My Inheritance

In August I went back to Korea for the first time in years. I went to see my grandfather, other family there, and to tool around Seoul. I got to share my adventures at the Kimchi Museum with GR readers, checked out Kinki Robot, and ate a free lunch with won-pinching Buddhist housewives in one of my favorite urban temples. A lot of things about the trip I haven't really shared with anyone.

I was born in Seoul, and lived there with my mother, grandparents and their extended family. For a short time I lived only with my grandparents while my mom was setting up camp in Southern California with my Dad. When I was young, I was very close to them, but I grew farther apart from my grandmother when I stopped speaking Korean. My grandfather spoke eight languages (one of which was English) so I was always able to communicate with him. My grandmother died when I was in grade school, but my grandfather has lived on to 91. Long, healthy lives run in the family. He had an older sister that finally passed away in her late 90's, closer to 100. I met her once (that I can remember) and she was a total bad ass.

It had been way too long since I'd seen my grandfather, and he'd been through a lot. He wasn't the man I remembered. Age does that I guess... I never grew up with a lot of old people around me, and I've always felt pretty out of touch with the things that other people understand and expect to experience with the elderly. Several times during our first visit to his house he had to ask my mother who I was. I saw a side of him that frightened and saddened me. I could catch glimmers of the grandpa I remembered, but they didn't linger.

I started to become really afraid of losing more of him. When I looked around his house, I couldn't find all the pieces of him that were so much a part of how I always remembered him - his tennis trophies, his offical keys to multiple cities, his multiple diplomas, gifts from diplomats all over the world, his dozens of photo albums... Eventually, some of those things were found, most importantly, his albums. I confiscated them, afraid that they would be thrown out, or forgotten about.

My mom took half back home to Memphis for my dad to scan, and I took the other half to work on as well. My dad beat me to the finish, and for the last couple of days I've been uploading his half of the pictures on to Flickr, wrapping my head around what a troubling treasure they are.



The picture here is from the late 1920's or early 30's, when my grandfather was a teenager. He's a brilliant man, and his brilliance was recognized at an early age. There are a lot of blanks to fill in, but ultimately, my grandfather ended up as the Dean of the Law School at Korea University, became an important man in Korean politics and foreign policy, and raised my mom, who raised me.

I have hundreds of photos of him, documenting his travels, his accomplishments and ultimately a large part of my history, but I can only identify a handful of people in all these images. I can't read Korean or Japanese, so I can't be sure where a lot of the photos take place. The one person who can tell me, and teach me this history is slipping away. I'd like another trip to see him, and make some time to see what he can remember, but I'm not sure I'll have that chance.