Deep Lessons Learned In Korea, Part 2
October 16, 2009 By 6 Comments
I’m back home now after a rather jolting week in Korea. While the the full impact of the visit hasn’t yet settled in, I have some meaningful impressions worth sharing.
If my previous post was any indication of anxiety and speculation, this post reflects pragmatism and sobriety. In other words, meeting long-lost family in another part of the world for the first time is not that big a deal. I sat down for an hour and a half with two of my cousins Ko, Se-Shil and Ko, Seon-Gyu at the hotel lobby cafe, and we got to know each other a bit. They were attentive and offered to fill-in for me any missing details of our family. The Ko family is pretty normal, I learned. We share many of the same aspirations and dysfunctions as everyone else. My grandfather was a bank president, later an artist, fathered seven children and taught himself English. He and my grandmother had a fiery, turbulent relationship, and a couple of our uncles are quasi-destitute. As far as me being the legendary first-born son of the Ko family, [Read more...]
Family Will Be FamilyDeep Lessons Learned In Korea
October 9, 2009 By 3 Comments
This isn’t your average Wordful post.
In fact, I’m writing this from a hotel room in Seoul, South Korea, which is quite a change in pace from the warm family life I lead in Hawai‘i.
The reason I’m here now is to take a few days to myself to discover the country of my mother and the ancestors from her side of the family.
Unfortunately, though, the odds of success are against me: I don’t speak Korean and my relatives are–how shall I say–very distant. I’ve never met them or spoken to them until about 3 months ago to make arrangements for this visit.
In fact, my uncle just informed me he can’t make it to see me in Seoul, so I will just be meeting a couple of cousins. [Read more...]