So, last time, we left off with my hal muh ni becoming pregnant long after my hal ah buh ji was gone. I am not sure how this happened. Well, I know the mechanics of it (heh) but I am not quite certain of the circumstances surrounding it.
My oldest cousin told me something that implied that my hal muh ni was raped. Something about how women those days couldn't do anything if a man forced himself on them... But his mom (my oldest gomo) implied at a different time that my hal muh ni had had an affair with a local man. She said something about how my hal muh ni's mom (or her grandma, I'm not sure) was "into men" and how that "bad character trait" lasts 3 generations. Sounded like bologne to me but I'm just reporting here.
I am not sure which is true and probably, the real true story lies somewhere in between... maybe? Anyway, the result was that my halmuhni became pregnant and gave birth to my youngest gomo. My oldest uncle (kun ahbuhji) was apparently pissed off at my halmuhni (it's always the woman's fault right?) but still, his 1/2 sister would still be raised in the same household.
That is another part of the story that I'm confused about. I'm not sure how my youngest gomo ended up living with my halmuhni especially with the next set of events to unfold. Somewhere along the line, I heard that our family had to have her live with us because she was "a part of our family." I also know that my youngest gomo's biological father had a family of his own with wife and kids so perhaps he didn't want her? I'm not sure but she grew up with my family and she didn't know that she had a different father until a fateful day sometime after she graduated from high school.
For the next part of the story to make sense, I have to explain the ho juk deung bon system in Korea. Everyone has a birth record that records the father, mother, place of birth, etc. But birth records are not individual documents. They are kind of "tied" to the entire family's records... on the father's side. The records create a sort of family tree I believe. I'm not entirely sure how exactly it works but with this system, the government knows how many children you have, how old they are, what gender, etc...
When my youngest gomo was born, somehow she ended up in both her biological father's family tree and our family's family tree. Both families had registered her. This would have been fine under normal circumstances but of course, the circumstances are about to get very un-normal.
You see, my youngest gomo's biological father's family decided to migrate to America. They got the visa and were all set to go but there was this one small problem. According to the Korean government, my youngest gomo was their daugther, so how could they leave Korea without their own daughter?
Not only was my youngest gomo given the shock of her life, being told that her dad was different from her siblings' dad but she also had to make a difficult choice. My mom told me that they gave her one week to decide. One week to decide whether she would stay in Korea with her family and friends or leave it all behind to go to the land of opportunity... America, the beautiful country.
To be continued...
