Money or Love

Some got fired, some got divorced, and some committed suicide. All these events occurred from 1997 to 2002 in South Korea because of the severe economic crisis. Since Korea became one of the most developed countries in the world, Koreans have been able to live better than before, but they should have had a self-restraint. They opened a champagne bottle too soon. Then, the government of Republic of Korea had to borrow money to get help from IMF (International Monetary Fund). Meanwhile, everybody was in a difficult situation except my family. Fortunately, my father had a communication service business which was not affected by the IMF crisis, but he earned more money than others. An ironic benefit of the crisis was that my family could move from a small house to a big and fancy apartment. The changes were not only about the house but about also my relationships among my family members. In fact, paradoxically my family connections become loose because of our increased wealth.

One change was the cold atmosphere that surrounded my father and me. Although I have many similarities with my father, we do not care much about each other. When I was nine years old, he started his own business instead of working at Samsung Corporation. Since that time, I have hardly had a conversation with my father. Frankly speaking, I believed that he took advantage of his business as an excuse to escape from my family when he was too busy to talk. His strong willingness of success was derived from his upbringing. My father, who was born as the youngest child in a poor farmer family, did not have any academic support from his parents. He fed cows and cultivated land day and night, but he also studied hard for his dream. Finally, he accomplished his desire, yet he would never stop. After the IMF crisis gave us a high status, he switched his business from the communication service to an alcohol corporation. As he took a different regional business over, my family had to move to a strange place. Even though I understood him and his background, his dogmatic decision did not make sense at all. My family members abandoned all our acquaintances just to chase more money. From the moment my family moved to a new and big place, the situation was getting worse. My father came home late because of his business, so my relationship with him has started to deteriorate. In addition, it affected my relationship between my father and my mother as well.

My mother and I are connected by a burning string. I think that she reflects her dreams to me and hopes to get a substitute satisfaction. Because my mother was also raised with the same status as my father, she wanted to run away from poverty. She went to the College of Education to become a teacher instead of becoming a designer because she did not have enough money to do so. However, she did overwhelmingly well at both her work and household, and she supported my family until my father had success. Before she had to quit her job due to my father’s request, she was an enthusiastic, confident, wise, and hard-working mother when she was an elementary-school teacher. My father cared a lot about the social reputation that he needed my mother as a housewife. Then, she flipped from a professional teacher to a typical soccer mom. She kept talking about her heyday and regretted quitting job, so she gave me pressure to be what she wanted to. Hence, I was forced to enter an expensive private women’s university which was well known as the community of respectable families’ daughter. The college was located in Seoul, which meant I could no longer be with my family, so my only time to meet my family was on weekends and vacations. As a matter of fact, the distant problem affected the relationship between my brother and me.

Although there are occasional problems, a rubber band connects my brother and me. My brother, who is three years younger than me, was a weak, dependant, and good-hearted child when we were in elementary school. Because both of my parents were working, I have looked after him since I remember. I had done everything I possibly could for him by the time we left our hometown. My brother and I spent our time separately at different private educational institutions. As a result, I had no idea about my brother’s trouble or worries. Then, when I graduated from high school, I barely saw him. Furthermore, “Out of sight, out of mind.” Even though we are siblings and are connected with a durable rubber band, it is hard to catch up with him due to the long distance between Korea and the United States. Now, he is performing his obligatory military service, and I am studying in the United States, which is fourteen hours by airplane from Korea. I am sure that he must have hard time in the army, but we have only talked by phone two times since I came to Chicago.

Fortunately, as time goes by, all my members of family do realize what the problems are, and we are trying to recover our relationships. My family circumstance makes me think about the Japanese cartoon “GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka)” which is about unpredictable teacher Onizuka. One of his students had a similar problem as mine, so he went to her house, and broke the wall between her father and her mother’s room with a huge hammer. The story was ridiculous, but it gave me a lesson that I had a responsibility to make a daring decision. I should have not let everything have its own way but recovered my family relationships. Even if I cannot go back to my memory, which is at my small and wooden floor house with a trifoliate orange tree and eating baked sweet potatoes with all my family together, I will do my best to bring my family together again.