History – Korean Snippets

Confucianism as I know it

I never officially took a course in it, so I can’t speak to the actual written text or the academic discourse on Confucianism. But having lived in one of the most Confucius societies in the world, I can speak about the impact it had on me and those around me. Nothing I experienced was ever specifically tied to Confucianism. And I don’t believe people around me who were acting according to Confucianism principles like an automaton were actually even aware of what they were doing.

Confucianism had become so pervasively infused in the society that it was just part of daily life, as in “this is how things were supposed to work”. That means you don’t question it. You don’t even think about it until…like me, one day you wake up in another society and ask, “Why did I behave like this? Why do I still do this? This is not what I actually believe.”

Let me start with what I think is good about Confucianism from the readings I’ve done. Confucianism is all about “being in harmony” with things around you. That sounds really nice to me. If we are all in harmony, there’s no discourse. No reason for conflicts. Perhaps no war? Who wouldn’t want that?

But What that principle actually translates to is that everyone has a place in life that they cannot deviate from. How can there be conflict when everyone is in their own place, doing what they’re supposed to do?

And what does this further translate to? Hierarchical society which has strict layers that you can’t cross. Women who were relegated to households and under their husbands. Children of commoners who could never be more, regardless of the talents they might possess. People often ask me…isn’t Korea a democratic republic now? No more hierarchy in the society. We all have equal rights. Problem fixed. If things were that simple. Even in the U.S. we are not all equal. In Korea, even less so.

Since Confucianism was officially adopted (it existed before, but) by the Yi dynasty over five hundred years ago, almost like a religion, Korea has been living and breathing those principles. These things do not disappear overnight. So throughout my formative years and many more years prior and after that, these principles had been very much alive in Korea. It’s just no one would ever tell you that’s the case since they’re not even aware of it.

I hinted at these principles at work in some of my blog entries (e.g. To be or not to be “borrowed barley sack”, Packing bags). Those are all results of Confucianism at play. Women and children have their own places and the way they’re supposed to behave. Under the strict Confucian culture, a woman would be dishonored, could be kicked out of her home, or mistreated if she commits any of these seven evils (chilgeojiak): disobeying in-laws, bearing no son, committing adultery, jealousy, carrying a hereditary disease, garrulousness and larceny.

I was born into a Korean society where it was common for husbands to abuse their wives. No one thought of it as abuse. Surely, she’s done something wrong since those seven evils are so easily violated. Drunken husbands, beating husbands, were societally forgiven. Women who couldn’t give birth to a boy like my mother were shamed. Boys were always smarter than girls because that’s their place in life. No one outside the status quo was acceptable.

And these messages still follow me.

I’m a grown up woman, independent, well-educated, over-achieved perhaps. But a small part of me still questions… women who were abused, shamed… That was how things were. There was nothing wrong with it, was it?

It is hard for me to get a pulse on the society as just a frequent visitor. I don’t know if some of what I’d experience still prevails or it’s fading away. I hope that Korea has gone through a change. I hope that the generations after me never has to question what I continue to question deep inside.

Packing Bags

I don’t remember how many times my mom packed her bags to leave my father, but it would definitely take more than one hand to count them. And I’d run out of all my body parts if I were to count how many times she said she wanted to leave him. Of course, those were just counts of what is in my memory. From what my maternal grandmother had told me, she’d packed her bags even before my older sister was born.

One might think this was like the boy who cried wolf. If she’d threatened so many times, but hadn’t left, she must not have really wanted to leave. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m quite certain she’d meant it every single time. Perhaps one day I’d have the courage to talk about why that was the case, but for now, I want to focus on the circumstances of women in Korea when I was young.

So what kept my mom from leaving? Primarily, her children. My mom earned a good salary as a private elementary school teacher with many years of experience, but my father, as a pharmacist, earned more. At the time, not only was divorce frowned upon in the highly patriarchal society where women’s place was by men, but the court system was also skewed toward men for the same reason. Just because my mom had means to support her children, didn’t mean she’d win a battle against the patriarch of the family, especially with less money. And of course, after she was made to quit her job, she really had no chance at winning her case in the court.

But my mom had tried. She always took her children with her when she tried to leave, but she’d realize the futility of her effort and come back. Running was impossible since she’d inevitably caught wherever she’d run to within Korea. And running to another country, of course, was impossible since the system in Korea made it impossible for her to take children anywhere without the permission of the father.

Fifty years later, my mom is still with my father. I think starting about five years ago, she finally stopped saying she’s going to leave him. Is that because she’s finally happy with her marriage? Perhaps. Or is it maybe she’s just tired of fighting?

Remembrance of Father

My maternal grandfather was taken by the North Koreans during the Korean War when my mother was only five. Having lost her father at an early age, I don’t think my mother remembers a lot about him. My grandfather worked as the first interpreter to General Hodge, a commander in the US Army Military Government in Korea after the Japanese occupation, probably the reason he was taken so swiftly by the North Koreans.

My grandfather was a brilliant linguist, a second son of a prestigious family, and also a dreamer. If it hadn’t been for my grandmother, he would probably have been a failed lawyer who couldn’t support his family. Having grown up lacking nothing with a sharp mind, he was likely encouraged to pursue a scholarly path. He knew little of how to make money or support his family. He became a lawyer, but he didn’t know how to collect money. My grandmother still complains of him receiving a chicken or a bag of rice for his services.

Through my grandmother’s push, he passed the exam to be an interpreter. She thought he’d at least make money as that since interpreters to the government were usually salaried. My grandmother once told me how he’d looked at the dictionary so much that he could find any word using his big toe. I’m not sure if my mother knew any of these stories. She’d always had a rather rose-tinted memory of her father.

One memory she frequently mentions to me is the time he’d worked as the interpreter. Every morning before he went to work, he’d ask my mother to go get warm, plain white rice cakes from the nearby store for breakfast. Since he worked with the people from the US government, he had refrained from eating typical Korean meals which usually have Gimchi.

This memory seems to be my mom’s best memory of her father since it is so frequently mentioned to me. She felt valued. With each retelling of the story, his voice becomes softer, his demeanor caring. I know from my grandmother’s story that her husband was not affectionate to his children. He was distant, at best. Even though he’d written many romantic letters to my grandmother, he’d not been a great father. But I think my mother wants to remember differently since he’d left so few memories.

And I certainly say nothing to the contrary or pry further.

To be or not to be “borrowed barley sack”

꿔다 놓은 보릿자루 is a common expression in Korea, which literally means “borrowed barley sack” (Note that I deliberately didn’t use any article since we do not have articles in the Korean language, and yes, that would look strange to English speakers 😄).

This phrase refers to a person who is taking up a space, but not saying a word, like a sack. The expression originated during the Joseon era (aka Yi dynasty, the latest dynasty in Korea prior to Japanese occupation and current day Korea). Some nobles gathered to overthrow an evil tyrant ruler. Of course, these people would be wary of being discovered and later tortured and killed for plotting against the absolute ruler. During one secret meeting, someone noticed there was another person in the room who he didn’t know. Everyone was scared only to discover it was just an outerwear lying on top of a barley sack someone had borrowed that day. So from then on, if there is a person in the room who’s sitting silently, taking up a spot, but not contributing, that person would be 꿔다 놓은 보릿자루.

It is a phrase often used for a non-contributing member, so can refer to someone who’s not doing their part. However, when I was young, it was often used to describe how children should behave. It would be akin to a phrase in English, “children should be seen and not heard.”

As a child, I had a difficult time with this edict, especially because I thought conflicting messages were coming from adults. I totally blame my confusion on me being perhaps too literal, too precocious and/or having opinions. My initial thought was, if I were supposed to behave like a borrowed barley sack, I should literally be a sack. No sound, no movement, nothing. But no, I was still required to be the first one to smile, bow, and clearly say hello to visiting adults before they did so. Not doing so would be a terribly rude thing and my parents would lose face. I was extremely uncomfortable with people, ‌thanks to being isolated and not allowed to go outside to play through most of my childhood (and yes, I once drew a picture of myself inside a jail as me being at home). For me, this supposedly well-mannered behavior I had to follow was one of the most awful things I could imagine as a child.

After the greeting, I was also required to be a non-sack whenever any adult felt like talking to me, but had to turn back into a sack after monosyllabic/short phrase responses to whatever they asked. I think I was a precocious child. I had opinions and things to say about whatever questions adults occasionally threw at me. But well, a sack that turns into a non-sack apparently was not allowed to have an opinion. So when I did talk a bit more than typical yes or no/short phrase answers, some adults found me amusing, but others would label me as ill-mannered. And my parents got upset about me for talking when asked to talk.

You see my confusion there?

I did once voice my opinion about my confusion, but I was shut down, well, more like scared into not speaking, and I became a true sack.

So here I am, an adult, in America, where a person is probably only valued for speaking out and advocating for themselves. Let’s say I spent many years of my life here trying to metamorphose myself out of being a sack. Was I successful? I’m not sure. I guess all I can say is I’m tired of being pushed in either direction. I just want to be, well, ME.

The First Son

I rarely talk about my father because I don’t have a close relationship with him. He was always more or less a fearful and distant figure in the family. Let’s just say there I can probably count in two hands how many times he’s ever smiled or been nice to me, or anyone else in the family, for that matter. But although I can’t excuse his behavior, I do understand why he is the way he is.

From a very young age, my father has always had this responsibility on his shoulders. The Korean War happened when he was around nine years old in Korean age, eight in western world. His family obviously fled to the south to escape the war and North Koreans. There was no steady home or employment. Although my grandfather was a skilled carpenter, the family subsisted by selling goods on the market, which meant both his parents worked long and rarely paid attention to home life.

As the oldest child, all the responsibility of taking care of his family was put on him. I don’t agree with this Korean custom, and no matter how many times my grandparents and my father say that was the way things were in those times, I actually know it wasn’t. Not really. None of my father’s friends’ families actually behaved this way. Just my family.

No matter the reason for the grave responsibility, it was my father who had to go wash rice in the cold stream with other mothers, who always complimented him on how well behaved he was. He had two younger brothers and a baby sister, the older one who always followed him to his elementary school. As part of poor public school post war, children received small bread and drink while in school. My father’s brother knew that and would stand outside so he could take my father’s bread. Feeling responsible, my father always gave away his bread, knowing his younger brother wouldn’t even share with his other siblings. My father went hungry regardless.

Let’s say such sacrifice has made none of his younger brothers better men, since they are selfish to this day. But that’s perhaps a story reserved for another day.

Growing up like this, my father had to give up his desire to be a farmer and an artist. He became a pharmacist instead, so he could make money. He was smart, so he attended one of the premier pharmacy schools in Seoul (and yes, it is a big deal to attend a university in Seoul for those living outside Seoul). It probably never occurred to him to question what he wanted.

The family brainwashing essentially had him work immediately after his graduation. It didn’t matter that he got married and had a family of his own. He spent all his earnings providing for his younger siblings and his parents. And yes, what I was told was… that’s the way it was at that time. Also, false statements.

I still laugh (not a funny one) since my mom, who worked full time to provide for her children (my father’s children obviously) and the household, was the only mom who had actually worked at the time. In those days, in most other households, the father actually provided for the family while the mother took care of the children. But my father’s earnings were reserved for “his family”. He supported both his brothers through university. One didn’t even finish since he could have cared less. He supported his sister through studying abroad. And to this day… even when my father is the one who needs help, they’re not the ones who support him.

But even as I don’t agree or excuse him for his behavior, I do understand why…

I just wish he’d stop saying that “It’s the way things were in those days.”

Mother-In-Laws

My childhood memory starts when I was maybe three or four years old. After my maternal grandmother and her daughters moved to the U.S. and stopped living with our family, my paternal grandparents moved in. According to my mother, my grandfather was a kind and gentle man, although he had a bit of a weakness for alcohol. But he was apparently still relatively a gentleman when he was drunk. He apparently loved my mother and through his influence softened his wife’s sharpness toward my mom.

It’s strange how so many Korean mother-in-laws are nasty to their daughter-in-laws. You’d think they’d swear to be nice to their own daughter-in-laws after experiencing mistreatment from their mother-in-law. But instead of not repeating the mistake, they equally mistreat their own daughter-in-laws. And the cycle continues. Perhaps they are taking revenge for the time they were miserable as a daughter-in-law. Perhaps they don’t know how else to behave, since that’s all they learned.

Thankfully, my paternal grandmother couldn’t treat my mother too badly. My mother was a highly educated woman from a good family and she was also as much of a bread earner as my father was, especially since most of his salary went to supporting his family of origin and my mother’s salary went to pay for supporting our family. Still, my grandmother wasn’t a very kind woman and, at least for the first few years they lived with us, my paternal grandfather was a soft influence on her.

In contrast to what most people would think, my mother was not happy when I got married. I think she was worried about me experiencing so many difficulties she’d faced as a married woman. I can’t count in my two hands how many times my mother packed her bags and grabbed us from school, with the intention of never coming back. Of course, that would never have worked in Korea since women had absolutely no rights then, even a working woman. I sometimes wonder if my mother would have broken the cycle of mother-in-law abuse if one of her children had been born as a man and had gotten married.

Seaweed Soup

Seaweed soup is a must-have dish. It’s not fancy and easily made so we used to eat it ‌often. All you need is good 미역 (seaweed) and meat broth – and there is plenty of stale seaweed that will make you believe seaweed soup is not good, so beware.

Not sure how much people’s eating habits have changed in Korea these days with westernization, but when I was young, we still had rice, soup and side dishes three meals ago. Obviously, as a child, I often preferred something different. Did I tell you I didn’t even like Gimchee when I was young? That obviously changed now. Now, I crave Gimchee, just not always able to get it.

Although it was a typical dish, the seaweed soup was very important. Usually you must have some on your birthday and after giving birth. Why? Well, the explanation given to me was that it was good for our body, cleanses blood, clears skin, etc. So traditionally when a woman gave birth, it was a must-give. But I suppose not always? That was the case for my maternal grandmother.

She’d given birth to a third daughter, my mother, that is. And her parents-in-law decided to neglect her. Apparently, it was her fault that she didn’t end up having a male child. You probably can’t tell from my writing, but this type of treatment upsets me. And it apparently upset my maternal great grandmother too. Beware of the wrath of mothers!

So hearing that her daughter was being neglected by her husband’s family – at that time, my grandmother had gone to give birth at her husband’s main family’s house), my great grandmother decided to intervene. She bought expensive seaweed and hired a man on a motorcycle. My grandmother’s husband’s family was extremely well-off and mighty, which meant they had their large main house situated away from the city with large land, and her husband had been studying in the city. On the motorcycle my great grandmother went, and essentially barged into her son-in-law’s house. Then she took charge of the kitchen – trust me, this is not something you do as a woman’s family in those times.

But my grandmother got her seaweed soup, finally after several days.

Memory of licorice flavored jelly

Several years ago, I asked my dad what he’d like me to bring from the US. It’s a typical thing, when I visit Korea, I typically try to bring items from the US that my parents want. Initially it was because there were many things here that didn’t exist in Korea, but later, it became more for my parents to be able to tell their friends and acquaintances that their daughter brought something. They are very happy when they can pass out small pieces of dark chocolate, candy or coffee direct from the US.

So when he asked me to bring back black jelly that has something like the fragrance of 5 spices, I was thinking…what is that about? My dad tells me often he doesn’t like sweets (even though he does), but I had no idea what black jelly was. Well…I figured out that it is licorice flavored jelly.

It seemed like a strange request since I think flavors like licorice or root beer are a bit of an acquired taste. If you aren’t exposed to it when you’re a child, you don’t tend to like it. I personally haven’t been so I don’t like either of them. Licorice flavor isn’t a common thing in Korea (at least up until my childhood) so I was wondering how my dad got exposed and was wanting this? So I bought the best licorice flavored jelly, the more high end kind that’s all natural, etc. When I brought this, he looked at it funny, took a bite and said this is not what he’d asked for.

At this point, I’m perplexed. Was there some other kind of licorice?

He explained why he wanted this jelly. The memory goes back to post war time. After the war, there really wasn’t much to eat, which means dessert or sweets were not even part of the picture. But my dad remembers the American soldiers he’d met. They’d have these small packages of round flat disk fruit jellies (ones that come in different colors and covered with sugar) that come with their food packages. And the soldiers would often hand these out to the kids they meet. These candies were untold treasures to children and they’d savor them. The reason licorice flavor was what my dad wanted most was that it was not a common one in these packages. So it was like a treasure when he’d get one.

And even now after so many decades past, my dad is still seeking a little piece of sweet memory, which he could only find in the fake licorice fruit jelly, not the real licorice jelly.

End Of Life

Today, I want to talk about the end of life. Yes, it’s a morbid topic, but it’s what has been swirling in my head as my parents are aging and I am having difficulty talking about it with them because of the cultural divide. So in my family at least and many of the others I’ve observed in Korea, we don’t talk about death. Nothing about end of life can even be brought up because that means you wish your parents to die or something. I’ve been exposed to the importance of end-of-life wishes, care, etc. here in the U.S. so needless to say, I’m incredibly frustrated by this lack of communication.

Normally I’d research why this practice of death as a taboo topic has come about, but at the moment, my frustration blocks me from objectively looking at this. So what do I do? I remembered a fun little folk story that has taught many children in Korea about the importance of elders.

Let me see if I remember the story. The gist is like this.

In an ancient time, there was this thing called Goreyo-Jang. Basically, if a person got too old and frail and couldn’t contribute to the society, they were given a burial so to speak. Old people were rounded up, taken to a cave in the forest somewhere, given some amount of food and left there. They were too frail to come back to their home, so they were literally buried.

There was a high-level official who had an old and frail mother. He loved her so much that he couldn’t bear to do Goreyo-Jang even though he had to. So he hid his mother in the house and spoke to no one about it. Well, this was a time of weakened Korea so a strong neighboring kingdom (guess which one) gave an ultimatum to the king. If he can solve three difficult riddles, then the country would be left alone for its cleverness. If not, the king would have to pay a large sum of money or be prepared to go to a war.

I don’t remember all three riddles, but one of them was that they were given a marble with a hole through it, except the hole was not a straight path but twisted. No one could figure this riddle out except for this high official’s mother, who was old and wise. So when it comes out that he’s been hiding his mother from following the law, the king abolished Goreyo-Jang instead of punishing him.

Moral of the story I guess is respect your elders.

And what has this to do with end of life? I have no idea. I just needed distraction from frustration. 🙂

Parachute Undergarment

As I am a totally lazy information consumer, I do information consumption via email, basically in the form of email digests of news, science, history, medicine…whatever I can subscribe to. Well, mostly you can guess that the news is about nowadays. But occasionally, I do find some snippets of interesting factoids of history, science, etc. that I have never known and sometimes it connects with my Korean background.

And that’s what I found a few days ago…

It was a story about how World War II soldiers carried hidden silk maps so they could aid in escape as scraps of cloth could be easily hidden.

So here’s a related story about my grandmother. Unfortunately now that I’m starting to tell the story, the silk map for escaping is not at all related to what I’m about to tell you, but it still reminded me of the story my grandmother told me so you’ll just have to bear with me.

After escaping Seoul, my grandmother and her children (my mother and her sisters) landed in Busan, the last stop on the train (for how they got there, read my blog entry on Last Train out of Seoul). As you can imagine, all they had were whatever it was they carried with them, some clothes, paper money (which was useless by this time), and numerous gold and silver rings that traveled with my grandmother. My maternal grandmother’s household was rather rich so she had thought to bring all jewelry she had with her. And in those days, many people collected gold and silver rings as preserving wealth.

My grandmother tells me that for a while, she literally exchanged a silver or gold ring, an item of great value for a single roll of Gim-bap (Rice with vegetable and maybe some meat wrapped with seaweed) or Jumeok-bap (Just seasoned rice shaped into a ball). She had been lucky since most people who had escaped from Seoul were not even able to get that much.

As my grandmother was quite enterprising, she soon started the business of selling whatever she could so she could support her children. One of the items that she sold happens to be women’s undergarments made out of parachute cloth. I never thought about it, but I suppose numerous soldiers during the war time were air dropped into the war zone. I assume the parachutes were discarded and the soldier went toward wherever they needed to. My grandmother harvested many of these parachutes. They were made out of extremely durable Nylon fabric that apparently made several lovely undergarments she could sell for a great profit.

I sometimes wonder how she thought to do that…considering when she first got married, she couldn’t even properly make clothes for her husband and mother-in-law, which was custom in those days. But that is another snippet for another time.