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.

Family Will Be Family

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...]