A Scandalous Kor-Am Tale

As I surface from the 19th Street green line exit during the warmer months, I usually see a small Korean couple hard at work tending to their street flower stand across the street. Mr. and Mrs. Lee don't know who I am, but if they saw me with one of my parents, they'd recognize me immediately. Our families attended the same church way back in the day. Their oldest is probably about 23 or 24 by now. If you're ever at 19th & Market and you spot the petite Korean couple selling flowers, give them a piece of your mind, or at the very least, do what I do and stare them down. Here's why:

Evidently, after we lost contact with this family, they added a fourth child to their family, a son, whose name nobody knew. My parents were shocked not so much by the fact that they were well into their forties when they welcomed their final child into their family, but that neither they nor any member of their greater circle of acquaintances had ever seen or even heard of the boy until he was well past his toddler stage. The family described the boy as extremely shy and nervous. Years pass by and their oldest daughter gets pregnant. The father of the baby happens to be the only son of the single Korean mother who lives up the street from my parents. Mr. and Mrs. Lee, much displeased with their eldest daughter's boyfriend's single-parent upbringing, begrudgingly allowed the marriage. Out comes their first grandchild and all is better. She bore a son. Woo-hoo.

Fast forward a year later and the beans don't just spill, they tumble out: their fourth child, the son who is so shy and kept indoors because of social anxiety, is not their son, but, in fact, their first grandson. That's not the worst part: their daughter withheld this information from her husband until after their child was a year old. "Honey, our son has a brother: my first son, but you know him as your brother-in-law. He is the product of a relationship I had with a college student years ago. I loved him, but his parents transferred him to a college in California when they found out I was having his child. Then my parents decided to raise my first son as their fourth child while I met you, got knocked up again, and suckered you into marrying me."

Koreans are so caught up in how their family "appears" that they often make misguided life decisions. I wonder if the little boy caught in the middle of this drama is a happy kid. He deserves that much, if not more. At least now the truth is out, maybe he'll meet and play with other kids rather than sit at home without access to the outside world.

Aigoo. Now I know where Korean drama writers get their ideas.