Mother
that I knew, Mother that I did not [19,000] [Feb 14, 2010]
[The Korean language parts
are left in order to help translation. They are to be removed from the final
English version.]
Content
1] Introduction
[210+3000+974]
2] My Childhood: Working mother,
lack of affection and source of pride [3740]
3] Mother on education
[6800]
4] Mother as a wife: her
relationship with father [1000]
5] My relationship with
father [3300]
6] Mother Finding a mission
(1): The Politics of Unification and mother’s relationship with me (1974-1982)
[5130]
7] Mother Finding a mission
(2): Spiritual Search (1984-1997) [2900]
8] Conclusion [720]
1] Introduction [210+3000+974]
Although it
would be almost natural by now to refer to mother as Ilsun as both Vana and
Yujin, and many others have done and are doing, I shall be using the term
“mother” to refer to her simply because I enjoy the warm feeling that I get
calling her and referring to her as “mom.” To me, she will always be Mom, ie, I
want her continue being a mom, in spite of various theories of negative co-dependency
relationships between mother and children.
Before starting
this article about mother, I should tell the reader first something about its
history before its birth of the story that I am going to tell. This history is
worth telling because it affected greatly what and how I would write about her.
It went though several stages, and its evolution would have been totally
unpredictable seen from the vantage point of several years ago, and even that
of a year ago. To tell the ending of the story briefly first, when I was first
asked to write about mother about two years ago, I was not very enthusiastic,
but now I feel almost like a missionary in spirit about this project. Why? That
is my story about mother as well as about me.
Let me continue with the stages of the
prehistory first.[3000]
Stage 1:
When I learned
in 1998 that mother was interested in writing an autobiography, I thought it
was a good idea. After nearly 80 years of life in many countries, a person in
mother’s situation must have something to say, both to family as well as to the
world. I was thinking about it firstly more in terms of an autobiography of an
immigrant woman rather than a story of a heroine. As a sociologist, I thought
it would be good for any old person to write about their life. It would be make
a contribution to a history of common people. But I also had an ideological
resistance to self-aggrandizing style of writing that was common in
autobiography or biography. I believed that there was a slight tendency in our
family for self-aggrandization, which I strongly disliked and distanced myself
from. I had little interest in an epic story of a great family. Please leave me
out.
On the other
hand, as I became older, seeing the next generation was getting married and
having their own children, I felt the need to convey the story of our family to
the generation who does not understand Korean language fully. There has been a
communication gap between mother and her grandchildren. It would be good for
the grandchildren to understand more and better about how their parents and
grandparents lived. Mother’s autobiography would play an important role in
this. It would work as a family history. Her auto-biography would of course be
in Korean language. But once written, its content could be communicated to
grandchildren in English. This is how my interest in mother’s autobiography and
writing in English started
Mother must have
completed her first draft of autobiography around 1998. It took her more than a
year to complete this first version since writing was on and off, and there
seem to have been several different drafts. At any rate, a version was
completed and mother found someone to type the draft, perhaps around year 2000,
and an electronic file was sent to me by e-mail from the typist on mother’s
request. (Mother lived in Toronto since father’s death in 1984. And my own
family moved to Australia in 1992 where we continue living.) It was about 60
typewritten pages long. I divided it into sections and put subtitles so that it
could be read in sections and sub-plots could easily be identified. By this time,
I had a homepage in World Wide Web, made mostly of family pictures, and I placed
mother’s autobiography as a family document there, so that any members of
family dispersed over several countries could have access to it. Its access was
not protected, so that anyone could read it, and some must have.
However, I did
not think it would have interested anyone outside the family even mildly. Even
inside family, it did not seem to have made a big impact though it did have
some on me, though not big. This was rather short autobiography told about mother’s
life experiences in stages, from parents, birthplace, childhood, family
upbringing, schooling, university in Japan, marriage, relationship with
husband, the Korean war, then immigration to Brazil, then again to Canada,
going to North Korea to meet grandfather, and it ended with father’s death and
grown up children having more or less successfully settled in their respective
societies.
The parts of the
mother’s life that impressed me most were the ones that were unfamiliar to me. They
were mostly about her upbringing before marriage, but also mother’s
relationship with father, especially the painful memories, also remained in my
heart. As it stood, it was not a remarkable story that would interested other
people. I got what I wanted, a common people’s story. Mother tried continuously
to have the story published, but she was not successful. I also thought no one
would be interested in her life story.
Stage 2:
After this point,
seven years after the first typed version of mother’s autobiography circulated
in 2000 within our family, the publication in 2007 of an article on (maternal)
grandfather’s life in a major South Korean monthly magazine, called Shin-Dong-A
(New East Asia) provided a new impetus to mother’s autobiography. The article
written by a historian in South Korea, whose specialization was the cultural
and social life in Korea during the Japanese colonial period. The author
described Li JongMan (maternal grandfather) as remarkable man, a “beautiful
rich man,” a top ranking businessman in Korea who was in business not for
profit but for improving society. It is apparent that the article was well received
in South Korea where the big businesses were not well respected. Li JongMan’s
nobles oblige stood in contrast to the selfish riches in South Korea. We, as
family members, were impressed about the newly discovered aspect of a forgotten
historical figure, who was our grandfather, and made us proud of him. We had
known about the fact that maternal grandfather ran one of the business groups
that paralleled the early colonial versions of Samsung and Hyundai, but we did
not know and appreciate what kind of person he was. Did mother know? I was not
sure. The new appreciation of maternal grandfather as a symbolic historical
figure affected the way the mother’s project on autobiography was received
within family. The focus of attention within family began to move toward a
better appreciation of maternal grandfather, and mother’s life began to be seen
in connection with that her father. This also meant the project on mother’s
autobiography became linked to a project on biography of her father. In
retrospect, there was, of course, an important connection. Mother’s North Korea
visit had changed her life for good. We knew that, but had not been thinking
about it too much when mother’s autobiography emerged.
Even before this
point, I had already obtained all materials on Li JongMan from mother, and was
collecting further materials on him, though not actively, with an intention to
study and write about him some day. Until then, there was simply not enough
material for writing about him. However, after the publication of the 2007
article, I began to understand that there were a fair bit of untapped materials
on Li JongMan available in South Korea. One would have to be in Korea for a
long time to collect these materials. There were Korean researchers involved in
doing historical researches that related to Li Jong Man life. I could not
compete with them from Australia. I began collecting their publications rather
than original historical materials. However, I did not link this project on
material grandfather with that of mother’s autobiography. It was Vana who was
most interested in making Li JongMan as a family project linking to mother’s
autobiography. Vana came up with various ideas for awareness campaign within
family about Li JongMan, and about the significance of mother’s life on our
life. Vana suggested that not only us the children to write something about
mother, but also grandchildren to do the same about their grandmother.
It is apparent
that not everyone was enthusiastic. It was not that there was anyone who did
not appreciate Ilsun as their mother or grandmother, but coming up with
something to write about her beyond that of average mother or grandmother was
difficult. Nothing emerged on this front. However, Vana was persistent on another
project: a video documentary project linking mother and grandfather, and this
time, herself. After much time and energy, with support of her husband, Eric,
she managed to produce an an hour long documentary that brought mother in a new
light. With this documentary as a bridge, she was successful in reaching all
kinds of people with the theme of peaceful unification of Korea that was one of
mother’s lifelong project that did not come out strongly enough in the first
version of autobiography. I was not a bystander in this project, but this was
essentially Vana’s project. I watched Vana from distance, giving feedback only when
asked, but as an anxious brother whose sister was trying learn bicycle riding
for the first time in her life. In my view, the documentary project did not produce
sufficient return for the time and energy, and money invested on the project.
Nonetheless, to Vana’s credit, it opened up many new doors and possibilities on
mother’s project. No one among our siblings could have spent that much time and
money on such a project.
Stage 3:
Meanwhile a big
geographic, and spiritual, movement was occurring in our family. This resulted
from the decisions by mother in 2006 and Yujin around same time, two related,
but independent moves, to relocate to Jeju Island, South Korea, after many
decades of respective lives in Toronto and the Emissary community in Sunrise
Ranch in Colorado. Although Yujin and mother do not live together in the same
place in Jeju Island, due to their proximity and joint activities in Jeju
Island, with Yujin forming a new centre for the Korean Emissary community, and
mother joining its activities, but also pursuing her own independent activities
with new networks of like minded people, their joint presence in Jeju became a
new focal point for our extended family. On top of this, Vana’s frequent visits
to Korea around this time in the process of documentary making and search for new
materials also contributed to create a critical mass for emergence of the new
spiritual centre. This new focal point was not simply that of our family, but
it was linked to something much larger, to a cultural and spiritual force not
only in South Korea, but that of North Korea, and the world. When I and
Chungsoon first visited mother’s new apartment in Jeju in December of 2006 to
help her with settling in Korea, I was not yet fully aware of what was to
emerge later.
Stage 4:
In December of
2008, two years after the first visit to mother in Jeju, I made a plan for
another visit. By this time, Yujin had come to Korea and bought Joyville
Resort, and had been running a regular offering of the Art of Living seminar
using the building facility of the resort business. When I told mother that I
would be coming to her in late December, mother told me that she would be
attending the Art of Living Seminar, again, and asked me, “What will you do?” She
suggested that I attend it together with her, to which I said yes immediately.
I (and Chungsoon) was the only person in family who had not visited Yujin in
the Sunrise Ranch even though he was there over twenty five years, and I was
interested in the Art of Living Seminar that I heard of many times, but had not
had a chance to participate. My participation in the Art of Living Seminar in
the Korean Emissary Community in Jeju had a big impact on me in a way that I did
not foresee. It was as if I found the meaning of life for the first time. In
many ways, I had been ready for it for thirty years, but the opportunity had
not come. After coming back to Australia, I wrote in Korean a twenty page long reflection
not simply on the seminar participation, but also on my life in general, where
I recalled my observations in 1989 on the change in mother’s life when I,
together with wife and son, returned to Canada after four years of stay in
Japan. By this time, having become free from father’s presence in her life,
mother was pursuing a new mode of life, creative and spiritual. Though I was
aware of the new life that mother was leading, my mind was too focused on completing
my doctoral dissertation that was taking too long. I had missed another chance
to understand mother and also to change my life. In writing my reflection on my
life and mother in January 2009, I became more interested in writing a biography
of mother. However, I did not have time, and by this time, Bomnahl, a publisher
of spirituality books in Korea, had been recruited to help to write mother’s
(auto)biography. It was obvious if I were to write it, it would have to wait
until I retire from work, but Bomnahl seemed to be a suitable person who can
work on the project now.
Even at this
point, I did not think my contribution to mother’s biography was necessary, if
someone more professional like Bomnahl would work on the project. Throughout
2009, Bomnahl and Vana were working very closely on the project together, and
came up with the idea of linking mother’s life story much more closely to that
of her father, Li JongMan. Mother had entrusted all of her diaries and
correspondences to Bomnahl, and over a periods of several months, Bomnahl had gone
through most of mother’s diaries and correspondences, which none of us had
access. Even mother had not re-read old diaries, and her memories were becoming
dim on a lot of details of her lives. Bomnahl adopted a strategy of
interviewing mother on the basis of the information he gained from her diaries.
Through this process, Bomnahl had become the most knowledgeable person about
our family history. In addition to the personal documents on mother, Bomnahl
had been pursuing the linkage between mother’s life to that of her father.
Meanwhile, he had discovered a couple of important documents on Li JongMan that
had not been available so far that greatly aided in understading of Li Jong
Man’s philosophy in life and business. Importance of the discovery of these documents
were such that the project on Li JongMan’s life could now stand on its own feet
without that on mother’s life. By this stage, it was becoming necessary to make
an assessment of the relative importance of Li JongMan’s life and mother’s:
which is more important? What was the role of Li JongMan, maternal grandfather,
who disappeared in 1948 on mother’s life since this point? I was not sure. As
for his influence or role in my life, I would have easily said, none, or almost
none. On reflection, I can now say that I had not sufficiently understood and
appreciated the significance of maternal grandfather role in mother’s life
until late 2009 or January in 2010 (now). This began to change during the month
of January this year as I will explain later.
Meanwhile, on
request from Bomnahl, for contribution by four children to mother’s biography
in the middle of 2009, I began to think about what to write. In response to the
request to participation of all four children, and sharing by each of us on the
idea for the direction of the mother’s biography project, I expressed my
resistance to writing of a heroine’s, or a great family’s story. I had by this
time gone though a reflection of a long period of my uneasy relationship with
(my) father since my participation in the Deepening seminar in Australia, where
I had a chance in a “time travel” session to re-visit father in his last stage
of his life. On thinking about mother, I had thought about reflecting this
aspect of mother’s life, especially her painful relationship with father as
well as myself. Grandfather’s role did not come into this picture in a major
way in December last year when I prepared an outline of basic points on my
writing on mother.
Stage 5:
Although having
promised Bomnahl and myself, that I would complete my writing during my
vacation time in Korea in December 2009, away from my school, this did not
happen. One of the main reasons for it was that I had spent most of my free
time in Jeju in mother’s apartment, scanning her diaries and correspondences. I
was determined to turn all of important family documents into a digital form so
that everyone in the family would have an easy access to them. Scanning all of
mother’s diaries (about thirty notebooks) and correspondences while I was in her
apartment was the top priority in my trip to Korea. After coming back to
Australia, I still could not spend time on writing because, among other things,
I had to process the scanned raw materials into more codified, accessible
document format. This meant reading the content of the scanned materials and
putting key words on titles. As I continued reading mother’s diaries back in
Australia, the process that began in Korea, I began slowly realizing how little I knew my own mother. It is
perhaps true that mother did not and does not know me either. The members of a
family all know about each other, but at the same time, we all lead separate
lives and do not really know each other, especially at the deep level of each
other’s emotional and spiritual life. This can happen even if two individuals
lived under the same roof for many decades, but in our case, we had lived many
years in different countries with few visits. Even when we were living together
or in the same city as in the case of the 1970s, we had not understood each
other fully. That was the realization that gained on reading mother’s diaries over
three weeks in January this year, 2010. That would naturally affect how I write
about mother. That was the last stage, and this is still only the end of the
beginning of the introduction! Gee!
Having finished
the prelude to my introduction, I still have to write the introduction. The
idea for this part came before my
reading of mother’s diaries. It can still be a useful point for starting my
story about mother.
Here it goes. [974]
What I think
about mother has changed over time. Mother has changed, I have changed, and
naturally, therefore, what I think about mother has changed. Not once, but many
times, thus it has been evolving. However, even for a given time, mother has
been a very contradictory figure to me conjuring up complex emotions, both
positive and negative. It was as if I could not live without her, but neither
could I live with her. When I lived at home with her, soon or later, I would
say to myself, I must get out of here. (Mother basically says the same about me
in her diary. So we are even on this score.) Often, she was one of the most
irritable people to me. Even if I was married and had a child of my own, she
would constantly try to teach me about all kinds of things. In many occasions,
mother would also say in absolute terms that she knew what was right or she was
right. To her, it was not simply a personal opinion but the truth.
Perhaps one of
the most irritable experiences I had with her was being couched by her while
driving. I had far more driving experience than she had, had a good sense of
direction, and was good in reading maps, but when she was in my car, she would often
couch me constantly while I was driving so that it would drive me crazy. I do
not know how she was with other people, and how she changed over time, but I am
thinking of the period of 1989 to 1992, before I left Canada. Felix would still
remember an incident around 1989 or 1990 when he was age 12 or 13. I took him
to Niagara Fall in a car together with mother, Chungsoon and Yongsoo. I think
it was something like an aquatic park that was popular with children. For some
reason, Marina was not there and we took only Felix with us.
Near Niagara
Fall, mother would couch me about direction when the route that I had chosen on
the basis of study of map was different from the route that was familiar to
her. She would insist that the route I was taking was not the best way and I
should change direction. This must have gone on for about five minutes. We were
still in a small highway, not yet inside a city. I could not stand anymore, so
I stopped car, stepped out, and asked her to drive, knowing that she could not.
Although mother learnt driving at an old age, she stopped driving, and would not
have had a driving license by then. Basically, it was not possible for her to
drive, and that was not what she wanted either. So, she apologized (I think),
and I continued driving. I remember worrying at the time about how this little incident
would impress on young Felix. We have not had much contact with each other when
he was small, then we went away to Japan and had never visited Canada.
Basically, I was playing a role of an uncle that he did not know well, and this
trip had been planned as a getting to know uncle and his family, and designed
to leave good memory together. (I must hear about this incident from Felix some
day.)
Mother is also
remembered by me as a person who walks
in front of others when walking together. A typical situation would be a
family outing to a restaurant, and she would walk one or two meters in front of
all others. I have seen some other people doing the same in a family outing,
and every time I see this, I would think of mother. It seemed likely that she
was not aware of the fact that she did not walk together with family. She must
have been thinking about something a couple of steps ahead. I do not recall her
doing the same during my visit to her over last couple of years, but I tend to
link this behavior of hers to a character that is not necessarily negative:
mother is goal oriented, future oriented, ideals oriented. These goals were
always ahead of her and she was orienting herself to these goals, and sometimes
she was not even aware of detailed movements she was making. I say this because
I am somewhat like that.
I am not sure
whether I walk in front other others when I go out with my own family,
Chungsoon and Yongsoo. Chungsoon and Yongsoo would surely say that I decide
everything when we go out and they are made to follow. Indeed, I do make plans
for the whole family considering everyone’s wishes and then try to follow it.
From my perspective, I do so because only because no one does the planning, but
I get blame for loss of freedom and spontaneity in carrying out the plan. My
life has been also driven by ideals, and I see this in mother’s life. On
reflection, when I think about mother couching, trying to teach others, and
even walking in front of others, I can relate all of them to mother’s idealism. At each stage of her life,
she set up big goals to achieve and daily life was oriented to achieving these
goals rather than enjoying each day. So much for Eckhart Tolle’s “Living the
Present.” Underlying all goals were big and noble ideals. I do identify with
this aspect of mother’s character.
For the rest of
this reflection on mother and mother’s life, I shall follow roughly a chronological
order from my perspective. I shall look at mother through my eyes both from
that the period that I experienced and from the present. This is finally the
end of introduction.
2] My Childhood: Working mother, lack of
affection and source of pride [3740]
Having been born
in 1948, the experience of Korean War (1950-53) should have been an important
part of the first couple of years of my life and certainly mother’s. However, I
remember very little of the experience of the life as a war refugee, of a drama
like travel during the war from Seoul to Busan, and of the beginning of the
primary schooling in war barracks. So my story starts from my primary school
years in Seoul from the middle of 1950s.
My childhood
memory of mother is that of a working mother. Mother was not home during
daytime. Cooking was done by a de facto maid who was often a young woman who
was a relative. And I shared a room with my paternal grandmother most of my
life in Korea. As a first son in the family, I was especially loved by
grandmother in a very Korean way. Therefore grandmother played the role of
mother to me in terms of affection. Even if mother would have been home in
evenings, I remember little about motherly affection at skinship level. (Don’t
be sad hearing this, mom.) To me, this was provided by grandmother. But
grandmother’s affection was rather partial, being mainly directed to son rather
than daughters. For Okkyung and Vana, to whom grandmother’s affection was not available;
the lack of skinship affection from mother must have left a permanent mark in
their lives. Okkyung, even after having her own children, had recalled again
and again lack of mother’s affection in childhood. Vana, on the other hand,
thought she was the only one not getting affection and love because she was the
second daughter. She also told this story again and again over many decades. The
situation may have changed with the birth of the last child Yujin to whom mother
began to pay more attention. I recently asked mother about this period and lack
of skinship contact with children, she simply said she did her best balancing
work and home.
It would be too
one sided to describe mother’s relationship with children at this period as
cold and lacking in affection. The fact that our mother was working full time,
especially working as a manger of a factory was a source of enormous pride to
us as we became teenagers. The fact that both mother and father graduated
Japanese universities during the colonial period was mentioned again and again
by people around us outside family. People would tell us how lucky we were to
have such educated parents, and how proud we must be. And as we grew, so it became,
not only for father who graduated from Tokyo Imperial University, but also for
mother who graduated from Japan Women’s University. The particular image that
symbolized our pride for mother was captured in a picture of mother in a horse
riding suit mounted on a horse in urban Seoul. This image was striking not only
in the early 1960’s South Korea, but even today. I remember that around 1970 in
Canada when we siblings were trying to divide the pictures in the family album,
everyone wanted to get that picture of mother mounted on a horse. The picture,
I think, went to Vana. In order to get this picture, she must have yielded
other important pictures. I had not seen the picture for many decades, but recently
it appeared in mother’s apartment. Vana must have duplicated it and given to
mother. I saw the picture also appearing in the documentary made by Vana. Thus
this pride had continued.
Mother wrote in
her first version of autobiography that neither her mother, nor her father, not
even her husband encouraged her to learn cooking and to stay home as a mother
and housewife. All key figures in her life wanted her not as a housewife, but
as a career woman. In this sense, she symbolized a new generation of a modern
married woman in Korea of the 1940s to 60s.
However, mother’s
privileged status disappeared as our family left Korea to migrate to Brazil,
then to Canada. So it did our pride in mother that was based on her social
status. She became a housewife in new countries even though she continued
working in various capacities beyond family household. In Brazil she was a
working class housewife without husband. She began to cook for the first time
in her life. She was home all the time even though she was often engaged in
laboring work delivered to our house. In our immigrant life in Brazil, all of
us except Yujin, who was too young, began to work full time in our teens.
Although mother was home all the time, we did not appreciate her presence
enough because, by then, we were busy trying to adapt to a new country.
3] Mother on education [6800]
Considering the
fact that mother was among the most educated for her generation of married
women, mother was not an “education mama” that was becoming common in Korea.
Like most Korean middle class mothers she had a deep interest and concern for
children’s education, but she did not push children to study or attend small
details in the educational rat race that was developing in Korea. She tried to
provide big pictures but was not closely involved in children’s daily study
life. This distant approach to education became even more distant as we grew
up, but especially after we left Korea. The main reason was the language
barrier in a new country. By this time children were learning language faster
and teenage children relied less on parents (mother) for guidance.
In my case, when
I was in middle school in Korea, I was not especially interested in study, and
my academic standing in middle school stood in the middle of a large class of
sixty students. Had I continued living in Korea, my chance of going to a top
ranking university would have been very slim. However, the experience of
immigrant life as a teen ager changed me, in fact all of us, greatly. I was
working full time as a teenager, but I began to study hard. As I note from the diaries
and correspondences from that period, late 1960s, which I had a chance to go
through last November in preparation for this writing, our working experience
as teen agers had a great impact on us, far stronger than anything parents
could provide. Working in a working class environment, all three of us,
Okkyung, Vana and I, seemed to have felt strongly that we did not want to stay
in that social position, and that we did not want to become like them
culturally. This work experience in teenage period seemed to have provided us a
strong motivational for achieving something in life. At least that was the case
with me.
In 1981, mother
was awarded a prize for Great Mother by the Korean Community in Toronto. It was
widely reported at the time and many people congratulated her for “her”
achievement. Mother’s diary reveals that her feeling at the time was rather
ambivalent about this award and she felt no special pride for the big fuss that
other people were making at the time. However, the fact that she was awarded the
Great Mother prize remained a permanent record in her life since then, and
mother gradually seemed to have grown to the feeling that she was entitled to
feel pride about the prize. The prize was for the role played by her for the
achievement of children: in our case, the fact that Yujin was awarded Rhode
scholarship, and three other children were doing PhD.
I do not know
how Okkyung, Vana or Yujin felt at the time. I, for one, could not see how the
fact that I was doing PhD had anything to do with mother. As far as I was
concerned, mother had little influence on my life, especially after we left
Korea. This was the way I felt until recently when I was asked to write about mother
in the project for her biography. Most likely Yujin thought differently and
perhaps Vana too. However, it is probable that Okkyung and I shared the thought
that we determined our lives rather than parents, and that mother or father
played no role in our doing PhD. Starting from the life in Brazil, there was
hardly any consultation with parents, and there was no parental advice that
played a key role in our key career decision making.
When I began to
reflect on this matter from November last year, gradually a different picture
began to emerge. The image of mother that emerged was, not that of the career
woman, the female manager, or the woman on horse back in middle of Seoul city,
but an immigrant woman in Brazil, without husband but with four children,
working at home, sometimes knitting, and sometimes making patterns on women’s
blouses with industrial sewing machine. Why did she come down in her social
position so much? For what purpose? The answer was clear. It was for children’s
future. How could I not have appreciated this fact earlier? And thought that I
worked fulltime as a teenager, made my own living, and paid for my university
studies without parent’s financial help.
Then, I recalled
the life in Toronto in the 70s during my university years. Although mother
looked like a housewife, she was in fact running a business, that of a rooming
house. She managed rentals of 5 rooms in the second and third floors of the
Albany house father bought. We all lived in the first floor and basement. It
was these rents from upstairs that were paying the house mortgage and providing
families living expenses. Father’s income from his employment played no role
here since that fund went into buying other houses in time. Mother was not
simply managing a rental house. She was also managing people, various kinds of
tenants over many years.
Then I also
recalled her intellectual life during this period. Although mother could not
read books in English with sufficient proficiency as her children did, she was
continuously reading one book after another. In the early 1970s, most of books
were from Japan. During this period, the number of Koreans in Toronto was still
small, being at most several thousands. She not only ordered books from Japan,
but also subscribed to two monthly magazines from Japan, Sekai and Bungeshunju.
These were intellectual magazines of the top standard from Japan that were more
at the level of Nation than that of Time Magazine. By the late 1970s the size
of Korean immigrant community grew considerably and there had appeared many
local ethnic Korean newspapers, both in Toronto and other parts of North
America. This was a political period of her life as I will be discussing later.
Mother was busy monitoring the political opinions of Korean communities in
North America. In May 11, 1980, the entry to her diary, mother listed the names
of all publications that she was subscribing to at the time. There were three
four monthly magazines, two from Japan, one from Korea, and one from USA, six
weekly newspapers, and one daily: Sekai (Japanese Monthly), Bungeshunju
(Japanese Monthly), Shindonga (Korean Monthly), Hanyang (ethnic Korean monthly
in USA), New Korea Times (Toronto Korean Weekly), Minjung Shinmun (Toronto
Korean Weekly), Korea Times (Toronto Korean Weekly), Canada News (Toronto
Korean Weekly), Hanguk Ilbo (Korean daily), Haewoe HanMinbo (New York Korean
Weekly), Dokripshinmun (Philadelphia Korean Weekly). It is clear that mother
was no ordinary housewife.
I also recall
how watching the world news in TV was an important part of her daily life.
Dinner was exactly at 6 pm. The reason was that she had to watch 6:30pm news
every day. Normally, when I was living with mother, I would watch it together
with her. Watching the news on the world politics was as exciting to her as it
was to me. Yongsoo would have noticed that at our home in Australia dinner time
was news time all his life. It is dinner time, turn TV news on!
When I returned
to Toronto in 1989 after four years in Japan, I found that the books she was
reading changed largely from politics to spirituality. This was an area that I
was not familiar with at the time and she had advanced in this field so much
that I could no longer catch up with her, especially since I was too busy with
my own work. Mother’s diary records and comments on all books she was reading
at each point of her life. Since father’s death in 1984, her reading seemed to
have reached a rate of two or three books per month for most of months that she
was not travelling. That would be more than twenty a year every year. They were
not novels; they were almost entirely non-fiction books, only with some exception.
Mother would often send books to children she would like to recommend. Sometime
she bought several copies of the books she would like her children to read,
sending one for each of us. This happened throughout last twenty years. In a
way, she was an incorrigible teacher and missionary. She could not stop being
so. We may sometimes, or often, get tired of mother, but it was difficult not
to be affected by her energy for life. That must have been her educational role
not only to her children, but also to all who came into contact with her.
4] Mother as a wife: her relationship
with father [1000]
I had always
known that the relationship between mother and father did not involve much
affection, but I had regarded this as a common character of the marital
relationship of that generation of Koreans, not something specific to our
parents. Most Korean couples of that generation were like that. As I learned
more about Japan, it was the same in Japan. It was thus partly East Asian
culture and partly a generational culture. In general Korean marriages in my
parent’s generation did not start from love, nor was it based on love. An ideal
marriage was one in which couple grew into an affectionate relationship after marriage,
and their mutual appreciation growing in time. Practically speaking, the
marriage of this kind was first of all for raising children. It was children
that held the couple together. Both sides of the couple played their role as
guardians of children. That was more important than the any affectionate
relationship between them. For long, I thought it was no different in the case
of my parents.
However,
mother’s 1998 autography revealed to me for the first time in my life that
mother was greatly affected by lack of affection from father throughout her
life. She devoted a considerable number of pages of her first autobiography on
this subject. She told how she fell in love with father soon after marriage,
but also how her love was not returned and how she was hurt. But she carried on
by devoting her energy to help father’s business by working as a manager of a
small scale tire factory that father started. Father could have been simply a
man of his generation who did not and could express affection either to wife or
to his children. Such fathers were common among Korean men of that generation. However
father had gone beyond this role of a traditional husband and father. Father
was involved in extra-marital affairs in two occasions, once in Japan, soon after
the Korean war, when he had been living and working in Japan while mother faced
the Korean war with children without husband, and another time in the second
half of 1950s in Korea when I was a primary school student. About the first
incident I did not know, while of the second case I had a vivid memory of a talk
of divorce in family. A marriageable age, female country cousin who lived with
us and helped with cooking told us children that, “if you are asked in court
which parents you loved more, make sure you say ‘we love both equally.’” When
this incident was over, I, perhaps, Okkyung and Vana also, forgot about it.
Life moved on.
However,
mother’s autobiography showed that these incidents were never forgotten. They
played a key role in mother burying her emotions but always missing the fire of
love that was ignited in her, but put down. Her feeling of loss was great, and
she had since then always lived with the yearning for the imaginary case where
her love was returned by the man she loved. Eventually, this case would become
a reality through rekindling of her admiration for father that was lost and
rediscovered, who in turn passed on to her a mission, that of unification, for
her life.
Father, on the
other hand, was incapable of love. His temporary diversions with other women
had not been initiated by him. As mother revealed in her autobiography, it is
always the case that other woman had found father attractive and had taken
initiative to pull father to them. Father had been brought up in a cultural environment
where the emotional life did not develop. He was incapable of expressing
emotions, especially positive ones toward others. When I think about the
situation of mother discovering father having an affair with a Japanese woman
while living in Japan by himself, I could easily imagine the scale and sense of
outrage and betrayal. Mother faced Korean War without father because father was
sent to USA before the war on a government mission. Given the war situation, he
could not return to Korea and stayed in Tokyo working for the US army. Eventually
father learned whereabouts of family, and he began sending money to us. But it
took several years until mother could arrange a visit to Japan and see father.
It was when she arrived in Japan that she learned that a Japanese woman was
pregnant by father. As I read about this in mother’s autobiography, I asked
myself whether I could have behaved as father did. I would not, and could not.
Even I felt a sense of outrage on learning about this incidence. However, I learnt
about this story about father and mother only in year 2000 when mother’s
autobiography was sent to me. Father had been dead since 1984. And the incident
had occurred around 1954, nearly a half century ago. Moreover, father was a
changed man in his last years. So, the point about delving into such story
about the past is that these incidents were keys to understanding mother, and
that I learned it so late.
However, even
after I read mother’s autobiography in 2000, I had not sufficiently understood
the depth of feeling she had about father throughout her life. This was, of
course, not simply due to the old memory of what happened in the 1950’s, but
every time there was some tension between them, she was reminded of the old
wounds. She felt that she was living with the same man still unchanged. I only
learned about this over last few weeks by reading mother’s diaries. She wrote
again and again in her diaries, especially during the 1970s, but also in the
1980s, that she would like to be freed from her husband. In April 1979, she
wrote in her diary: “I will be destroyed if I continue living with him”, and
several days later, “I am in in peace when I am alone, but my peace is broken
when I am with him.” On the basis of this situation, she would go on writing articles
about women’s education and ideal society, and so on.
5] My relationship with father [3300]
Father’s
relationship with children was not affectionate, but it was not same for all
children. Among four of our siblings, my relationship with father had been the
worst. As the youngest child whose age was greatly separated from others, Yujin
was always treated with affection. Among the older three siblings, Vana often
was in a good term with father playing a diplomatic role among family members. It
is not entirely clear when and why my relationship with father became bad, but it
seems that it was not until we moved to Canada. I do not recall that back in the
old days in Korea, there was any special tension between parents and children
in our family even though Okkyung and Vana were going through adolescence. I
recall that our family was different from others’ not in a negative way. In our
family, father did not exert authority and family outing were decided
democratically by vote. For long, I used to tell others about this situation
with some pride, that our family was a democratic family before Korea had
democracy. It is possible that the real situation was that father did not
command authority and respect. It happens that our family migrated to Brazil without
father and mother survived the challenges of the country with four children
without husband. This just happened as in the case of father’s absence in Korea
during the Korean War years. It was an accident of life, but what an accident!
During the Korean War, children were too young to think about absence of
father, and his absence during those years did not emerge as material for
reflection at later stages of life. However, the case of the absence of father
during the first two years of life as immigrants in Brazil, often did appear.
Father did not share the early difficulties we experienced. He arrived after we
were more or less settled without his help. There were no sense of resentment,
but there was a sense of distance between us and father.
The fact that we
survived without father, and the fact that three teenagers worked full time
making their own money made father somewhat dispensable. We could live without
him, I could live without him. Children knew about the new society better than parents.
There was no need to consult them on important matters on career and study. I
wonder how mother felt about father when children (or I) felt that way.
After moving to
Canada, father lost more of his authority. That was firstly because it was more
difficult for middle aged father to find a job than grown up children in the
early twenties. However, even more importantly, it was father’s insecurity in
not finding a job, and its effect on family that had made father loose respect
from grown up children. As was recorded in Vana’s letter to me still in Brazil
in 1969, out of his insecurity, father demanded mother to discontinue her
English school to look for a job instead, and mother cried in response. Father
eventually found a job. However, he was always under-employed for his
qualification and experience. In relative terms, it could be said he was one of
the most successful immigrant of a non-English and Asian background for his age.
Having immigrated to Canada at middle age (age 49), father became a
professional engineer. He was the only case of Asian immigrant that I knew of
his age group around me who worked as a professional in Canada, when even a
college professor in Korea became a grocery shop owner. Nonetheless the reality
of his working life seemed to have been humiliating. At least, that seemed to
have been the way he took it. Father hardly talked about where he worked and
what he did, or what experience he had. However, there were glimpses of his
personal experience at work.
Thus, to
children, he emphasized the importance of financial security. In my case, after
doing one year, year thirteen, of high school in Canada, I was moving up to
university level, and had to decide on major. Father wanted me to choose
medicine because he thought this was an area where even an immigrant was
needed, and would be less likely to get discriminated, and would result in
financial security. In reaction to such a suggestion by father, I ignored him
and decided to major in physics even though, in reality, both physics and medicine
were in my mind. Father had lost respect from me. To me, he was not only a
chicken with no courage, but wanted make his son another chicken. I, on the
other hand, thought that Canada was a country where an ambitious young person,
even an immigrant, did not have to worry about how he or she lived. One could
do anything, and no one needed to worry about being poor or hungry. Country’s
social security system was such that no one needed to worry about security.
Young person should do what he or she liked, and should study what they liked. So
I thought then, in rebellion to father. In turned out that after having studied
physics to the PhD level and having changed to sociology, and having taught in
universities, I sometimes think becoming a medical doctor may have suited my
personality. However, during the early years in Canada, from 1970 to 1974, when
I was doing an undergraduate study in physics, my relationship with father
soured irreversibly and stayed that way to his sudden death by heart attack in
1984.
Once our
relationship solidified in this manner, we stopped talking to each other. Since
then there were many incidents where I confirmed my dislike for father. In one
occasion, father likened my hair to pig’s for being tough. I had a curly hair
by Korean standard. When I was small, many people had commented how soft and
good looking my wavy hair was. But as I reached teen, my hair became tougher
and tougher, and I became very negatively conscious of my thick hair. It was in
Canada one day in my undergraduate year, that father mentioned in passing that
my hair was like that of pig, it was so tough that you can make a brush out it.
Between friends, this could well have been a joke. But to me, it became a
source of despise for father as a human being. If I had an ugly hair, I am not
responsible for that. It would be father who was responsible. And he ridicules
my hair (me) as if my hair had nothing to do with him! It was difficult to
forget an incident like that, and it stayed with me all my life. Another incident
that I could mention in relation to father was about western music. During my
undergraduate years, I acquired a strong liking for Western classical music,
and began to collect records even though they were expensive for my purse at
the time. In the early years, I did not have my own record player, and had to
go to living room to listen to the record. I do not recall the exact incident,
but remember father’s distaste for Western music when I tried to listen to it.
To father, Western classical music was not simply an exotic sound, but a noise.
This realization about father’s sensibility or lack of it also strengthened my
dislike for him. Could he not at least respect another person liking what he
did not understand?
Father must also
have understood how I disliked him, and we began to avoid each other. We tried
to avoid being in a same room even if we lived together. When communication was
necessary between us, it was usually done through mother. Vana who always
seemed to have a reasonably good relationship with father, also played a
diplomatic role between us. I am not sure how aware Yujin was about this
situation at the time, but to all others the relationship between father and I
was a matter of great concern, and it is often mentioned in correspondences to
me. Vana told me around 1973 (?) while in her visit to Korea that she decided
to marry YH, a promising Korean medical intern, who had an outgoing personality
that she chose him because he was so different from the men in our family, ie,
father and I. She thought that YH would get along well with everyone, thus providing
a fresh air in our family atmosphere. My personality and father’s, and our
relationship was an important factor in choice of her marriage partner.
Father’s
negative relationship with me probably made him feel closer to Yujin. Yujin, of
course, did not have the negative feeling that I had toward father. Having had
an age gap of six, my feeling toward Yujin was near parental as a big brother
until he reached university age. Yujin grew up to be a highly goal person who
exerted his upmost in everything he pursued. I recall that, in high school,
Yujin’s English writing was so good that his English teacher refused to believe
an immigrant boy from a non-English background could have written such a piece
only after a few years in Canada. Together with academic study, Yujin had a
strong interest in sports, in fishing and canoeing. This combination of
interests lead him to major, unexpected to me initially, in philosophy and
education. Throughout his undergraduate years, he was a canoe instructor and
pursued leadership training. In retrospect, this was a preparation for the
Rhode scholarship which was awarded to him in 1978, the last year of his
undergraduate study in Toronto. With Yujin being awarded Rhode scholarship, the
first by a person of Korean background, father’s heart (of course, mother’s
also) had lighten up, but this was done at the expense of my relationship with
him. As Yujin became a star of the family, father’s joy and love found an
outlet, and I had completely disappeared from father’s heart.
By this time, I
had finished master’s program in physics and was into the second year of PhD
program. However, there had been turmoil in my heart, and I was thinking of
giving up physics to restart in social science, a decision about which I will
be discussing later. At the same time, I had grown into a relationship with a
Korean woman, Chungsoon, I was helping in various capacities, and decided to
marry her. Chungsoon had come to Australia to get married to his boyfriend who had
immigrated to Canada. However, he unexpectedly died within a couple of months
of marriage from leukemia, and Chungsoon was at a stage of trying to pull
herself together and start a new life. She had decided to go to university to
major in chemistry again even though she had been a school teacher in Korea for
three years. Our relationship was not a romantic one, but that of a two lonely
people finding companionship in each other. After two years of relationship, I
proposed her that we live together. To this proposal, Chungsoon responded that
she could not simply live together with me without getting married since her
former husband’s family was living in the same city in Toronto. It would not be
proper. So, I agreed to marriage.
These two major
life decisions, giving up the PhD degree in physics and deciding to get married
with Chungsoon, were made without any consultation and communication with
father. There was no big wedding ceremony involving family. We had simply gone
to the Toronto city hall to get registered. Mother and Yujin were present, but
father was not. I knew this would cause hurt in father even though we had not
been speaking to each other. Under a normal situation, I would have asked and
received blessing from parents and family. It would have been great if my heart
were big enough and more mature at the time so that I had asked father for his
blessing and could “build up his face.” However, I was not in a normal mode
during that period. Elder son’s marriage without consultation to father and without
his presence must have been humiliating to father. One could only expect that
our relationship would become even worse. However, I was still shocked on
reading mother’s entry in the diary of that year only several weeks ago, thirty
years after the event took place, that, according to mother, father “felt
betrayed by son.” My heart felt crushed. What have I done?
On my marriage
in 1979, I moved out of parent’s house to live with Chungsoon. Not doing PhD,
there was no financial help, and we were financially struggling at the bottom
because I was back to an undergraduate study in a new field. Chungsoon’s study
was suffering because she was doing too much part time work. When we visited
parent’s house father avoided us, and often we would go out to a restaurant with
mother without father. Father hardly knew Chungsoon, but did not approve of her
simply from the fact that she was a widow. I had expressed no interest in the
past when I was introduced to daughters of prominent families in Korea for
marriage, but had married a widow without consulting him. He had no wish to see
us. Mother on the other hand was curious about Chungsoon when I had first introduced
Chungsoon as a friend to her before marriage. After marriage, as she got to
know Chungsoon mother began to appreciate her intelligence, sense of propriety,
and of orderliness. Mother particularly appreciated Chungsoon cleaning her
house every time she visited there. No daughter ever did that, she wrote in her
diary. Mother saw that Chungsoon’s cleaning was no ordinary cleaning. She had
never seen any paid cleaner cleaning her house to her satisfaction, but her
body was too weak to do herself. Then, she saw Chungsoon cleaning her place
gladly to a level that she did not expect even from herself. Cleaning was not
simply something you did mechanically. It was a state of mind and attitude
toward life. Her entries diary shows that mother identified with this aspect of
Chungsoon more than with her daughters. Mother’s diary shows that, not
understanding the real reason behind it that was related to her, she approved
even my giving up PhD in physics to start anew in social science
However, between
1979 and 1982, when the news arriving from Yujin at Oxford excited mother and
father, I felt like a forgotten son. My new start in social science was a big
gamble. I had no confidence in my ability to do well in the new field, except
in my will power. This understanding made me dead seriousness with every
subject I was taking; I slept little and spent all of my time for study, except
when I was doing teaching assistant job as an MA student. Eventually, there
were two happy news in my life in 1982. I was accepted to the PhD program at
Harvard’s sociology department, and Yongsoo was born. Both of these happenings
must have softened father somewhat. I see family pictures with father and us
together around this time. As my decision to go to Harvard solidified despite
other offers with better financial incentives, father and mother would decide
to buy in a house near Harvard university so that my family and Vana’s family
could live together while we were doing PhD at Harvard. This was a symbol of a
big turnaround in my relationship with father. After this point we did not
avoid each other though we were still not talkative with each other.
Father had two
heart attacks, one in 1983 and another in 1984, and died on the second one. The
news about he second attack came in summer when I was in a mountain campus of
Middlebury college, a language specialist college in USA, to get an intensive
training for advanced Japanese. It was a boot camp like environment for
language training involving a full day and evening program filled for every
day. The news for father’s death came as a shock and unreal. I was too busy
with my life, but there were things to settle with father, and he was now gone.
Soon after this point I took my family to Japan on my research stay and ended
up staying there for four years. Having done PhD dissertation on a topic on
Japan, I ended up joining Asian Studies rather than sociology department for
teaching career. Over last couple of years, my teaching and research interest
had touched on the relationship between Japan and Korea during the pre WWII
period. While I was studying this area, I could not help but miss the
companionship of father in my life. Would it not have been great if I could
hear from him about his years in Japan, and his experience with Japanese
people? This thought was also prompted by the fact that I was talking with
mother in Canada, then Korea, weekly over all kinds of subjects over last
several years. Why could I not do that with father?
The Emissary
advanced seminar, the Deepening, was held last year in Australia in a place not
very far, only one hour of driving distance, from where I lived. It happened
that Yujin and Marsha were coming to Australia to conduct this seminar. It was
a five day long, intensive emotional and spiritual workshop. I decided to
participate in this workshop even though I did not have time mainly because
Yujin and Marsha were coming. I wanted to increase the opportunity to get to
know them better. Of course, the unexpected positive experience I gained in the
basic Art of Living Seminar in Jeju Island two months earlier was a
precondition. In both workshops, I had opened myself to a degree that I had
never allowed myself to whatever was happening to me. In the time travel
session of the Deepening Seminar, while watching other participants sharing
their deepest lonely moments, an urge had come upon me to talk about the memory
of father. Typically, I was a planned speaker in public, one who organized his thought
in mind and decided key points and the effective order of presentation. However
on this occasion, I presented myself with no plot for my story, and let my
heart to come out. It was not organized and I did not know what I was going to
talk next minute. But I responded to Yujin’s cues. I knew that there was
something in my heart about father that I wanted clear up about which I had
never spoken to anyone. I wanted to apologize to father for what I have done. I
also wanted to tell him how I could feel for all the pains and hurts that he
experienced as a middle aged immigrant father. That of course, included the
pain of having a son like me. This session lead everyone to tears including
Yujin. The message crossed the cultural boundary of all white Australian
participants. It was apparent to participants that Yujin was not familiar with my
story: that of the state of my relationship with father in the 1970s.
As mother told
in her autobiography, father was a changed man toward the last year of his
life. I was not aware of this development in father because we lived in
different cities. Father had a chance to ask for forgiveness from mother before
his death, and mother was able to make up with him after his death. However, mother
had written that when father said near death bed that he would like to marry
mother again if he were reborn again, and the immediate response in her mind was:
“[누구 마음대로!] Who says you
can do that?” Nonetheless, this occasion did provide mother a chance to make
peace with father, which I did not get while he was alive.
6] Mother Finding a mission (1): The
Politics of Unification and mother’s relationship with me (1974-1982) [5130]
The eight years
between 1974 and 1982 constitutes the “political period” of mother life the
details about which I am very familiar. We have been together in many places,
though not in all. I knew most of organizations mother belonged to and key
figures, either directly or indirectly. The entries in mother’s diaries filled details. Nonetheless I found it difficult to write about this period
Partly, that is because it is still a sensitive issue
that can affect some people’s lives, especially our own, but also others’.
There was a period of American history, the McCarthy Era, when an individual
could be branded as a communist, and not only his life, but his family’s could
be ruined. In the case of South Korea, such a period lasted long, covering the
whole of modern Korean history before democracy, but particularly the 1970s on
which mother’s political period falls. Although Korea is supposed to have moved
into democracy since 1987, the issue of communism is still a sensitive one in
South Korea today though it is incomparably better than 1970s. The strong
opposition to the abolition of the Anti-Communism Law even today provides the
context for this understanding. More important, however, is the issue of the negative
consciousness of Korean people on the issue of communism and North Korea, that
is, even today. This issue can still bury people alive. But it is an issue, not
simply of politics, but of heart, that is of a central importance to anyone
concerned with peace and spirituality. It is this matter that I shall focus on
in discussing the political phase of mother’s life.
Before talking
about mother’s political activities in the 1970s, for the benefit of the second
generation readers, I need to explain the political and international context
surrounding the Korean peninsula of the 1970s. There may be some tedious parts
here and there, but please bear with me.
South Korea of
the 1960s was under the rule of the authoritarian regime of Pak Chung-Hi, and at
the end of the 1960s, he tried to extend his rule by introducing a draconian
Yushin constitution through which he could hold the country in a state of
permanent emergency. During this period, the US funded, KCIA (Korean CIA)
expanded its operation to penetrate all spheres of not only political, but also
social and cultural, lives of the citizens in South Korea. A quick way to
understand the situation of South Korea is to compare it to that of a communist
country, including North Korea. South Korea during this period was rather like
a mirror image of North Korea. It made anti-communism as the primary guiding
principle of the country. It existed in order to oppose North Korea. However,
the Anti-Communism Law was used to control its own citizens. KCIA penetrated
academic campus and media, and even highschool students had military training. The
KCIA also operated overseas in such a way that all diplomatic agencies worked
as an arm of the KCIA. The KCIA was keen to watch the democracy movements, also
called “anti-government movement,” by the Koreans overseas, both the students
and residents, and apply pressure and threats to silence the criticism of the
South Korean government. This attempt to control the Korean critics overseas
went to such an extent that the KCIA carried out operations to kidnap the
critics in Germany and Japan, the most famous case being the kidnapping of Kim
Dae-Jung during his stay in Japan.
This situation
in South Korea should be understood in relation to that of North Korea, ie, the
division of Korea in two parts, and the context of international Cold War lead
by two superpowers, the USA and USSR. The Korean War had not ended officially,
and both North and South were on a permanent war footing. North Korea had
always been under the US embargo for trade and diplomatic relations. The whole
of North Korea as a country was organized to fight what they called the “US
Imperialism” and its “puppet regime,” in South Korea. Until the 1970s, North
Korea was fairly successful in building its economy, supposedly following it
philosophy of “Self-Reliance.” Many left leaning intellectuals in the West and
Japan had regarded North Korea as a preferable model of development for the
developing countries, certainly more preferable to that of the capitalist
dictatorship in South Korea, at least until the situation reversed in the 1980s.
The intellectuals within South Korea did not have freedom to voice any view
that was favorable to North Korea, but the left leaning critics of the
government pursued an anti-imperialist view that was not too different from
that of North Korea although they tried to present it as “love of nation” (minjokjueui). The right leaning critics
of South Korean government still shared the anti-communism with the government.
All of these factions would be found in mother’s political life in Toronto, and
more broadly, North America.
But what did
this have to do directly with our family or mother? We have not been a family
of politicians and political aspirants. It all started with maternal
grandfather (grandfather hereafter) disappearing in 1948, the year I was born. This
is two years before the start of Korean War in 1950. Korea had been divided in
1945 into two parts in the process of the decolonization from Japan by the
entrance of two superpowers, USA and Soviet Union, into the scene. This
division of Korea into two parts soon became a stage for international Cold
War, each of two superpowers supporting one side. The struggles among various
political factions within Korea, both in South and in North, both shaped and
were shaped by the support by superpowers. This situation would eventually lead
to a war of unification that was the Korean War. The actual fighting ceased in
three years after a casualties of an estimated 2.5-4 millions. But the “two
countries” were left on a permanent war footing with no diplomatic relations.
This in turn resulted in 8 million people with separated family not being able
to communicate for decades, the majority of them even today.
In the case of
grandfather, it was known that he went to North when coming and going between
North and South was still possible, but it was not clear whether he was held, dead
or alive. By 1960s, it was assumed that he was not alive, and mother’s brother
(maternal uncle to me) began to conduct memorial service for grandfather. But since
going to Canada mother continued her effort to seek whereabouts of her father. Then,
what follows is the familiar story of appearance in November 1974, in a North
Korean Newspaper, Tong’il Shinbo, which used to be delivered to many Korean residences
in Canada in the 1970s, of an article by grandfather, and mother’s visit to
North Korea in August, 1975, that followed.
A daughter found
a long lost father, and goes to meet him. The story of this visit could have
been something so ordinary to deserve a special mention. However under the
context that I described earlier, this visit, and what happened before and
after, were extraordinary. In 1974-5, it was totally unthinkable for a person
of South Korean passport to visit North Korea. The South Korean government
would not have allowed even if the person was in Canada. One would have to
obtain Canadian citizenship first, which did happen in the following year in
the case of mother. However, the South Korean government would still try to
prevent an ex-Korean citizen to visit North Korea. This happened in the form of
a Korean consul in Toronto visiting our house to persuade mother not to go. Why
did mother not make her visit a secret? It would be known soon or later, and
the secrecy itself could be regarded as a problem to acquaintances close to
family. In 1974, mother had initiated a Won Buddhist meeting in our house, and
mother was concerned about the reaction by the members of this meeting about
mother’s North Korea visit. The idea of mother visiting North Korea alone was
enough to make the meeting in our house no longer possible.
It was not
simply outsiders, but family members who were divided about mother’s visit.
Father was against. Mother recorded in her autobiography that father would not
provide her travel expense, and she had to get a bank loan which took her some
time to repay. I am not sure whether father had any political reason for his
opposition. This does not seem to be the case. The strongest opposition came
from Vana’s first husband, Kim YH. YH was not a very politically conscious
person either for or against North Korea; but he had a goal to return to Korea
to establish as a university professor, and he was concerned about the effect
of his mother in law’s visit to North Korea on his career, which was
understandable since I also had such a goal at the time. My own position, however,
which was recorded in my notebook at the time, was that “how can a son oppose
mother trying to see her father?” Even if it is likely that mother’s North Korea
visit would make a negative impact on my career prospect, that should not be a
reason to oppose her travel, so I thought. This was the story behind her first
visit to North Korea in August, 1975. [During this year, I was doing master’s
degree in physics in Hamilton, a steel manufacturing city, about an hour’s
drive from Toronto. I wanted to be away from home, but Hamilton was close
enough for me to visit home on weekends.]
That was only
the beginning of a long series of emotional rollercoaster for everyone. In a
November, 1975 entry to my notebook, I wrote:
“YH thinks that mother does not care what happens
to his family [YH, Vana and daughter Una]. I believe he is mistaken about
mother. Mother still has a very traditional Confucian and Korean value so that
it would not be possible for her to ignore consideration for others. But the
problem is that mother seems to believe that her activities would not affect
Eun-Myung’s (Vana’s old name) family. I think this is a big mistake. …” [영후형의 생각으로는 엄마는 영후형가족에게 무엇이 일어나는가에 대해 전혀 care하지 않는다는 것이다. 나의 생각으로는 그것은 오산이다. 엄마에게는 아직도 유교사상등, 한국의 사상이 잔뜩 남아 그런짓은 생각할수가 없다고 생각한다. 그러나 한가지 문제는 엄마의 activity가 은명가족에게 해를 미치지 않으리라 생각하고 있는 점이다. 이것은 역시 큰 오산인것 같으다…”]
However, on
later day in the same month, my view on mother changed to a negative one : my
notebook records that I told Vana that
“mother pursues things that she believes is right
even if it brings harm to us, but we cannot tell her not to pursue what she
believes in simply because we are worried about its negative consequences to
us. …” [얼마전에 은명과의 이야기에서 엄마가 자신이 옳다고 생각하는 것은 우리에게 해가 오더라도 하는데, 우리 (형제)가 우리신변을 걱정하여 하지 못하라고 말할수는 없다고 나는 말 해왔으나 …]
Thus, my view on
mother fluctuated with time.
In January 1976,
I had finished master’s program in Hamilton and was back in the Toronto home,
and wrote notebook in English:
“Ever since mother’s visit to NK, the subject of
communism brought much trouble to our family, especially between Kim’s [Vana’s
first husband] and mother. The favorable impression NK had made on mother, her
meeting with grandfather who must have triggered mother’s dissatisfaction with
her present position as a housewife in family life, gave her a sense of mission
to work for unification, which I thought was a very good thing to happen, but a
problem was awaiting us. Mother was so convinced of wretchedness of the life
and society in SK in general and the necessity of urgent unification, that she
thought that [South] Korea would be better off united under the communist
regime as soon as possible, and started going out to meet people in order to
talk to them into such an idea. Although my knowledge of communism was very
limited, I knew that hers was even less, and I felt that I must somehow
persuade her of the vast implications that the acceptance of communism
necessarily brings. First thing I had to do is to learn more about communism
and its counterpart, capitalism. I bought books both in favor of and against
communism, and also … [One or two lines missing here. This part was cut in the
process of scanning and the original had disappeared.] Miloban Djila’s The New
Class made much impression on me in disfavor of communism although I found its
ending a little disappointing. ….”
I believe this
assessment of mother and I, made 35 years ago, was reasonably accurate as a
first approximation to our state of mind that time though there are other
factors to consider, about which I shall elaborate more later.
My philosophic
interest had started fairly early in my life, in Brazil during my high school
years, and throughout my study in physics, philosophy had been my retreat. On
the other hand, I never had a chance to be exposed to politics so directly until
mother’s visit to North Korea. Although I always had an interest in the issue
of sufferings in the world in general, had identified with the black people and
native Indians in North America, they were at a intellectual level than
political. Mother activities brought politics to the surface of our daily
social life. Out of concern for mother, I was lead to study communism and
Marxism, which turned out to be related to my philosophic interest. On reading
mother’s diaries last month, I learned that mother was also studying Marxism
and communism though not as systematically as I did. Her readings were mostly
from the Japanese magazine Sekai as well as from publications from South Korea
and North Korea. However as she began to link with the progressive political
groups among overseas Koreans, her self-education expanded together with the
organizational activities.
My study of
Marxism had coincided with another stream of influence in my life: my
encounters with Korean PhD students in McMaster University in Hamilton,
majoring in religion and mathematics. For the first time in Canada, in fact, in
my adult life, I had made friends with Koreans. We discussed all kinds of
issues: Buddhism, philosophy, mathematics, and Korean politics. Eventually, we
ended up becoming a part of the democracy movement among the overseas Koreans.
This started with attending Ham Seok Heon’s talk on his occasional visits to Toronto
and reading the articles in his magazine, called The Power of Grassroots, 씨알의 힘. Then, we began
to help the Christian Minister, Kim Jae-Jun’ [an elderly Christian minister who
was well known and respected for his anti-government views] who was living a
sort of exiled life in Toronto, in his publication called The Third Day. Sometimes
I did some packing work for the magazine, and eventually I wrote some articles
for it. During the period between 1976 and 1978, I was engaged in the PhD
program in physics, but outside the study of physics, I was drawn into the
study of Marxism and involvement into meetings with the democracy movement
groups in Toronto. Many of these coincided with mother’s interest in
unification, and we attended many meeting together.
The democracy
movements everywhere had two different wings: liberal democracy versus and
social democracy. Liberal democracy meant liberal capitalist democracy, whereas
social democracy was more concerned with the issue of economic and social
inequality. In the case of the movement for democracy in South Korea, carried
out by Koreans outside Korea, social democracy was replaced by anti-imperialism
and unification. It was understood that South Korea was in an underdeveloped
state both in politics and social and economic development because of its
dependency on imperialist nations, namely USA and Japan. Furthermore, the
imperialist nations encouraged the division of Korea and the elites in South
Korea benefited from the division and its connection with the imperialist
nations. In this view, true development was a self-reliant development.
Self-reliance was both an end in itself, and a means to an end that was
development. The same was true for unification. Unification was an end in
itself and also a means to achieve self-reliance, and therefore, development.
It was in this manner that unification, ie, overcoming the division, became a
necessary condition even for democracy, a true democracy for the masses rather
than a bourgeoisie democracy for the elites.
It happened that
the idea of “unification first” was fairly widespread among the politically progressive
Koreans overseas though they were numerically a minority. An international
organization that linked this group in many countries emerged in 1978, holding
its first meeting in Tokyo, Japan. It had a long name, Overseas Koreans United for Democracy, Korean People, and
Unification [민주민족통일 해외한국인연합 (해외한민련)]. Its shortened name, Hanminryeon (Democratic Koreans United) was commonly used. It also happened
that the political line of this organization was philosophically close to that
of North Korea. Hanminryeon was against division as well as being against anti-communisim,
and it tried to cooperate with North Korea to hold common unity goals. This
group was seen by other democracy group as being pro-North and pro-communist. Philosophically,
mother’s political line was found in this organization, and mother had
associated with the North American branch of this organization, attending over
years many of their meetings that were held in different American cities.
The movement for
democracy in Korea among the overseas Koreans was therefore divided into two
groups according to their political line, sometimes simply called as “democracy
first” group versus “unification first” group. There was a common goal for
democracy in South Korea, but they were divided by their attitude toward North
Korea. In many ways, the “democracy first” line was more intuitive since it was
against dictatorship anywhere, both South and North. It was also more popular
because most of Koreans were brought up by anti-communist doctrines. Only good
communists were dead ones. Talking about unification had been prohibited by the
government. Thus, to talk about unification was being pro-North. They did not
appreciate the philosophic underlining of the unification group, and regarded talking
with North was being soft on the communist dictatorship. Thus to them, this was
not a matter of supporting a different sport team, or even having a different
religion. Commies were sick people, they were morally repulsive, and they
contaminated others. Conclusion: do not associate with them. And that is what
happened in Toronto, first with mother, then with our whole family and to
individual members, by association. This was not only happening among lay
people, but also among the supporters of the democracy movement in South Korea
too. As one can easily imagine, the situation was rather more complex since
Yujin became a Rhode scholar and mother was awarded the Great Mother prize.
There was thus a complex mish mash of admiration and avoidance among people
surrounding our family.
Among the cases
where people began to avoid her, the case that hurt mother most was that of her
sister Namseon [남선], an aunt to
me. Mother was the youngest of many sisters and very much loved by all, but
Namseon was the one who had been closest to her both by age and relationship.
Her daughter, SH, a niece to mother, a cousin to me, had immigrated to Canada
and was living in Toronto with her husband and two children. Initially there
were comings and goings between her families and ours, but it completely
stopped after mother’s visit to North Korea. We all had fond memories of each
other going back to early 60s and 50s in Korea. So this sudden cutting of relationship
was understood as a work of her husband who had graduated from South Korea’s
military academy where, it would be expected, he was implanted with
anti-communist thought. But does the wife have an independent mind? Perhaps she
also thought her aunt was contaminated with communist germs and should be
avoided. Or perhaps she thought it would not be good to be seen to be associated
with a communist family. Very sad, but this was a common state of affairs among
the Koreans in regard to communism. No surprises.
In December,
1980, when 3 year old grand daughter Una lived with mother when her mother Vana
was writing her master’s thesis, Una had been attending the Korean language
school in Toronto on Saturday where SH was the principle. Even while Una was
attending her school there was no direct communication between SH and her aunt
(mother). Una was picked up by a school bus and dropped again when school was
finished. Occasionally messages were sent through the driver. However, mother
had been resolved not to act the same way in return, as she wrote in her diary;
so on the last day of December when the Korean language school ended for the
year, she would send through the driver the presents for she had bought for SH’s
two children. There was no phone call in response from SH.
This was a sad
enough state, but what saddened mother even more was her sister Namseon who was
in South Korea had expressed desire to stop communication with mother. This
must have been in the late 1970s. What had gone on? In 1982, mother learnt by
accident that sister Namseon had come to Toronto to visit her daughter, but did
not let mother know. They had not seen each other for many years and her sister
came all the way from Korea to Toronto, and was in the same city, but did not
want to see her. In April, 1980, Mother recalled in her April 18 1980 entry to
her diary sister Namseon’s earlier letter: “Sister Namseon wrote in her letter[to
me] that her view of life (인생관) was different
from mine. It is not clear to me how different it is, but there is nothing
wrong for being different.” It is evident that what aunt Namseon [남선이모] meant was she did not want to see her sister
because the sister was a communist and pro-North, and mother thought there was
nothing wrong for anyone to have a different political view, and thought that that
is no reason for sisters not to see each other. Mother continued: “the reason
why she wrote that way is due to the division of our country, and [consequent]
division of people. It hurts my heart to see the abyss of the tragedy of Korean
people.” Therefore, mother was again resolved that she must struggle toward the
removal of the wall between people through unification.
Another big
happening of this kind within family relations was YH, Vana’s first husband’s
letter to her in September 22, 1979. Vana’s family was in Chicago at the time.
In this letter, YH declared that “I cannot tell mother in law what to do or
what not to do,” “I cannot change the flow of this family.” “I do not want to
be called a communist, … The only way left for me is to divorce Eun Myung
(Vana’s old name).” “I must decide now because I am planning to return to Korea
next December. …You think happiness or unhappiness of your daughter is
secondary to your great work.” This letter was among the correspondences that
mother made available to us together with her diaries as material for writing
biography. I had not known about this incident, and it was the first time for
me to read this letter last month, Janurary 2010. However, the content of this
letter was not surprising to me since it could have been written in 1975, four
years earlier.
What is more
notable was that mother was shocked by the letter and became ill. However
within a day of receiving YH’s letter, she wrote an eleven page response to the
two page original as an entry in her diary, challenging every point made by YH.
She pointed out that YH married Vana because she was of advantage to him at the
time, and he was now trying to dispose her because she was of disadvantage to
him, presumably, for being connected to a communist family and having a
communist mother. Mother continued:
“He says that I
do not think of happiness of my own daughter, but I am thinking of Korea’s
future and their future, and that is why I am thinking about peaceful
unification of our country. His thinking is so tiny, being only concerned about
his own career and not thinking about his wife and daughter. …”
It is difficult
to refute her logic. I would probably have thought the same way.
However I was
one of her biggest headache in her political life although I shared much of her
thought. Out of concern for mother, I tried to be her fiercest critic before her
ideas, speeches, and writings reached public. This gave her an impression that
I was always opposing her even though we kept attending many meeting together,
and she always shared all of her readings with me. Mother diary reveals that
she was often hurt by this critic within family. In numerous places, mothers
stated that “Sejin is criticizing me again.” Then, she wrote “I ask him to
correct spelling in my writing, and he tried to change the content! … He seems to look down on me because I am a
woman. …” On looking back my relationship with mother on political matters, one
particular letter that I wrote to her stands out. The letter is two pages long
and in small letters, but it is not dated. This letter could have been written
either in 1975 or in 1978. It was not posted as mail, it must have been given
to her by hand. I had kept a copy, but the original that I gave her is not
found among mother’s correspondences. Thus it is not certain whether mother had
read this letter or not since there was no mention of it either in diaries or
in the form of a reply letter.
The letter
started: “In this letter, I am going to put down in writing some things that
have been in my mind for long but had not had a chance to communicate to you
well enough.” Here, among other things, I talked about the consequence of
mother’s pro-North political activities on family. What I told mother was
similar to YH’s but also different.
“It is possible
that, in your opinion, your pro-North activities do not pose an obstacle to my
or Eun Myeong couple’s future in South Korea. … But we think differently; we
think it is not only impossible for us to prosper in South Korea, but it would not
be possible [for us] to return to Korea if you continue your political
activities. … Some time ago, you talked to me about marriage. If I were to
marry, I think I will marry a Korean woman. But I do not think it is possible
to find a Korean woman whose political thought is so progressive that she can
accept yours, and loves me at the same time.
…I have no wish to ask you to stop doing what you believe is right for
the sake of my happiness. However, as I respect others, I should also pay a due
respect to myself as one human being among many. I believe what mother can do
for our country and for unification is rather limited. I do not know what it is
that I can do for our country, but it has not even began. Considering this
point, it can be said that the activities that you pursue for unification is
damaging what I can do for unification, and if my youth and potential were to
be more highly assessed than yours, it can then be concluded that you work is
ultimately more of an obstacle to unification. When I decided to major in
physics, I had done so with return to Korea in mind. The question, “why do I
study physics?” that I raised myself has been bothering me in pursuing my study
with peace of mind. However, I was able to put down such a disturbing thought
with the idea that I shall return to Korea. However, now, the thought that ‘it
is not possible for me to return to Korea,’ has lead to loss of motivation for
me to study physics. I still do not ask you to stop your political activities
in support of North Korea. Between us, mother and I, there have not been enough
exchanges of political ideas in calm atmosphere. The motivation for me in
writing this letter is to let you know how I think, so that it can be helpful
for you in making decisions for your future activities.”
My logic in the
70s also sounds reasonable to me today. So, what was mother’s response to this
letter at the time? Unfortunately, no record remains, and mother does not
remember about this letter. Even if the letter were not written, I must have
conveyed its message to mother one way or another. And what happened afterward
is history. Mother continued her political activities without being bothered by
others’ opinion, so I thought, and I gave up physics to study sociology, and also
gave up the idea of returning to Korea.
The role of Yujin in mother’s life should be mentioned at this point.
Yujin began to appear in mother’s diary from the point he received Rhode
scholarship, and given mother’s relationship of tension both with father as
well as me, mother began to find consolation in Yujin. This was significantly
based on the fact that that Yujin had grown intellectually over the four years
of university and had bridged the age gap with other siblings, particularly
with me.
In a September 1979 entry to diary, mother describes a dream about me in
a bus station: mother had lost me and was calling me anxiously, “Sejin! Sejin!”
But she could not find me. It was symbolic of her relationship with me. She
ended this entry to diary with the following monologues.
“Why did I have this dream? 어째서 그런 꿈을 꾸었을까.
My Heart, Heart, and Heart … 마음, 마음, 마음
A proverb says ‘no children is
best life.’ …. 무자식이 상팔자라는 속담의 뜻은
One is worried if there is no
child, and also worried when there is one.”
자식이 없으면, 없어서 걱정, 있으면 있어서 걱정.
From this point on, mother’s diaries begin to record mother talking about Yujin as well as talking to him. Mother recorded about her talk
with Yujin about the “problems of father and Sejin,” then saying “Yujin is the
one who understands me most in this world.” To my dismay, mother linked me with
father in character and personality. She saw a connection between Yujin with grandfather,
and identified with them. Father and Sejin were like chains to her, while Yujin
and grandfather were like wings.
The entries from diaries also recorded Yujin distancing from me from 1979 and this matches with my own
recollection of him in the three years after 1979. After Yujin went to Oxford,
the letters from Yujin was a major source of joy to mother. In fact, Yujin was rapidly
developing spiritually during his years in Oxford, and his letters conveyed
this message and mother found freshness in it.
7] Mother Finding a mission (2):
Spiritual Search (1984-1997) [2900]
The subtitle
above was made in November last year when I first prepared an outline for this
writing. 1984 was the year father died and, for long, I understood this to be the
turning point in mother’s life from a political phase to a spiritual one. However,
on reading the diaries of the period before 1984 several times, I began to
realize that the beginning of the spiritual phase was located much earlier, and
in fact found in multiple points rather than in one, at least in a focused one.
In this last section I shall be writing about that the spiritual development in
the political period, leaving the writing about the part after 1983 to the
future partly because I ran out of both time and space, but also because the
spiritual part for the period between 1984 and 1997 will require far more than
a section in length.
I now regard the
political period of mother’s life to be a very important period of mother’s
spiritual growth. It was obvious to us children that father’s death must have
been an important turning point in mother’s life. However, what I did not
realize until reading mother’s diaries was that mother had decided to move away
from the front line of political activities much before father’s death, and
those were signs of the beginning of a different path.
Interpersonal
relations among and within the political groups [5300]
There were two
political groups in Toronto of the second half of the 1970s in which mother was
a central member. One was Tongyeon (통일문제연구회, 통연, Unification Research Group) and Yeodong (여성동우회, 여동, Women’s
Solidarity Group). Both of these groups accepted the leadership of the
international organization, Hanminryeon
(Democratic Koreans United), that I
mentioned earlier. In fact Toronto Yeodong was the Toronto Branch of the North
American Yeodong which was initiated by Ms Li Bo-Bae who was the wife of Dr
Liem Cham Yeong (임창영) who was in the
leadership position of Hanminryeon in USA. [Dr Liem was a former UN ambassador
of Korea.] Yeodong (Women’s Solidarity Group)’s goal was to attend the women’s
issues under the general guideline of Hanminryeon (Democratic Korean United).
The number of members in Toronto was never more than ten, and the active members
were less than five. Okkyung was listed as a member, and must have been in
their mailing list, but not likely to have attended the meetings in Toronto, or
in other American cities.
The
interpersonal relationship is an important factor in success and failure of any
movement. In a political movement, leadership and the ideological line would
have been key issues. The finer differences in Ideological lines did always
present some tension in the movement. An individual X would say ”we cannot work
with the person X,” while X would say it is Y who should be removed. This
happened both in the Toronto group as well as the New York group. Sometimes
there would be suspicion that a certain member was an agent of KCIA. Mother
noted: “how can we overcome the division between people in North and South, and
achieve unification when we are fighting among us in the unification movement?”
However, later mother herself was involved in this tangle. Some member of the
New York group said in suspicion of mother’s line: “Mrs Lee Nam-Soon (Inlson’s
old name)’s son has a position in MIngeon (the democracy first organization)
and Toronto’s local Korean consul with the same surname Park, is a relative of
hers.” Apparently the consul at the time was a distant relative of ours though
I hardly knew the person. Mother was being suspected of a secret KCIA
connection! But at one point mother was also suspicious of a possible KCIA
connection of two members Tongyeon. Not only that, she told of this suspicion
to another member. Mother’s diary records of her regret about this action at a
later state, and reflection on the destructive effect of political movement on
humanity (인간성) of its
members.
There were times
of great solidarity and also times of mutual suspicion, but on the whole mother
saw more and more negative and disappointing developments within the movement. In
November 1979, she noted that one particular member of Tongyeon who was very
supportive of North Korea acted in such a way that resulted in defaming North
Korea contracry to his intention: “Father C [he was a Korean Anglican priest]
thinks he is helping North Korea, but what he does in the name of helping North
Korea makes people look down on North Korea.” Mother was referring to the lack
of maturity in Father C’s speech and behavior. In making these observations she
was also reflecting on her own speeches and behaviors. Many others were no
better.
I had also been
experiencing the something similar in my own involvement with the people in the
democracy movement in Toronto. The first experience that caused me a great deal
of hurt in me was that the members of the group of Korean doctoral students
with whom I was had been very close began and through whom I got interested in
the democracy movement in Korea began to avoid me without explanation.
Presumably, it was because of mother: she was a communist and pro-North, and
therefore, I was … In fact, I am still
not sure what they thought I was. It was crime by association, that practice
that was common in Korea, especially in so called thought crime. I was not only
hurt, but deeply disappointed that highly educated and politically conscious
young people would behave that way.
Another
experience was with a person in Toronto, Kim JG, who was also a friend of one
of the doctoral students in the Hamilton group. Kim JG was close to both of us,
mother and I. He was doing PhD in ethnic history in Toronto and was about six or
seven years older than me. Kim JG was also in the circle of Hamilton PhD
students that I was in, but at the same time often in communication with mother
by phone and visits to mother’s place, to a far greater than I realized until I
read mother’s diaries. Both of us were among the founding members of Minjung
Shinmun, an ethnic weekly, in Toronto that pushed the democracy first line,
when it started. To both mother and I Kim JG had presented himself as a
politically progressive thinker when we first met. However, he turned out to be
not only very moderate, but looked nearly an opportunist who seemed to change
his line depending on circumstance. Kim JG was one of the persons that mother
was lead to suspect of being a KCIA agent. The reason was that he gained mother’s
trust by posing a political progressive, then later quoted mother’s speech to
accuse her in front of others for being pro-North. I was not aware of this
happening between mother and Kim JG, and I did not believe he was an agent of
KCIA. He was just a very cautious person. Neither would mother have believed so
at a later stage. However, involvement in a political movement had created this
kind of tragicomedy.
My own
relationship with Kim JG, also ended in a similar situation later on. Having
been in tension with me on political issues, mother had not shared her
experience and feelings with Kim JG with me. And I had continued my close
relationship with him for another year until one day I felt he betrayed the
trust and camaraderie that I had shared with him. This event was left in record
beyond personal memory in the form of a five page long letter that I wrote to
him over two nights of no sleep in September,1980, one and half a year after I gave up physics and began
studying sociology. I wrote: “I feel like giving up sociology and going back to
physics. … I have no idea whether this letter will result in ending of our
relationship for good, but this is how I share with you the feelings that led
me to two nights of no sleep.” I was deeply disappointed about and hurt by the
Korean friends I made in the democracy movement. Our relationship ended there
and I did not look up his whereabouts until recently: he had taught in a Korean
university, and had retired. I think I will look him up someday and talk about
the past, and future.
Individuals were
devoting their lives, and often their family’s too, in order to strive for
greater ideals, but they themselves were a failure as human beings. Through
this experience and understanding, mother came to see improvement of humanity (인간성) and raising of spiritual maturity (정신연령) as a prerequisite to building of a more peaceful
and better society. On the other hand, I reaffirmed the importance of integrity in human life if life was to
be worth living. Both mother and I had reached similar conclusions
independently through our involvements in a political movement, and both of us
were lead to move away from politics. Mother was lead to a spiritual path,
while I was led to an academic study with an area focus away from Korea that I
originally was aiming at: that was what Japan research was for me, something
that would not lead me to an emotional entanglement, but something through
which I can study the issues parallel to those in Korea, so I thought.
Toward
building of an ideal society: from religion, to communism, then to spiritual
path. [4360]
Mother’s diaries
reveal another aspect of mother’s life and thoughts in the 1970s that I did not
fully realize: the importance of religion and spiritual self training(수행) in her life throughout the political period
despite the more visible political activities.
Had the article
about grandfather not appeared in that North Korean Newspaper delivered to our
house in Toronto in November 1974, and had mother’s visit to North Korea in
1975 not taken place, it is most likely that our house would have been a center
of Won Buddhist activities, and the whole family would have been involved in
them. That would have been so mainly because mother wanted it that way, and most
of us would have accepted it. Before November 1974, there were already many
indications that showed that this was happening. The most obvious were the
entries in mother’s diaries in 1974. In a July entry, mother had written an
entry “why I became a Buddhist,” and she then prepared a newspaper
advertisement announcing a meeting for anyone interested in Won Buddhism,
explaining how Won Buddhism was different: that in it, religious life and daily
life are not separated, and it is suited for modern age.
The content was
similar in both. In them, she stated that: human beings are born with potential
to become both good and bad; we can become either good or bad depending on how
we live; heaven and hell is not in next life but in this, and we make them; we
can become Buddha by continuous spiritual self traning (수행) and achieving enlightenment; won’t you join us in building heaven [극낙세계] on this earth?
The preparation
for this Won Buddhist gathering have gone on for many months as shown by a long
series of corrspondences between mother and the aunt in the Big House (큰집아주머니) in Korea who was an important member of
the Won Buddhist Order in Korea. There were ten letters from the aunt in 1974,
and 8 in 1975. There must have been about equal number of letters from mother
to her. However this correspondence suddenly ended by mother’s North Korea
visit in August 1975, and had only restarted in 1983 after mother had stopped
her political activities. Had she given up her interest Buddhism, self
training, and building heaven on earth that she mentioned in the advertisement
she prepared?
When one looks
at the records of her thoughts and her activities with this question in mind,
one finds that she had not changed or abandoned her religious and spiritual
interest at all in 1979 which was the pick of her political life. The 1975 visit
to North Korea initiated in her an interest in the notion of utopia in
communist sense, material conditions had to be satisfied before spiritual ones,
though the two would have to be combined eventually. Therefore she came to a
conclusion that that heaven on earth that she talked about in the advertisement
for the Won Buddhism meeting should be achieved through communism by combining
it with Buddhism. The sole focus on material world was insufficient, there has
to be spirit (정신). This spirit
put men over material. Soon after her visit to North Korea, this meant the
acceptance of juche idea (주체사상).
This was a
rather big and sudden jump, but something understandable from a point of view
of a spiritual searcher that she was, or from even I at the present point. I
had not understood this process of reasoning that occurred in mother when I had
criticized her in the 70s for being pro-North at a purely political level. I
see it as a spiritual connection. This was not an issue of accepting a
personality cult such KimIlsungism though this will require further discussion.
In the 1979
diary, one finds frequent references to religion among political commentaries:
“Communism to
reform capitalism. Religion to reform Communism. (자본주의를 수정하기위한 공산주의.공산주의를 수정하기위한 종교.)” (March 3) “I believe only a society where
communism and religion can co-exit can be one that can develop for true happiness
of mankind. [공산주의와 종교가 건전하게 공존할수있는 사회라야만이 진정한 인간행복을 위해 발전할수 있는 사회라고 생각한다.]” (April 14) “I am a religious person. Political
but religious. [나는 종교적인 사람이다. 정치적인 사람이나 종교적이다.]” (April 20)
I was surprised
and pleased to find the last expression “religious person” because that was the
term I have been using over last thirty years to describe myself. I would say: “I
do not have a religion, but I am a religious person.” Now I understand that
what I really meant was “spiritual” but I did not have the term until last year.
It may have been the same with mother in 1979.
What she saw
among the people who were involved in the democracy movement in North America,
whether they were in the “democracy first” line or in the “unification first”
line, often the level of spiritual maturity in participants was much to be
desired, often even lower than the people who were not interested in politics.
In April 1980, on return from a New York conference, mother wrote that what
happened in the conference was such a shock to her, and she would like to take
time to record and analysise. But she did not write any further on the subject
beyond: “glory and shame. Jealousy and envy.” [영광과 치욕. 시기와 질투.”] But these must have been the key words for what
she observed. The individuals participating in political movements were meant
to be in a big game for building a utopia where spiritual maturity was a
requirement, but most people were bogged down in smaller local games of emotions
which were counterproductive in developing any spiritual development. It was
this realization that mother arrived at by the end of the 1970s that lead her
to resign from further involvement in political activities. In February 1982,
mother recorded that she decided to keep relationships only with people who
were “good, truthful and wise” [“인간적으로 선량하고, 진실하고, 지혜로운 사람들”] and give up
all others.
Mother’s search
for a path for spiritual development met in 1982 with the Emissary message of love that was passed on to her through
Yujin in Oxford and then, with encouragement from Yujin, and Vana helping her
about the nature of the Emissary group, lead her to regular attendance in the
Emissary meetings in the King View Farm Emissary centre in Ontario, Canada. By
March 1982, mother agreed that the message of love in the Emissary teaching
could be the key for both individual spiritual self development, and well as to
changing the world, including that of Korean peninsula and the issue of
unification. Love had to be ignited in the heart of individuals, and fire had
to spread: that was the only way to bring peace and utopia to this world, not
through political means, mother concluded.
Although I was
living in Toronto during 1979 and 1982 and aware of mother’s attendance in some
meetings in a place called King View Farm, I had no idea at the time that this
sort of spiritual change was taking place inside her, and I had missed yet
another chance to get to know mother better. In 1982, mother noted several
times in her diary that Sejin had spiritually grown. [정신적으로 많이 성장했다.] In August, the
month before I left Toronto to Harvard, she wrote: “Okkyung also is interested
in the Emissaries, and Sejin is also working toward truth, so he will join the
Emissaries once he goes to Harvard.” [옥경이도 에미서리에 대해 관심을 가지고 있고, 세진이도 진실을 지향하고 있으니 만큼 하바드대학에 가서는 에미서리와 합치게 될것이다.] Unfortunately, I do not recall any conversation
along this line with mother at this time. And the chance to join the Emissaries
did not happen during my Harvard years. My study in sociology and research in
Japan resulted in further intellectual growth and empirical knowledge of
different societies, however, this path did not result in further personal
spiritual growth in me.
8] Conclusion [720]
I must end here
now, leaving the later part for another time. But I must let the reader know
that, even for the political period, the real story of mother was much more
complex than what I painted here. There were many other subplots in mother’s
story that were not told here but were equally important.
To mention three
only briefly, one was the issue of position of women. This issue started
initially from mother’s own situation, but it continued to develop because of
mother’s informal role as a social worker for Korean elderly women around her.
And she was also watching her daughters’ lives. Then there was the focus group
Yeodong that discussed women’s issue together. Mother continued to learn and
develop her own view on this matter. Eventually she was lead to the conclusion
that the liberation of women and coming of matriarchal society was a
precondition to the construction of utopia in this world. [It is recorded that
I would turn her off as usual by asking her “On what basis, do you say so?”]
Another was
mother’s acting in the capacity of an amateur psychologist. One case was in a role
of a career of daughter’s children. Mother recorded in detail her observations in
interactions with grandchildren who were entrusted to her while daughters was
busy studying and travelling. In the case of Una, it was almost a full year even
though mother found it physically too demanding. While looking after
grandchildren, she made keen observations about human nature and constantly
thought about methods of education to help them to develop certain faculties and
not others. In her daily life, this sphere was mixed with her political
activities. It would thus be no wonder if she was making the same kind of
observations about grownups in her political meetings, and were thinking about
applying some method that she came up with in her interaction with
grandchildren. In fact, the grownups were no different from children though
they were harder to change.
Third issue to left
to explore is the place of grandfather something beyond a role model for her,
something akin to an imaginary true love, not a father figure, but as a lover;
and the sense of mission for unification work that grandfather was able to
depart to mother. There is not enough information on this part and it might
require too much imagination to analyze it. However, I feel that this is an
important issue to be explored while mother is still alive.
Finally, I would
like to end this story with a concluding observation on mother as a role model
for me and an embarrassing confession.
This observation
about mother only emerged through my study of her diaries last month and in
writing of this article. I had to read the certain parts of the diaries many
times. One thing that impressed me a great deal was that mother had a great self-correcting approach to life: she committed
herself fully at each stage of her life in which she often made mistakes, but she
would reflected upon them and make self corrections to start a new stage.
Mother had a capacity to observe herself as she observed others. She believed
in both in perfectibility of human beings, and our obligation to us and others.
My confession is
that despite what I wrote in the serious letter to mother in 1978(?), that I
had more youth than her, ie, more potential to contribute to society, and
therefore she should think about giving up radical activities not to damage the
prospect of son’s role in society, I am ashamed to say that, after thirty years,
I have achieved rather little compared to mother, and I have a long way to
catch up with mother’s achievements. My only consolation is that I am twenty
seven year younger than her, and I may still be able to catch up with her.
Mother’s diaries
as a record of her life and thought will continue being an important guideline
for my future life. I therefore feel that I can boost for at least one
achievement: that I was able to make digital copies of all of her diaries and
numerous other family documents, making them accessible to all members of
family. I will treasure them and explore them all my life.
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