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...
When the Korean War broke out my hal ah buh ji was taken from his home and imprisoned... supposedly for his being Catholic, a community leader, and being rich. He was taken and he never came back home. As the North Korean army retreated, it was common practice to kill all the prisoners and burn all the records but my family never knew what happened to him so they waited for him to come back. They thought maybe he was taken to North Korea as a prisoner.
Even when the war was long over, my hal ah buh ji never came home. Decades later, my family finally learned that he was indeed killed. His name was written on a prison ledger next to many other names from the town, thus confirming his identity, and there was a mass grave where all the bodies of those who were imprisoned were buried.
Without a husband and with no money (my aunts and uncles told me that my hal ah buh ji's little brother stole the family land and fortune during the war chaos but not sure if that is 100% true) my hal muh ni sold things at the market and did whatever she could to feed the six hungry mouthes (my dad has three sisters and two brothers). My dad's older brother (big uncle) went to seminary to be a priest but there was not enough money in the family to send anyone else to high school or college. I think my dad barely graduated from junior high school. Anyway, things were tight but they survived.
Acutally, I should correct the number of siblings above... my dad had two brothers and two sisters before the war... but a few years after the war, he gained another sibling. Yes... my hal muh ni had gotten pregnant and gave birth to my youngest aunt whose father was someone other than my hal ah buh ji.
To be continued...
