My 아빠. Kook Sub Lee.
By: Bo Young Lee
Tags: Korean American, Immigrant

My 아빠. Kook Sub Lee.

A few years ago, after our annual family Christmas dinner, Appa was sitting on the sofa watching his four grandchildren; Annabelle, Ezra, Micah, and Beatrice, playing in the frenzied chaotic manner that kids who are equal parts tired and over-stimulated do. The kids were zooming back and forth. Singing, screaming and having a great time. After some time, Appa turned to no one in particular and said “Ah, these kids.”

Now normally, one expects a grandfather to say something like “It’s a blessing to see them so happy.” But not Kook Sub Lee. He said instead “Ah, these kids. I feel so bad for these kids. Their lives are so predictable and safe. It’s always just the same thing for them. So boring. There’s no adventure. Not like when I was young. We would just run around all over the place chasing after military trucks. We’d go look for soldiers and do silly things to get them to give us food and candy. We’d dance and sing. We’d rummage around the canton looking for packages of unopened food. These kids don’t even know what fun is.” He had a huge grin on his face as memories of his childhood as a North Korean refugee floated through his head.

Now, I don’t have to tell any of you what an odd reinterpretation of history this was. But this is how our father told stories and lived life. Everything that was lived, suffered, and endured was fodder that could be repurposed into the most magnificent, optimistic, and engaging story with just the right spin. Appa was a talker. Was he a talker. A storyteller. A deep eccentric thinker and philosopher. A genius encyclopedia of both deeply useful and completely useless information. An endlessly curious human with an intellect that was unique for not only its breadth but also its depth. The man could not be stumped. He held facts, figures, and dates in his head like he was a file cabinet. If born in a different time, in a different place, in a different situation, I want to believe our father could have changed the world…or at the very least helped to solve some of its biggest problems. As the saying goes, genius is universal, opportunity is not.

Nobody’s life can be summarized and fully appreciated in 10minutes. It’s a disservice to them and also to all of us to even try. And certainly, the life of Kook Sub Lee requires far more than the pittance of a glimmer that I can provide here today. But let me at least try to share a few stories, some you may know but also some you may not know.

Kook Sub Lee was born on July 17, 1942, in a town that now lies on the wrong side of the Demilitarized Zone. He was born at the height of WWII as Japanese colonial rule bore down hard on the Korean people. He was the 2nd eldest son of Ahn Young Sil, a shrewd, brilliant, and stubborn young homemaker whose greatest regret in life was the inability to seek further education after the age of 8, and to Lee Dong Kwon a firefighter with the gentlest of hearts and the most expansive and correct sense of moral responsibility. Though he was the 2nd son, our father lived his life carrying the responsibilities of the eldest son to his parents. His parents had lost their first child, a son, to malnutrition and disease. Not uncommon in those days. Ahn Young Sil and Lee Dong Kwon would go on to have three more sons though again they lost their third child to disease, malnutrition, and war. As my grandmother said, she was so worried throughout her 2nd pregnancy that this child would suffer and die like her first. But then, as she said, all her worries disappeared when out popped our father “all fat and white and round.” She saw what a butterball he was and knew “This one will live.” Our father lived his life a giant amongst a relatively small-statured people. And that size difference began at birth. When our father joined his college marching band, he requested to play the clarinet but instead was handed the Sousaphone since he was the only person big enough to carry it. Thus began his lifelong love of all marching band music. John Philip Sousa was on frequent rotation in our house.

Our father was an unapologetic progressive his whole life. And also a feminist. These characteristics were defining for him. His early childhood meant he refused to live life oppressed by systems meant to destroy us. He had an open-mindedness about the world that is rare amongst Koreans of his age and even frankly, most Koreans and Americans of today. He spoke out against multiple forms of oppression; racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, classism, and consistently pointed out the hypocrisy of those that advocate for supposed freedom but instead sought to marginalize and dehumanize those that are othered. Our father HATED celebrity culture. One of his frequent sayings was “Why do folks fawn over famous people? It’s not like they ever bought you a cup of coffee.” A cup of coffee. That was my father's bar for “Is this a good human?” This progressivism was not by chance. It is part of his and our family’s legacy.

One of my father’s favorite stories he liked to tell us kids was about the time he almost got captured by North Korean soldiers because of his shoes. When we heard these stories as kids, they were just funny anecdotes. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized what he was trying to teach us in these stories. Few families made it out of North Korea after the unofficial start of the Korean war in 1948. My father’s family was lucky. As I mentioned earlier, my grandfather, Lee Dong Kwon was a man of great kindness and moral awareness. As a firefighter (and sometimes defacto local police) he had a front-line view of how local government and laws were changing as the increased influence of Russian occupation and Kim Il Sung was born out. Unable to tolerate the encroaching communism and fascism, and against his better judgment, my grandfather finally felt compelled to speak out. To condemn the interrogation of political dissidents. This, of course, branded my grandfather as a dissident and he was forced to flee to the South soon after, leaving behind his wife, an infant son, and my father. Soon after, the borders between North and South were closed permanently and it was impossible to leave without attempting some elaborate escape which often required money — something my grandmother lacked. Many months later, my grandmother living in poverty with a newborn and our father, heard a knock on the door. A man she had never met handed an envelope of money and gave her the message “Your husband says you have to leave at once or you won’t be able to leave.” Grabbing nothing more than the clothes on their back my grandmother with a baby tied to her and my father set off to the west coast where UN/US peacekeepers were evacuating refugees. The money sent by my grandfather was used to bribe the occasional North Korean soldier. You could still do that at the beginning of the war. By the time they made it to the beach, they were exhausted, starving, and had spent all the money. My dad remembers the journey to the beach. The Russian and American planes flying overhead, dropping bombs off in the distance. It was the MOST EXCITING THING EVER for a kid his age. It was usually at this point of his storytelling that my father would get really animated. He’d set the scene “It was night and there were helicopters overhead with huge lights searching up and down the beach for refugees trying to escape. They’d shot anyone they saw. Your Halmoni turned to me and said “No matter what you do. Just keep running. Keep running until you get to the boats. Don’t look back. Don’t stop. Just run. Tie your shoes tight so they don’t fall off.” Our father knew what he had to do. He had to run. And when Halmoni said run he held her hand and RAAAANNNN as fast as his little 5-year-old legs could carry him. He ran and he ran as though his life depended on it. Because it did. Suddenly one of his shoes goes flying off. And without thinking, he yanks his hand out of Halmoni’s and runs back to retrieve it. Just then, the beam of the helicopter shines on him and he is convinced he’s going to die. Just then he feels his mother grab him and pull him and scream at him to just RUUUUUUNNNNNN! And so they did. And then they made it. They made it to the boat. They made it out of North Korea alive.

Whenever we got to the end of this story, my dad would always let out a little sigh and look wistfully away. I think he was thinking about that shoe he lost. Things lost in childhood hold a special meaning. And even 73 years later I think my father still regretted losing that shoe.

It wasn’t until I was well into my teenage years that I realized what that story was really about. Yes, it was about the good fortune of escaping North Korea but it was also about so much more. It was about speaking up even in the face of persecution. It was about courage. It was about taking risks. And it was about fighting. Fighting for yourself. Fighting for what was right. Appa was a fighter. And he fought every day of his life. And even in the end, he fought so hard to try and stay with us just a little bit longer.

These early life lessons meant our father could not stay silent in the face of others’ oppressions. My sisters and I were raised with a healthy family dialogue about racism and sexism and homophobia. He often said, “You have to fight for those who are being attacked because eventually, they’ll come after you.”

Life in America as new immigrants, as racial minorities, as people who didn’t speak the language well…was, well, difficult. This is something almost everyone in this room is familiar with. There is poverty. In our case, 7 people living in a small 1.5 bedroom apartment for too many years. A couple of years after we arrived in the US, my parents amassed enough money through their jobs working in a sweatshop and fish market, to buy a small business. A small fruit and vegetable store on 8th Ave. bet. 56th and 57th St. KS fruit and vegetable. While now in the shadow of the fancy Time Warner Center, back in 1980 this cross-section was somewhere not quite bad as hell’s kitchen but not quite as nice as central park south. Growing up during these early years we kids watched a lot of Late Night with Johnny Carson. Why did kids age 5, 7, and 9 stay up so late? Because staying up meant we got to see our parents that day. The fruit and vegetable store required a level of time and devotion that made all other life impossible. Our parents never came home before midnight. We’d get a few minutes of time to see them and then it was off to sleep. Our father would be gone by the next morning. Having gotten up well before dawn to head to the Hunts Point Market to buy the daily supply of fresh produce and vegetables. My father did this schedule, sleeping fewer than 5 hrs every day for over 3 full years. It’s a wonder he survived. But this was his devotion to his family. He would not let our family fail.

One of my favorite Appa stories comes from those days. Unlike many Asian immigrants, Appa never suggested to us girls that we should try to assimilate into white American culture. That’s why our parents never bothered to give us western names. Our names were our names. Many, many times when Appa noticed that we girls were becoming maybe a little too white-adjacent he’d remind us “No matter how much you sound like them, dress like them, act like them, speak like them…the first thing they’ll see when they see you is this and they’ll treat you like a foreigner.” They’ll never let you be one of them and that’s why you have to fight harder, try harder, and be proud of what you are no matter what they say to you. Appa’s messages seem all too relevant and needed today in this climate of anti-Asian racism and oppression but back in the early 1980s. They were unheard of. My father took the lessons he learned in post-war Korea where he said he saw how white American GIs treated their fellow Black GIs and he remembered the lessons of racism as he prepared his daughters for success in this country. He saw how the American GIs treated all the Koreans; as uneducated, unsophisticated animals…and he knew this would be the obstacle his children faced in this country.

He’d usually follow this lesson in systemic racism by telling us the story about the time a white person at Hunts Point starting yelling racist slurs and telling Appa to “Go back to where you came from.” For those who might not be aware, Appa had the most beautiful alabaster white skin. It’s what all the k-pop stars and young women of Seoul bleach their skin to achieve. By his later life, his skin had been tanned and aged by the sun. But peak anywhere hidden by clothing and his skin was still smooth, creaseless, and as frosty white as Korean people can get. So going back to the racist incident at Hunts Point. A rather swarthy, tanned white man of European descent began yelling at our father to go back from where he came. My father, rather than backing down or ignoring the attack, turned around and yelled back “You think you’re from here. You think your people have been here for a long time.” And then my father would explain (with full physical demonstration) he lifted up his shirt to show his gleaming white belly and began slapping while screaming “I’m whiter than you. I’m whiter than you.” Appa would always be smiling and laughing at the end of this story.

Our father may have been the only immigrant to America who was never colonized. He rejected white supremacy with a ferociousness that was evident to the end of his life.

Now, our father was not perfect. You might guess that at times he could be a blustering bully. Stubborn with a ferocious temper. But at the end of the day, all of that anger and rage, and stubbornness was channeled to fight endlessly for his family.

Maybe because of the hardship of his early life, Appa loved beautiful things. He loved nature and travel. Our biggest regret as a family is that Parkinson’s and cancer weakened him before he ever had a chance to travel in the way he desired. He dreamed of renting a big Winnebago and driving all over America and Canada. He’d talk about driving all the way up to Alaska and all through the Rockies. He wanted to see the world. Peru and Brazil. Europe and Australia. If anyone deserved a very long, very adventure-filled, and very relaxing retirement, it was Umma and Appa.

Amongst the many beautiful things my father loved, he loved music and most of all he loved our mother. As you know it’s rare for Koreans to talk about their romance. It’s rarer still to see that love displayed. Possibly the greatest gift Appa and Umma gave us was the gift of parents that loved each other, respected each other, and cared for each other until the end. I want to believe we Lee girls and our partners benefit from their 51 years long marriage. As the story goes Appa was working in the southern part of Korea as a pharmaceutical salesman and Umma lived in Seoul. To minimize the time it took to travel to see our mother, Appa would pay to fly back and forth to Seoul several times a month to visit. This was unheard of in those days (the late 1960s) and this was decades before the KTX bullet trains. Our parents enjoyed listening to classical music and watching foreign films when they were dating each other. And it was while watching a Catherine Deneuve movie that it struck my father that he was dating a Korean version of the french actress. And that’s how our mother became his french actress. He’d often comment about how beautiful our mother was…and what a pity it was that all his kids took after him rather than her. Our mother was the energy, fire, and action to our father’s stabilizing force. Our mother needed someone who would keep her grounded so her fire did not send her flying aimlessly across the sky. And more importantly, our father needed someone who would pull his roots out of the soil and move and take action upon all the wild ideas that floated through his head. They needed each other and for 51 years they shared something amazing. The greatest privilege of my life and of our sisters is having Moon Ja Kang and Kook Sub Lee as our parents.

One final story about my father and his love for his family. A few years ago I asked Appa “Korea is such a modern and amazing world now. Do you regret at all coming to America and suffering for so many years?” He thought for a moment and answered me by saying “Korea was such a poor country when we left. We were doing okay at the time but there was no future to be seen. I was the father of three girls during a time when it was frowned upon to have more than two children. Korea is a deeply sexist country and there was just no way that you girls could have achieved success in the country. I came to America because I was the father of girls. We came to allow you, girls, to have the ability to fulfill your dreams. To be successful. You and your sisters couldn’t have achieved what you’ve achieved here back in Korea. Not even today. You couldn’t be both a mother and an executive. Your sister wouldn’t be a mother and a lawyer. That would just be impossible. The school would have been harder. Work would have been harder.” Now, I don’t know if our mother and father made the choice to come to America because of some feminist agenda but this is what my father wanted me to believe. That he came because he couldn’t stand the idea that his children couldn’t live to their highest potential just because of the country they were born in. This belief in his children might be the greatest gift he could give to us. I hope I can be a fraction of the parent that our father was to us.

I hope through these stories that you can appreciate the greatness, the kindness, the wonder of our father, Kook Sub Lee. His loss is beyond comprehension. But I do know that through his children and his grandchildren, his legacy will endure. Annabelle, Ezra, Micah, and Beatrice will do amazing things someday. And all of it will be because 70 years ago a little starving, tattered boy ran with all his might, along a beach, to his freedom.