“Fine, if you say so. Just remember, Thunderball holds the keys to the whole kingdom.”
I finish the cup of kopi luwak. Its deep bitter taste stays on my tongue.
“By the way,” he says, showing me out. “You don’t have any promises tonight, right?”
“Huh? Promises?”
“You know, yaksok. Appointment?”
“No, but I have too much work to—”
“Event tonight,” he says, ignoring me. “Invited a couple of talents.” Talents, I’ve learned, are female movie or TV stars.
“Maybe I can bring my friend Jack along. He likes—”
“No barbarians allowed in club.” When he sees the look on my face, he reassures me, “Trust me. It’ll be fun.” Like the good old days.
14
October 26, 1979
For new Americans, Umma and Appa sure talk a lot about the country they left behind. We became natural USA citizens over a year ago. But the parental units are always talking in a low voice about the Dictator and Yushin Constitution, some law that allows President Park Chung Hee to have power forever. Like one of those emperors in the old days.
Sometimes they have a group of people over our house, and they drink scotch and chew on dried ojinguh. They discuss about politics, always Korean jungchi. The grown-ups think I don’t know, they always hush up when I walk into the kitchen. I can tell they’re talking politics by their hushed tone. They cover up the way my friends do when someone brings in the new Playboy magazine. I know things. Sometimes I like to be a spy. I sit quiet on the staircase and like Agent 007—Bond, James Bond—eardrop on their conversation. I hear them talking about prodemocracy protests in Seoul and Korean Central Intelligent Agency striking fear in people’s bellies. They keep calling Hanguk “our country,” even though they all left it. Why leave if you can’t put it behind you?
Most days at home Appa is quiet, keeping to himself and his beloved piano. But whenever the people come for the group discussions, he becomes like a different person and does a lot of talking. He gives lectures, the way he used to at university back in the old country. I can tell they respect him by the way they call him Sunseng-nim and listen to his words. I can listen to Appa’s gentle voice all day, too.
Appa lectures one gathering about “our country’s cursed history.” “At Yalta in early 1945,” he says, in Korean, “as World War Two was nearing its end, FDR and Stalin, with Churchill’s assent, agreed to make Korea an independent, unified country. Under the American aegis, of course, but, still, unified as a single country, a single people, as we Koreans demanded, and deserved.”
I can’t follow everything he says, but Appa sounds so wise. I spy through the staircase railings one old woman, in her midtwenties at least, staring and smiling at him in a way that annoys the heck out of me. She’s like an ugly Ginger admiring the Professor’s knowledge.
“But then FDR dies,” he continues, “and along comes Truman. At Potsdam in July that year, Truman decides to horse-trade with Stalin and gives the Soviet Union half of Germany and half of Korea. He just bisected the Korean Peninsula at the 38th parallel. An historic betrayal. That’s how Korea came to be divided. And stayed that way for going on thirty-four years.”
“A pawn in a geopolitical game played by two superpowers,” Ginger says, smiling up at Appa. She has such crooked teeth.
“Our cursed fate,” he says, shaking his head. “For centuries a vassal state to the Chinese kingdoms, then an annexed colony to Imperial Japan. And now ward to America.”
Appa returns all the time to his favorite topic, the Dictator. Boy, does he not like President Park’s guts. The former army general, in his sunglasses and high-heel shoes, with some skin disease Appa calls Napoleonic complexion. I hear Appa talk about how the Dictator came to power in a coup de ta, so his presidency is like an illegitimate child. Appa says that put a jeojoo, a curse, on the country. Sure, Park is making Korea modern and less poor, with the chaebol and their big factories. “Development over democracy” and all that. But Appa says all the rice bowls Park puts on Koreans’ tables can’t wash away the evil that started his presidency and has hung over it like wet laundry on a clothesline.
Appa gets worked up when he talks about how President Park rules with what they call a metal fist. The Dictator crushes on any opposition, like that activist D. J. Kim, and tortures student protest leaders. Tortures his own countrymen! And country kids! He controls the military, the press, and even the elections. The once and future Dictator. He won one election with 90 percent of the electoral vote! Appa says he and Kim Il Sung in the North are birds with the same feather, just different colors.
President Park’s saving grace is he’s not greedy about personal riches, so he’s a rare clean Korean political leader. But they say he’s not so clean about young women, especially actresses and singers. My imagination runs away from me when people talk about that. Appa’s face turns cherry red when he says the smiling American president Jimmy Carter is propping up this “monster” for his own agenda. Says as a bull work against the Communist North.
Appa tells often about a favorite student he taught at university. Name of Shin, a political studies major. Shin talked smartly in class about the “false democracy” Koreans were living in and how they have to fight for their basic freedoms. Appa had taken Shin under his wings, and they were going to fly together to great scholar heights. They wrote a paper together, titled “Koon-joo Min-soo.” Appa explained the title to me, saying a sea’s strong waters will lift a boat, but an angry sea will turn it over. The Korean people are supposed to be the sea’s waters or something.
One class Appa noticed Shin was absent, and then the next and next. He was not seen or heard for a month. There were lots of whispers about what might have happened to him. Stories about the dreaded KCIA and their not-so-secret torture chamber in Namsan. Their worst guesses were confirmed when Shin returned just before finals. He had a heavy limp and bandages on his hands where fingernails used to be. I was grossed out imagining all the bad things they might have done to him. Appa said in a shaking voice, from then on the student just had a blank look on his face the whole time. He said Shin became a ghost in the classroom.
*
One chilly fall day, I come home from school, and there are many people gathered, the usual faces but some new ones, too. But their mood is not the spirited anger I’m used to but something heavier. Then I hear it, in bits and pieces. A presidential banquet, singer Shim Soo-bong and a coed, a Walther PPK (James Bond’s gun!), an assassination over dinner. The Dictator dead. Just like President John F. Kennedy, who we studied in social studies class and where I first heard the word “assassination.” Killed by a psycho Commie sniper. Except President Park was killed by one of his own men. I learn Park was shot during dinner at a Korean CIA guesthouse by the KCIA director Kim Jae-Kyu (“thug number two,” as Appa calls him). Director Kim was apparently upset at losing power to the presidential bodyguard Cha Ji-Chul (thug number three), so he killed both President Park and Cha. Park was shot in the chest and head, and he died on the spot. At the trial, Director Kim was asked what was his motive, and he said, “For democracy.”
What a cursed family, the Parks. The president’s wife killed by a North Korea sympathizer in 1974, now him. His poor daughter, orphaned by two violences. What will she grow up to be? Unlike the JFK assassination, no one dares use the word assassination for President Park. They just call it the 10.26 incident of 1979. The jeojoo of the coup, a doomed presidency. Country thrown into something called marshal law, again. A new sheriff coming soon, I guess.
I expect Appa to be happy at the death of the Dictator. The enemy of the people and all that. But instead he’s somber. For the first time, he doesn’t give a big lecture to the group. “A violent beginning to presidency, a violent end,” he just says. “Cursed country.” I don’t know if he feels guilty about having his wish come true or he’s more worried about the future of the country. Appa puts a large hand on my shoulder and says,
“I pray your Hanguk is better than mine.”
When I go up to my room, I hear the people downstairs break into singing of the Korean national anthem. Daehan saram Daehan euhro . . . I can hear Appa at his piano, leading the chorus. Great Korean people, stay true to the Great Korean way . . .
15
Early February 1998
The driver circles and circles, but he can’t find the place. Wayne’s chauffeur is sweating, squeezing the wheel with his white-gloved hands, craning his neck to look at the building signs. The bright lights, watery neon signs of Gangnam pass by in a colorful blur against the cloudless night. We’re headed to Wayne’s club, Karma, but locating it is proving elusive, because streets in Seoul have no names; you just have to know your way.
“This our first time here?” Wayne says from the back seat, his words cutting more sharply with the even delivery.
Wayne’s car is a Chairman, Ilsung Motors’ latest luxury sedan. The front passenger seat has no headrest; it has a pull-out compartment to stretch legs through from the back seat. There’s also no rearview mirror. Wayne had it removed because he didn’t like the driver looking at him in the back. The Chairman is made with a licensed old engine from Mercedes-Benz and a plagiarized S-Class body, but because it has the Ilsung name, local executives drive it without fear of retribution from the authorities. For years it was known that if you had a foreign luxury car, you were inviting a tax audit. Mercedes-Benz and BMW could never figure out why they were having a hard time penetrating the Korean market.
When we finally arrive, the driver rushes out to open Wayne’s door, but Wayne opens it himself, denying the old man this small dignity after his poor driving performance.
At Karma, there’s no sign, no entrance visible. Wayne stands in front of a small aperture, which turns out to be a retina scan, and a door slides open with a hiss.
Karma is a private, members-only club, membership criteria unknown. Inside, it’s all black lacquer and glass, and as I walk in I lose depth perception. The walls look like deep pools of dark water. We pass an open sitting area, where Wayne exchanges a handshake with a guy, a bit younger, my guess another chaebol samsei. Wayne pats him on the back, tells him to come by our room for a drink later.
We come to a glass door, whereupon Wayne says, with a wink back at me, “Open sashimi,” and the door slides open. We have a sashimi dinner in a room, just the two of us, along with a chef who stands behind a counter and prepares the fish. Wayne lets drop he brought over the sushi sous-master from Sushi Ko in Tokyo. The sashimi is served on black plates on a black table. It’s hard to taste what I’m eating with visual sensory deprivation.
We move to the next room, where a barely visible inscription over the door reads, Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, if I remember from my school days. A gaggle of starlets, all young and chic, greets us. Each of them has been sculpted, scrubbed, peeled, and polished to artificial perfection.
“They all actresses?” I ask Wayne.
“Women are all actresses,” he says.
I’m introduced to a Hae Sun Kim, whom I recognize from the movies. She’s taller and thinner than she appeared on the big screen. Her eyes are luminous, her skin glows. She’s used to getting stared at.
I blurt that I’m a fan, and that she’s even prettier in person. She smiles, sits down between Wayne and me. Waiters bring buckets of Jacques Selosse in ice and pop open the first two bottles.
Wayne leans over to me and says, “Never tell these chicks they’re pretty. No matter how hot they are. Everyone tells them they’re pretty. Cut them down, play on their insecurity.”
I heed his advice, try to act unimpressed. A “talent,” looks to be in her midtwenties, sits down next to me. She has a dainty beauty mark at the tip of her nose, the latest fashion among actresses.
“Oppa is putting me in a movie his company is producing,” she volunteers, pointing her chin at Wayne. “How do you know him?”
Just superficial beauty, I tell myself. Even if courtesy of a higher grade of cosmetic surgeons than those ministering to the room salon hostesses. I try to make a neutral remark, but it comes out as “How long have you had that nose?”
She makes a face and moves away from me.
Wayne, watching, snorts. “Relax,” he says. “They’re all just looking for ‘spawn.’” The girl next to him pops a strawberry in his champagne flute, and he takes a swig.
“Huh? Spawn?”
“You know, spon. A sponsor.” He adds, “Don’t worry, you’re not old enough. Or rich enough.” His sudden laughter that bursts like morning light onto a darkened room. It’s genuine, a signifier of an unadulterated mirth, and it’s inclusive, uplifting all around him.
There is a karaoke setup, with small Bose speakers placed discreetly around the room. Everyone begs Hae Sun for a song, and, after demurring just the right amount—too much, they get annoyed—she stands and takes the mike. She’s a singer turned actress. A flick of the hair, a brush of the tongue across her lips. Then she sings a love song by Nami. The lyrics are of aching longing, and as she turns her gaze to me I swear she’s singing to me. Her face, mythologized by the tabloids and the public, is that of just a girl wanting acceptance, maybe forgiveness. But I notice she keeps looking at Wayne, especially after one of the younger talents slides over to her vacant seat next to him.
When Hae Sun sits down, Wayne sends for his bisuh. His male assistant brings in a briefcase and opens it in front of him. Wayne removes bundled envelopes, wrapped in pastel-colored, traditional rice paper, and hands one to each talent. The packets bulge. There are no cash denominations greater than ten thousand won in Korea, less than ten dollars. To curtail bribery, I was told. Hae Sun’s envelope is fatter than the others.
They nod, Kamsahapnida, Oppa, no awkwardness, no embarrassment. There is no sense of superiority in the giving; no supplication or shame in the receiving. I sense, simply, a primitive yearning for connection in the exchange. The talents put away the gifts in their handbags, every one a Chanel quilted model, then resume their drinking and smoking.
Everyone smokes but me. Wayne smokes Cohiba Churchills, the girls all thin cigarettes. The smoke and the sake combined with champagne are getting to me, making me dizzy.
I duck out to get some air. The sky is a deep purple. I take a deep breath, fill my lungs with fresh air. I think about the absurdity of a world in which people pay money to luxury goods makers, Chanel, Cohiba, for the privilege of advertising their brands for them. Maybe this, too, is a way of connecting, bonds purchased through brands.
I go back into the room. Now there’s a DJ, and the music has gotten louder, thumping, and the girls are all dancing. Hae Sun, I think, has her hands planted against the wall and swings her head side to side, techno, I’m told, the latest dance in the clubs. Wayne is seated in a chair in the middle of the room, his shirt pulled off. He has a bored expression on his face, a stogie between his teeth. He’s surrounded by three girls dancing around him. They writhe, sway to the music, their mouths close to his head as if to devour him. They seem to float in the air, Goya’s witches in flight. I sit to the side, look for a blanket to cover myself.
Umma used to tell me the tale of the fox-woman when I was young. She said Koreans believe ancient creatures like the tiger, the turtle, the crane, and especially the fox attain special spiritual states. If trees exist through long ages, they become coal; so the fox, if it lives long, gains powers of metamorphosis and can appear in different forms.
One day, a fox appeared in a village as a beautiful woman, dressed in a brightly colored chima jeogori made of fine silk. She approached a good-hearted young farmer and promised him marriage if he brought all his rice to her, and, smitten, he did. To the next young man, an earnest scholar, she offered her hand if he brought all his books to her, and he gladly did as told.
Then the fox-woman went to the young son of the high official of the village. She told him she was his to have as a bride, if only he’d de
monstrate his love for her by bringing the family silver.
“Who are you?” he asked. She just smiled her coquettish smile. “Where are you from?” he demanded. She pointed to the mountains, saying, “A place beyond there.” Then she knelt before him, did her most feminine curtsy.
His suspicion growing, the young man said, “Maybe you should meet Uhmuni,” and called for his mother.
Upon seeing the woman, the mother growled and showed her fangs. The young woman cried out and jumped on the back of the young man and, transformed into a fox, bit him at the nape of his neck. The mother clawed savagely at the fox and pulled her off her son. The fox, bleeding and defeated, went whimpering off into the night.
The mother made sure the fox never returned to the village. She told the son she would always be there to protect him.
16
Spring 1983
I don’t know what the point is to all this fucking studying. A couple years, I’m outta here, away from Fort Lee High, off in the real world. Where there will be plenty of people like me, who get me. Or if Orwell is right, next year will be end of the world as we know it anyway. Big Brother will be watching us, and we’ll all be speaking double and getting tortured with rats. In meantime, I gotta be like every other good Korean American boy and study hard and come home with straight As? Fuck that. Fuck good grades. And fuck this. I just wanna read, and only the books I want, not the lame shit they assign at school. And play my baseball.
I like “fuck” in the English language. Nothing like it in Korean, maybe in any language. Just fucking satisfying to say it, and so many uses. A verb, to fuck, thrilling word. It can be an adverb, fucking awesome! Also a noun, a dumb fuck. Sometimes an exclamation, fuck! It can be good, fuck yeah!, or bad, fuck me, or neither. Who gives a flying fuck?! As a question, what the fuck? Or, simpler, the fuck? He’s fucked, not to be confused with, he’s fucked up. Sometimes a name, Hey, Fuckface. Even in the middle of words, abso-fucking-lutely, de-fucking-lightful, Van-fucking-Halen. Custom cannot stale fuck’s infinite variety.
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