To my young niece and nephews,

         Currently, you three understand that Halabeoji (Grandpa) was orphaned in childhood, but that is the extent of your knowledge. Perhaps you are not the slightest bit interested, perhaps you do not wholly believe it happened. Even if the story I will share blights your minds, I hope that at least one of you might perceive the value of Halabeoji’s history and the need to carry on his legacy.

In curiosity, I traveled to Korea to piece together the mystery Halabeoji painfully cannot impart himself. Gleaned from the scattered accounts of myriad ancestors, distant and tenuously connected, I discovered a history more dejected, but far vaster and more inspiring that I had initially conceived.

         Halabeoji’s life at first brimmed with bright opportunities and secure gaiety. Born as the sole son of a significant branch of Korean royalty, every resource and whimsical vanity was provided. Obstruction and solitude were alien concepts and adventure and company seemed a natural right. The privilege of Halabeoji’s early childhood was so promising, that everything that happened next would seem contrived, as if part of a cruel plan. This life of luxury and entertainment would have sustained until today. He would have been able to recount his gifted past in spurts of nostalgic laughter had misfortune not struck. 

          One cold winter night, on the eve of Halbeoji’s fourth birthday in 1938, his fatigued father committed a grave mistake. While holding a lit match, he spilled lamp oil on himself. Flames suddenly erupted in a blur of red and orange and Halabeoji’s father repelled into a table, scattering pieces of a shattered vase onto the floor. Maintaining his consciousness, his father persisted towards Halabeoji before desperately casting him from the window. 

“Achieve what I could not!” heard Halabeoji as the hands of his father left him. In the seemingly endless period of his fall, he gazed back, discerning through distorted vision a charred figure sinking out of sight, their hand dragging the side of a curtain. When Halabeoji collapsed into the grass below, his eyes still held onto the window. The sound of burning and panicked sirens resonated throughout the area. Halabeoji covered his ears and darkness seized him into sleep. 

It was after this cold night that Halabeoji’s dreams of flames began to arrive. But even as he thrashed in his dreams, fighting off tethers of fire, his mother would gaze out the window, rendered unresponsive by grief when Halabeoji needed her the most. Her hands perpetually traced the armrest of her husband’s chair, as if searching for any evidence of his existence. Every once in a while, she would whimper and shield her eyes. But at the cusp of regaining consciousness, she would retreat back to the peace of denial, taunting the hopeful eyes of Halabeoji. After the pass of a month in this repeated torment, she conceded to the unrelenting past and commited suicide, entering Halabeoji’s dreams. 

With no one to fall back upon, a tall and aloof cousin adopted Halabeoji, or rather claimed the right to Halabeoji’s inheritance. He sent his irascible wife to fetch Halabeoji, and she transported him to their dreary house in Ulsan. Quickly cast inside, Halabeoji’s eyes expanded over a stifling room, held seemingly in space. Everything was static, devoid of change or movement. Suddenly, Halabeoji was shoved from behind, as though luggage by the wife. He regained balance and perceived, on a chair positioned at the corner, the cousin reading a newspaper, and on a couch, his sleeping son. 

“I’ve brought it here? Now what?” said the bothered wife. Without glancing up, the cousin replied solemnly:

“Make dinner, we’ve got extra funds now.” The face of the wife reddened and she yelled in defiance, but the screams spurred no change. Since the husband and son were inviolable, she turned towards Halabeoji with her bitter and ugly face. 

“It’s all your fault!” she shouted and struck Halabeoji across the face, alleviating her frustration just a bit. With no thought paid to the sprawling child, a sumptuous dinner was promptly purchased and served. 

“To our prosperity!” celebrated the cousin. As eager hands reached to steal pieces of meat, Halabeoji sat separately, forcing down the bitter contents of cheap barley. He looked around and questioned with unease whether these people were human. 

Seven years later in 1945, when Halabeoji was eleven-years old, Korea earned back its sovereignty from Japan. In order to abate starvation, the government bought most private land, but of course, for a pittance of its actual worth. A calf that had existed on Halabeoji’s inherited land was in turn displaced and afterward adopted by him. 

When the calf first arrived, Halabeoji smiled a bit. For an increasingly more aware Halabeoji, this was his first and only connection to his deceased parents. It was as if a light had finally pierced through the layers of darkness. When he laid his fingers on the calf, he could feel the finger tips of his ancestors separated on the other side of death. Suddenly, a thunderbolt exploded nearby, sending the calf into a distressed frenzy of squealing and kicking. It dashed to the other side of the hut and back, until exhausting itself to collapse on the hay ground. His eyes reflecting the unsettled breathing and lonely gaze of the calf, Halabeoji exhaled slowly. 

“You too, huh?” he mumbled in bitter understanding. He embraced the fellow sufferer without home or family and, in docile tones and gentle movements, he shushed and soothed the apprehensive being the way he wished his mother would have himself. Resolving to provide the affection he lacked in his own childhood, Halabeoji whispered the name he would give him, Gwihan (precious). Still wrapped in the warmth of the other, the two passed, for the first time, into a not yet peaceful, but undisturbed sleep. The cruelty of the cold world melted away and everything seemed almost endurable. However, this solace proved unlasting. On a freezing fall night, 3 years later, Halabeoji’s nightmares returned, and his path shifted once more.

At first, Halabeoji giggles, enjoying the pleasant warmth of his parents’ arms. When he looks up though, their faces are gone. Suddenly, he sinks far below and his infant arms flail to grasp his parents, but they disappear into the darkness above. The sound of burning manifests and he turns. In the distance, his home, ravaged in flames, travels towards him. The window displays a convulsing figure, charred black. Violent hands of orange and red play on its neck. Halabeoji shifts his body to run, but his legs stutter and crash. He falls into a puddle and lifts himself. A reflection shows his pitiful face and behind it, a woman strung on a noose. He screams and suddenly he is thrown forward into the ground. His hands feel around the mushy surface and he realizes it’s dirt. His eyes open, but his face is immediately struck with a mud ball. Under a blurred vision, he faintly discerns the cousin and his family as they deride him. A mirror appears to his right and he sees himself as an old man. His dirtied face has been worn down at the sides and his back has hunched over. He wears white baggy pants, a blouse, and his right hand holds a rusted and aged hoe. Suddenly, his reflection’s skin withers away, leaving only another skeleton. 

Halabeoji gasped awake in tears and his fingers searched for Gwihan’s gentle touch. He’s gone. The sudden thought pulsed through Halabeoji’s chest. His eyes threw themselves open and he lifted his back to scan the room. He’s gone. No, not yet. Halabeoni swiftly rose and dressed himself, before dashing outside onto the wet dirt paths to scour his village.

“Gwihan! Gwihan! Where are you!” shouted Halabeoji. He wove around, checking location after location. Every desperate bound stained his pants a darker and stickier brown. After circling the village twice over, he could feel his breath failing him and he forced himself to scream again. The sound echoed only for a moment.

“Gwihan,” he whispered now, but the wind carried the meager attempt to silence. A terrifying nervousness seized him. Returning to the house, Halabeoji entreated the cousin’s son:

“Do you know where Gwihan is?” 

The boy rolled over on the couch, refusing to open his eyes. He gestured to dismiss Halabeoji and resumed his nap. 

“Come on!” now pleaded an impatient Halabeoji.

“What about you, cousin?” he said, his composure crumbling. The man glanced fleetingly towards Halabeoji, tilting his newspaper back. Then, determining the affair to be unworthy of his time, he returned his gaze back to his article. Witnessing the stagnant room continue suffocatingly in inertia, Halabeoji tightened his grasp on his sleeve. Was he powerless to do anything? 

Halabeoji confronted the wife near the back window. The woman’s sharp eyes seemed to peer infinitely down in contempt, as if daring Halabeoji to speak. 

“Do you happen to know where Gwihan is?” murmured Halabeoji, a tremor censoring his voice. His eyes glanced towards her rugged hands and he cursed his cowardice. 

“What are you saying, brat!?” yelled the woman scornfully back. Her hand lifted and Halabeoji felt the pain spread across his cheek. He looked back up, stimulated now by adrenaline. 

“Where is Gwihan!” Halabeoji demanded. The woman staggered back, furrowing her brow in surprise, and pride swelled in Halabeoji. But in the next instant, she regained her bearing. Halabeoji could feel her hand before it made contact, propelling him to the ground. 

“What right do you have to know!?” she shouted before turning to leave. Soothing the skin at his neck, Halabeoji rose back to his feet with no greater knowledge. He struggled to balance himself with the wall and began to lament the futility of his efforts. What could he do anyways? He absently resolved to search the village another time, teetering in drawn out movements towards the door. While passing the cousin, Halabeoji discerned a new luxurious watch, and in an unthinking despair, he asked him:

“How did you get that?” The cousin provided the normal reserved and distant glance, but the next moment, his eyes returned in greater force. He dropped the newspaper and turned his entire body to smile, perceiving an opportunity to gloat over his wealth.

“It cost 100,000 won (84.62 American USD).” he said, gesturing his hands as if measuring stacks of money.

“No one in this village has what I have! One day if you work hard enough, you might earn similar things. Yeah, maybe just maybe” he snorted, clapping his hands to his own malicious joke. This was the most lively Halabeoji had seen him since the dinner of his arrival. Repulsed and hurried by his own concern for Gwihan, Halabeoji began to walk away.

“It was tough to get! I even had to sell the cow! Can you believe that?” the cousin suddenly said, still showing his cavity-filled teeth. Halabeoji immediately halted at the door. His grip on the wall trembled and his mind began to blur in between the laughter of the man and the beginning outpour of outside rain. 

A sharp claustrophobic terror slid through Halabeoji and he dashed from the house. He passed home after home, seeing enviously the smiling families of each. Everytime he blinked, the area distorted into shapes of fire and rope. When he looked at his feet, puddles reflected his wrinkled eyes and gray hair. The clatter of knives preparing dinner summoned the image of Gwinhan and his shrill squeals. He lifted his gaze to the clouds in madness and screamed, his voice hoarse and pathetic. Suddenly, he tripped and collapsed into mud, scratching his arms and legs. What is all this? His limbs throbbing and his breath strained, he allowed his body to go limp and he uttered:

“Umma (Mom), Uppa (Dad), I wanna go home. I’ve had enough. Gwinhan too...” As darkness enveloped his vision, a single regret pierced and expanded in his heart. Suddenly, energy rippled through him. Achieve what I could not. The long forgotten words resonated in Halabeoji’s head and he opened his eyes. Mud surrounded him. Was he to let all of this happen? Was he to grow old, doing nothing at all? He rose from the ground, supported by his bloodied arms and legs. He thought of the gluttonous cousin, the indolent son, and the malignant wife. He thought of everything he had lost, everything he did not have, and then he allowed himself to cry, not to give up, but to brace himself. Raising a fist towards the clouds, Halabeoji at that moment proclaimed:

“I will forge my own future! I will determine my own destiny! Only when death claims my last breath will I resign myself to the will of another!”

For the next three years, until the opportunity for a college scholarship, Halabeoji rigorously endeavored to educate himself without any financial support. In order to earn the certificate to enter university, he enrolled in a free agricultural school and due to the uselessness of this curriculum, Halabeoji was forced to seek education independently. With an English dictionary and discarded newspapers, Halabeoji taught himself English. The scattered notes and homework of the idle son taught Halabeoji every other crucial subject, enabling him to even reach calculus level math. Ultimately, by virtue of his indomitable efforts, Halabeoji became knowledgeable enough to attain free entrance into the prestigious Korea Maritime and Ocean University. The renown of the college and its educational courses allowed Halabeoji to become a ship captain, a high earning and coveted profession at the time. Much later in his life, he would even succeed in immigrating to the United States, all the while supporting his new family: your father, grandma, and me, in foreign land.

Understanding that Halabeoji was capable of all this in his own limited circumstances, I believe that, as his ancestors, it is our duty to strive for similar heights. Ambition is not something that can be tethered down, it is only something that can be shirked. Indolence, malignance, and cupidity, do not allow these aspects to render your life inert as it had Halabeoji’s tormentors. Acknowledge the adversity and hardship that ambition entails, but also recognize the despair that awaits you in inaction. In an understanding of both of these ramifications, resolve to take initiative and persist towards your dreams.

Sincerely,

Your loving Aunt