Love & kimchi

A wayward son, on the lam for an accidental murder, misses his mother's kimchi so much he risks returning home. His old mother, weeping with joy to see her son again, prepares an elaborate meal while her son takes a nap. He wakes up at a knock on the door, only to be arrested by plainclothes police, who screech out of town with him the back seat. His mother runs after the car, shouting, "Wait! I didn't get to feed him yet!"

This scene, from a Korean movie I saw on the plane home, seemed very emblematic of certain important themes in Korean society. I watched five Korean movies during my trip to Korea (3 on the bus, 2 on the plane). And except for what seemed to be a Korean version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, all dealt with the extremely strong bond between mother and child, often focusing on a child's longing for his mother's cooking, or a mother's yearning to cook for her child. Often, this separation is related to a child's leaving of an almost mythic country home with a chong-dok (a collection of large, brown ceramic pots for kimchi, bean paste, and other home-made culinary necessities that were prepared once a year and buried in the backyard to ferment) for the crowded apartment blocks of Seoul or other cities, a move that millions of Koreans have made in recent decades.

I knew that Korea, a very Confucian society, placed a great emphasis on the parent-child bond; but I had no idea it would all boil down to a longing for your mother's kimchi. This yearning tells a story that reflects some of fundamental changes that have occurred on the Korean peninsula over the past several decades. And it also sheds some light on the Koreans I've known in Bergen County.

For the past 28 years, dealing with the fruits of Korean parenthood has been my business. Over the years, I have come to know Korean parents indirectly, through the worries, obsessions, and behavior of their children, whom I teach and tutor. From my extensive study of the matter, I have come to conclude that Korean parents are hardworking, dedicated, demanding, involved, and not to be messed with. Oh, and they think that no child who can walk should miss school. From the pleas of Korean children who beg, "Please don't call my parents," I know that Korean parents are really old school. They remind me of my father, something of an anachronism even in the 70's, who would say, "If the school calls, it's always your fault." But I also know that they will go to great extremes to obtain the best education for their children, even if it means sending them to the U.S. while they work abroad.

But parenthood was greatly on my mind during my nearly two weeks in Korea for the simple reason that several of the young people I was traveling with were in search of identities that had been at least partly complicated by bold decisions made by parents.

I'm talking about Korean parents who decided to move to northern New Jersey to seek some sort of better life for their children. And Korean parents who decided to give up their babies for adoption. And Caucasian American parents who adopted Korean babies. And Koreans and Caucasians who decided to marry and raise mixed-race children.

I realized that, even with all the struggles and illnesses and accidents and challenges that can befall one's child, I have it so incredibly easy as a parent, simply because of my wife's and my undeserved good luck in having been able to produce our own biological offspring. My children are under no pressure to decide whether or when to search for their birth parents, and they will never have the threat of being unsuccessful in that search.

As a parent, I never have to steel myself for the results of my children's search for their birth identities.

As an American with American children, I never have to worry that my children are growing up without their true identities. I never have to see my 17-year-old Korean adoptee son return with tears in his eyes after playing with Korean orphans, as I did on this trip.

And as an American living in the U.S., I never have to go for months at a time living in a country where I have a job in order to support my family, who live in another country where the educational opportunities are better.

But, sadly, I'm also not part of the kind of universal societal shift like the one Korea has been living since its war, from rural hunger to urban plenty. Like most Americans, I'm relatively rootless. My history doesn't go that deep.

For me, there never were the kimchi jars in the backyard of my rural mountain homestead.