When I first came to USA, I lived with my uncle and aunt for a year. This was not by my choice, but by the choice of my so-called parents – whatever they were thinking. If I asked, all they say were, it was for my best, with irritation – because how dare I ask for their intention when I am just a child who does not know anything and they think I should be absolutely obedient to them – regardless of what I know it is best for me. They regarded that I was a child who doesn’t know enough – always treated me as if I am short on something. But when there is any life challenge and ask for help, they would be annoyed/angry and would lecture me that how could I not able to figure it out for myself when they have fed me and supported me so much all these years, that I am such a dumb that I cannot figure that out myself. So I learned to shut my mouth whenever there is any problem in my life; with any luck, if I am really lucky, I can figure it all out, or usually I can manage just to get by, or often just suffer in silence.
My Uncle, ByungKwon is elder brother of my so-called mother, Sohee. Around 1970s, ByungKwon and his wife TaeSook, moved to Teaneck area of Bergen County, NJ. They were the only non-white family there in that particular town when they moved in. Everyone in the town came out and watched them moving in.
They had 2 cars – 1 beige colored average looking sedan, the other was a work van with enclosed back which he drove to work. They both worked. Aunt was a registered nurse, uncle was a computer programmer. They had no pets and had 2 sons.
My aunt TaeSook, always wore her old menstrual blood stained underwear. She never bothered to wash the stains away with hands – my guess is that she probably thought that’s a demeaning work she refused to participated. She just wore it and put in the laundry machine. When she hung those panties on the cloth line, she hung them hanging in sideway so that the old blood stain (now turned dark brown) would not show to other neighbors.
They never asked what was my birthday. They did not celebrated my birthday. The elder son went to a college in NYC and he lived there most of times. He occasionally visited his parents in NJ. For their younger son who is a year younger then me, who still living with them, she celebrated his birthday. I saw how she did it. She bought a round cake that was about 2/3 size of my palm, complete with white icing on the top. She put a candle and lit the candle and sang happy birthday song for him dutifully without joy, which her younger son, Eubin sort of chuckled in sad disbelief. Aunt didn’t flinched a bit but responded to him with a sort in stern motherly smile, as if to say that she knows better then he is and she knows what is best for everything.
Food:
They didn’t buy much of anything, but they bought a lot of different varieties of boxed breakfast cereals even though they were expensive – for whatever reason . They ate cereal religiously every morning with skim milk (sometimes 2% fat milk). It almost seemed like ritual – as if that will make them more American. Breakfast was milk and cereal – that was it. No fruit, no bread, no other food. For lunch, aunt TaeSook made sandwich from white bread, ice lettuce, cheese, and cold cut meat. An apple was added in the brown bag. And that was lunch for everyone. I was going vegetarian at the time, so meat was skipped on my sandwich. I bought a small milk cartoon at school for the drink. I didn’t like the cheese either, so I asked her to drop the cheese, but she insisted on putting them in my sandwich. I wanted something like whole wheat bread or rice with beans, tofu, some vegetables/fruts, nuts/seeds, but I wasn’t getting any of them. Just plain white bread, cheese, cold cut – cheapest ones at that.
The lunch food sold at school was terrible. Neo-Conservativism was on the raise with Reagan/Bush era. This affected the lunch program at that particular school as well. Ketchup was counted as vegetable. The neo-cons, with their ruling ethos allowed to do away with free school lunch program in Bergen County. The shift from cooking meals from scratch to the use of prepackaged, processed, heat-and-serve foods in Bergen County, NJ, likely have began in 1980s and continued into the 2000s. These nutrition deficient meals were not free – even for the dinky little milk carton. Needless to say, this contributed in my malnutrition, mood (depression), and school performances. Such neo-con ideology was not just affecting school lunch program, but for school bus program as well. Everyone had to pay for the school bus. Uncle or aunt would drop me off at school, but they didn’t pay for the school bus, so I had to walk to home, which took about 60-70 minutes – it didn’t matter if it was cold or hot or rain or snow.
Jeffrey Epstein frequented the Bergen County, NJ Airport. It seemed this was one of his traffic center in shipping underaged girls (and probably boys) to the Wall Street Billionaires. In the airport security log, there is not much record of who was on the plane. Did neo-con/neo-liberal policy at county government level affected this?
One time, I needed a scientific calculator for my physics class. When I asked for one, my so-called uncle said to aunt in a short question as if it is something to be dismissed, “Well you have it?” Aunt responded in terse answer “No, I don’t. Do you?” He said “No.” And that was end of it. I kept asking about it, but they didn’t say anything. My so-called father, SangMyung gave me his very old scientific calculator, with florescent light flicker on it, which used 4 AA battery that only lasted about 15 min max. It gave me wrong result, which also resulted in bad grade in physics. It seemed that teachers had no idea of such neglect can happen to a child – something that they are unheard of?
Once, in the morning, my uncle ByungKwon, said me that 2% milk tasted better than skim milk, as if he was teaching me about some important fact in life. I thought both were somewhat disgusting in their taste, but I didn’t say anything and that’s all I had. Sometimes I would taste very faint iron taste, I didn’t know what it was at the time, but now I realize that they comes from cow blood which is dropped into milk because their udders get overworked and have blisters and blood drips when milk is squeezed from udder. I preferred soy or almond milk, which of course, they did not buy.
Once their younger son Eubin complained to his mother that he ate meat only once a week. His mother TaeSook, said authoritatively “Eat meat once a day is enough!” But they were eating processed cold cut meat – everyday except weekend. Such process meat is level 1 carcinogenic substance on par with cigarette and plutonium – according to FDA.
Diner, she made Korean soy bean paste soup with tofu and onion only – no other vegetables or other food were in. The true Korea soy bean past soup has at least 3-4 different vegetables, mushroom, tofu, and meat/seafood. Diner was that soup, white rice, and kimchi. She made kimchi once a year. Every day was like that; same breakfast cereal, lunch cold cut sandwich (no cold cut for me), dinner white rice, tofu soup with kimchi. No other vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds or meat/seafood.
I thought, what a nutritionally deficient meal this is! The aunt and uncle were able to live like that because ByungKwon may have free lunch at work with meetings or he would buy one. So as aunt TaeSook. Eubin worked at supermarket and he was able to buy whatever he wanted – pizza and etc. I only ate what they gave me.
I thought I was going to get malnutrition, which I did. It wasn’t very visible, and I thought about it, but at the same time not very aware that I was getting malnutrition. However, it affect my mood profoundly as is scientifically proven that malnutrition is bad for mental health. This was compounded with the fact that they are such cold, joyless, invalidating, stern, repressive people.
There were one more variety in their food. They would cook turkey, eat cranberry pie for Thanksgiving and New Year, (not Chinese New Year). That’s all they celebrated. They did not celebrated Christmas.
Other Things:
They had fire place in the basement. ByungKwon got treated scrap woods from the German neighbor next door who was often working on renovation projects as side income, and ByungKwon frequently helped him. The German neighbor was happy to get rid of that wood for free because otherwise he’d have to haul to the landfill site and pay fee to get rid of it. In the winter, ByungKwon would burn them. Because they were treated wood, the black smoke would come out. The fireplace door was broken and didn’t properly shut, so smoke would fill the basement and window had to be open eventually.
In the Christmas Eubin took out artificial Christmas tree that was about 2-3 feet tall with one arm broken off because of repeated folding and unfolding usage every year. It had gawky large 4-5 ornaments with it, which Eubin hung dutifully in matter-of-fact manner. I said in sad astonishment, “This is so small!” He responded in matter-of-factly, “It is, but such is all we have.” All they have?!
A registered nurse and a computer programmer who lived in Bergen County, NJ in early 1990s, their combined income would have been at least $80,000 a year! At the time, the average household income of that county back in the early 1990s was $80,000, which amounted to about $200,000 a year calculated in current dollar (after pandemic).
They did not have Christmas light outside. Their house was the only one which had no Christmas light in the town.
Eubin always made fun of me and degraded me saying that I am an FBO (From Boat Out – as in Vietnamese refugee after the fall of the South Vietnam) if I had some habit that I had in Korea that is not usual in America, or whenever he didn’t like it for whatever reason.
At school when he saw me, he slammed his fist onto the heavy textbook I held onto both hands without any reason, which caused me to drop the books. Then he just took off with bouncy walk with a grin. Other times he slammed my violin case, which I was carrying, toward wall, because he was yelled at by his father, ByungKwon. He also made fun of how I was awkward and inept at playing Nintendo video game, which was the only activity I could engage in the house around there. The neighbor was suburbia which had no train or bus. A bicycle or car was needed to get around, which neither was provided to me. I couldn’t go anywhere – just vast residential housing area – and they took me to nowhere. They may say that they tried – as in, they told me that they are going to grocery store, I said no, because I didn’t want to be with such abusive and repressive people. What other options did I have?
They had patchy grasses in the front yard, which my so-called uncle ByungKwon, mowed dutifully with hand mower, once every 2-4 weeks. Because grasses were so patchy, they didn’t grow much even in summer.
They never went to museums or classical concert. They took vacation once in every 3 years or so. Of course, they plan everything, and only they went.
They subscribed to NY Times and read them religiously every evenings and Sunday mornings.
During the New Year, Korean families go to grave of dead ancestors pay homage to them. In this case, my uncles’s father, who is maternal grandfather to me. ByungKwon basically celebrated the exact same Korean New Year in America. Everyone accepted this as a matter-of-factly – even though ByungKwon and TaeSook seem to degrade Korean society and its culture. We all rode in uncle ByungKwon’s van to the cemetery. Me, Sohee (my so-called mother), her mother SukHee (my maternal grandmother), uncle, aunt, and Eubin all 6 of us was riding in that sky blue colored work van with enclosed back which he also drove to work everyday. He put a golden yellow and orange colored sofa in the back of the van in the sideway. So me, Sohee, SukHee would seat in that sofa, facing the side window of the van. Uncle sat on driver’s seat, aunt on passenger seat, and Eubin on the makeshift seat that came with the van. During the ride, NJ police stopped us and told the driver, ByungKwon, if he was moving illegal immigrants to somewhere, because it looked that way. He said they are his relatives, his mother, sister and nephew (me). The police sort of looked at us and let us go.
I didn’t think much of it until I talked about this to one of my American friend how dangerous this could have been. I also didn’t fully realize how screwed up they were of almost everything that they did.
Some years before, when my maternal grandfather died, ByungKwon got one small hotel room with one bed, near the funerary house. ByungKwon, TaeSook, Eubin, Eugene all slept in that one room. The room only had one twin bed, so TaeSook probably slept on the bed (since she was the one who originally held the work visa to come to USA and spoke better English), and the rest rolled in fetal position on the floor. Koreans call such sleep “shrimp sleep” because one has to sleep in fetal position to keep oneself warm and cannot sleep well, either. Their children Eubin and Eugene bittery complained about this, but ByungKwon said, “This is an emergency!” Emergency my ass. What is so emergency about? Someone died of an old age! That’s all! If I said this to them, I would automatically become someone less then a brute for saying something like that for her grandfather, an ancestor’s death.
ByungKwon’s younger brother, Byung-Gi, who lived in NY, USA was having a meal with me and sounding off about an incident when he had a meal with his elder brother ByungKwon and his brother’s children. Suddenly, for whatever reason, the elder brother ByungKwon slapped hard on the cheek of one of his child. ByungGi while remembering this, said “why on earth would he get suddenly upset like that?” I didn’t say anything but, I thought, that explains why that house had such cold and had repressive air.
If I tell them there were such incident to aunt, she would say, “some wind got into them (=바람이 들다) and (her children) needed discipline.” .
Both uncle and his wife aunt had stern look. And dictated as if everyday stuffs were matter of some holy things that need to be kept in routine. They were always cold and without much laugh. If I sang, they would frown and almost try to yell at me to stop singing/humming. I wasn’t singing anything bad, just humming classical music and I was humming in tune, nicely, too. But they could not stand any singing, let along humming. And Eubin, their younger son would look at me in disbelief and shook his head as if I did something unbelievably nonsensical and wrong. I guess they didn’t want that “wind got into them”, although there is nothing wrong with what I did.
They did not listen to any music, did not listen to radio, and only watched TV occasionally. Their older son was off to college in NYC, but the younger son, who attended same grade as I was, would play very loud MTV heavy metal music as soon as he got home. The TV was on the basement but one could hear the heavy metal singer’s voice screaming throughout the entire house. And he would turn it off whenever it is about time when his parents are about to come home. I wanted to hear some classical music on the radio, but no such luck for me, because I just could not hear classical music properly over this loud scream. Nor I was allowed to play any music once those stern and cold couple got home.
But when I played violin for the school concert they would smile as if something good happened. Anything that gets school recognition – especially in the formality form – and such was good. But playing music in their house or singing was a no, no. Their value (old Korean value) i.e. no music, because it makes heart go all over the place – akin to Taliban’s moral code, if you ask me!
Their younger son, Eubin liking heavy metal and playing it until his parents get home was a type of defiance against the mute, stern, joyless atmosphere which his parents exuded with pride. That pride was wordless statement that they are stoic, upright (Confucious) moral people who does not let themselves get into so-called “such bad haphazard wind or mood.” But they degraded Korean society and culture.
I moved out of there a year later and lived with my parents in an apartment at Flushing, NY. That apartment was owned by ByungKwon. When my father got sick from liver cancer, my so-called mother Sohee left to Korea and left me without any money for food or rent. I was still in college at that time and I had to pay rent and food with my credit card. ByungKwon knew this, but he didn’t do anything about this either. Debt started from those payments, which snowballed into amount which I could not pay later, which made me ended up in bankruptcy, which also contributed to my homelessness. If someone ask about why they did that, they would say something like, oh it is cold world and kid like me who do not obey, need to be taught that way. In other word, I had to submit to such Confucius top-down hierarchal order mindset which I only got exploitation from, but since I had too much of other ideas, I had to be disciplined in harsh way.
Mostly, they wanted money. And they didn’t care about me – only minimally because my parents wanted me to live in NJ. They experienced extreme poverty when they were young, and they expected to be nurtured by their children – even if that means forcing, neglecting, and abusing their children. It was their right, they thought. After all, their parents did so to them as well. However, they would blame Confucianism for country’s (Korea) downfall, but it seems that they were willfully ignorant about the fact that they are doing everything according that same exploitative Neo-Confucian philosophy developed in Korea. As always, they willfully ignored that how detrimental it is for people who are below the hierarchy – but they would bitterly complain about it if they are in the receiving end. That’s exactly what has happened in the 19th century Korea as Catholic Priest would describe, and other Protestants who traveled to Korea would describe. The horrors of what happened in such society. This is well documented. People like my aunt and uncle, they are simply willfully ignorant, morally coward, mentally lazy about their own act and connection to how the country got screwed up – some Confucian scholars, royals, and yangban (the nobles) did wrong, not them.