had all my papers, including the family registry, which was written in English, Korean, and Chinese.
M y earliest memories of life in America begin at about age three. Dad had a job through the Vinnell Corporation, which assigned him to Bogota, Columbia. After that assignment, we moved to Seattle, Washington when I was four years old. This was also when I met my other two half-brothers.
My early childhood years and school years were difficult. Not only was I the only half-Asian child, I was the the only Asian child, and was also profoundly hearing-impaired. This added to the obstacles that I had to overcome while growing up in a predominantly white “Wonder bread” society during the late 1960s when racism was prevalent. My mom was the epitome of a “Mama Tiger.” No one—and I mean NO ONE—messed with her. I was very protected by her. She actually over-protected me, which did not help me in my later years, as I lost touch with my instincts about people.
Fortunately, she taught me to read when I was little. Being hearing-impaired, I discovered that reading was an avenue to communicating with the outside world. I was reading medical encyclopedias by the age of seven, and at a college level by fifth grade. Mom also made sure I had speech therapy: three long and intense years, including summers. How I hated it, but I hated being made fun of even more. It was my mother who taught me to be strong and to look inside of myself, to overcome society’s ignorance through my own sheer will and determination. She also told me I had inherited my dad’s ambition. She said I had fire in my belly and would succeed in life. My dad was there to see it all happen too.
After my dad died in 1992, my mom asked me a question that I never imagined: “How would you like for me to adopt you?” I was thirty-four years old with two daughters of my own by then. My answer? “Yes, of course I would love to be adopted by you.” I have often wondered how someone can get past the betrayal of adultery and then raise a child from that relationship? I asked her once and she told me that she loved my dad so much that she could not help but love me too, as I was a part of him. For that, I admire her. For that, I will always love her. For that alone, she deserves angel wings in heaven. I have searched for my Korean mother but have not located her yet. My message to her is this: I love you and have never stopped loving you. I hope you are all right. I thank my dad and both my mothers. Dad, I thank you for saving my life. Cho Keum Ok, I thank you for giving me life. And mom, I thank you for letting me have a life.
Nancy Cho Auvil was born in Busan, South Korea and lived with her Korean mother, Cho Keum Ok, for the first year of her life. Raised by her biological father and his wife, Nancy lived her early years in Africa and the U.S. Today she is a mother and grandmother, and considers the Pacific Northwest home.