ON THE DAY FATHER ANNOUNCED HIS DECISION TO MOVE THE WHOLE family to Seoul, I was as worried as I was excited. Competition for colleges in Seoul was much keener than it was in Taegu, and I knew I would look only worse in my report cards. But Seoul was everybody’s dream city; it was the capital of the nation and the center of all activities. “You should be glad,” Father said, “because you’ll attend good schools and reap the benefits of being taught by the best teachers.” As the third largest metropolis in Korea, Taegu had everything one needed for a comfortable lifestyle, but it didn’t offer Seoul’s educational opportunities. All the prestigious schools, both secondary and higher, were in Seoul, so it was no wonder parents in the country sold their houses and farmlands, even going bankrupt, in order to send their children to top colleges and universities in Seoul. My hungry, driven parents were determined to put their children through some of the most highly rated schools in the nation by whatever means necessary. They knew we needed no more than a Taegu college diploma for a trouble-free, middle-class life, but they expected more from their children. They wanted preeminence.
In January of 1969, we moved to Seoul. To have enough time to buy a house and help the children settle in time for the new semester, Father left a month ahead of everyone else, while Mother stayed behind for two weeks to clean the old house in Taegu and put it up for sale. Grandmother had to stay in a relative’s house until Father could bring her back to Seoul. Hence, we children traveled alone. Big Sister had already graduated from a two-year college and was teaching at an elementary school in a small town near Taegu and wouldn’t be coming with us, so Big Brother was captain of the team. Bundled up from top to toe against the knifelike wind of February, the four of us—Big Brother, Less Big Brother, Little Sister, and myself—boarded the train in a line, plopping down on our seats one by one like a bunch of tumblers. In 1969, the heating and cooling systems in public transportation were patchy at best, and we would be on the train for four hours. Bundled into six layers of ragged cotton clothing, we had a hard time standing straight and sitting comfortably, so we laughed and walked sideways to avoid falling down. Little Sister struggled especially hard, tumbling down on her back like a fat bowling pin. I had to be careful, too, wrapped in folds of worn underwear thicker than my arms. Luckily, we had nothing to carry but a shoulder bag Mother had packed for each of us. Mother had shipped all of our belongings and furniture to Seoul on a small truck. It didn’t cost us much to move everything we owned because we owned very little: four chests of drawers for eight people, and a small desk for each of the four children.
On the train, the four of us busily planned our future in Seoul. From our carriage window, we saw something bright in the frozen, gray sky—something to celebrate while our own planet was so barren. We saw hope in the air, hope as visible as a star, as Big Brother started to talk about his visions. Promising each of his siblings a handsome chunk of his earnings, he declared his plan to revolutionize Korea’s economic system. He was a born idealist, determined to end the exploitation of workers by capitalists, to play a leading role in maximizing the national wealth of Korea, and to return part of his earnings to his country by supporting artists and writers who would democratize the feudal culture. Following him, Less Big Brother proudly confessed his passion for politics; he wished to be a George Washington of Korea, a great leader heading the birth of a new country. His new party would consist of brilliant dissidents and clever tacticians who would place his Korea on top of the globe.
Less Big Brother turned to me suddenly. “What do you want to do?”
Caught off guard, I heard myself improvising, “I want to be the best in English in Korea.”
“That’s a great plan,” Big Brother said. “You could become a reporter for The New York Times office in Korea.”
“Even for a man, writing for The New York Times is the highest honor,” Less Big Brother added. “For a woman—”
“You have to be better than the best man at your job,” Big Brother interrupted. “That’s the only way a woman can get ahead.”
They were asking me to be exceptional. I felt my desire to please them, to make them proud, stirring once again in my chest.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Big Brother asked Little Sister.
Even at seven, Little Sister meditated before she spoke. “I want to be an inventor,” she pronounced.
“Excellent!” Big Brother said. “If there’s one thing this country can’t do without, it’s inventions—of all kinds. Our children will be in their prime in the twenty-first century, and in the twenty-first century, scientific and technological inventors will rule the world. I’m proud of you.”
“If you can figure out how to manufacture a flying saucer, you’ll be the world’s top scientist,” Less Big Brother suggested.
“You always come up with something ludicrous,” Big Brother snapped. “We don’t even know if flying saucers exist. She’d better go for something realistic, like an electronic plane to take us to New York in an hour and a half.” He looked at Little Sister and cooed, “Are you going to invent a plane like that?”
“I am,” she replied confidently. She was a dreamer like the rest of us.
On the train to Seoul, I discovered something new: my brothers understood my dream. This came to me as a revelation. That they, too, had dreams gave me hope, and that they, too, had suffered as dreamers suffer brightened up my dark mood.
Big Brother went from the top of his high school to one of the most elite university programs in the country. He was a freshman in economics, one of only fifty, at Seoul National University, and its graduates were famous for their contributions to the economic and social progress of their country. He was adored by his peers and teachers; everyone knew him for his rigor and compassion. Although his authoritarian behavior as the almighty oldest son prevented me from clearly seeing the gentleman in him, I could see the enormous impact he had on others. He awakened me, as he awakened his friends, to the concept of a country, to the idea of serving one’s people, and to the truth that there was something bigger—much bigger—than me in my life. How I wished I could possess his magnificent, commanding eyes! I dug a furrow between my brows, putting pressure on them to make my eyes look slanted.
But he noticed my scowl and scolded me. “What are you doing? What’s that face for? A woman should always smile.”
I don’t want to be a woman! I wanted to bark at him. I want to be somebody!
But I was his sister, and for this reason alone, I was expected to adopt excellence as my guiding principle. Just like Less Big Brother, who, after years of poor performance in school, suddenly picked up the highest grades and entered the best high school to prove he was Big Brother’s brother, I was to be nothing but the best to show that I was his sister.
I knew how much pressure Big Brother was under. He worked until he nearly ruined his health. Two years earlier, he had spent six months in bed with tuberculosis, and he still hadn’t recovered entirely. In terms of the competition and required test scores, being admitted into the economics department at Seoul National University was harder than being admitted to Harvard, and for the oldest son of a poor family with no extracurricular help, it was an achievement indeed. I knew that he gave up everything he liked to do in order to be a son faithful to Father’s expectations. He threw out not only playing guitar, painting, and reading for pleasure, but also sports, his social life, and dating.
Always, and with a sense of destiny, he set himself on fulfilling his role as the oldest son, while his little brother put his self-interest above all else. Big Brother was a second father to his little siblings, stuck with the duty of disciplining Less Big Brother, who habitually played truant from school and failed to make passing grades. As the “brat” picked up the habit of smoking and drinking at just fourteen, mixing with fallen young men and women, Big Brother would go to his teachers to apologize on his behalf, promising in vain to steer the delinquent in the right direction. “He’s incredibly knowledgeable and bright,” the older one would plead. “He just doesn’t want to make the effort. Do you know that he’s only fifteen and can explain Kafka to me? Can you give him one more chance, so that he can bring his talents to fruition?” It was in fact Big Brother who got Less Big Brother through the exams for the second best high school in Korea, who pushed him—over and over again—to show the best of himself.
Less Big Brother was handsome. His face was unusual in its combination of ideal opposites; it exuded a sophisticated mind and a simple, down-to-earth sensuality, a mental furnace boiling with wild ideas and meticulous logic. Almost a carbon copy of Father’s, it was pale but radiant with energy, with striking features and flawless symmetry. His smoldering eyes cast an air of seductive glamour into the distinguished features.
In the end, nobody, not even Big Brother, could prevent Less Big Brother from rotting in the cesspool of his own promise. Bereft of discipline, he was unable to channel any of the clashing creative thoughts in his head into an organized expression, so he just sank into a swamp of chaotic feelings. He was only a teenager, but he was an expert in sophistry. He already knew how to represent himself as a genius misunderstood by the world, how to call his laziness a thinking rebel’s rejection of mundane routines, and how to squeeze money out of his family.
The train slowed down to come to a jolting stop at Seoul Station. We picked up our bags and rushed out to the platform, spotting Father on the stairs leading to the ticketing boxes. Standing straight, away from the rails, holding his fedora above the crowd, he stood out like an alabaster statue.
Me (left) at twelve.
“Father!” we all cried, running toward him like a brood of chickens. “Father!”
“Don’t hurry!” he cried back. “You may fall down!” As if to prove him right, Little Sister plopped down on the platform, unable to stand the weight of the heavy clothing under her coat. Big Brother picked her up on his back, giving Less Big Brother his suitcase.
“Hold on to your brother!” Father shouted to Little Sister, and then to Big Brother, “Slow down!” Watching his children climb up the stairs, he seemed utterly satisfied. The breath from his mouth, easily visible in the February air, reminded me of the smoke from the train that had carried us to Seoul. At forty-nine, Father was of medium height, with a complexion of light yellow plaster, broad shoulders, and sturdy legs. He had a firm, tightly closed mouth and a prominent, round chin, giving him the austere but compassionate air of a middle-aged family man. At thirteen, I was captivated by his face. I could sense he had once been a romantic youth; from what Mother told me, I knew he still had a streak of his old dreaminess.
“He thought about becoming an actor before he got married,” she said to me once. “He was so very handsome that everyone encouraged him. But coming from a strict Confucian family, he talked himself out of it.” She smoothed out some crumpled tickets she had removed from his pockets. “Whenever I wash his pants, I check his pockets to see if there are little bills he forgot to take out. But I only see tickets for Hollywood movies he’s gone to see all by himself. I guess he likes to think he’s one of those handsome actors on the screen. What’s the name of the actor he adores, Paul Noo—?”
“Paul Newman,” I pronounced, “the good-looking fellow with steamy eyes!”
“I bet he thinks he is Paul Newman sometimes. He probably thinks if he had blue eyes, he would look just like him.” She laughed.
Boy, how could Father be that stuck up? I wondered. I never saw him looking at Mother as the famous actor looked at his female co-stars. It was impossible for me to picture him gazing at any woman with anything but the most efficient, professional attitude in his eyes.
“I’ll show you something.” Mother took a box out of his desk drawer. “Here are some pictures he’s proud of. He got them taken when he was at Peabody College in Nashville.” She handed them to me, with her finger on one of them. “As I told you, he was invited—and paid in full, including his room and board and expenses—to study in America by the U.S. secretary of state, and he chose Peabody College because it was one of the best for education, the subject he was interested in at that time.”
With his face tilted slightly to one side, Father wore a broad, impish smile, making long, thin puckers around his eyes that almost reached his hairline. It was the face of a man enjoying himself heartily, or of a naughty little boy pulling a prank to spice up the dull lives of the adults around him. The face of the beaming young man in the picture was so different from the face I knew; I could only imagine the tangled circumstances that had changed Father. The picture aroused my curiosity about America even further.
Father with his students at George Peabody College in America.
“Your father isn’t like other men,” Mother told me when I was thirteen. “He doesn’t care for women, not even for rich, pretty ones. There was this woman who had a crush on him, but he didn’t give her a look. Not because she wasn’t attractive, but because he looked at women as if they were stones. He was a stone himself.” Every time I heard this story, it struck me. For a man of Father’s age and with his smashing looks, not taking up a chance to womanize was very unusual. In his culture, a man who rejected such an easy opportunity was branded either a eunuch or a saint. Although polygamy had been legally repealed at the end of the Yi Dynasty, the custom of having as many wives as one could afford lingered on. As part of the Confucian heritage, extramarital affairs were accepted as a rite of passage for men. They were grudgingly tolerated by women and secretly recommended by other men, viewed as proof of manhood. In being so faithful to his oath of matrimony, Father was half a century ahead of his time.
“This woman coveted Father, who was a frequent customer at the fancy teahouse she owned,” Mother went on. “Nobody knew how many times she asked him out, but everyone knew how many times he had said no. She finally persuaded a friend of his, Kosan, to call him late one night and ask him to come over to a hotel room where she had checked herself in for the night. Father rushed to the hotel, believing Kosan’s lie that he had a personal emergency. When he saw the teahouse owner instead of his friend, he shouted, ‘What are you doing, woman? Can’t you find better things to do? Get dressed and go home. If you got drunk and lay down on a street in broad daylight, it wouldn’t be as wasteful as this.’ He slammed the door and walked to the elevator.”
“Who told you the story?” I asked.
“Kosan did,” she said. “I believe him. I know your father.”
The following Sunday, Kosan found himself speaking for all the gentlemen at the table, who were of one mind in wondering about Father: “He won’t do anything to hurt his children. They are his life, and he knows they’ll be devastated if they find out he has another woman.” As they packed Father’s empty seat with the secondhand books they had brought to exchange, they wrote off his absence with their dime-store psychology. They couldn’t have guessed that Father was being faithful to Mother because he was being faithful to himself.
“In any case, he’s not a man,” the men in the teahouse decided. “We know that much.”
“Is Father not a man?” I interrupted Mother, wide-eyed.
Mother gave me an amused look. “My dear child, you take things too seriously. They were joking.”
I didn’t believe they had been joking, but I bit my tongue. “But … but … Does he love you? Is that why he turned down the woman who offered herself?” The possibility of him not loving her had always made me ache.
Mother stared at me. “You’re only a kid. A kid isn’t supposed to ask a question like that.”
“But …” I persisted. I couldn’t understand why my question upset her. I wanted to see Mother and Father holding hands and acting like a young couple in love. Because Grandmother eavesdropped on them out of jealousy, they couldn’t talk freely even in the privacy of their own bedroom. But Father seemed hardly better than Grandmother, thinking of Mother as no more than a maid hired for the family.
More incredible to me was that Mother didn’t seem to mind at all. To a woman like Mother, romance and love would be a luxury, and I had no right to make her long for something she didn’t ask for. When I was growing up, most of my peers didn’t question that a man showing romantic love for his wife was a wimp.
“He’s a responsible father and he doesn’t mess around on me,” she replied sharply. “He is so devoted to his family that he doesn’t have the time to go camping with his friends on weekends. He spends every penny he earns for your education, don’t you see? He is a man among men.”
“So he loves you, then,” I said.
“He won’t leave us, no matter what,” she assured me. “If there is anything you can absolutely count on in this changing world, it’s your Father’s devotion.”
I thought she was telling me the truth. In order not to repeat his father’s mistake, he avoided women as the captain of a ship would avoid reefs. But I wasn’t proud of Father; I was rather ashamed of him. He suppressed romantic joy, giving his wife nothing but orders. I decided that if I could speak English as fluently as one of those glamorous Hollywood actresses, a man wouldn’t be able to brush me off the way Father brushed Mother off. Didn’t Grandfather leave his good old wife for a young, English-speaking woman? Didn’t Father sneak out on Mother to experience the vicarious hot love of the theater screens? There seemed only one way to be free from Grandmother’s fate, and this was mastering the English language. I had to speak it as well as, if not better than, all those women Father secretly courted in those dark, empty halls.
Running to meet Father on the train platform in Seoul Station, I saw the face that his children had always loved. Now, I know that it was love—love that my family was unable to express except in the form of quarrels—governing our house. It was love in a dust storm. Blinded by the wind, we each made the mistake of believing the others were throwing dirt at us, and picked up the same dirt to hurt each other in return.
