A Portrait of My Father
Prelude
Many people don’t know this, but my dad escaped North Korea when he was 11 years old.
I grew up knowing this about him, but as most Asian-American, parent-child relationships go, I never delved into the details of his personal life. I attended West Point for college and spent the majority of my cadet years in a third floor corner room in MacArthur barracks. The view out my window overlooked the back of MacArthur’s statue and into the Superintendent’s home where MacArthur used to reside with his mother during his tenure at West Point. The significance of me, a Korean-American and direct benefactor of his actions in the Korean War, living in his barracks, overlooking his statue, and living next to his former home, was lost on me until my parents visited the campus and genuflected in silent admiration at his statue.
As I learned more about my dad’s past, it would impart a sort of density and hue on the trajectory of my own life as an American and an Army combat veteran. This article is a short attempt to memorialize that past, and the present, recurring sacrifices my parents make for their children.
Part I
I learned that my dad’s parting meal with his mother was a Korean version of chicken soup to help him endure the long escape across the 38th parallel. I first learned this fact when he recalled it at a dinner where my sister’s in-laws were preparing that same soup; his casual delivery draped the room with a heavy silence — a stark contrast to the gravitas of his memory.
That moment sums him up: wildly understated.
But the saga continues…
My dad crossed the 38th parallel with two of his older brothers on their first attempt. I’d later learn that my aunt made nine attempts before successfully defecting — highlighting the rarity of their first time success. To elude roving guards yet maintain the integrity of the group, my dad’s eldest brother slung a white towel over his shoulder for his younger brothers to follow in the middle of the night. Hours later, they made it to South Korea and established themselves in the city of Incheon, a city my dad now considers his South Korean hometown.
Several years later, the Korean War broke out and the Chinese Army’s advances south forced my father to relocate to a refugee camp in Pusan. His extended family joined him there, concocting a mish mash of relatives festered together in a cramped shack, including his five adolescent aged cousins. Proving the intractability of male adolescence, my dad’s entourage established an orbit of terror in spite of the war: throwing rocks at windows, starting fights (headbutting was my dad’s WWF move) and impromptu shopping sprees instigated by a wayward wallet. But whenever I connect with family members about this time, they always, always, always mention how hungry they were. As my dad and uncles grew older, the effect of war’s perniciousness became more obvious; to this day, my uncle eats dinner as slowly as possible — never taking a meal for granted, savoring every chew.
The success of General MacArthur’s amphibious assault into Incheon pushed the Chinese Army to the Yellow River, simmering the Korean War down to an armistice and formalizing the division of Korea into the two countries that we see today. Dad finished his military compulsory service, graduated college, and was one of the first classes to matriculate into the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST). In hopes of spurring economic growth for South Korea’s fledgling democracy, President Lyndon B. Johnson and South Korean President Chun-Hee Park established KIST to improve South Korea’s domestic markets through industrialization. My dad graduated ready to enter the newly established industries of data storage and management.*
Emboldened by MacArthur and the vision of American prosperity, my dad, like so many parents of my generation, bought a one-way ticket to America with $300 in his pocket.
*Note: If you’ve seen Ken Burn’s documentary on the Vietnam War, I surmise that this was a spillover from President Johnson and Robert McNamara’s obsession with hyper-analytical decision making approaches to the Vietnam War. Recall that every campaign decision was preluded with basements worth of supercomputers attempting to forecast battle outcomes through topography, weapon, and troop variants.
Part II
By today’s standards, $300 is hardly enough to survive a week in California. But compared to my dad’s paltry upbringing in Korean winters, $300 is plenty in the context of peace time and perennial 70 degree weather. Dad slept on the couches of friends and family until he settled into a kitchen-less studio on the outskirts of Hollywood. With his degree from KIST, Dad quickly snagged a job with industry stalwart Ducommun Metals, and began his next pursuit of finding a life partner. For most immigrants, marriage is mainly a means to provide stability, and in the off chance, depth and beauty in the long term. My parents married with this mutual understanding, and my sister and I were born shortly after.
Southern Californian suburban life was the dawn of quotidian comfort and the end of my parent’s struggles. Peace, and the convenience of manicured, bedroom communities were the hallmarks of their new beginnings — their American dreams. When I reflect upon those days, I find my upbringing to be indistinguishable from most middle class American families — Home Alone 2, swim lessons at our local pool and making mixtapes from my favorite top 40 radio stations — nothing that remarks the styles of a North Korean defector.
Within this banal backdrop, my dad’s estranged past revisited him on a quiet afternoon. While drinking coffee and listening to Korean radio, he heard a pithy advertisement from a pastor offering to reconnect families in North Korea. Outside of occasional reminiscences with my aunt (the same aunt who made nine attempts to defect eventually followed my dad to California), there was little left of his childhood in his present life. It had been nearly 50 years since he left his North Korean home, so with his curiosity piqued and nothing to lose, he called the number in the advertisement.
A year passed with no signs of success. Given that the pastor never revealed his methods, Dad brushed off the advertisement as a scam and dashed any hopes of hearing from his family.
Then one day, with no notice or fanfare, he received this envelope in the mail.
In it is a letter from his two youngest sisters, Jiyoung and Soo-ah*, with the following pictures from a wedding and a family portrait.
Below is a redacted translation of this letter.
To my dearest sister and brother whom I miss so much.
To receive letters and photos from my brother and sister whom I had not heard from for over 50 years feels like a dream.
It’s impossible to write all the happiness I feel in this letter.
I had never known the faces of my father, brother, or sister, and never had the chance to call for them. I am Jiyoung.
I have not been able to sleep since hearing from you and I’ve been looking at your photos several times each day.
As I pick up a pen to write this letter, the terrible images of the war that occurred in Korea come to mind.
I know that you (brother) miss the scenes of our old home in [redacted], but even in our beautiful and peaceful hometown many people died as a result of bombing and fights. Uncle [redacted] and his family, as well as our cousins also passed before the war ended. I was also injured in my left leg.
Such bad fortune and sadness were felt by many people from the war.
Even in such a terrible situation, I was provided free treatment for my injuries and was able to go to school.
[Older sister] Soo-ah and I were able to go to high school for free and after graduating, the government sent us to become kindergarten teachers and we were able to work in a loving environment.
Mother never forgot about the separated family. She always hoped for the unification of our countries before eventually passing in 1975. There is no one left in [redacted].
The third older brother. Seeing pictures of new siblings makes me wish I could fly over there to meet you.
I hope that all us separated siblings can meet in the future.
I wish that our countries will unite as soon as possible.
Brother and sister, do you miss us and your homeland?
Please come. I can’t wait for the day when we’re reunited.
I wish everyone in your family good health.
Goodbye.
06 / 27 / 1991
This correspondence continued for over ten years, with letters, pictures and of course, whenever possible, American dollars sent. With each exchange, excitement around the prospect of seeing each other built. All the while this was happening, I was attending school, taking SAT classes and going to taekwondo competitions, completely oblivious to the undercurrent of emotional milestones eerily occurring in this suburban context.
Eventually, a window of opportunity opened up: the North Korean border relaxed its requirements and the political climate felt safe enough to make a visit. Excited by this once in a lifetime opportunity, Dad discussed a trip to North Korea with my mom.
But she said , “absolutely not.”
*Note: For my family’s protection, I replaced names and details that can personally identify them. As you read the letter, keep in mind that they are screened by the North Korean government, so descriptions of their lives are euphemistic so that they’re not accused of defamation.
Part III
My mom wasn’t antagonizing my dad. When the opportunity to visit his sisters came up, I was several years into studying at West Point and decided I wanted to pursue a career as an Army officer. 9/11 was in America’s rear view mirror, and the Army had launched itself into heavy deployment cycles to Iraq or Afghanistan, guaranteeing all Soldiers would see combat in the near future. My mom was concerned that Dad’s visit to North Korea would create suspicions around our family’s allegiance to the U.S. and upend my military career. She wasn’t off her mark; there were several instances during my time in the Army when Dad’s past was brought up and questioned.
Knowing the trip was a major risk to my future, Dad passed on seeing his sisters with little further contemplation. He decided not to share this with me at the time out of concern for the guilt I’d feel on top of the stresses of Cadet life.
Over time, the North Korean border closed and the country’s increased scrutiny on foreign nationals made the trip unrealistic in my dad’s old age.
I wish he had just gone. Our naiveté around the process of background checks had made this decision so unnecessarily expensive. I would later find out that that opportunity was Dad’s last chance to see his sisters in his lifetime.
The pastor eventually retired his services because of the amount of undue distress he was exposing himself to and transferred his courier responsibilities to a suspicious “international businessman”. After a few more exchanges through this broker, Dad lost communication with his sisters and presumes they’ve now passed. In a last ditch effort to validate their living statuses, Dad recently visited the businessman’s home in LA, only to find him confused and deranged with dementia.
Most of this is new information to me, divulged during a COVID trip home, 15 years after this opportunity surfaced.
I’m often thanked for my service and the “sacrifice” I’ve made serving in the military. But frankly, the price of freedom is paid in different ways by different people. For me, it was a young adulthood of challenging, but salient life experiences overseas. For other service members, it is the loss of limbs, mental health, or life itself. My dad’s price of admission, which he also paid for my sister and me, was to leave his family and then forego ever seeing them again. In light of what people like my dad and other service members have done, the uniform term “sacrifice” doesn’t capture the deeply significant and varied contributions given by others for the ideals of this country. “Sacrifice”, within that backdrop, is an inequitable term for my military tenure.
In 1962, General MacArthur addressed West Point’s student body with an infamous speech that landed with the institution so indelibly that a portion of it became mandatory for all members of the Long Gray Line to memorize verbatim.
“Duty, Honor, Country” — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
This- all of this above, is my dad…the portrait of my father. Once again, wildly understated, the King of Kindness, and a silent dam of patience and Sacrifice. I also don’t possess the eloquence, poetry or brilliance to tell you what “Duty, Honor, Country” mean, but I do find a beautiful and understated reflection of that mantra, ironically in one of those MacArthur saved from the refugee camps of Pusan.
This week was his 83rd birthday. Happy birthday, Dad. Thank you for all that you’ve done for us. I love you, and God bless America.
