Mother that I knew, Mother that I did not [19,000]
[Feb 14, 2010]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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]
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,
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.
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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