Brief interlude between classes:
Regardless of the the impropriety of favoritism, my mother’s older sister is my favorite relative. Perhaps because she is also the oldest child of her family, and because of her intelligence and success, I relate to her more easily than I do almost anyone else. And she relates to me. A couple days ago, before my classes started, we had a lengthy conversation about my family, and she told me several things about my parents, my father in particular, that I of course would not have heard from them myself, Korean parents being as silent as they are about some of the most important things life.
One thing in particular that I could not forget is the fact that my father is the first son of the first son of the first son in his family. My father has no sons—just me and my two younger sisters. My aunt also told me that when my father came to Korea a few years ago and visited his extended family, he was treated as though he had no children. Even though my father has long since changed his opinion about gender differences. Still, my own grandparents were at first displeased when my mother gave birth to a third daughter.
I hate, perhaps even more than any of my other internal problems, the fact that I allow my own family and the deep, inevitable remnants of a traditional society, to make me feel inferior. I am not. I never have been.
I came to Korea to learn more about my family and to understand them better. I should know by now to expect disillusionment in anything I attempt to explore. Still, as Professor Kwak explained Confucianism in depth today, and spoke of ancestor veneration while drawing a stick figure family tree to represent the concept of ritual heirs and actually said “the first son of the first son of the first son,” I couldn’t help but feel…angry.
Although Confucius may have never meant for such gendered oppression, and although I know that practiced Confucianism is often a perversion of his original ideas, the fact remains that South Korea is, in the modern world, the most Confucian society on earth. The social hierarchies present in the population are a result of both Confucianism and of Japanese Colonialism. The only thing I can say to any extended family member on my father’s side is that I’ll become more educated and earn more money than any of them, goddammit, and never offer them a single penny.
There is no other way, in there eyes, to prove myself.
