Kimchi Mamas

Sign the Petition for Na Young

I was absolutely horrified just now to read this article via a comment by one of our readers. In Seoul, Korea, Na Young (pseudonym), an eight year old girl, was kidnapped, brutally beaten, strangled, raped, and tortured and left to die by a 50 something year old man. AND HE WAS ONLY SENTENCED TO 12 YEARS IN JAIL. He was a repeat offender and had many prior arrests, having served jail time for another rape even. Be warned, some of the articles describe the crime in graphic detail. Apparently, he was drunk when he committed the crime but that is no excuse for the horrendous and truly evil things he did.

Please sign this petition to help bring justice and also to help reform the Korean laws regarding sentencing sex offenders. I am not that familiar with Korean law and the justice system but apparently, it is quite lax. I don't think they have a sex offender registry either. That is what Na Young's mother is asking for. For pictures of sex offenders to be posted at schools and updated every 6 months.

It is SUCH a shame that Korea has such lax laws for sex offenders. In one article, I read that a justice commented that the 12 year term was actually not that lenient, given Korea's laws. WTF? I even read somewhere that the government was taking down posts about this because it didn't want to draw international attention to such a shameful incident.

This is a picture that Na Young drew when asked how she would like the man who raped her to be punished:

Korea, shame on YOU. How can you let this man only serve 12 years in jail? Clearly, with repeat offenses, he is a danger to society and our children. To me, what he did was WORSE than murder. Please Korea, we need to protect our children from such criminals. President Lee and the citizens of Korea, I ask you as a Korean living in America, who still has a lot of pride in her home country, to please prevent this from every happening again. We cannot afford another Na Young.

- Mary

Korean School

A guest post by Christine Yum Lenz from Small Town Girl Grows Up.

"A, ya. Uh, yuh. Oh, yoh." I heard my daughter practicing her Korean vowels in the dining room.  Three weeks ago, she started Korean school near our home in Silicon Valley.  I've always wanted to be fluent in my mother tongue but never got past restaurant-level Korean.  My parents chose not to make me speak it at home perhaps to not confuse me.  I developed my own blend of Konglish featuring a colorful array of slang and swear words (thanks Dad!) through home osmosis and Korean classes.  On my first visit to Korea at age 12, I nodded silently at my grandparents while they uttered simple sentences about not eating too much or how I looked like my father, limited by my language comprehension to address any deeper topic.  I felt foolish sounding like a 5 year old so I generally didn't speak that much.  During my second visit to Korea several years later, I endured verbal abuse from taxi drivers who chastised me for not knowing my "own" language and teasing from my cousins.  Remembering these experiences, I became determined to give my daughter the opportunity to learn Korean. 

On our first day of school, I marvelled at the sheer quantity of Korean kids - 700 in all - little black-haired heads bobbing around the large high school campus.  I felt at home and self-conscious at the same time.  Most of the other parents were recent immigrants and spoke only Korean.  I definitely felt out of place but as I gripped my daughter's hand and looked for her classroom, I became more determined to "take" our place in this community.  I saw only one or two Caucasian parents so my 6'3" tall husband stuck out a bit but it really didn't bother me.  I was focused on my daughter and how she was handling herself.  I wondered if she knew that she looked different.  She seemed nervous and shy but also curious about these rambunctious kids who were speaking a language that she heard her mom and halmoni speak.  The class was comprised mostly of Korean kids including one little fellow who promptly told me that he was 4 years old. I watched him take out his little pencil case and start lining up his erasers.  I noticed a few hapa kids with their parents and felt small sense of relief knowing that there were others who felt a little out of their element.  The teacher was very kind and addressed everyone in English while explaining the curriculum.  I said goodbye to Sophie and left with a hopeful feeling.

Sophie going to Korean school has brought back a lot of memories of my own Korean classes which were taught in our church basement in the late '70s.  My parents were recruited to teach the classes - to my great embarrassment - along with several parent volunteers.  My dad was an old-school, you-will-obey-me-now-not-later, 1950s style teacher.  He pounded tables with rulers and even flagpoles (watch out front row!) to get everyone's attention and make his point.  My friends, Grace and Becky, reminded me that he broke several rulers throughout the course of our class.  Despite all the theatrics in the classroom, I learned how to "read" Korean (mainly by sounding out words) and could understand my parents' conversations pretty well but not a KBS news show.

Now when I do homework with my daughter, I find that I need to speak Korean albeit poorly to support her lessons.  At 40, I am trying to get over old fears and insecurities.  I also realize that I want my daughter to learn Korean to not turn out like me.  Though I was born in the U.S., I was considered and treated as a "foreigner" because of my looks but I was also treated as an outsider in Korea because of the way I spoke or did not speak.  I hope that by giving my daughter exposure to Korean language and culture that she will gain a sense of ease that I struggle with in my own community.  I also hope that she will gain insight into the Korean people - one half of her heritage - and a fresh way of looking at the world.

Christine grew up in Sunnyvale, California and has been blogging about motherhood since 2006.

Unwed Mothers in the Motherland

Yesterday, the New York Times published a story profiling the trials of the South Korean single mother.  It is truly heartbreaking to read what these women sacrificed in order to raise their own children.  Even when faced with a declining birthrate, it is more acceptable to have an illegal abortion or to give up a baby for adoption than to live as a single mom.  It is especially infuriating, considering how much pressure is put on Korean mothers in general to be the sole caregivers, that these women are roundly shunned when they should be applauded for taking full responsibility for their lives and the lives of their children.

Sadly, my family has some personal experience with this cultural stigma.  My cousin's husband was tragically killed in a car accident when their daughter was only 8 months old.  She tried to raise her daughter alone, but eventually word got out to her daycare provider that there wasn't a father at home (her employer already knew because she was employed both before and after the accident).  They confronted her quite rudely, and when she explained with great pain what had happened, they had the gall to call her a liar (as in "Of COURSE you're going to say that your husband is dead, that's what they all say").  Because of this and similar experiences, she eventually moved to the United States.  If widows get this sort of treatment in the motherland, I am not surprised that straight-up single moms get it much worse.

That said, I applaud the 40 women who have joined the unwed mothers association thus far, and hope that as South Korea further establishes itself as a modern nation, these last few shameful vestiges of pigheaded bigotry can be laid to rest.

Julie

Roots (part 1)

This is the story of how I ended up living in the US. I think it's pretty long so thus, I put part 1. And due to its sensitive nature, I've opted to leave this post anonymous. I've told snippets of this story to a lot of my friends but never had time to write it all down. What better place to do it than here on Kimchi Mamas?

It all starts with my grandparents. My hal ah buh ji (grandpa) and hal muh ni (grandma) were apparently pretty well off during the pre-Korean war times. My hal ah buh ji owned a mill and my aunts and uncles told me that if you had a mill during those days, that meant that you were pretty well off. My hal ah buh ji, I was told, was also quite a handsome man. He was totally in love with my hal muh ni and he would even take her on his horse to watch the movies when the movies first came out. He was a community leader and a faithful Catholic. He never turned away a hungry person who knocked on his doors. These are all just stories I heard from my aunts and uncles so I'm not sure how much of it is true but they seem to be truthful... 

Reunititing Families to Unite A Nation

Whenever North Korea is in the news, and lately that's been pretty frequently, I'm struck by how the media talks about the country as if it were separate - a truly alien and different entity from industrialized, modern, democratic South Korea. And no doubt there is much to separate - over a half century of disparate ideologies, influences and, of course, the DMZ, two and a half miles of the most militarized border in the world.

But if there is any evidence left that Korea is truly one nation waiting for reunification, it is the thousands of Koreans cruelly separated from their family members all these years. Children separated from parents, brothers from sisters. These tragedies are nearly mythic, part of the many narratives of war that our grandparents and parents have carried with them all these years. Over time they become nearly irrelevant, their potency diluted against the mongering of missile testing, sanctions, politics.

But this week, those stories are being told again. 97 families were reunited in the North Korean mountain resort of Keumgang and 99 will be reunited next week. These are families - Korean families - able to embrace each other again after decades of separation. They are the fortunate ones. There are thousands of families who applied who were not picked for this round (and hopefully there will be more) of reunification meetings.

I've read that many people in South Korea are ambivalent - or at least concerned - about reunification, whether it will ever happen and even, whether they want it to, considering the possible economic ramifications. But I know most Koreans still yearn for unification. They still know, despite all their modern differences and latent ideological and political hostilities, that the 38th parallel is truly just an arbitrary line drawn in the sand of one nation. They are not truly North or South, they are simply Korean and one day will be so in name too.

- Nina Moon

Greetings from Cheju-Do!

My family took a wonderful cruise vacation this month in Asia, starting out in Tianjin, China, with excursions to Cheju Island, Korea and Kagoshima, Japan.  The highlight of the cruise was viewing the total solar eclipse near Iwo Jima on July 22.  We ended our trip in Kobe, Japan and spend two days in Osaka before flying home.  It was a wonderful trip, and one of the highlights for me was our trip to Cheju-do.  I have been to Korea twice before to visit relatives in Seoul, Inchon, and Tongduchon, but had only heard about Cheju-do from my mom and family members.

We arrived in Cheju (or Jeju) at 8:00 am on July 19, to cloudy skies. We had booked an excursion with the ship we were on, trying to cram in as many sights as possible into an 8-hour stop.  At the pier, we were met by Korean drummers in colorful costumes, welcoming us to the island.  Aside from the eclipse, this excursion was the thing that I was most looking forward to on the trip.  My mother had told me many times about Cheju-do, and how Koreans go to this romantic island getaway as a "honeymoon paradise."  Of course, while we were there, I had to call her to rub it in that I was here and she was not.  I'm nice like that.

 

Kid-Friendly Jeju Island

Jeju Island is the honeymoon capital of Korea and therefore "kid-friendly" doesn't immediately come to mind, but my family and I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days there while my dad (who was turning 60) and his extended family golfed the days away.  So the four of us (including our 5-year-old and 2-year-old), along with my sister and cousin, were given a guide and a tourbus, free to roam the island as we wished.  We knew taking the kids to the typical folk villages and temples would result in mutiny, so we asked our guide to take us to kid-friendly destinations.  We ended up having a fantastic time, and there is definitely more than enough to experience for me to wholeheartedly recommend Jeju Island as a family vacation spot.  Here is a summary of where we went:

Psyche World
Our first stop in Jeju was a butterfly and insect museum, and it turned out to be a real treat for the kids.  The first wing we visited, Parody World, consisted of dozens of whimsical dioramas created from preserved insects, including scenes from famous movies and a self-explanatory rock band set-up simply titled, "The Beatles."  The best part, however, was Live World, where visitors can hold and take pictures with a variety of cute, fuzzy, and not-so-fuzzy animals.  The kids cuddled up with bunnies, hamsters, parakeets, cats, hedgehogs, and even a stag beetle.  As you can imagine, there were plenty of Kodak moments, and even the adults couldn't resist oohing and ahhing over all the cuteness thrust into their hands.  Apparently there's an actual butterfly house as well, but we missed it.  I'm sure that's even more magical.

Sebin White Sand Beach
This beach rivals any you can find in Hawaii.  The sand is so white and fluffy, the sea a milky jade green, and during low tide the water forms a natural kiddie pool, never exceeding 2 feet in depth, perfect for our little ones.  Our two-year-old, Emily, especially loved wading through the water and squealed with glee when tiny fish kissed her toes.  There was also horseback riding available, and the horse lady brought with her a young foal who ran around the beach like an excited puppy.

Goldenhill Herb Farm
This little farm and restaurant really reminded me of Berkeley with its laid-back naturalism.  Their specialty is a huge hamburger about a foot in diameter.  The bun is made in-house, an herb-laced sponge dough that reminded me of slightly-sweet focaccia, and stuffed with a Korean-style patty and lettuce, tomato, sweet pickle, onion, and even thinly-sliced apples, all doused in this herby goo that was absolutely delicious.  While they cook this masterpiece for you, you are treated to some fresh herb tea while the kids can wander the garden, fully visible from the windows.

Elephant Land
I have always wanted to ride an elephant, I never thought my wish would come true in Jeju of all places!  Since they're not indigenous to Korea, these Asian elephants and their mahouts were brought over from Laos.  My husband, who rode elephants in Thailand, warned me that I might not enjoy seeing these wonderful creatures being whipped into compliance, but I was happy to report back that these men at least did not use whips, but rather nudged behind the ear of the direction they wanted the elephant to go with their knees.  They also hold a few shows a day with the elephants and a variety of other animals.  During the ride, I also got to see "backstage" a bit and the elephants seemed relaxed and well cared-for, fooling around with water and snacking on dandelions.

Go-Kart Racing
There are Go-Kart tracks sprouting up all over the island, and the one we went to had no problem with our small kids going along for the ride, although they did request that the 2-year-old not drive her own car.  What a bunch of fuddy-duddies, right?  Gotta love Korean safety standards.  They did, however, provide helmets and a brief safety demonstration.  We decided to have the kids ride with a parent, and although both had a great time, something about the racing brought out the Steve McQueen in Emily.  She set her jaw tight the whole time, squinting at the track, speaking only to bark at me to go faster.  Who knew this little girl had such a need for speed?

Horse Riding
Jeju is famous for their breed of wild horses, some of which still roam free to this day.  However, there are many opportunities to go horseback riding on some very well-trained domesticated horses all around the island.  A word of warning, though: there is definitely a wide range of animal husbandry standards, and if you're at all concerned at how the horses are disciplined, make sure to ask around.  At the first place we went to, the horses cowered whenever they saw their trainer, and with good reason: once he got the pack into the woods, my husband reported that he whipped the horses quite heavily.  The second place we went to did no such thing, so hopefully this guy was an exception.

Pork Belly
Jeju is famous for its unique varieties of fish and shellfish as well as its tropical produce, but if you eat pork at all, the pork belly (sam gyup sal) is second-to-none!  Our guide took us to this unmarked building that looked like a house, and inside there was a Korean grandma and 3 tables with grills installed.  Right as we sat down, she presented us with the most gorgeous strips of pork belly I had ever seen, apparently from Berkshire (sometimes known as kurobuta or simply "black") pigs from the next town over.  She also had homemade kimchis, ssam jang, and home-grown lettuce to accompany the sizzling meat, and I seriously thought I was going to die from the yumminess of it all.  She even made some noodle soup for the kids, and showered them with kisses.

If you would like to see pictures, our Jeju vacation albums can be seen here and here.

Happy travels,
Julie

South Korea's Ex-Presidents Commits Suicide

Sadness. Former president Roh Moo-hyun commits suicide.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104494312&ps=cprs

-Mary

Laura Ling and Euna Lee to be "tried" in June

I heard an update of their story on NPR yesterday...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104146763

It's been almost 2 months since they got detained in North Korea.

-Mary

North Korea

Saturday night, I watched the film Crossing, about a North Korean man who crosses the border into China in search of food and medicine for his pregnant wife.  I bought the DVD at an event hosted at Stanford where the guest of honor was Shin Dong Hyuk, the only person to have escaped from Camp Number 14, a political concentration camp (Thanks Glennia for the heads up about the event!).  He was born and raised there and saw his mother and brother executed in front of his eyes for attempting to escape.

Through Google Earth, he showed us where the camp was, and the barbed fencing that encloses the entire camp.  He pointed out the prisoners' housing, the pig farm, the guards' housing, and the execution grounds. He pointed also to the school where children are taught to read and write, and basic math skills that are necessary for labor, nothing more.