The Life of Pil Ju Choi Templeton

April 30, 2022

The Life of Pil Ju Choi Templeton and the History of the Choi Family of Daegu, Korea Additionally Dedicated to Her Namesake Valentina Choi Templeton

“A good person and a great kid, very generous, and a lot like her father.” – Yil Sun Choi Lee

Created from 2019-2020 interviews by Richard Templeton in Annapolis, Maryland Pil Ju, thank you for sharing your unique Korean family history that is a wonderful legacy for your children and your grandchildren.

Birthplace I was born in Daegu, Korea. I think we are from Gyeongju. A lot of the Choi family come from there. It is about two hours from Daegu. It's a very traditional historic city on the coast. School children always visit there. Naturally, I visited there because I had relatives living there.

Gyeongju is a coastal city in the far southeastern corner of North Gyeongsang Province in South Korea. The city is 55 km east of Daegu. Gyeongju was the capital of the

ancient kingdom of Silla (57 BC - 935 AD), which ruled about two-thirds of the Korean Peninsula at its height between the 7th and 9th centuries, for close to a thousand years. Later Silla was a prosperous and wealthy country, and its metropolitan capital of Gyeongju was the fourth largest city in the world. A vast number of archaeological sites and cultural properties from this period remain in the city. Gyeongju is often referred to as "the museum without walls."

Gyeongju has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in South Korea.

Origin of the Choi Family Name My father’s father was very well-to-do, and his father was well-to-do. We were big landlords. We are known as “Choi the Rich” in our town Daegu, so it had been for hundreds of years. We have mountains surrounding my city Daegu with its blue mountains far away. My father always said, "That's your 3rd grandfather, your 15th grandfather."

The Choi name was in Daegu for hundreds of years. It may go back thousands of years.

The Choi name was there from the beginning. The name may have come from the Chinese people. My father could have answered that. The Choi name is from the coastal city of Gyeongju east of Daegu. We were the main family in Daegu. Choi comes from the Chinese character. It means high. The Choi family moved from Gyeongju to Daegu hundreds of years ago maybe 11 or 13 generation. Other families would pay respect to our family because we were the main Choi family and what that entailed. I would guess that there were more than 10 Choi families in Daegu when I was young.

Korea

Daegu

Daegu (literally 'large hill’), formerly spelled Taegu and officially known as the Daegu Metropolitan City, is a city in South Korea. It is now the fourth-largest city in Korea with over 2.5 million residents. In ancient times, the Daegu area was part of the proto-kingdom Jinhan.

Subsequently, Daegu came under the control of the Silla Kingdom, which unified the Korean Peninsula. The city is the warmest region in South Korea due to the humid subtropical climate.

This climate condition provides the region with high quality apples and oriental melons.

Traditionally, Buddhism has been strong; today there are still many temples. Confucianism is also popular in Daegu. Cross-topped spires of Christian churches can also be seen in the city. ______________________________________________________________________________ The Meaning of the Name Choi Choi means "high mountain," Look at the Chinese character for Choi . You see the mountain shape. The Chinese characters are done with the shape of things. You see that mountain figure on top. It's a "high mountain" kind of a name.

Choi is a common Korean family name. As of the South Korean census of 2015, there were 2,333,927 people by this name in South Korea or roughly 4.7% of the population. In English-speaking countries, it is most often anglicized Choi, sometimes also Chey, Choe or Chwe. The Gyeongju clan traces their origin back to Choi Chewon (857-10th century), a noted Korean scholar, philosopher, and poet of the late Unified Silla period (668-935).

Choi is written with the Hanja character 崔, meaning "a governor who oversees the land and the mountain." The surname Choi also means mountain or pinnacle. Choi (崔), originally written in Hanja, is derived from the combination of 2 ancient Chinese characters: 山 is a pictogram symbolizing the mountains or top most. 隹 is a pictogram symbolizing a bird.

My Parents

Young Choo and Jae Hyong Choi

Our Traditional Home __________________________________________________________-__________

Some traditional Korean homes.

This undated photo is of the residence of the Gyeongju Choi clan in Otgol Village on the eastern outskirts of Daegu. The Otgol Village has been known for many, many years as the residence of the Choi family of Daegu.

Traditional Korean Home I think our home address was 7751 DONGDUCK***. It was a large property with a wall around it and a gated entrance. The house was inside the wall along with trees and well in the garden in the front and in the back. We had a neighbor who was a farmer and whose house was not as good as ours. In a car, it was twenty or thirty minutes to the center of Daegu. We always had a wall around the house. So, when I came to America, a house without walls seemed very insecure. I didn't feel comfortable. We always had a door, and we'd lock the door at night.

A House with Four Doors I'm from a house with four doors. It was a very nice, lovely home. It was a big Korean home with a tile roof with a garden in the middle. There was a big door at the entrance, wooden, big and old. The door was a very valuable antique when you think about it now if you were to sell it with all these ironclad designs on it. I remember I used to close the door a lot at night and I remember its sound. Then there was another door and then two more. There was one door to the left to the women's quarters, one to the right to the men's quarters. They each had a door.

It was a big house, and people always thought it was grand. People would walk into the house and say, "My goodness." They'd gasp. That's how big and nice it was. To me, it was just average, but all my friends would come in and say, "Oh, my goodness." Most people had never seen such a big house with a big, beautiful garden. I'm sure it's not the most gorgeous home in Daegu, but it was still one of the few very good houses in Daegu. It went back.

We could go back and forth between the men’s and women’s quarters. The women ate by themselves. The men ate by themselves. I'm sure my grandfather never came to the women's quarters to eat. We were always putting a cooked dinner for him in what we call a sarangchae.

It's the men's quarter. Sarangchae was a very beautiful old structure with sliding glass doors you could close. In the back of the quarters there was a rock garden with apple trees and Japanese maple trees. In the fall, there were always very pretty colors between the rocks.

A Traditional Sarangbang Room ______________________________________________________________________________ The sarangbang serves as a man's room for studying, writing poetry, and leisure activities. A sarangbang usually has a separate study called a sarangchae. The sarangchae is forbidden to women and only men can enter it. ______________________________________________________________________________

The Yard We had a garden in front. We had a garden in the back. We also had a big garden in the middle of the women's courtyard. I used to plant flowers there. I was interested in gardening, so I was the one who was cleaning and planting flowers. It was very interesting to me. We had a well where we put watermelons since we didn't have a refrigerator at the time. We had a beautiful garden. My grandfather had big, beautiful trees. That's where I learned to enjoy flowers. There were forsythia and pear trees in the middle of the garden. We had fishponds, and we had all kinds of beautiful flowers. I began to love flowers and smelling them. It was a beautiful home, and I saw pictures of my grandfather walking on the grounds. There was a rock garden in the middle of the yard. When I was growing up, the water of the pond where there had been fish was dried up. I remember we had a big pear tree in the middle of the yard and peony flowers blooming in the spring. They smelled good. It’s a nice memory. I don't know why I remember the peonies so much. They always came in the springtime, and they smelled good. I remember smelling it. There were trees all over. It was a nice house. It was a good house.

There was big, open land around the house. Eventually, I guess it was sold or filled with homes people built. But it was a very big, empty field for a long, long time. I guess my family owned it. I guess they sold them because they had a difficult time because of the Korean War and other reasons. The government came and restructured the land. They took a lot of land from my family home and gave it to the poor farmers. We lost a lot of money because of that, but we still had plenty to live well. That's when my father tried business, but everything he touched failed.

My Grandfather My father’s father used to live there. I didn't know my grandfather. I knew my grandmother, who was widowed a long, long, time ago. I saw his picture. It was a side view so I don't know what his full face looked like, but the side view looked just like my father. I would always see his picture standing in the garden, a very dignified-looking bald man who looked like my father in a Korean outfit. I am sure his parents lived there too, but I never asked.

My grandmother and my grandfather on my mother’s side were well accepted**** by the Christian missionaries who came to Korea and the Korean Christian church. The missionaries came to Korea to spread the Gospel. My mother’s father built the Presbyterian Church that my mother attended.***ADD off trancription

Visiting My Mother’s House My mother's home was about a half an hour away. We'd take a bus or taxi or other public transportation. It wasn’t very far. They had a huge house. I used to go there with mother. They had such a big, long wall along the house. I'd have to walk that long walk and then open a big door. Everybody knew we are coming, and family members would be standing in the middle of the house corridor or living room. They all watched me walk toward the house with my mother, and I'd get so embarrassed or shy. Children feel that way. I'd worry all day long that I'd have to go there with my mother, even though I wanted to go there.

My heart would begin to beat because of the tension. The idea of walking along that long walk to get to the door along those little, stone steps. It seemed to me like a million miles to get to the house. Then opening the door and suddenly everybody looking at me and saying, "There she is!"- it makes me laugh. It was very uncomfortable even though it was a welcoming sign. Especially my mother's oldest brother who was standing there saying, "Oh, There she comes. That little girl's coming." He'd yell, "Why are you here?" "Why are you here, little girl?" That means that he's happy to see me. You might think it's a rejection, but it's actually not. He was very funny and playful. I'd get very embarrassed, and everybody would look at me.

They had a large square yard. There was a big well in the middle of the yard and a little structure above it. I used to go up into the structure. It was right above the well, but the structure was kind of old and shaky. Whenever I would go there, my two cousins used to shake it so that I'd get so scared. I went up

there like a silly child. Then the boys shook it and scared the hell out of me. It makes me laugh. They were so naughty. They always did it to me whenever I went in there. They’d shake it. But I still went up there whenever I visited because it was so much fun. I was right above the well. If I fell, I could have fallen into the well. I was 7 or 8 years old. I would just visit to play with my cousins. One of them is a girl. The others are all boys. They used to tease me and scare me, but I still used to go there with my mother.

Winter and Summer Heating At that time Koreans didn’t have central heating systems and winter was cold. We heated the house floors from underneath where we would sit or sleep. The Korean heating system through the floor is called ondol. __________________________________________________________________________ Ondol (온돌;溫突), also known as goodle (구들) or banggoodle (방구들), is an underfloor heating system that has kept traditional houses in Korea warm for thousands of years. It was energy efficient as they re-used the heat from fireplaces (agungi) in traditional Korean kitchens. The inside of the agungi was connected to a series of channels, called gorae, that traveled underneath the floor. ___________________________________________________________________________ In summertime, you would just open all the doors, and then the wind would go through it because there was always a big door here and there was another door in the back. But in winter you would have to feed the fire with wood. The maids would do it all day long, heating the floor so that the fire didn't go out. It was a big job for the maids, to make sure there was fire in each room. The floor would get nice and warm, sometimes hot. We used to sleep on the floor and not the bed with a thick blanket. It was very nice and warm with the heated the floor. You would put down a nice cotton blanket, and it was cozy.

Cooking Meals and the Help The maids would cook for the house. My mother really had no time to cook. She had to manage her life. So, we always had cooks. One of the cooks belonged to my mother's house, her family house, even as a little girl. She was an orphan. She had a cleft lip. She was a good woman. When I was 10 years old, she came to my house to take care of us. She did the cooking. She did the laundry. Sometimes we'd have an extra person who came to help.

My mother's good friend was also from a very rich, elegant family, but her husband was a drunkard. He drank like mad, and he lost everything. They had five children. He

lost all their money, so she came live with us and help in the kitchen. She was such an elegant lady. You could tell her upbringing. She cooked elegant and delicious meals for our family because that was her background. The other lady cooked but not as elegantly. The elegant one had a grown-up daughter who lived with us, but she had a job in an office. She was very beautiful, and I admired her. She had other children who lived in other people's houses because she had no place for them to live. I really appreciated my mother's friend who lived with us. She taught us a lot of good things which my mother didn’t have the time to teach us. My mother was so busy. She didn't cook. She was managing the household finances and property and other things. This lady was really like a mother, cooking, showing us nice things and how to do things.

I really appreciated her. She was very nice. Despite her personal difficulties, she was always very elegant, very kind and gentle. She never raised her voice. She was very humble, grateful, and dignified.

Meals, Sitting on the Floor, Bento Boxes and Backpacks In the women's quarters, there was a big, brown table. This is not a fixed table.

You would carry it in and out. At least six or seven people could sit around this round table sitting on the floor. The maids cooked dinner. The people who were in the middle-class could always be hired. People needed a job, so we hired one or two maids who ended up cooking for us and washing for us. So we'd all sit around. There was usually very good Korean food – soups and rice and kimchi, salad, a lot of fish, bulgogi -very good, delicious meals.

______________________________________________________________________________ Korean cuisine has evolved through centuries of social and political change.

Originating from ancient agricultural and nomadic traditions in Korea and southern Manchuria, Korean cuisine has evolved through a complex interaction of the natural environment and different cultural trends. Korean cuisine is largely based on rice, vegetables, and (at least in the South) meats. Traditional Korean meals are named for the number of side dishes, or banchan, that accompany steam-cooked short-grain rice. Kimchi is served at nearly every meal.

Commonly used ingredients include sesame oil, doenjang (fermented bean paste), soy sauce, salt, garlic, ginger, gochugaru (pepper flakes), gochujang (fermented red chili paste), and napa cabbage.

_____________________________________________________________________________ Ingredients and dishes vary by province. Kimchi originated in Korea during the Three Kingdoms period (1st century BC to the 7th century AD). By that time, families had long used preservation methods to keep a constant food supply for their families during the long, harsh winters. A blend of cabbage, garlic, ginger, hot red chili peppers, vegetables, fish sauce and often seafood, kimchi has since established itself as a Korean culinary staple. Bulgogi (from the Korean bul-gogi, literally "fire meat") is a grilled or roasted dish made of thin, marinated slices of beef or pork grilled on a barbecue or on a stove-top griddle. Beef grilled on a skewer was prepared for the wealthy and the nobility. _____________________________________________________________________________ When the dinner ended, the maid would take the table away. It folded. They would do it three times a day. We ate in the women's quarters. My father used to eat with us by that time. Times had changed. He didn’t always stay in the men's quarters, though he stayed there most of the time. That was a nice time.

Bento Box During the school year, we ate the same things, but we used to take lunch, usually a lunchbox, actually a Japanese lunchbox, a “bento box”, with rice and some meats and vegetables or whatever. _____________________________________________________________________________ A bento is a single-portion take-out or home-packed meal of Japanese origin. A traditional bento may contain rice or noodles with fish or meat, often with pickled and cooked vegetables in a box. In Korea, the packed lunch boxes are called dosirak, and they are either made at home or bought at the store. They are similar to Japanese bento but slightly different.

Korean bento boxes are usually made with a few different vegetable and meat side dishes.

Kimchi is often included in the bento box. ______________________________________________________________________________

The box was made usually of aluminum or sometimes wood. It's kind of a cabinet. Having a pretty design was almost a competition in school. Everybody wanted the title of prettiest-looking bento design. I remember having a big, pinkish-red, round flower in the middle of my bento box that I was very proud of. They had a groove where you stuck the chopsticks so you would always have them to eat lunch. We always carried our own things such as our books or papers in backpacks. I had a happy life.

Walking to School and Travel in Daegu I always had to take a bus or a small taxi type of thing. People would ride together. It was about 20 minutes to Daegu. I used to walk to school too. It wasn’t that far. We’d walk to school in the winter. Sometimes we would take a bus. At that time, not many people had a car. My uncle had a car. He was a government official, so he had a big, black limousine. I thought that was ours, but it was actually his. Everything was a walk. If you had a half an hour or 40 minutes, you could get to places. We enjoyed it with friends, talking. It was a very sweet time when I think about it.

My Father and The Choi Wealth My father’s name was Jae Hyong. I don’t remember my grandfather's name. He was a rich landlord inheriting wealth and mountains from many generations ago. The story is that one of my ancestors many generations ago was used as a decoy for a government envoy to Japan. As a government official, in disguise, he was a decoy for a real ambassador to Japan. Other people thought he was the ambassador, they killed him, so he lost his life for the government.

The government gave my family a big award for his sacrificing his life hundreds of years ago as far as 500 years. That’s where the wealth came from. It was on my father's side. The government gave the reward in the form of land and mountains rather than cash. It was a lot of land and a lot of mountains. Daegu is surrounded by mountains, blue mountains far away. That was the Silla dynasty or Yi Dynasty, or it could be the Goryeo Dynasty. We were a bit before the Goryeo or Silla dynasties in Korea. My father used to tell me, "That's your fifth-generation grandfather's tomb site." He used to point to the mountains. We owned a lot of mountains around Daegu, and he talked about it all his life. I would listen to it and then forget about it because he wanted to talk about it so often.

The Ancestor That Died for His Country and the Burial Mountain My great, great, great grandfather died serving the king with an ambassadorial mission to Japan. He heard that Japanese were trying to kill the ambassador and our relative went in his place. The Japanese killed him instead of the Korean ambassador. It is these mountains in Daegu from the king that are where my ancestors are buried there. As far as I know, nine generations

back. Maybe eight hundred years or more. Because of his loyalty to the country, the king gave us more than one mountain. Its thousands of acres. My father would have known the name of the king. It may be in the family jokbo- the record of all the male Choi ancestors eight hundred years back. (See the interview of Mr. Choi at the end of this document.) The mountains are covered with trees and all of our ancestors of my grandfather are buried on the mountain for at least eight or nine generations. They are burial mounds for each generation are in order next to one another on the hillside and not very separated. We used to go there on New Year's Day or at other times to honor our ancestors.

There are stone gravestones just like here in America, but Korean in design. On the stone maker there were writings of the name, date of birth and or death date. There was a place to put things such as flowers.

The Gravesite and the Government My oldest sister Yil Sun said that it was some years ago the graves were moved by the government and centralized in another area of the same mountain because the government wanted to use the land. Although it was possibly an act of eminent domain, she felt the land was being used by a private group as a shooting practice range and some corruption was involved as can happen in Korea. I think we are responsible for cutting of the grass throughout the year.

Before in old times there was a caretaker or a slave who took care of the land and lived there with his family in a house for free. But now we pay for it and it's not cheap.

The Most Famous Choe Chiwon There are some Chois that believe that Choe Chiwon, the famous Korean scholar, was not really our direct ancestor, but others insist that he is. My father feels that he was as noted in our jokbo and his discussion of our family history. (Note his interview at end of this document.) My father would often talk about him. He was proud of his connection to Choe Chiwon. He was a very proud of the Choi family. We have a long tradition. It is said that Cheo Chiwon retired to the mountains to write and had secured the magic jade flute of the Silla Dynasty and that he did not die but played on the flute and disappeared into the heavens above.

Cheo Chiwon 최치원 Born 857 __________________________________________________________________ Choe Chiwon (857–10th century) was a Korean philosopher and poet of the late medieval Unified Silla period (668-935). He studied for many years in Tang China, passed the Tang imperial examination, and rose to the high office there before returning to Silla, where he made ultimately futile attempts to reform the governmental apparatus of a declining Silla state.

In his final years, Choe turned more towards Buddhism and became a hermit scholar residing in and around Korea's Haeinsa temple. Choe Chiwon was also known by the literary names Haeun "Sea Cloud" ([hɛ ː un] hanja: 海雲), or, more commonly, Goun "Lonely Cloud" ([koun] hanja: 孤雲). He is recognized today as the progenitor of the Gyeongju Choe clan. ______________________________________________________________________________

My Father and Ancestor Worship Celebrations He was a very traditional Korean with Buddhist traditions, even though he was very contempaorary following world news. He always read magazines such as "Time” and "Life" and he liked Japanese things. As the only son in three generations and in accordance Korean tradition he was responsible for the ancestor worship activities and the recording of the family genealogical history in the jokbo. He was proud of his family history and his ancestor worship.

He was proud of his father's history and wealth and his hometown, Deagu. Ancestor worship includes the observation the dates of the passing of ancestors as distant as eight generations.

The Importance of Boys

Having had five girls, my parents were happy to finally have a son. In Korea the boys inherit the name, whereas the girls lose their name when they marry. The boys and particularly the oldest son are responsible for continuing ancestor worship and the care of the mountains.

That's why boys are important.

My father was the only son in the family for three generations. He was responsible for the family history. He came from a Buddhist family with ancestor worship traditions. My mother had to assist in the ancestor celebrations every month throughout the year. Because Christians are against this ancestor worship, my mother was against these celebrations. She also felt were wasteful.

My mother was always in the church or praying. He was always worshiping. My father was always pushing ancestors. It was a big problem in their marriage, but before my father died, he became a Christian. In worshiping ancestors, my father would read something and bow. We just enjoyed the food. All my relatives, my cousins came in and enjoyed the food. We would have something almost every month. It was my mother's big problem because too many relatives came to my house and there was always somebody in somebody else in the house. That went on for many years.

MOVE That's all he did, taking care of his ancestors' history and the books. He tried to manage his land, of course, but during the Korean War nothing worked according to the law. Because of that, he lost a lot of land, I'm sure. ______________________________________________________________________________ Jesa is a ceremony commonly practiced in Korea. Jesa functions as a memorial to the ancestors of the participants. Jesa are usually held on the anniversary of the ancestor's death.

There are several kinds of ancestor rituals such as gijesa, charye, seongmyo, and myosa.

Gijesa is a memorial service which is held annually on the day of the ancestor's death. Memorial services that are performed on Chuseok or New Year's Day are called charye. On April 5 and before Chuseok, Koreans visit the tombs of their ancestors and trim the grass off the tombs. Then they offer food, fruits, and wine and make bows in front of the tombs. Memorial services that are performed in front of tombs are called seongmyo. Myosa are performed at the tomb site in the lunar month of October and conducted in memory of old ancestors (five or more generations). ______________________________________________________________________________ You just have a big party. You prepare a lot of food and arrange it in front of the big folding screen with some incense burning. We'd bow to the ancestor. There's a certain way of bowing. I've never done much of it myself. There's a certain way of bowing to dead people and to people who are living. You shouldn't bow to them the way that you bow to dead people. That's a very, very bad thing to do. There are these manners you must learn. My father spent most of his

life doing things like this. There were celebrations very often throughout the year. That's what my mother eventually eliminated, since she was Christian. But she also felt it was wasteful and expensive.

Celebrating Ancestors When she first married there would be at least two or three celebrations a month. That's where some of their wealth went. Poor family members would come. They'd sit there, live there, eat there, and at times steal things. My mother realized that's not the way to go, so she over a long period of time she eventually eliminated a lot of the celebrations except important ones like his grandfather. Six or eight generations were celebrated. It makes me laugh. It was hundreds of years. They would celebrate their death day. Observing ancestor worship included taking care of the tomb site. Visiting the burial mountain was like a vacation and a fun time for us, but it was important for my father to do it.

The Choi Family Burial Mountain The land that came to the Choi family hundreds of years ago, when the government gave it to our ancestor for sacrificing his life. The land included many mountains. We lived in a big city surrounded by mountains. They were kind of blue and far away. According to my father, most of them are ours. He always said that at least half of them were ours, but I never really asked questions. Children don't ask those types of questions. That was how I was brought up. But that history implants pride in you. It's important to have pride. I have roots.

We didn’t have an address for the mountain. There's a name for the mountain, but I don't remember it. I remember that all of them looked flat on top so we called it a “tray” mountain or something like a serving tray. The name is probably in the jokbo. My father's grave site is there now, and my mother’s. Your name is there too, Richard Templeton. You're named as a son-in-law. So, feel honored. I have to laugh. Because it's our mountain and land, its where our family is buried. There are all the daughters' names and their husbands' names but only since my father began to include the women ancestors.

The burial mountain is about an hour or two from the city of Daegu from where we were living. We didn't have our own car at the time. We used to take a taxi or a bus. Then

we'd have to walk. They'd drop us off at some point. I think we had to walk at least a quarter mile to get to the mountain house, and then we'd do our things. The land came down through Generations. We owned those lands around there, the mountain, land, and house.

When we'd go to mountain and our ancestors’ tomb site on Memorial Day. It was a nice place to picnic. There were a lot of chestnut trees on the way. We would stop and pick up chestnuts. Walking through the chestnut-tree-lined road was fun. Chestnuts are a big thing in oriental society. We would pick them up and roast them.

When we got there, there was a cute, small, Korean-style house below the tomb sites in the mountains. That's for visiting guests like us. It was nice. It had two rooms and a hallway in the middle. In summertime, when you opened all the wooden doors, you had good ventilation. I remember we used to lie down and take a nap because we had walked from the bus stop to the mountain. We then we went up the mountain to visit my grandparents' tomb sites. We'd usually display some flowers, food, or wine there. Then we would bow in front of the memorial.

After visiting the monuments of our ancestors. We’d return to the house where you could nap or cook and lunch We’d sit around in the hallway. Korean old houses didn’t have windows or doors. It's all open. The bedroom has a door so you can close it when you go to bed. Usually, the hallways open both ways so that the wind can go through. It's very nice and cool, especially on a hot day. In the high mountains, and we'd sit there with a hallway door on both sides, open front and back, and the wind would go through. That's the coolest place to sit and enjoy. So, we often took a nap and rested. It was special. Lunch was served there. The maid used to be there waiting for us to come, and they would serve food. Later we didn't have a maid waiting for us.

We had to bring our own lunch. But in the old days that was the way it was supposed to be.

It had a very nice yard with a fence around it. We had a yard man who came along with us, and there was a little stream. There was a big silver frog jumping around. The yard man caught it and he roasted it. He pulled out one of the thighs and gave it to me to eat. It was just like chicken. It was delicious. We always had a maid and a yard man because we were rich at the beginning. They used to cook lunch for us.

In the past there was a slave class but when I was in Korea there was a man who took care of the mountain burial site and lived in the house for free. He had a family, his wife, his sons and two grandchildren. They would show us the mountain and the grave monuments. He is no longer there and that was many years ago. He had his own business. I remembered going to the mountain when I was eight or ten years old. I have nice memories of those times. We would visit the mountain and do all of that at least once a year all my life.

Bowing to Ancestors

Importance of Chestnuts in Korea ______________________________________________________________________________ The lore of chestnut trees has deep roots in Korea. An old folk tale called Nadobamnamu (which means "I am also a chestnut tree") tells the story of a man whose son was destined to be killed by a tiger unless 1,000 chestnut trees were planted. The man took the prophecy seriously and planted the trees. Many years later, a visitor arrived and claimed that he had come to kill the man's son. The man insisted he had done as instructed, and both set out to count the chestnut trees. But when the count was finished, he was one tree short. At that moment, a nadobamnamu tree stepped up and claimed it was also a chestnut tree. The would-be murderer turned into a tiger and died, and the man's son was saved. The story contains the belief that one can take certain actions to avoid bad fortune even if it is destined. The act of planting and protecting chestnut trees can be viewed as giving birth to and raising one’s children. The planting of chestnut trees to avoid bad fate is reflected in use of chestnut wood for carving ancestral spirit tablets. ______________________________________________________________________________

Yangban, A noble Family Not every quarter family has a mountain like we did. Our family was special because my great, great, great, great grandfather died for the king. It was because of his loyalty to his country and the award of the mountains that our burial monuments are there. Not every family has that kind of historical event. Our family were “yangban” or nobles, and we were very proud of it. We were raised by our parents with high-quality values and traditions. That's why the kids are so good. They are all very good.

The Fate of the Memorial Monuments on the Burial Mountain My sister Yil Sun said that we had to give the land of our ancestors to the government, to the Defense Department. But it turned out that it may have been a private business that was guilty of using the mountains for shooting practice. We had to move all our ancestors’ gravesites to one place they called a common burial area. The government took over the mountain, they shouldn't have, but they did. It's in the same mountain. If it wasn't for the corruption of the government, it wouldn’t have happened. They moved all the memorial stones to one centralized area. Some mountains they put highways through, so some of them are gone. I remember they had to move the tomb sites to another place.

My Parents’ Ashes My mother took my father’s ashes to Korea because he wanted to be buried there .My cousins and my youngest brother Hyong Ju were there and helped her. My mother is buried there too next to my father. I think my sisters went to help. I didn’t go, in fact, I haven’t gone back to Korea since we visited in 1978. There's quite a few relatives and cousins there. It's still very important for them to have this kind of family connection, so they all came to my mother’s service along with many of the workers of her church who were in Korea. I have picture of them assembled there at the tomb site when my mother was buried.

My mother's side is a different story. It's the other side of the family. We didn't have much to do with them like my father's side. My father was 82 when he died. My mother was almost 98. He died from old age and some medical illness. He was always a bit sick in his last 10 years. He was living in Annapolis at the time. They lived in the senior community of Heritage Harbor just outside of Annapolis. My mother stayed there until she left for Korea, and that's where she died.

Jokbo, the Family Tree Book __________________________________________________________________ In Korea, the genealogy book is called jokbo. The earliest jokbo in Korea appeared in the 14th century often on a paper scroll. Each family has a jokbo which is passed down through generations, and copies are often printed and distributed among family members as necessary.

The firstborn son of each family inherits the original jokbo and continues the genealogy and family line. Other notable family connections,honors and epithets might be included. It was often used in pre-modern Korea as proof of being of the yangban class (the dynastic ruling class). Its function was very important and legally binding before the modern era.

_________________________________________________________________

Any family who has a history has a jokbo, the written history of their family ancestors, but I bet our family has one a little thicker than other people. I did not pay much attention to that.

Kids don't do things like that. I'm sure there were some famous people from past generations in our jokbo. It's a family history book, the family line. It shows all the family members, whose son he is and what he did and who was his wife, who she is, that kind of thing. It could include exams that they passed, the job they did, the property they might have owned, and where they lived. Where they were born and died and where they are buried. It's all there. It's all written in the jokbo. It’s updated when they die. Its then you can summarize their life history and write it down. It’s done generation after generation. The person responsible for updating the jokbo is the male head of the family like my father. He spent a lot of time doing that in his life. He always talked about it, and he took care of the mountain tomb sites and things like that.

My Father He always depended on his father's wealth. He would talk about his father and his ancestors, and he looked over the care of their tomb sites and other traditional duties as the only son in three generations. I'm sure he had ambitions of being somebody. He was a good student.

He got an economics degree from the best school in Japan. He was a very smart man, but he was not good at business. He tried business, but he never made it work. Everything he did failed. At that time, it was hard to keep money because of World War Two and the Korean War. It was also very hard for any businessman to do well, especially for someone like my father. He studied economics for four years that makes me chuckle.

He was a landowner and others used the land. At one time, he was a businessman in the bicycle tire business. He was the owner of apple orchards but that was not a moneymaking. He was never very successful with anything he did. Deagu was an anti-government town. So we were not very popular with the Korean government. As an adult my father didn’t participate in anti-government demonstrations, but it was known to everyone that Deagu was anti-government. He lost a lot of money rather than making money, so he had great pride in his

family and their background and their traditions. He would talk about his ancestors all day long every day. It amuses me now.

When I was young, he usually stayed home a lot or had friends over. When he was rich and young, he had many people who assembled around him. I remember seeing a lot of shoes in front of his room. People gathered in his room and talked. He always had Time, Newsweek and Life magazines around, and also Moon Yee Chun Chu, the thick Korean magazine. It has everything - literature, politics, society, novels and everything. "Moon Yee Chun Chu" means art and literature or four seasons. "Moon Yee" means literary art and "Chun Chu" means fall and spring. People who were educated read things like that. I enjoyed looking at the first few pages of pictures in it. It was in Japanese, so I didn't know how to read it. Every time it was delivered each month, I always went through the first few pictures, and they were kind of fun. All his life, he had these magazines, and he had books, books, and books all over.

We had a lot of Japanese things like dishes and furniture.

We were surrounded by the faraway, bluish mountains. He inherited the land that descended from the past generations. It lasted for many, many years. The money my mother and father lived on was from my father’s ancestors. He lost all the money that came down from the past so they didn't have much of an estate. In Annapolis they had the condominium you found for them. It was worth at least $200,000 and they had some savings.

He was a very good, gentle, and sweet man. He was a little weak in character, very insecure, always depending on his father. He liked dressing well. You never saw him dressed poorly. He had a lot of nice clothes and shiny shoes. He really looked very much like a gentleman when he was home. Here in Annapolis, he was just average man.

My sister Yil Sun said, “He was a very nice person. Very honest. Very decent.

Actually, that I liked my father better my mother. He had a great spirit, and he was a very kind and gentle man. He was very intelligent. He was book loving and a gentleman. He liked what he did and but just wasn't born in a good time in Korea. He knew some Chinese and we all could read some Chinese. Chinese characters were mixed in with Korean words and was there before the Korean alphebet was created by King Sejong the Great in the 15th century.”

Samsung Founder Borrowed Debt Unpaid The founder of Samsung was my father's very, very good friend, and I think he borrowed money from my father to begin his business, but he never paid it back. So my father always said of Lee Byung-chul, which is his name, "He is a thief." He always said that. Byungchul. Everybody knows him. He's famous and Samsung is famous. He was the founder, and his son was in charge, but he's sick right now, so his grandchildren are in charge. I don't know how much my father gave him. I'm sure it was a lot to begin his business, but he never paid my father back for his financial help. In the old days in Korea, men talking about money was a very small thing to do, so they did not talk about it. You speak to friends. Friendship means a lot.

Eventually, he was not his friend. He took advantage of him. He was a billionaire, and he didn't pay it back. I don’t know the year, but they were young. They were young, maybe their thirties. ______________________________________________________________________________ Lee Byung-chul (1910 - 1987) was a South Korean businessman. He was the founder of the Samsung Group, which is South Korea's largest business group, and one of South Korea's most successful businessmen. Byung-chul was the son of a wealthy landowning yangban (noble) family (a branch of the Gyeongju Lee clan). ______________________________________________________________________________

Parent’s Education As a child, my parents were educated in Korean schools but had to learn Japanese because they occupied Korea from early in the 19th century until the end of second World War in1945. Also in the 1930’s when they both attended university in Japan they spoke Japanese. My mother’s high school was Kim Jong-IL????***. My father high school was Kyung Book.

He was class president but was expelled because of his anti-Japanese activities. That was why he went to Japan to study. (See discussion in his interview at the end of this document.) His father sent him to university in Japan. They went to Japan because that’s what the young, successful children did under Japanese control. That was the highest goal. He attended the famous Waseda University and studied politics and economics. It was like smarter kids going to Harvard or Yale here. Both of my parents must have been very good academically.

My mother also studied in Japan, mathematics, at one of the best Japanese woman's universities, Nara Women's University. It was like a Yale University women's college. They were there for several years until they graduated in four or five years. All my aunts went to Japan to study. But not everyone. I have five aunts. Two of them are very smart. The other three girls, they didn't even go to elementary school, I laugh, because the parents thought they were not very smart.

They were smart, but they were just not very good at school.

My mother was going to be a teacher, but she got married and took over the huge household with all of its demands never working outside the home. She had nine children, and two died. She was so busy with family, children, relatives and my father. A lot went with it. ______________________________________________________________________________ Waseda University is a Japanese research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Waseda consistently ranks among the most academically selective and prestigious universities in Japanese university rankings. It is often ranked alongside Keijo University, its rival, as the best private university in Japan.

Nara Women's Higher Normal School was initially aiming at the training of women instructors and teachers for women's normal schools, secondary schools and

kindergartens. In 1949, it was raised to full university status and was renamed Nara Women's University.

My Father and Politics When he was a teenager, he was involved in politics. Basically, because Korean youngsters all wanted to be independent from Japan, they often organized groups against the Japanese government. I think he did a little bit of that, but I don't really think it grew to anything.

I think he was expelled from high school because of and had to account to his father. (See the interview Mr. Choi at the end of this document.) I don't think he had any political activity in college. I don't remember hearing anything. He was studying hard, and my mother was studying hard.

The Japanese in Korea I don't think our family suffered with the Japanese occupation overall. We still had a house. My father and my aunts all went to good schools in Japan. That tells me that we were well-to-do. They couldn't do much about us. We had a big house and big land. We were landlords, so I guess they left us alone. We lived our life, and we went along with them, but they were still in control. My parents were speaking their language. That was before I was born. My parents lived half Korean-style and half Japanese-style.

_____________________________________________________________________________ Japan has influenced Korea's cultural education, religious beliefs, and spiritual influences both as a neighbor but also as a occupier of Korea. During the occupation, the Japanese established thousands of schools in Korea, which have had a major impact on the education and culture. Japanese rule prioritized Korea's Japanimation by building public works and fighting the Korean independence movement. The public works included developing railroads and improving major roads and ports that supported economic development. This included architectural an construction design and methods. ______________________________________________________________________________ I don't think they were impacted negatively by them, but I guess it was beneficial because my father was very educated. He had "Time" and "Newsweek" and "Life" magazines piled up, and he had the Moon Yee Chun Chu. It was a famous literary magazine about an inch thick. He had piles of them. Every month they came. He always had Japanese radio on, only the Japanese radio, not the Korean radio. I heard the announcer talking in Japanese. I didn’t understand it. It was more like CBS. Half of his time he was steeped in Japanese culture because that's when he was brought up and because he studied in Japan. They would be talking Japanese all the time. They learned Japanese when they were young when Korea was occupied. All the time I was growing up they spoke natural, fluent Japanese. He and my mother always talked in

Japanese together, especially when they would talk about something they didn't want us to hear.

He was very used to Japanese things or reading Japanese books. ______________________________________________________________________________ Munye was a seasonally published Korean literary journal. The name translates to "Literature and Arts." It was an important publication in the first half of the 20th century in Korea. There is some research in English detailing the publication's importance during the leadup to the Korean War and during the war itself. ______________________________________________________________________________

5000 Years of Korean History We have 5,000 years of written history. That's the kind of country I'm from. I used to write 4,095 or something like that. But the actual history of our country is 5,000 years. It's far older than the Roman Empire. We were there for a long, long time. So there's a long written history, a lot of tradition, beautiful traditions, very profound, very rich in culture and understanding of human nature. I had a very good education. When I compare my Korean education and American education, American education is all wrong. That's why we're in trouble. ______________________________________________________________________________ The Three Kingdoms The three kingdoms of Korea are Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. Goguryeo was later known as Goryeo, from which the modern name Korea is derived. The Three Kingdoms period is defined as being from 57 BC to 668 AD. In the late 7th century, Silla conquered both Goguryeo and Baekje, and later the Goryeo dynasty would last until 1392. During the next 500-year reign there was an entrenchment of Chinese Confucian ideals and doctrines in Korean society. Later Chinese invasions led to an isolationist policy, for which the country became known as the "hermit kingdom" in Western literature. In the 1700’s after the these invasions, Korea experienced a nearly 200-year period of peace and prosperity, along with cultural and technological development.

My Father’s Mother My father’s mother was just a wife. In that generation, Korean women didn't have much stature in society. She was just an average woman. I thought she was very pretty. She had a very charming face. When I was born, she was already old. She was always sitting in the one room that she occupied. She used to catch flies all the time. She didn't have much to do except to be there. I'm sure she was from a decent family to be married to my grandfather, but I don't know her family background. I never asked her. I didn't know how to ask things like that. But she was

there all my life. She passed away when I was a teenager. But, still, she was the head of the house even though my mother was really the person who had all the power.

Grandfather, Concubines and Children My grandfather had many concubines. If you have the money, you could also have a concubine. My grandfather had three wives. One lived in a different house. I used to go to her house. I visited and spent time with my grandfather's other wives. She enjoyed my company about probably because she alone so much. She lived in a separate house. My grandfather had three children from the concubines. There was another son, Jae Jun. My uncle was always treated like a second-rate person in our family. When Korean men die, they give all their money to the son, not the daughters or even a second son or concubines. They don't get the money. The oldest son, my father got all the inheritance, so he was very well-to-do. All the aunts and uncles all lived together with us, and we were very close. They loved us. We always loved each other alot, it makes me cry. My aunts were so sweet and kind to me. My grandfather had four children of his name with my grandmother, my father being the only son. There were three children from the concubines. We were all very close.

Seven Siblings

Girls: Yil Sun, Mi Rung, Pil Ju, Chong Eun, Hae Young, Boys: Won Ju, Hyong Ju- All Oldest to Youngest ______________________________________________________________________________

China has had such an influence on Koran culture that many Korean names use Chinese characters. Surnames were typically reserved for people of means; many commoners did not have one. In Korea, the father’s side family names comes first and is followed by the given name that generally consists of 2 parts and contain 3 syllables. Of the two, one syllable denotes the generation name given to siblings or cousins of the same generation and helps identify different generations within a family. The concept of a middle name is uncommon in Korea. Names were often chosen by the grandfather or father and have meaning in the Chinese character. ______________________________________________________________________________ Father: Jae Hyong- “Prosperous”

Mother: Young Choo- “Glorify God”

Yil Sun- “One Pearl”, Mi Rung- “Beautiful Pearl”, Pil Ju- “Helful Pearl”, Chong Eun- “Straight Pearl”, Hae Young- “Early Morning Star Pearl”, Won Ju- “Important Pillar”, Hyong Ju- “Helper Pillar”

Our Family In our family, we had five girls at first for some reason. Then there were two boys. The girls would sit around and talk. One of my cousins, Hye-Sook Unnie, she was a really good storyteller, with the juiciest stories, it makes me laugh. Whenever she would come in, we would shout, "Oh, Hye-Sook Unnie." She always came with a big story, and she would talk all day long. We'd all talk. Sometimes we'd go into town and meet friends. It was a good time.

My Mother and The Church with No Name My great grandfather and the grandmother accepted Christ from the Christian missionaries who came to Korea to spread the Gospel. He helped them to build the church where my mother went before she belonged to the church that had no name.

My mother was a Christian, so she didn't believe in all the family ancestor worship traditions. She was a very religious person with simple Christian beliefs. She was very a strongminded woman. She was fair. She spoke some English. She did not talk very much because she was always busy thinking about her life and taking care of things. She'd go to church all the time.

Whenever we were looking for my mother at home she’s be in the back courtyard or garden praying. Sometimes she would be in the backyard where we kept the kimchi and the Korean sauce jars. There was a little closet place too where she prayed. When we'd go to the mountain, and she'd also be sitting and looking at the sky, praying to God. She prayed for one-third of her day. I think she was like that since she was a child. She was always looking for God and truth.

She was always looking for the answer. I envy her strong and profound faith that would be very comforting when she passed away.

She was actually a very sweet person, but she had so much stress in her life because she was the head of a large family. My father took second place because he was not able to do many things. He was a scholar. He read books all day long and listened to the news.

She felt something was missing in my maternal grandfather’s church that he built and where she attended. She didn’t feel satisfied with her Presbyterian Church but found a fundamentalist church that had no name. They didn't have a church building. They'd meet at the home of a family or friend. I think she ran into some elders of the church somewhere in Korea.

She wanted to belong to this church. She was looking for the right church all her life, and I guess it just suited her. She really became involved with it. She used to invite the missionaries to our house all the time when I was in Korea, and we fed them a nice dinner. It was the church my mother and my sisters, Yil Sun and Mi Rung also attended. The “workers,” as they are called, are unmarried, usually went in pairs, and stayed at the homes of the members. The workers are the ministers and are not paid. The church has no name. They have simple church meetings mostly in homes. When they get together, they preach, read from the Bible and sing some hymns. They are all over the world doing missionary work, sometimes as in China and Borneo where my brother went under the guise of teaching English. My brother, Won Ju was part of the church and Mi Ryung was too. They don't have to go through training to be a missionary. Anybody who wants to do it can do it.

The Church Brother Won Ju Won Ju left medical school during his last semester as a senior at Inidiana??***University. He was the top of his class. A professor begged him not to leave before finishing training, but he just left with only a few months to finish. I don't know whether he was happy with what he was doing. If he was truly unhappy, it was right. He seemed happy with his choice and his life. Once when he came to visit me, I also begged him not to leave school. Even if he wanted to go do missions, just finish medical school first. But he didn't listen.

He just left. He spent his years serving the church and died in that service. Apparently, he liked what he was doing. He went as a worker to China, the Philippines, Borneo, South America, and other places with the church.

My older sister, Yil Sun, joined the church in Korea, but she felt like it was not for her.

When she I got married to Dr. Lee they went to a regular church in Connecticut where they ended up working and living.

My Father’s Sisters There were five aunts. I don't know the names of three of them who were not educated. We always called them “Imo” and “Gomo.” That's like "aunt." In Korea, call your mother's sister “Imo.” You call your father's sister “Gomo.” The other two aunts were very well known. One of them was a home economics professor. My other three aunts were all very sweet,

kind and very loving. They came to our house all the time, but they were not educated. They were smart, but they didn't really show much interest in studying or anything like that, so they got married to nice men and became mothers and wives. They all went through some tough times during the Korean War. Because the other girls were so smart, my grandfather had to send them to college, and they studied in Japan. Two of them studied home economics. One of my aunts, Choi Kyung Ju, became a university professor in Daegu where I lived and the other and was the wife of a very famous lawyer in Seoul. She was highly educated and from a rich family. He was from an almost royal family by Korean standards, next to the royal family. They were a very educated and highly respected family. They had five children. They all went to Harvard and all of the best schools.

Korean War We didn’t not see the war at all and of course I was very young. My Sister Yil Sun said, “During the Korean War we sisters went to school in the communist country. You could have never become close to our next-door neighbors. We never saw the enemy soldiers. The Naktong River area was the furthest the Chinese communists came south just west of Deagu. Our family stayed in our traditional home. I remember hiding from the airplanes and bombing underground in the basement every night, even before going to elementary school. I was six or seven years old. We escaped or to my uncle's house in the countryside. He was my father’s stepbrother named Jae tojoon.(sp)***. He had an apple orchard. We stayed there. I don't think we stayed more that several months until we could come back to our home. Our home wasn’t disturbed when we came back. We buried all the good things in the ground.

My Mother, Her Sisters and Family Escaping South From North Korea My mother had only two sisters. There was another sister from the first marriage of my grandfather, but she was much older. She had a daughter who was always very sick who eventually died early. They used to live in our house. This sister from the first marriage of my grandfather were living in North Korea during the Korean War and they had to move down south. They lost everything, so they lived with us for many years. We had a very good relationship. Korean people have good relationships with their relatives. We are very close, especially cousins and all family. This aunt had so many stories, especially when she talked about the nights she was walking south from North Korea to escape. It could've been a movie.

The details she told us were so interesting. I was fascinated by it all. I never met her husband. I remember her sitting in the kitchen all the time whenever I went to my mother's house. She was sitting on the kitchen floor or cooking. Her complexion was slightly dark. She had a very tight bun and wore Korean clothes. I never really talked to her much. I was immature.

Uncle Abducted and Taken to North Korea During the War During the Korean War, the North Army came and captured my aunt’s husband and took him to North Korea. At that time, the North Koreans wanted the intellectuals in Korea,

and they tried to capture as many as they could. They took him to Seoul that is only less than eight hours from Pyongyang. The family weren’t able to go there to find him. My cousin said fifty years later or so after the Korean War she heard that her father was still alive. She wanted to go visit him, but she wasn’t able to. His name was Paik Boong Jae. He was from a very noble family, Boong Jae. They're all very famous lawyers and doctors in Seoul. That's why they were captured by the North Koreans. They needed people. The North Koreans needed intellectuals at that time. That was in1951 during the Korean War years. His family thought that he was alive, but found out they killed him. I, too, was waiting for him to come back. My aunt was waiting all her life while taking care of her children.

My Mother's Family Although I knew my mother family, I really don't know as much about them as my father's side. That's how it usually works in Korea. We are more part of the father's side of the family. The wife becomes part of her husband’s family, and her allegiance is to his family first. All I know is they had a big house and that there was a square. There were serving quarters, the main court, and a great garden and the well and things like that there.

My Mother

Young Choo Choi My mother was from another big, rich family in Daegu.

My Mother's Mother My grandmother was always in the kitchen on the left side of the living room cooking all day long. She was a really skinny grandmother, very skinny. I'm sure she had a very stressful life with such a big, rich family. Her complexion was somewhat dark. I thought that she was a good-looking woman with a Korean hairdo. It’s when the hair pulled all back, and

then there's a little bun in the back, and you put a little pin through it to stabilize it. She was always there. She passed away when I was in my early teens. I remember her well.

A traditional Korean chignon-style bun held in place by a decorative pin called a binyeo.

Men and My Maternal Grandfather In Korea, usually, the men are in charge of everything. I never met my mother’s father, but when you walked into the big hallway, there was a big very nicely painted portrait of him. It was hanging right in the middle of the room. That's how I know him. He died before I was born. He was very Western looking, almost like Stalin with white hair, a white beard, and a mustache. I think he had some Western influence because he was a very Western-looking man.

On my mother's side, her brothers and sisters are very Western-looking. You don't see it in my mother because she's old, but when she was young, her nose was very strong. She had bigger eyes. All her siblings are like that. When I look at my grandfather, he's like Stalin. His family name was Kim. He was the first elder of the city's Presbyterian church. He was a very Westernized man. But I knew his son, my uncle. He was another landlord, but they eventually lost most of their money. They were rich. All of them were. But after the Korean War the government took a lot of money from rich people to give to the peasants so that they could begin their life. They gave away a lot of their land.

My Parents Met through Match Making ______________________________________________________________________________ Korean culture has a strong tradition of matchmaking. Traditional Korean weddings are based around and centered on traditional Confucian values. Every aspect of the wedding, from the arrangement of the marriage to the ceremony and post celebrations, had important and elaborate steps to go along with them. In traditional Korean culture, marriage between a man and a woman were decided by the bride and grooms’ elders. Confucian family values and its customs are placed above all. The union is between two individuals but also two families. It was a way, particularly among elite families, of developing and/or maintaining social status. ______________________________________________________________________________

With matchmaking there are people in town who know a lot of people and have lived there long time. Here and there, there's a groom candidate. There's a bride candidate. They think it's kind of matching familywise. Family background and money is very important. They would never introduce a poor man to a rich girl. Anyway, sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. At that time, matchmaking was good. Nowadays, kids date on their own like our Ashley does, but in the old days, most of the marriages were done through matchmaking by a matchmaker.

My parents didn’t meet in Japan they met through matchmaking in their hometown, Deagu, as did children from rich families. During the time they went to Japan, there they were matchmade when they were about twenty, at the time when family think of looking for partners for them. My mother's house was very wealthy too, as wealthy as ours. She always had a huge house. In Korea, the mother's side of the family is a more distant from the father's side. We would always go there and visit them. Her uncle came to our house. We also had two or three aunts. We were close, but we were closer to my father's side.

My Mother’s Doing Away with Ancestor Tradition My grandfather had passed away, but my grandmother was there. My mother was raised in a Christian family. Her father was an elder in church. It was a Christian family. My father's side is a Buddhist family, and my mother married my father. She didn't feel like believing in these old traditions. For example, you have to do the ancestor worship once or twice a month.

That's about 25 times a year. That's when all the relatives come, and they stay around and eat.

Sometimes they steal things from relatives. She didn't want to do that. She thought that was a waste of time and money. She didn't really believe in things like that. There was a more Western kind of thought in her family. They were Christians.

For example during an ancestor celebration, we'd just set up a big table with food and candles. We'd usually put a beautiful folding screen in front of it that we bought for that.

Around that time or a little later, my father would always visit the ancestors' mountain tomb site.

There wasn’t a shrine in the home, just a nice, big room and some pretty folding screens. It was very elegant. I don't know where they all are. I'm sure they're worth a lot if you think about it now. I'm sure my mother was not interested in things like that. If I were her, I would have sold it for a high price. When she left Korea for America, I'm sure she gave it away, especially to my cousins. We have some poor cousins and some poor aunts in the family. I'm sure she gave them all those things and the very beautiful antique flower vase always sitting in the hallway.

Anybody could steal it. It was all inlaid with interesting metal. It was very beautifully done.

The Valuable Paintings and Other Objects I know my cousin took all our famous, valuable paintings. That's millions of dollars’ worth of paintings. That's something my parents should have brought to America. I used to know his name so well. We called him “Oppa.” He was a very close cousin. He used to live

behind our house. He was a concubine daughter's son. He was right behind the house. Yong Gee Oppa is his name. He was like my own brother. He was in the house all the time. Oppa was a big brother. He would just open the door and walk in like my own brother. He was more like my mother's confidant. I think he also took a lot of our precious antiques. My mother didn’t care. My father didn't have much power to say much. He did not want to come to America, but he had to come because nobody could take care of him, so he didn't have any power by that time. My mother had all the power. So she decided. That's why we all complained to my mother. Those were worth millions of dollars.

Yoo In-sung Paintings Yoo In-sung is a most famous painter in Korea. He was my father's very good friend. We had this painting of his of a beautiful apple tree. It was greenish with apples and leaves and the shade of the tree on the ground with some apples that had fallen on the ground. It was not a big painting perhaps two feet across. I always enjoyed it. Then there was the picture of children warming themselves. Those two painting stay with me. Very few people had paintings of In-sung. My father was able to get them because he was his best friend. A lot of people couldn’t afford to get that kind of painting. Yoo In-sung paintings are worth millions of dollars right now in Korea because he's so well-regarded in painting in Korea. I don't know much about him now, but I bet his paintings are a very, very valuable. We had other paintings hung around.

We had antique dishes and beautiful flower vases. They were very valuable, but we used to treat it like nothing. They were all over the house. Sometimes relatives would come and steal one and take it away. We didn't know how valuable they were, but they were all highend plates and dishes, silverware, and glass bowls with designs on them. It was a sign of wealth, all these valuable things, but we treated them like everyday things. My mother really didn’t care about material things. My father was very upset because of this. He prized many of them, so he did his best. When they move to America it took a toll.

Family Photo Albums We had many, many photo albums. I never really kept albums. You were in charge of things like that. We had 10 or 15 family albums and a collection of all of our family history and children. I had a lot of pictures of my parents in school. They used to wear uniforms even though they were in college, a dark uniform with a button in front and a hat that had four corners. My mother too. She wore just a regular dress, but she was a pretty young lady. I had an old picture of deer on the street. People would feed the deer. We had a lot of pictures like that in an album, and I could see a glimpse of my father's youth and my mother's youth. They were just like us. They had A happy, healthy, and productive young life. When they moved to America, the whole household was turned upside down. I'm pretty sure my mother would have brought some pictures but not all 10 editions of her albums. She's like that. It's not necessary for to care about that kind of thing. Either she left them in Korea or left it with my cousins.

Choi Family Gathering in Terra Haute, Indiana

Coming to America They had a very complex life because of the times they lived through- the Japanese occupation, the Korean War, and the government. Being more interested in Western ways, she always wanted to come to America, first for her children for their education and opportunity, and then for herself. My father didn't want to come to America, but what could he do? He had to come, but he was never happy here. She dealt with his Buddhist background and traditions while she was in Korea, but eventually she broke away from those traditions by the time I came to America. She wanted us to come to America for modern education. She kept telling me to, “Go to America and become a PhD.” It makes me laugh. She always said that. So, we all came and went to school. Nobody became a PhD, but we all got our master’s degrees. My mother’s wish that you go to America and live a very comfortable life was realized, because she had such a tough time in Korea. So, we did, and we've had a comfortable life, actually. We all came and lived here.

My parents came to America 10 or 15 years after I came. It was some years later after Chong Eun and Hae young came. Then my brothers Won Ju and Hyong Ju came. After that, they sold their properties in Daegu and came to America. They lived on the money remaining from their ancestors. They first came to Terra Haute, Indiana where Mi Ryung lived. They settled down for some years in a little house near to my sister's house. They never worked. When they were in Korea, they had to manage the properties or whatever, but here there was nothing they could do. They were elderly people by that time, over 60 and in no shape for finding a job, especially with the language barrier. They just lived there comfortably. There were to be family reunions in Terre Haute that we went to several times.

Later they came to Annapolis to the Heritage Harbor Senior Community into a condominium overlooking the water that Richard

found for them. They lived there about 15 years or so. My father died here in Annapolis. My mother returned to Korea and lived to be 98.

All the Sisters

Sisters Chun Eun Hae Yong Mi Rung Pil Ju

Il Sun

How Each of Us Came to America My Older Sister Yil Sun My eldest sister, Yil Sun, ten years my senior, came first. She came as a medical intern and then a medical resident. She was engaged to my brother-in-law Dr. Lee at the time.

They're both doctors. At that time, America needed medical doctors. They didn't have enough doctors, so they imported a lot of foreign doctors. She found an internship in a New York hospital, and that's how we started. She was very smart, very beautiful and sweet. She went to school in Seoul, and whenever she would come back home for vacation, I'd get so excited. I think she was always very nice. She went to medical in Korea at Severance and the Yonsei University that is more like Yale. It's the second or third best university. There's Seoul National

University, Korea University, and Yonsei University. They're top-notch and going to medical school in Korea is very difficult. She was always a very good student. ______________________________________________________________________________ The Severance Hospital of the Yonsei University Health System is a hospital located in Sinchon-dong, Seodaemun District, South Korea. It is one of the oldest and biggest university hospitals in South Korea. ______________________________________________________________________________ In America, Yil Sun, finished a residency in radiology. She never really practiced.

She became her husband's medical office manager. She managed it for over 35 years. Dr. Lee was a nephrologist. They lived in Norwich, Connecticut. As the oldest child she witnessed all the things happening in Korean society and the family. I'm sure life in Korea at that time was very difficult, especially in my mother's case. Instead of my father, my mother was in charge and took care of our huge family, including relatives and the land. It was a difficult time. Retired now, Yil Sun and Dr. Lee live in a lovely place in Mystic, Connecticut.

Mi Ryung, My Next Sister from the Top The second sister, Mi Ryung, four years older, was married to Dr. Ahn. Dr. Ahn came from a highly respected, educated family even though they lost a lot of their money and stature because of the Korean War. The Ahn family is a very well-known family in Korea. I think some of his relatives are still doing very well. Mi Ryung came to get a master's in New York at the notable school in New York City, Columbia University. Mi Ryung was a church person. She has a master's degree from Columbia University in nutrition. She worked in New York for a few about five years before she married Dr. Ahn. She didn’t work outside of the home. She went to the church meetings of her mother’s church. She was a good wife and mother raising their son, Chan. They met through matchmaking. Dr. Ahn was from a very good family.

His mother worked with my aunt, so they introduced them. He was a gentleman. You can tell his background. He was a very special and gentle person. We never really lived close to them. We only saw them a few times in the last 30 years, but he's very nice. Dr. Ahn obtained an undergraduate degree from Amherst College and went to Yale University for his PhD. in biochemistry. Then he was a professor at Indiana State University for many years. They lived in Terra Haute, Indiana for many years before retiring to Michigan where their son, Chan lives, Chan went to Perdue University, obtained his PhD. at Northwesrten University in chemical engineering and works as an chemical??? engineer at the Dow Chemical company in Midland, Michigan. Mi Ryung died from liver cancer about four years ago. Chan and his wife, Debbie, belong to the church my mother attended. They have two academically successful children.

Me I came to America about four years later in ????. I was the third of the four girls, then there were Chong Eun and Hae Young. They all finished their college studies in Korea.

They all went on to get a master’s degrees but for Chong Eun. I have a master’s degree in fine arts from Ypsilanti Since I came to America, and I was so interested about living here, I let go of my Korean connections and friends. I regret that now. America was exciting. I should really have tried to maintain relationships. My sister, Chong Eun, Dr.Park's wife, was good at it. She's even close to my old friends. She likes to be connected with Korea and Korean news. She always has news about people. I wasn’t very much, perhaps because I was married to an American and my life was very American. I was busy doing an American life with the kids and school and all. If I had married a Korean, I'm sure I would've been more involved like my sister is, so that's something I regret.

Chong Eun, Younger by Three Years My second youngest sister, Chong Eun, Dr. Park's wife, is currently living in New Jersey after living in Springfield, Ohio where Dr. Park practiced as an anesthesiologist until retirement. She would go to a gospel meeting every Wednesday. Initially, she went to see my brother, but a few days ago I talked to her, and she said that eternal life seems to be very important to them both. I think she's really getting it now listening to the gospel preaching. That's very unusual for her.

Hae Young, The Youngest Girl Hae Young was the last girl to come to come to America. She was also a nutritionist, but she managed her husband’s rheumatology practice in California. She's very sweet. She was my favorite sister. I used to tell her to run errands for me all the time, and she never said no. She was always sweet. We were kind of buddies. She and I are very close, and she was always a very good person. She meet her husband, Hong Joon, who was attending Seoul National University Medical School. It was all matchmaking. Hae Young went to a very good university in Seoul, Yonsei University, Severance, the same school as Yil Sun. It is a very difficult school to get into. She studied food and nutrition. She has a master’s in nutrition. When Hong Joon finished Seoul National University Medical School, he wanted to come to America for training. They matched when somebody introduced them. They got married here in America.

He died some years back from cancer. ______________________________________________________________________________ Seoul National University is a national research university located in Seoul, South Korea. Founded in 1946, Seoul National University is considered to be the most

prestigious university in the country. The university comprises sixteen colleges, one graduate school and nine professional schools. ______________________________________________________________________________ Hae Young is living in California. Her daughter, Stacy, and her husband David are in London. She has a son, Daniel, a lawyer who is in San Francisco. He's not married yet.

Hyong Ju, The Youngest Brother Hyong Ju my youngest brother is a civil engineer with a degree from Purdue University. He obtained his MBA from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington State. He returned to Korea where he works. He has two girls. ______________________________________________________________________________ Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana. It was founded in 1869 to establish a college of science, technology, and agriculture. ______________________________________________________________________________

Parents Coming toAnnapolis My parent came to Annapolis from Indiana, because they wanted a change, and I invited them. Annapolis is nice. They had the money to buy a place and thought that they should change their life situation for a more interesting place and be near family. My sisters and brothers were fine with it. It all worked. They lived very comfortably at Heritage Harbor. It's a nice place. By the time my father died, they may have had $500,000 left of the money coming down over hundreds of years from their ancestors. When she returned to Korea, she bought an apartment.

My Mother's Father Sons- My Uncles My maternal grandfather was well-to-do, but he was a Western-influenced person. He was a Christian. I'm sure he was very highly educated and from a well-to-do family because the way they lived. They had a big house. His oldest son was an opera singer in Japan. I don't know whether he was famous or not, but he was in opera. It's kind of a Western idea.

My other uncle Moon Su was a cameraman. He was always not doing well. He disappeared during the Korean War, and everybody worried about him, but he eventually showed up. I remember everybody was so happy to have him back. He eventually moved to L.A. with his wife. He stayed with the same wife all his life. He passed away some years ago. I'm sure he was over 90. He was a figure in our house. He used to come to our house all the time. He was a very handsome man, a very Western-looking kind of person. He liked me. He was a cameraman. He didn't have much of a career after he came back. He stayed around the house. I

don't think he made much money. That's why his wife was unhappy. They got divorced, but they got together again. I think they remarried in Los Angeles, California. They had a couple of children. They're all doing well. I don't have much contact with them at all, but we used to.

My Mother had Two Brothers and Three Sisters My mother had and two brothers three sisters. Her father, I think, had married three times. Eddie Kim’s mother is my mother's older sister. She was also educated. She came to Los Angeles. Her name was Pok Ju Kim. She was sweet, and she was a lot of fun, a very charming person. She would say a lot and whatever she said was very amusing. She was kind and very pretty. She came to America with her husband who was Korean and they owned property in Los Angeles. They had one child, Eddie who lives in California (?? What he is doing now?)

I used to communicate with my other mother's sisters, such as Paik Ju Imo and the others.

I had a few other cousins. I used to know all these names. The second one was very close to my mother, but I forgot her name. They are all similar names. Eventually, they all came to America.

They all have passed away. They have children, but I don't have any contact with them. My aunt in Korea who we met on our tip around the world and to Korea, was the one who smoked cigarettes. Older women are allowed to smoke cigarettes. She was my father's older sister. They were my closest aunts since when I was growing up and she lived close by. She would come to the house all the time, especially when my grandmother was living. She always smoked. I loved all our aunts very much. I don't know her name, I laugh. Names were not important at that time for women. Her son that was an intellectual. She has a few daughters. They're all beautiful. Very beautiful homemakers, the cousins that is.

My Mother’s Younger Sister Who Married into the Paik Family My mother’s younger sister married into the Paik family. They're famous in Korea to this day. Paik Hospital is a modern famous hospital in Korea. My aunt's family established and owns it. My aunt's husband was a very well-known lawyer in Seoul. North Koreans came and captured all the famous people at that time, and he was one of them. They never saw him again. About 15 years ago, my cousin heard that her father is still alive in North Korea. She tried to get there, but she could not get the visa. He was a very handsome man. I have family photos of him. My aunt is highly educated and attended Nara University, Japan. Her son, Paik Nak Chung, got a graduate degrees from a Harvard University.

Paik Nak Chung He was a very intelligent man. When he returned to Korea he started a publishing company and created the literary magazine “Creation and Criticism.” He is very well known.

People who are into literature or the academic world know him. I'm not one of those individuals, but I know him because he’s, my cousin. People like you would know him, people at the high intellectual level. He runs the literature magazine and writes articles. He was politically active. I

think he went to jail for a couple of days for his political activities. But politics is not his main field. Literature and education and writing are his academic interests. He's over 85 and still active, and I didn't hear that he retired. Going to Harvard University is a big deal in Korea. ______________________________________________________________________________ Professor Paik Nak-chung is was born in North Korea in 1938. He grew up in South Korea. He earned a B.A. from Brown University and went on to Harvard University where he received his M.A. in 1960 and Ph.D. in 1972. He served as Seoul National University professor of English literature until he resigned himself protesting against corrupted government. Paik earned praise from young Korean intellectuals and activists for his ceaseless efforts to move South Korea, under a succession of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, toward democracy and to encourage the reunification of the two Koreas. He has remained a well-known figure since the democracy movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Paik was also the chief editor of the magazine The Quarterly Changbi, which he founded in 1966 to encourage democracy and the reunification of the Korean Peninsula. Changjak-kwa-bipyong means "Creation and Criticism" in English and is usually abbreviated into Changbi.

My Father’s Aunts and Uncles My paternal grandparents had my father, my three aunts, and then three concubines. So six children. My father's name was Jae Hyong. Jae Quiran, my aunt on my father’s side, in Seoul was married to a very prominent lawyer in Seoul, but he was captured by North Korean soldiers during the Korean War. It's was only a couple hundred miles, but they never saw him again. I remember one day my aunt said, "Before I die, I wish I could see his face only once. I would be happy." He was a very hands-on and dignified-looking lawyer, a very prominent lawyer, I'm sure highly educated in Japan at the best school. It was a very sophisticated-looking family. All the kids went to Harvard and Cornell, and then his brothers were very famous doctors.

I don't remember the other two aunts' names. I used to know these names, but I don't say them much, so I forgot. They were very sweet aunts. The first one married an average nice man.

They had five girls and one boy. The second one married this famous lawyer and was the Paik family connection. The Paik family had concubines. One of them was a professor at the university, a home economics professor. She was married to a very well-to-do man. Another sister was not educated, but she was living in a smaller home behind our house. We used to go there all the time. She had two or three kids. We all lived very close and visited each other all the time and had a good time on holidays. I had a very happy childhood.

Why Art?

We had a garden in front of our house in Korea. We had a garden in the back. We also had a big garden in the middle of the women's courtyard. I used to plant flowers there. I was interested in gardening, so I was the one who was cleaning and planting flowers. It was very interesting to me. My mother thought I had artitic talent. But I didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to do, so she said, "Well, do art." I guess it was the right choice. I could never be a scientist or a mathematician. Art was the right thing. I did a lot of drawing when I was a teenager. My sister, Yil Sun, thought I was very good. She was also interested in art, and she always invited used to paint with her. My second sister, Mi Ryung was not talented at all, so she was never invited to join us. But she did roll her chair next to us and begin to copy us. Yil Sun and I always came up with some decent paintings that looked like a painting, but Mi Ryung who always came up with horrible pictures. It makes me laugh. She didn't know how to handle the water and brush. Then she would look at our paintings, she then would look at her painting, and she'd cry. Its so funny to think about it.

Public Education and Keimyang College I attended all public schools for elementary, middle school, and high school. I then went to a private Christian college, Keimyung College in Deagu. It was a new-age school. I went there for four years. It was about a half an hour from my home if I wanted to walk or 15 minutes by bus. It was a beautiful school on top of the hill. A lot of professors came from America. But they weren't Americans, but American-trained Korean professors, new-age teachers. It was very beautiful and nice. I studied fine art, painting, drawing, and sculpting. For part of the four years, I stayed in a dormitory. I just wanted to get away from it. That's what young people want to do. I had roommates and a bunk bed. I was up top. I enjoyed it for a while, but after a while it got old, so I came home where it was more comfortable. The president of the school knew my mother, and my mother talked to him about me going to America to go to school. He had a lot of connections to America schools and he knew the president of the Hanover College in Indiana, also a Christian college. My mother said to him, "Please help Pil Ju go to that school." It makes me laugh. "Time" magazine written that Hanover was one of the most beautiful campuses in America. It was on the Ohio Riverbank. It was a very beautiful, small liberal arts college. It was just gorgeous. I remember how much I enjoyed it there. So, I went there. I enjoyed it, and I had a very good time. ______________________________________________________________________________ Keimyung University is a private university located in Daegu, the fourth largest city in South Korea. The founding principle guiding their concerted efforts was to provide Koreans with higher education firmly anchored in Christianity. KMU has three campuses in Daegu named Daemyeong, Dongsan and Seongseo which is considered as one of the most beautiful campuses in South Korea. ______________________________________________________________________________

Reasons for Coming to America, the Japanese Occupation and Korean War My mother always wanted to come to America. Her heart was in America. She always said, "You go to America and go to college, and you'll be a PhD." That was her dream, sending her children to America. She thought American education and society was better because she had a tough time in Korea. My parents had a very difficult time when they were young. There was the Japanese occupation and the Korean War. Their lands were taken away. They had complicated and stressful life. It wasn’t easy. It's easier to live here in America. I'm sure my mother knew it, so she wanted to live in a place where it's easier to live, because they had a difficult time. She heard about America from newspapers, magazines, and the radio. She was educated. Everybody wants to come to America to get an education. My mother always told us that we all have to go to America and go to school there and get PhDs. Nobody got a PhD, but we all got master's. It's like anybody else who comes to America. They want to get a good education and have a good life.

Hanover College I flew from Seoul to Los Angeles. Then I visited my second sister, Mi Ryung. She had just gotten married, and she was living there with her husband, Dr. Ahn. He was finishing his PhD at Yale University. I visited her there for a week or so. Then I flew to Hanover, Indiana. It's a beautiful place.. There were old trees and beautiful buildings. When I went there, I thought, "This is a dreamland." I never saw anything so beautiful on the Ohio bank. I studied fine art, painting, drawing, and some sculpting. I was an art major. There was a lot of art and music and literature. I lived Donner Hall, a nice dormitory with a lot of trees around. It was a very nice, kind of a high-class liberal arts college. The maid came and cleaned our rooms every day and made our beds. It's that kind of place. I remember that it was a rich-people school.

Hanover College and Donner Hall _____________________________________________________________________________ Hanover College is a private, co-ed, liberal arts college in Hanover, Indiana. The college is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. Founded in 1827 by Reverend John Finley Crowe, it is Indiana's oldest private college. Hanover College is situated on 650 acres of land overlooking the Ohio River. The land features several climbing paths and cliffs, as well as the only view of

the Ohio from which three bends in the river can be seen. The campus is characterized by Georgian style architecture. ______________________________________________________________________________ My roommate’s father had his own plane, and she invited me to their home one weekend in his private plane. It was a small private plane. I think it was a nearby little town. They had very beautiful home. They were very rich people. The family had invited me for Thanksgiving. It was just a very nice American family with a warm, cozy home with a fireplace. I could've appreciated them more and sent them a thank you note. I don't think I did that it, I have to laugh, I was so immature. It was all so new. I have always regretted that I didn’t.

There weren’t any friends at Hanover that I remained friends with. I had one friend nwho was from Thailand. She was from a very well-to-do family. She was beautiful. Not physically.

She was tall and skinny, but she had such a beautiful personality. I was really impressed by her, but I never followed up with my friendship with her. I regret that because she could have been a great friend. Her boyfriend came from Thailand to visit her for a week and stayed on the campus.

I think I got a scholarship from Hanover when I was in Korea. I'm sure my parents paid for my living expenses and spending money, but the tuition was a scholarship. I went to Hanover College for a year and a half and finished a bachelor of arts degree. Then I went to Eastern Michigan University for my master's degree.

Eastern Michigan University Near Ann Arbor Eastern Michigan University was in Ypsilanti, Michigan, right next to Ann Arbor. That's how I met you. I used to go to Ann Arbor all the time. ______________________________________________________________________________ Eastern Michigan University is a public research university in Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States. The university was founded in 1849 as Michigan State Normal School. EMU comprises eight colleges and schools. ______________________________________________________________________________ I don't know how I picked that school. I was just a young kid. I just looked at the list of schools and said, "Michigan sounds good." I have to laugh. So, I chose it, applied, and was admitted. It was nothing serious. I didn't know much about the school. All I knew was the University of Michigan was a far better school, but Eastern Michigan University is a fine school, a beautiful campus with a very nice art department. I didn’t visit before I went, I just flew there and stayed in the dormitory with friends. I didn't know anybody there. I was an art major in my master’s program.

My Paintings I didn’t keep much of my art or creations from that time. I gave a piece of my art to you when I was dating you, but I haven’t seen it. I was not very serious. I was immature. Now I would've kept everything, but I just gave away paintings to people. I didn't store them at the right place or lost them. But I wouldn’t do it now if I was me at that time. They were no great masterpieces, but people said I was good. I painted flowers, landscapes, never people or animals, basically, natural scenes. I wasn’t influenced by any particular people or professors, but they were all good people. They were all very kind and willing to help me because I was a foreign student. I could've paid more attention to teachers and what they said, but I was a young kid from a foreign country in a strange land trying to make a career out of it. So there are many things I lost in the process because I didn't pay attention to them. I didn’t know well enough.

After my master’s, I got a job in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a great public school. I taught art classes for children from kindergarten through sixth grade every day for five or six years. I liked it. The other teachers thought I was so good at it. Kids are kids. I decorated the hallway with the children's artworks. I’d hang everybody's paintings in the hallway. The teachers thought that was nice of me for doing that. After four or five years of teaching, I didn't want to teach anymore. I wanted to do something else. I guess then I met you and I married, so I never really went back to teaching. I always painted a little bit, as you know, here and there.

I never really kept contact with anyone I knew from my teaching years. There were a couple of teachers that I remember who paid some attention to me, but I was an independent, immature young woman who did what I wanted to do. I didn't know how to keep friendships like that or keep a record of their names and address. That can be a very important and worldly thing to do, but I didn't think like that at the time. In my spare time hung out in downtown Ann Arbor.

I went to the café. That's where I met you. I used to hang out at the many bookstores in Ann Arbor and look at all the pictures in the bookstores. I was a young woman. I went to restaurants and cafés just like any young woman would do.

A Friend of My Sister Mi Ryung I ran into the very good Korean friend of my sister, Mi Rung. One day, I was walking in Ann Arbor. Suddenly, somebody said, "Oh, hi, Pil Ju!" I turned around. There she was. We became extremely good friends. She had a mental illness. You remember her, but I can’t remember her name. She was a nice girl from a very nice family. Her older sister was my English teacher in high school, I later found out, but she was the black sheep of the family. It was a very good family, not a noble, one but a very nice family. She met black G.I. in town, and she married him. That was a no-no at the time, marrying a black guy. She had a young boy with him, and then she divorced. That's when I found her in Ann Arbor. She was divorced already.

She and I became very good friends. I liked her. She was a good person, but I noticed that she was acting very strange. Whenever we would go places and anybody would say something, she would say, "Pil Ju, shut up. Shut up. Somebody's listening. The government is listening." I did not know it was a mental illness. She always stopped me from talking whenever I talked.

Later on, I found that she had a mental illness.

Then I married, and I moved to Maryland, and she was alone. I guess she had no friends.

She was hanging out and doing strange things. One day, she flew to Annapolis to be with me. I didn't know she was coming. She invited herself. You remember her. I had to invite her, so she lived with us for a few weeks. Then you didn't like the idea of her being there. You noticed she had a mental illness. Then I told her to leave, and she was upset, but she eventually left because she was a very proud woman. I think she was hanging out with other friends in Virginia somewhere. The mental health people called me a few times about her. But I could not do much because I'm not a professional. I could not bring her into my home, so I just left her with these agents. I don't know what happened to her, and I never heard from her. She could be dead. She was such a lost soul because of her mental illness, but she was a very good person, very fine, and kind.

My Matchmaking My mother would send people to me in matchmaking. She had all kinds of people she knew, friends and matchmakers. When you have a marriageable-age daughter, then people tell people about these men. I only met a few of them. They were all very qualified, highly educated people from good families.

My mother sent me a couple of groom candidates. I met a few of them. One was a doctor, a very smart man, but he was ugly, kind of short and bald. That's not my type at all appearancewise. He was from a good family and nice to me. Of course, he wanted to marry me, but I didn't want him. He was just not very attractive physically. I felt bad. Physical attraction is important to me. I'm a very visual person. I can relate to an ugly person very nicely, but what I mean is when I'm romantically involved, you've got to have the right kind of appearance or feel. You have that.

I don't know that you have it now because of your beard. At that time, you were a very attractive man.

Another my aunt had introduced to me. I rejected him, and she was very upset. She was almost embarrassed. It was a very respectable family. He liked me, of course. He came to Ypsilanti when I had my graduation show. My paintings were hanging in this big room like this all over. I took him there, and he was very impressed. He wanted to marry me, but I said no, and my aunt got very angry and upset with me. Its laughable now. This was Eddie Kim’s mother, one of my favorites. She passed away many years ago. She was the sister of my mother. She was sweet, intelligent and a lot of fun. My mother has two very cute aunts. They were all funny, very

engaging, and amusing. She was one of them. Some people are like that, funny and fun to be with and engaging. Both of them where like that.

The matchmakers sent two boys to me. The first one was the bald guy I didn't like. The second one was another Korean guy, another doctor. He knew that he was supposed to bring flowers when he meets a woman. He brought plastic flowers. Its so funny. Korean men don't do that. In Korea at that time they didn't bring flowers. It's kind of a sissy thing to do for them. Now they do it just like here. Anyway, he brought plastic flowers.

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My Boy Friends Over the years I met many friends, but I did not know that keeping a friendship was important. I had a couple of boyfriends. One of them used to come to the bookstore with me. I don't even remember his name. He was a tall and skinny and blonde kind of person. I went out with him for a few weeks. I had an English boyfriend, Ray. He had just come from England for some research project for a short time. I met him one night in a restaurant. I was reading a book there, and he came over to my table and began to talk. We dated for a few months. Then he had to go home. He wanted to marry me, but I didn't really like him that much. He was from Cambridge, a very educated, a smart person. From there, we exchanged letters, but eventually the relationship went away. There was another boyfriend I remember. I forgot his name. I don't know what he did. It could have been something to do with the school or something.

There was Arturo who was Turkish. I met him somewhere in Toronto. I used to date a PhD candidate at university. He was a muscle builder. One day, he took me to Toronto in Canada for a muscle building competition. I never saw anything like that. I watched it, and met his friend, a Turkish guy, Arturo, who was a reporter for the newspaper. He thought I was cute, so we dated for a year, but he was in Turkey. He's over there. I'm here. We exchanged letters a few times. He was very handsome and very attractive and charming, but you can say he had a lot of issues. Now I can tell. I thought I was totally in love with him. He was so cute and handsome.

I'm sure he had millions of girlfriends. He was a playboy type of person, but I didn't know. I was just very attracted to him. He was funny and fun, a bit crazy, a very handsome, very classylooking person with a tweed jacket, tall, a romantic-looking person. He thought I was kind of cute. I'm sure I was not sophisticated enough for him at that point. I was a young kid. I'm sure he was dating many very famous actresses and things like that. He said so. He was so handsome, and every famous woman would love him. He said he dated some famous actress in Turkey and all of this. Eventually, that kind of relationship will never work. We exchanged letters for a year or two. Eventually, it went away.

I'm a unique kind of girl. I'm not like the average Korean girl who is always obedient. I have a little more of an independent spirit. Many of the boy friends were totally not my type. Of course, I said no. So, I rejected a few guys. There were a few others, but I never really

responded. I was a nice, bright material for them in so many ways. I was cute but very immature.

I was from a good family and had a nice personality. People used to tell me, "You would be perfect." They totally knew I was from a very well-to-do family. They used to tell me. They said I looked like that which makes me laugh. I was a good girl but immature.

Meeting Richard Templeton Then I met you, and we married. I was just a single, simple girl, innocent and naïve, but that's why I think you found me attractive. But things never work like that. We met in the Central Café in Ann Arbor. It was a little breakfast place on Main St. I used to go there almost every weekend to eat breakfast and read the papers. You sat next to my table, and you asked me if you could borrow my newspaper. I let you borrow my newspaper, and then we began to talk. Then you took me to walk around through the Ann Arbor streets. You talked about the architecture of the buildings and other things. We dated for a year, and we got married.

I thought you were very handsome and tall and very sweet and nice. You were in medical training, so I thought you were very smart. You are smart, actually. I was very attracted to you.

You were very nice-looking at that time, tall and blonde. You don't look like that now. I can’t help but laugh. Shave off that beard. You look like a dog. You were very handsome and my type.

You're my type, your appearance. You were tall and blonde and intellectual. That's my type. So, it was my type, so we dated. We married.

I think your mother wanted you to marry your old girlfriend Jackie. I don't think she was that wild about me. Anyway, we married. She was never bad to me. She was always nice to me.

Jackie Schaffer was a really cute girl. I think she liked Jackie better than me. That's the impression I got. Jackie was your good friend, but she was into some other boys. You introduced her to me – her house was across the street or something – one day when we were together as friends. Oh, you used to carry her picture in your pocket. I was amused. Apparently, you had some special romantic feelings for her. She was a lovely girl. I don't blame you for doing that.

But that relationship did not work, so you married me instead. She was dating that guy in D.C. He moved to California, but I guess that broke up the relationship. She wanted to go with him, I remember, eventually, I'm sure.

Courtship I thought it our courtship was very nice. You were very nice to me all the time. You remember the restaurant under the bridge or the train station. the Gandy Dancer. We had dinner there. It was a nice place. I'm sure it's still there. It was a new-age kind of cooking and restaurant atmosphere for the new-age generation.

The Gandy Dancer in Ann Arbor I enjoyed my apartment and always enjoyed cooking at home. I think food at cooked at home is always better than in an restaurant. I used to cook for friends, invite a few friends, and we would sit on the floor around a big coffee table I had. I always enjoyed cooking. I never cooked in Korea, but when I came to America, for some reason I began to enjoy it. I remember having many small dinners with four or five friends coming. I cooked for you and some of your friends. I'm a domestic person. I like doing things like that. You were my friend, and you had some guy friends. I invited them. I didn't have that many girlfriends. I enjoyed it. I still do if I didn’t get sick. I love cooking.

Wedding Invitation and Night Before Dinner

Wedding Day and Everyone Outside the Music School

Deciding and Getting Married I remember that moment. We were just lying down under the tree on the Ann Arbor campus. We were talking, and then you said, "Okay. Let's get married." I laugh. I don't know.

You didn't say, "Will you please marry me?" with flowers. You never did that. We were talking under the tree. I remember sitting under the big tree. For some reason we decided, "Okay. We'll get married." It was as simple as that.

We married in Ann Arbor outside the University of Michigan music school. There's a lake and on the side of the pond we had an outdoor wedding. I was immature. I arranged something. People said it was a beautiful wedding, very natural. Everybody was standing up wearing casual clothes. Nobody dressed up. We ate good food. I think I cooked some, and there was also some other food. Everybody had a good time. It was a very good wedding, at least I hoped so. I never had the wedding that mothers prepare for years to have. I did it in a couple of months, quickly arranging it. You didn't know anything about it, so I just took over and took care of it. It was simple, just like an afternoon picnic. We invited a woman minister in town. Someone introduced her. She married us. They all said it was a beautiful wedding, so I guess it was.

Mother-in-Law, Helen Templeton Thomas Since I hadn’t met your parents, you brought me to your home. We came from Ann Arbor to Severna Park. I met your mother before we decided to get married. Your mother was sitting in the backyard reading books. When you walked in there, I said, "Oh, hi there," and she came and hugged me. I remember that. She was happy to see you. That's how I met your mother.

I met your father later.

She was a very nice, beautiful lady, lovely lady, but a very independent person. She has her own strong streak, but she was actually a very good woman. There's not much I have to complain about her. I didn't have that much of a relationship with her except being a daughter-inlaw visiting once in a while. I remember having a nice conversation with her once about something. She was a very nice, wonderful lady, but she is not a person that could be a very close friend. She a bit aloof and cool. I think it came from her childhood upbringing and her family story. She has a little bit of a hard time getting close to people. She could be close to you because you were her children.

Father-in-Law, Bill Thomas Your father was always like a teddy bear, sweet and always gentle. He depends on your mother a lot. He was smart and from a good family, but by birth he was a bit passive. His personality is a little meek. He needs a woman like your mom, a very strong, and confident person, because for some reason he does not feel he is good enough. He is good, but he may not feel that he is good enough. But he achieved. I respect him greatly. He's a very sweet, lovely, and wonderful man. I feel much more comfortable with your father than your mother. Compared to our father has a more human side and warmth.

Richard’s Brothers When I went to visit your home, I met Billy. Eventually, I met Jay. Then we went to Cleve's house in the country. I was thinking, they're not living very far from us, and we've never really visited them for a long time. I could've created a little more intimate relationship between two brothers, but I didn't think like that. I was a bit naïve, but I was busy trying to figure out my way in a foreign land.

World Trip and Visit to Korea After we got married you had to finish your training, so we lived in Ann Arbor until you got done. Right after marriage, we went on a trip around the world overland for six months. You said you had planned it for a long time before you married me. So now I'm married. I'm your wife, so I went along. That trip was after we married because if I did not marry you and traveled like that, I couldn't go visit my home in Korea. It was a no-no at that time, going on a trip with a man without being married. So, we were married at that time.

We started in England. We never stopped in France, so I never saw Paris. We travelled by train from Holland, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Hawaii and back to Maryland on the bus after visiting your family in California. It’s hard to remember all we did on that six-month trip. We traveled to 27 countries, and then we went to Korea to visit.

In Korea we visited with my family and meet with all my cousins came together to be with us. There is a big family photo we took. There were about 20 of them. They all dressed up nicely. Most of them are still around. A couple of them passed away. They were on my father's side, my father's siblings' children, and their children, some of them. We met just once with a large get together. We're closer to them than to my mother's side. That's how it usually happens.

When a woman gets married to a man, she belongs to the man's family. In other words, she's an outsider from her own family, but I still had a good time with my mother's family.

We were in Korea for a week. Then we went to Japan. I really enjoyed the trip even though I was not so worldly or experienced. I never thought of doing things like that. It was a very interesting thing to do. I might not have been the best traveler because I had never done anything like that, but I remember enjoying it and finding people interesting and seeing different cultures. It was fine. It was good.

I will never do things like that again, so that was a good thing to do when I was young and I had the energy. Right now, I cannot do it. We didn't have much money, and we stayed in a simple places and in many cases people’s homes. We never stayed in a fancier hotel, but I didn't mind it. I washed my own clothes, and along the way I even washed your clothes. I remember enjoying that.

Returning to Live in Annapolis Then we came back to Annapolis. We moved into a small house on State Street in Eastport, Annapolis where I taught art classes with younger children above the garage. I would look for students through word-of-mouth. Some people would send me two or three kids. I taught them art there in the afternoon. It did not last long. I was more interested in homemaking than teaching, so that ended in about a year or so. I'm a good homemaker. I have a great interest in having a good home and a happy home. We bought that little house, that ugly house, in Eastport. I could not stand the house, so a year later we moved to another house with a large yard on Second street.

That too was a horrific house, but the yard was very beautiful. It was just an awful house.

Everybody would say, "Wow," when they walked in. That made up the difference. Tom Rogers and his girlfriend or wife came and stayed there a couple of times. They said that house was haunted. I never felt that it was, but they said that they thought it was haunted. I have to laugh. It scares me thinking about it, but I never felt anything unusual. It was an old house. I was young and silly and naive. I just took it as it came. I didn't know how to complain much. I didn't have much to back up my complaints. But it was fine. We were young. Nobody abused me. I was a young woman, and I basically had a very good time. That’s where Alec was born and raised the first couple of years.

Pets I don't like pets. They are dirty and smelly. We had the ferret. You named him “Sanyasi,” the name for a Hindu wandering holy man. When he was an infant, we went to get Sanyasi somewhere close to Washington, D.C. It was a tiny, little thing. You used to carry him in your shirt pocket. It was so tiny, and people just thought that was kind of fun. Then he got real long.

Eventually, I came to like him. I thought he was so cute. People said, "Whew! That's a long thing!" But I didn't feel that way. I'm usually the first one that feels that kind of thing, but I didn't feel that way. I was carrying him around. I was attached to him. We lost him when he ran away and never came back. I was really attached to him. I usually don't like animals, but you get attached to things like that. I was crying and crying because he never came home. I hope he survived. We raised him for about four or five years. I didn't like it at the beginning. Also, in Eastport we had a black cat who we also named Sanyasi who also ran away one day and never came back either. We had a rabbit for a few weeks.

Then we moved to your mother's house, 5 Boone Trail, Severna Park, where you grew up in Linstead on the Severn. There we had a dog, “Berkley,” a handsome mix of a beagle and a Sheppard, just the right size. I'm not an animal person. I don't want to take care of them. It's too much trouble. I prefer to take care of people. Later we got our black and white shih tzu, “Siddhartha,” named for the prince who became the Buddha. His purchase was hidden from me when we went to Nantucket picking him up when we got back. Siddhartha was lovable, a flat mop, but not trainable. I took care of him even though I didn’t want a dog and not in the house where lived. In Korea dogs don’t enter the house. We had a smart German shepherd that was given to the Korean army during the war.

Son Alec I'm his mother. I adored him. He was a cute boy, always studying hard. I didn't have any problem. My pregnancy was good. Not a big deal. It was my first experience, so I did not know any different. You just let modern medicine take care of you. I had a cesarean. Actually, I didn't want to have a natural birth. I always thought it was awful. Maybe I influenced the doctor to make the decision for me. I just think it's just an awful thing to go through as a woman. Alec and Ashley were both cesareans. Alec had a cesarean because he didn't progress in labor and the umbilical cord was around his neck. He didn't come for 18 hours. The cord was around his neck twice. I was so young. Whatever came along, I just took it without thinking much. It was just a natural progression. Natural birth did not work, so I went to the cesarean. I didn't think it was a traumatic experience. It is a traumatic experience for anyone to go through childbirth. He was always very self-motivated and energetic. He is an architect in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where lives with his wife Nicole (Velez), a dermatologist, with their three children Olive, Se’bastian and Valentina.

The Art Studio Over the Garage Vs. Homemaking and Motherhood I worked here and there at the art studio thing, had affiliations with some local art associations, and later had my small retail space in your office building. For a while I used to taught children art classes at the house above the garage. But I was more into homemaking and having children and raising them rather than teaching. At the beginning, when I was single, I thought it was fun to be with the kids all day long, but later I didn't like it. I can teach still. I don't dislike it. But I prefer raising children and being home, homemaking, and doing my own art in my free time. Right now, there's nothing going on with my art. I'm sick.

Painting and Art Sales

Back some 30 years ago I painted a lot, and I used to show my paintings at the Gilpin Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia and later near the White House where they relocated. They liked my art, but the owner died in a car accident. These were often large flower and sometimes landscape paintings- very light, colorful and positive. In the past, I was inexperienced in money and the value of my paintings, so I sold many of my paints very cheaply. At the Gilpin Gallery, a two-foot high, three-foot wide, magnificent flower painting may have sold for $1200. But mostly they were $600 or $700. I was not very aggressive. My heart was somewhere else. I'm into family, children, and raising kids more than being a professional artist. I could have been, but when you are distracted, you cannot do very good art. The prior owner’s niece was continuing the gallery, but I told her I was more into having a home, family, and kids.

Right now, I can charge $1,500 or more if I do a good job. I was thinking of your recent Scotland magazines. They have a lot of beautiful photographs of landscapes with beautiful colors. It kind of inspired me, especially now that I'm not doing any art. So, if I ever get recovered and feel enough energy, I might do some landscapes in oil or acrylic rather than watercolor. When you do a certain painting for a while, then you get tired of it and you want to change the medium. I might change to watercolor later like my signature paintings, watery, and beautiful paintings. I get a lot of compliments on my paintings all the time. People think they're beautiful. If I ever want to be a good painter, this is a good time. If I ever recover my health, then I don't have to worry about anything like children. I might even do a masterpiece.

Moving to Severna Park We moved to Severna Park because we wanted to have a better home. Your parents were about ready to move out of the 5 Boone Trail house in Linstead on the Severn that your mother and your biological father bought in the 1940’s and where you grew up. They were talking about selling, so I thought that was a good place to buy, especially thinking of the elementary school there. So why not? It's your old home, and this is a nice thing to do. We paid $350,000 for that house at that time. That seems to be awfully cheap, doesn't it? Right now, you would get almost $1 million or more because of it being on the water. You and I talked it over, and we decided to buy it.

I liked it. Your mother was from the Depression times. She didn’t believe in too much comfort, warmth and beauty. Studied fashion design and was an artistic kind of person, of course, but her decorating was a little aloof and sophisticated. She had a lot of French provincial wooden furniture your aunt had carved in New York City. Her house was a bit like her, elegantly aloof, with a distant refined atmosphere. I made it an inviting place. I made it a nice, warm home, for raising kids and for friends to visit and come to dinner parties.

Daughter Ashley

Ashley was born when we were living at 5 Boone Trail. She's now 32. I remember being pregnant and sitting in the backyard there. She was always a happy, smiling, and energetic child with lots of friends. I so love them both.

Sitting Out over the Severn River at 1 Boone Trail and the Kids

Living in General It was comfortable enough in many ways. I didn't have to go to work. I hated to go to work and try to raise children and deal with the family. Nothing can be done right. A lot of women have to do that, but I had a choice. I didn't have to. I was able to make a nice, warm, inviting home, as you know. We had many dinner parties. I tried to make the house very pretty with the paintings.

I Don't Regret My Life

I don't regret my life. I could have done a little more. I wish I had a little more energy in my life, but for some reason I was exhausted. Having a family and raising kids and doing your finances is very exhausting. I took a little nap in the afternoons for an hour or two, but it was always a very exhausting kind of life. But I didn't mind it. It was my family, and I was doing it for my family. That's most of what a woman does anyway.

Early Family Photos of Korea

Choi Sisters and Brothers and Pil Ju

Family in Terra Haute, Indiana and Sisters and Husbands

Alec and Nicole Wedding with Korean Family

Velez and Templeton Family

Oliver, Ashley, Se’bastian

Alec’s First Birthday and Korean Doljabi

Oliver’s Christening

Gallery

Oliver + Se’bastian Footprints

Ashley and Pil Ju June 2021

Letter to Our Family from Rita WJ Choi On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 5:22 PM Rita WJ Choi <choi.wonjung@gmail.com> wrote: Hello Ashley, I hope this finds you well.

My name is Rita (Won Jung) Choi and my mom, Mi Young Paik, is a cousin to your mom, Aunt Pil Ju. You probably don’t remember me but I used to visit and stay at your place in Maryland when I studied at a college in Pennsylvania and visited again with my mom afterwards - probably around 2008.

I just learned that she passed away in December 2020…I stayed in touch with her mostly by email so wondered why she didn’t respond for a while, which was unusual. I should have checked in earlier but with the pandemic and everything else, I obviously missed the chance.

I want to let you know I am so sorry for the loss and wish you and your family peace. If you don’t mind, can you let me know what the cause of death was?

I wish I had a chance to speak with her again and visited her one more time one day. I now live in Los Angeles with my husband Jeff and a corgi puppy, Molly, while my parents live in Korea.

Your mom was one of the most generous and sweetest persons I’ve ever known. I have a small painting of hers too, which is now in my mom’s place in Korea. With so many fond

memories about her, I am saddened to learn about her passing but believe she is in peace now. If there is her grave I can visit one day, please kindly let me know.

Also if you ever come to Los Angeles and want to meet or need anything, please know I would be more than happy to see you again and help in any way I can.

Thank you and I hope you, Uncle Richard, Alec and his family are all doing very well.

Best regards, Rita

Choi Family History By Jae Hyong Choi (Halabuji) married to Young Choo Choi (Kim) Interviewed By Richard K. Templeton Assisted By Pil Ju C. Templeton October 15, 1983 Transcribed and Translated By Eunji Kim St. John’s College Annapolis, MD Gwangju, South Korea July 14, 2014 (RT: Richard Templeton, HC: Jae Hyong Choi (Halabuji), PC: Pil Ju Choi)

Origin of the Choi Jokbo Although I am the eldest grandson of the head family I do not know that much about my jokbo.

However, not only I, but Koreans do not, cannot, have a accurate knowledge of their jokbo. This is because the history of the ancestors of Koreans is at least two thousand years old. So there is probably no one that has continuously written down a historical account of those two thousand years. And even if there is, in my opinion, there will probably be a lot of made-up stories like myths.

But I have a kind of pride for my family jokbo because, if you look at this jokbo book, my family jokbo has been carefully first recorded from about two thousand years ago and that remained as a document that my ancestors kept studying and adding on to, so I think it it’s somewhat reliable.

And not only for my family, but for any nation, I think it is natural for people to have a kind of pride for their ancestors through legends or folktales.

This jokbo that was made in 1950. The person who made it was rather educated in a new fashion and his father was the person who remade our jokbo in the middle. This jokbo book that he made is probably the only documentation we have nowadays among the several Choi families.

This book was made about 120-130 years ago, and as this was the case, the person that made this jokbo, embracing his father’s will and considering it a pity that the jokbo was recently lost, labored greatly for several years and made it. I don’t know if it is completely true, but it looked extremely accurate from how it was recorded and because it used scientific methods that the people in the past who made the jokbos did not have. I think that it is a fairly reliable document.

As written in this jokbo, the documents used to first write our jokbo and its genealogy, were made 754 years ago. It tells us that the first time it was written was 754 years ago and then the second edition was made 722 years ago. The second version was based on the first one and after the second edition, each household’s jokbos were compiled to make the jokbo that I have now. I am of the opinion that this document is similar to the first one and is fairly reliable. Since the second edition 722 years ago and it wasn’t kept up as well until recently, about hundred years ago. Then 150 years ago,“Gu Book,” the “turtle grandfather” edited it. It is probably the basis for the jokbo of the Kyungju Choi’s lineage of our household. Turtle grandfather’s father was a very intelligent scholar. He was like someone who had passed a government bar exam, nowadays. more like a judge position.

The Role of the Guachub In Class Stratification As it still is nowadays, it cost a lot to make a jokbo in Korea. So the average Korean could not even think of making a jokbo. They didn’t have the necessary knowledge or the information to make one. So people who weren’t well off would just carry around something they had written down on a memo pad. In Korea that was called a guachub***; they carried the small memo that had their lineage with them. It was very simple, small and hand-written. A large jokbo were just too expensive for most people to have.

The reason that people in the past carried the guachub, a kind of jokbo, was because it was a feudal society and a kind of society that had different classes. So everyone had their ancestor’s names in their jokbo. If their ancestor was a lowly person sometimes their descendants wouldn’t be able to get married and even if they were very capable they couldn’t acquire good jobs or good social status. You couldn’t get a government position. So everybody valued their Jokbo that had their ancestors names or pictures.

So in the past they always carried the small jokbo, guachub, that I mentioned earlier and wherever they went and greeted someone they would show this. So, when one is traveling and if he went to a famous person’s house and showed the gauchub as proof and said that my ancestor is so and so, I am so and so’s descendant… he could be invited in for a meal. So the jokbo was that precious and valuable but not every house could have one, so families of people who were in debt would use the gachub that I mentioned before as proof.

In the past, like any other society, the upper class, people who were educated, knew about the local history of where he lived because the local area was not that big. It was common sense to know the history of your hometown. So you wouldn’t be trusted with just your words when you didn’t have a guachub. If the person’s name in the guachub is a name that you know then you would think, ‘This is who and who’s descendant so I can’t ignore or despise this person, I should show kindness and respect to this person.’ When marriage was considered, that made all of this even more important.

Maintaining the Choi Genealogy Beginning in 1592 Because I had studied the so-called modern sciences, I wasn’t that interested in guachubs, but my family is the head family of the Daegu Choi’s household which moved to Daegu in 1592 from the Kyungju Choi’s lineage. When I was little, my grandfather, who was very interested in this, educated me that I had the responsibility to keep on the family line and to maintain the household/lineage well. It was something I had learned from when I was young and I was interested and when Turtle grandfather decided to make this book, I thought I should help provide money for the project and he put in several years of effort and the book came about in the 1950s. I was interested in Choi jokbo was because I was the first born son of the head family and my parent’s education when I was little. Korea’s Hwanggae’s*** household was also very precious so I was very interested and I helped make this book.

Ancestor who died for his Country and the Gift of the Burial Mountains Something I am additionally proud regarding my lineage is that about 400 years ago a grandfather eight generations above me died in Japan. My grandfather used his story as a very valuable educational lesson. What it was is this: He told me to have an attitude that thought about what it is for a man to be born in a country and give his life for his country. So from when I was little that kind of attitude grew in me subconsciously and I was very strong and bold in school and said, “Japan killed my ancestor!” Because of his sacrifice the Munju grave site was given to him by the country in memory of his death. It is a very precious grave site and from what I know, no other household in Daegu has a grave site like that. So, my father and all the elders of my extended family thought of that as such a great honor that there was great respect for that grandfather. I have that kind of family pride, because an ancestor of mine that laid down his life for his country. I have it even today. So during the colonial rule of Japan, I resisted the Japanese.

The grandfather who passed away in Japan was eight generations above me and he passed away in Japan in 1764 in the Western Years.

The Killing of the Ancestor Eight Generations Ago The details of the event are these possible facts. At that time, Japan wasn’t a strong country as it is today and because Japan was a feudal society, horses were rare. But the grandfather that died then was a military person. He was a commander and probably something like a company commander of today. He accompanied the ambassador as a military officer and if you’re a commander you have command over the weapons. I’m guessing that some Japanese were trying to ask the grandfather for horses or arms or they were trying to steal them. And the grandfather said, “No.” and they were probably average commoners. I remember reading somewhere that when the grandfather was sleeping, they came and stabbed him in the neck and assassinated him for no reason.

I don’t really know and the elders in our family line don’t really know either. We just know that he was going to Daepan and coming back but he got killed in Daepan. That’s all we know,

nobody knows the specific reason. Korean horses were well-known then. So even though the Japanese had horses, they might have thought the Korean horses were better and were envious.

This is just my guess; there weren’t big horses in Japan then.

A Second Version of his Killing The elders of the family say that people were trying to assassinate the ambassador. Because the grandfather wore the ambassador’s clothes and went to sleep in the ambassador’s room he was killed instead of the ambassador. I think that’s also a possible story. But I looked at another book that recorded this happening and it said that when the Japanese person came to kill him and right before he was about to die, he said, “I do not know why I am being attacked.”

But there’s no reason to kill someone without a reason, even if that person is Japanese. Since the grandfather was a military commander, it was probably because of the horses or gun powder. But Japan was more developed in gunpowder because they already had guns imported and were using them. Because the Japanese didn’t have anything to learn from us about gun powder, but with regard to horses, they might have been envious and greedy. Because Japan had closed its gates to outside trade they had no way of bringing horses. This is my guess. I feel like it is in a way a scientific guess.

A Third Version of the Killing Another telling is that he went to Japan and offended some Japanese person and the person wanted revenge and that’s how the grandfather died. There’s an English book about Korea at that time that I read and if you look at that it says that Korean government had a lot of objections against the Japanese government. Eventually, Japan apologized for many things. And the person that killed our grandfather, his name was Yidodandaima, and he was executed. But if the grandfather had offended him and was in the wrong then there was no reason to execute Yidodandaima even though he is Japanese. So that’s why I came up with my own kind of “fiction” for why he was killed. The grandfather was 38 years old when he died in Japan. He was the 54th generation Choi. His name was Choi Chun Jong. If that grandfather hadn’t been killed in Japan and he lived on, he would have gotten a very high official ranking because he was such a very great man.

The Long Choi Tradition of Not “Crouching” and Being Anti-government and Anti-Japanese After this event happened, the family that came down directly to us established a principle of never becoming a government official. In that time, you weren’t treated well in the society, so we sometimes did average government positions, but that’s a kind of subordinate job position.

My household was not fond of being a government official. When I was young my father told me that when I became an adult I should never crouch and go under someone to feed myself. That meant to not go work under a Japanese person. So when I was a student, I didn’t think of finding

a job because I would have to cringe before some Japanese person. I wanted to go into politics or even more than that I wanted to get into the press world and be a reporter. But after I graduated school, my father was against that and my grandfather passed away so everything was different.

The Choi family tried not find a jobs as a government employee. (“So actually he never had a job, never.” Pil Ju) Another reason, apart from grandfather’s advice, that I didn’t get a job was because my family was already pretty well off. We were one of the richest families in Daegu, so my pride wouldn’t allow me to feel discomfort and go crouch under someone. At that time, the highest income you could get after graduating college was 80 won a month, which then, 2 won was 1 dollar, so you could at most only get 40 dollars for your monthly wage. Since I had a hundred times more than what I could earn in one year, why would I ever go work under someone else for that money? So I just inherited the orchard business that grandfather did and lived my life as a land owner.

Halabuji Childhood Times and Family Values and Traditions There is much family history. My grandfather was a very kind person. He was very aware of other’s circumstances and since he had plenty of means, he never put on an unkind face to his friends who were not that well-off even if they always came asking for help. So since I was little I realized, “Oh, I need to resemble this kind of character of being generous in helping others, in Korean the word would be, hooduk hada (has high moral character, eminent virtue).” Another thing is that if you mentioned so and so grandfather, everyone would praise him saying, “Oh, yes, so and so is such a virtuous person.” So when I went to downtown Daegu, if someone asked me, “Whose son are you?” and I answered, “I am so an so’s son,” they would all respect me and treat me very well. At the same time, I learned from a young age a sense of responsibility; I said to myself that I would never do something that would disgrace my father.

So even as a child, I was always careful of my actions. That’s why I’m relatively gentle and not so active and don’t take much initiative. But since I was the eldest of the head family, all the elders of our family line valued me and wherever I went they looked over me and treated me very carefully like I might blow away. So even now, I haven’t forgotten the expectations of my elders, should I say, or how they always thought my future was very promising, but now since I’m here and living like this… Sometimes memories of the past pop up and I feel a kind of loss… something like that. Growing up in a traditional atmosphere like that, I learned to be generous in helping others and in other words, sharing love to others.

My Father’s Character Here is an example of how gracious and high in moral character my father was. I participated in strikes during my high school years, and I was expelled from school. I got called to the principal’s office and your grandfather had to go in to sign the papers for expulsion by hand.

Most parents wouldn’t have been able to stand their child that evening if they had had to go and sign an expulsion paper, and there would have been a lot of scolding. But your grandfather didn’t say a word about it, even till when he died, he never said, “Why did you do that?” And though he

didn’t express it outwardly, he really trusted me in his deep heart. When I got expelled from school and was at home, my friends heard the news and came over to comfort me. My student friends and I were hanging out. It was already past dinnertime, so we were hungry. Around that time, we had an old servant/butler named Mr. Ko. And then, considering the culture, sweet potatoes were a favorite snack among students. A little past dinner time Mr. Ko brought a box full of sweet potatoes. We normally don’t roast sweet potatoes at home so I asked him what this was and Mr. Ko told us that my father had bought it for us since we would probably be hungry. I was so touched then. Normally parents would have not let the son who had just gotten expelled have friends over but my parents let them come over and play with me and even bought sweet potatoes for us because we would be hungry. I will always remember the affection of my parents.

Extra Spending and Manipulating My Father A second episode is this. Even though we were very rich then, I went to Japan to study, my older sister also went to study, my Kyung Ju aunt also studied there. So in that time currency, my father had to send about 150 won a month, that’s about 75 dollars but 75 dollars then was a great amount of money. Since he had to send all that money my father probably kept a very tight grip on his money pouch. When I was in Japan, I spent a lot of money other than my monthly rent and tuition. So at that time currency, I spent about 2000 won a year when I was studying in Japan. 2 won is about 1 dollar so 2000 won was about 1000 dollars at that time. That was a big burden for my family. When I come home for vacation, I would ask my father for my tuition money? It was bad of me, but if I needed 100 won I would tell him it cost 130-140 won. I would use that extra 30-40 won as my allowance to hang out with friends. When I asked him for that money, he wouldn’t give it to me saying it was too much and that he didn’t have that money.

This was bad of me, but when that happened, I would be stubborn and lay down on the floor and say that then I wouldn’t go to Japan if he didn’t give me the amount I asked for. He would then be like, “You little rascal…” and he would open up the big chest and give me the amount I asked for. So in cases like this, my father would never say, “No” to his son’s ideal. He would listen to me and since he trusted me I would remind myself that I should always be careful of my actions and that’s how I was raised. So that’s how I was educated and that’s I education you and your siblings. I’m not sure whether that was for the best or worst but as of now, I don’t think that was a bad way to educate you all, if I look at yourselves today.

Studying in Abroad in Japan and Values There were several families that were richer than our family in Daegu at that time, but none of the children of those families went to study abroad in Japan. Maybe there were one or two, but they didn’t go to the top-level universities in Japan. They probably went to the third or fourth level universities. In Japan, Wasaeda University was considered the best university there and that’s where I studied. And when I look at that, I realize that if I didn’t have that kind of family pride I would have been swept along by the general atmosphere of that time and would have gone to the bottom of bottoms. There were a lot of young people from Daegu that had gone to

Japan to study and had become very corrupt. All of them just fell into corruption. The reason I, who hadn’t even graduated high school, was able to go and complete my studies in Japan was my family atmosphere. For example, at that time, in Japan, dancing was really the trend, and then Maja was very popular. There wasn’t a student who couldn’t dance or do Maja. I wasn’t much for drinking ever but there was a lot of drinking too. Everyone drank. Japanese always drank a lot. I just always kept my distance from it. And my reason was because if I thought about how my father had educated me, I just couldn’t bring myself to that level to do it. I’m not trying to brag, but relatively, I was a pretty smart student at school. I think Koreans have a lot of ambition. Even through all the discrimination that I received from the Japanese, I felt challenged, and I graduated college.

The Role of the Jokbo and Family Values Maybe this is over saying it, but now I’m not that concerned with a person’s jokbo, but I am very interested in one’s family background. In my experience, if one does not come from a good family background, the children of that person don’t turn out that well as good people. It’s a kind of proof. It seems like they just do whatever they want because they don’t have that kind of structure from their background. In a good family, even if you want to do whatever you want, because of the family’s influence there a certain binding force that stops you from acting like that. But in families that don’t have that, there are a lot of lesser valued people that emerge.

So even in Hyong Ju’s marriage concern, the very first thing that I was curious about was what family the other person was coming from. I always look at what kind of family environment one grew up in. And with my experience in the real world, in society, whether female or male, it is very hard to find a good person that came from a bad family background. I’ve seen it. So that’s why I am a lot more interested in one’s family background than a lot of people my age are. But I don’t think this is necessarily good. For me, I think it’s the right way.

The Organization of the Jokbo The very beginning part tells the short history of how this jokbo came to be made and why it was made. It’s short but it has very good content. The second part is something that I wrote about eldest sons in the head family because my father asked me to write a little something. It’s how I felt in the 1950s. At the time, there were a lot of children in our extended family but there was no exceptional ones in my view. All of us didn’t do well in school and we were pitiable. Since it was the 1950s and right after we became independent, so I wrote it out of a sense of writing something firm that could tie all our families. Other sections tell the history of the time when the Jokbo was being made and when and what happened among the different households.

The Choi People Origins in China The beginning story of the jokbo has the origin of the Choi family. In this book and as I see it, our original ancestor is Chinese. As a Korean, saying that I’m a descendant of a Chinese person

might be sort of shameful but there is no nation that is purely racially homogeneous. From that point of view, I am not really embarrassed that my ancestor came from China.

In the past Emperor Jin was such a tyrannical emperor that when he went to war he would make all of his people go to war at a time when the people lived in a poor conditions. So some people in San Dong, couldn’t stand all of his tyranny and they fled by land or sea through Manju and arrived in Korea. It’s easy to get to Kyung Ju from there, you just follow the sea line. So they arrived in Kyungju, but there was a village called Choi in San Dong of China. Choi. Like our Choi. So then or now, when someone who first settles down tries to make a family name they use their village name. For example in the Jokbo there are 326 groups of Kyung Ju Choi’s and most of them are after places in Korea. All of them were using the place where they lived and using the name Choi. Likewise, our Kyungju Choi was also derived from the village where a lot of people from Jin Empire came to take refuge in Kyungju and a lot of Chois gathered together and decided to name the family name as Choi. This was about 2000 years ago. And Emperor Jin, as he is well known in history, is the king who built the Great Walls of China. Emperor Jin was the most powerful and most tyrannical King in all of Chinese history.

Origin of the Choi Name Even in Korea, if you look at the big family names, they’re all derived from their hometowns.

Not only the Chois, but the Kims, the Lees, the Parks. All of them take their family name from where their ancestor lived. Japanese do the same. If you lived on top of the mountain, your family name was Yamanaka, if you lived near the bottom of the mountain, it was Yamamodo.

“Yama” means mountain and “modo” means bottom. The family names were made like this, and it makes sense. Americans also do something similar where their names show what their occupations are. Smiths were blacksmiths, Carter, those who pulled carts.

62nd from the First Generation and 31st from The Famous Choi Chiwon It tells when the jokbo was made and the fact that in the 1950’s there were 158 families in Daegu and 782 individuals. At that time, the total population of Daegu wasn’t even 10,000. If I follow along with this jokbo, I am the 62nd generation from the very first generation. And Choi Chiwon is the 31st generation. I am double the generation of what Choi Chiwon was from the first generation.

Choi Chiwon went to China to study when he was very young. The Tang Dynasty in China was the most culturally developed country at the time. If you look at the Korean history of the Chosun Dynasty at that time, if you were going to really study, you went to China. You would go to the center of culture in the Tang Dynasty. It’s like how Koreans come to America to study these days, and how Koreans used to go to Japan to study. Going abroad to study meant you learned about the foreign culture and used it to enhance the cultural level in Korea and you could be in a higher position when you came back to the country.

I call him Choi Chiwon grandfather, but I should be saying ancestral grandfather, but I could just call him Mr. Choi Chiwon. Anyways, he went to Tang to study when he was about 12. China had a governmental bar exam at that time. It was even hard for Chinese to pass but this grandfather Choi passed it. You couldn’t get a government position if you didn’t pass this exam or move forward in your career. But because he passed he worked like a tutor for the emperor’s children next to the King. He also was responsible for serving the emperor and he got a pouch made of gold as a reward for his service. He was treated very respectfully in a way that he really never could have been treated as a foreigner in China. He also was an officer of administering exams for soldiers. All the people respected him very much. It’s usually hard for a Korean to be respected by the Chinese.

Choi Chiwon Ended a Rebellion There’s another thing Choi Chiwon grandfather is famous for. China had a lot of political disturbances and a lot of bandits formed in the rural areas. There was a group called Hwang Gun Jok that was rebelling against the government. Because the country was in a turmoil at that time, China couldn’t take care of the rebellion. Choi Chiwon wrote a warning to the guerilla groups and he had them posted everywhere. It was telling them to read this and take it as a warning. It was such a well written piece that after reading it, they all just gave up and never showed up again. This is also written down in Chinese history. That is how Choi Chiwon’s name became famous all over China.

Choi Chiwon Tries to Unify the Three Kingdoms, Then Writes Literature Classics and History He then came back to the Korea at that time and to Silla Kingdom in 884. It was the time of Queen Jinseung, near the end of Silla Kingdom when the country was confused and Hin turmoil.

It was just in a terrible state and there weren’t any good positions for him. It is my thought the he was disappointed, but the high culture of Tang Dynasty had peaked at that time as well.

Ideologically and culturally, a kind of Hermit Taoism ideology, like Lao-tzu or Chuang-tzu, promoted that a person retire from secular society and live peacefully, a philosophy that permeated all of China. Grandfather Choi was influenced by that ideology as well as the fact that the Silla was in a terrible state. So he went to Haeinsa Temple and lived there for a couple of years before passing away there. But we lost all record of him after that, nobody knows about him. If you go to Haeinsa Temple now, there is this valley, and the legend is that this is where he took refuge from the world and where he wrote poems and other works. My conclusion is that grandfather Choi was influenced by the Chinese culture and accepted Hermit Taoism Ideology, and then when he came back to his native land and it wasn’t what he wanted, he left the world and the secular society and lived outside it.

The Choi Jokbo and Choi Chiwon It says in the jokbo and I mentioned it before, after he went to the Haeinsa Temple, we don’t know how he died. How does his son and descendants know? Whenever I look at our jokbo, I think to myself that this part maybe was created as a legend. But I can’t say that for sure. The interpretation that I gave, that this was his reason for acting as he did when he came back, is just my own interpretation. From what I know, no one else interprets it like that. But if this is not the case, it just doesn’t make sense that someone who had gone all the way to China to study came back to Silla and just decided to leave everything and go into the mountains. So that’s how and why I choose to understand grandfather Choi’s choice and his feelings. In the jokbo there is a whole list of the descendants of grandfather Choi and most Kyung Ju Choi’s consider him as their ancestor. But for us, there is his younger brother, Choi Seo-won, and we are his descendants, according to the jokbo.

Words for the Future Generations With regard to words for the futures generations, I am in a difficult position to answer that question because I am now living in America. If I hadn’t come to America, I would have had a lot to say, but what I say here is a completely different expression from what I would say have said in Korea, even if in essence I’m saying the same thing. What I still want to say, having come to America is- since America is a democratic nation- be a good citizen. This is something that I told Won Ju a lot and how I taught him. And when he went to school and his teacher would ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” a lot of kids would say, “The president,” “A general,” things like this. But I taught Won Ju from when he was very little is to be a good citizen. First, if you want to be a good citizen, you become a good husband, a good father, and then if you’re a good citizen, you also become a good member of the nation. I think the essence is this: become democratic, become a free man, a democratic being. There are a lot of people who have come to America have become good members of America while they were being good citizens. This is how we repay the kindness, the good that we have received from the American society as people who are physically living in this social space. If we were in Korea, we would not have been able to enjoy all of this atmosphere, all these rights and freedoms. So as way of remembering the gratefulness of being in such an environment where we can enjoy all these things in America I say, “Let’s be good citizens.” If someone happens to gain American citizenship, I want to tell them to become a good American citizen.

Why I Feel and Think This Way The reason I came to think like this is because I was oppressed by the Japanese during the colonial rule of Japan and even after our liberation, the police were always keeping a close watch on me, even though I was such a good person, a good citizen. The reason that they were watching me was because of my financial status. They thought they would be able to get some extra money by keeping watch on me. In addition, I was very educated for my time and it was

strange that I wasn’t employed after graduating. And after the Korean Liberation I didn’t go and fawn over the government officials, because I was confident in myself and my own way of living. At the time you were only a good person in the eyes of the government officials if you fawned over them. They were afraid of people who didn’t cringe before them and had their own dignity and pride that they lived with. So before I came to America, they were always watching me and I didn’t have any freedom. They would even have someone follow me when I met up with my friends to listen to what we were talking about.

So after the liberation of Korea and after Won Ju was born I started to think that only a country that ensures a human being’s basic rights is a country that is good to live in as a human being.

And as I was feeling that, Won Ju went to school and his teacher would ask him what he wanted to be. I had always told him to become a good citizen. So when his teacher asked this question to other kids, they would say they wanted to become the president, or a general but Won Ju would always answer without any hesitation that he would become a good citizen. I didn’t hear this from Won Ju, but my wife saw this and told me about it. So when I look at Won Ju, I think that naturally guided him and helped act as a guiding principle in his life.

One Last Thing One last thing I want to say is that what I have talked about today is not from a position of being very knowledgeable about the jokbo, but it was a sincere account according to what I know and according to what I’m feeling right now today.

Halabuji, I want to thank you and I appreciate your sharing with us your family history, your personal history and your words for our sake.

Not at all, you’re very welcome.