Photos courtesy of Iris Shim/Grayscale Films
Filmmaker Iris Shim and editor Joseph Lee hope to generate additional funding to finish “The House of Suh.”
The camera focuses on a color photo of an immigrant Korean man with his baby son on his lap; both are dressed in hanboks. A young man’s voice is heard: “I always relished my idea of being the son. I was always so involved with my family’s life, that I lived my life for them.” Then, a black-and-white family photo appears, and the camera zooms in on the serious-faced girl with braids. “But it was different for Catherine because she came to America in about her teen years,” the voice says. “She wanted to rebel. She wanted to be the ‘all-American girl,’ and my father didn’t like that.”
The scene is taken from a new documentary that explores the cultural and generational rifts in an immigrant Korean American family. Tragically, this real-life tale also involves murder, manipulation and betrayal.
For the last two years, Illinois-based filmmaker Iris Shim has been working on “House of Suh,” a documentary exploring the circumstances that led siblings Catherine and Andrew Suh to plan and execute, respectively, the 1993 murder of Catherine’s boyfriend, Robert O’Dubaine. According to authorities, Catherine had convinced her younger brother, then 19, that O’Dubaine was the one who had brutally stabbed their mother to death in 1987 to get his hands on insurance money and that it was Andrew’s duty to avenge it. Police never arrested anyone in connection with the mother’s killing, though they suspected Catherine, who with O’Dubaine used the inheritance money to buy a nightclub and live extravagantly. O’Dubaine served as Catherine’s alibi.
The unfinished “House of Suh” focuses particularly on Andrew, the good son, the congenial boy, the well-liked high school student body president. He was enrolled at Providence College in Rhode Island on a full scholarship when he admitted to lying in wait in the garage of the Bucktown, Ill., home O’Dubaine shared with Catherine and planting two bullets in his victim’s head. He is currently serving an 80-year sentence at the Pontiac Correctional Facility in Illinois. His sister is serving a life term without parole 30 miles away. Andrew is eligible for parole in 2035.
Andrew had one “fatal flaw,” says the 25-year-old Shim. “He’s got this fatal flaw of loyalty, which is why he is where he is.”
Her documentary is not about how this “Korean kid killed this guy,” she explains, “but about how someone could get to the point to kill another human being.”
Shim has a unique lense into Andrew’s life: she considers the 33-year-old inmate a close friend of six years.
After his conviction in 1995, Andrew wrote four- and five-page letters to Korean newspapers and churches, warning other young Korean Americans against the mistakes he had made. The letters won Andrew a network of supporters at a Chicago church he once attended, the same church where Shim served as the president of her youth group. She was a senior in high school when a church friend was so moved by one of Andrew’s letters that she started writing to him. Shim, then 18, decided to accompany this friend on a prison visit.
Andrew and Shim became instant friends after their first meeting in 2001. She was taken by the fact that he was so “eloquent and charming,” even funny, though in such a depressing environment. Since then, Andrew has acted as an older brother figure, giving her advice on everything from college (even though he never graduated) to cars, and he even prepared for her a detailed diagram for opening a sushi restaurant, a venture that Shim had briefly considered with a friend a few years ago. He stood up for her when Shim’s mother initially did not support her decision to move to California to pursue filmmaking.
Shim, who immigrated to the U.S. from Korea with her parents at 3 months old, studied psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, but soon after graduating in 2004, she hopped on a plane to Los Angeles with no film training and no job prospects. After taking a film course, she served as a production assistant on a few features, including Tobe Hooper’s “Mortuary.” In December 2005, she moved back home to Glenview, Ill. Andrew had asked her if she knew anyone who might be interested in documenting his story. She volunteered.
Some might accuse Shim of a conflict of interest in telling the story of a convicted murderer in the eyes of many, but a big brother to her. In her defense, Shim points out that people do not watch documentaries necessarily to get an unbiased story. At the same time, she adds that this film is not an advocacy film for Andrew, whose pro-bono attorneys are currently seeking a reduction to his 80-year sentence, which is double the usual sentence for murder in Illinois.
Shim also has crew members, including co-producer Gerry Kim and editor Joseph Lee, who are not shy about voicing their concerns if they feel the film is favoring one point of view too heavily. The focus of the documentary is “not to justify guilt or innocence,” explains Shim. “[Andrew] admits guilt. A lot of things happened in [Andrew and Catherine’s] upbringing to get them to the point where she would plan the murder and for him to execute it. I always found the story fascinating.”
***
Fourteen years ago, the media had a field day with this twisted murder case that had “made-for-TV movie” written all over it. Catherine was dubbed the “Black Widow” by some media outlets for planning the murder of her boyfriend so she could collect on his $250,000 life insurance policy. Catherine was supposed to be tried with her brother for the O’Dubaine murder, but she abandoned him two days before their scheduled court date. She was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in absentia.
A few months after an appearance on “America’s Most Wanted,” Catherine was arrested in Hawaii, where she had been living under an alias with a surfer boyfriend in Honolulu. The case became the basis for a television movie called “Bad to the Bone” a year later.
The media seemed equally fascinated by Andrew, who appeared to stay loyal to his sister, refusing to testify against her to help his own case, even after she abandoned him.
Shim wanted to make this documentary in part to humanize the people behind the sensational headlines and to add context to this awful crime.
The young filmmaker observes that the Suh siblings reacted so differently to the pressures they faced as Korean immigrants: Andrew embraced his Korean identity and his role as the loyal son of the family, while Catherine, who wanted to be more “American” and dated interracially, defied her parents’ wishes again and again. That led to a great deal of tension and some explosive fights between Catherine and her father. According to Shim, court transcripts of the trial testimony from one of Catherine’s ex-boyfriends reveal that her father would get so upset at his rebellious daughter that he would beat her while her mother looked on.
A major turning point for the worse occurred when Andrew and Catherine’s father succumbed to cancer in 1985. Two years later, the mother was killed — stabbed 37 times — at her dry cleaning business.
Shim believes, had the influential father — the disciplinarian of the rebellious daughter and figure of adoration for the docile son — not passed away when he did, the siblings would not be in prison now.
“One thing I talked about with my team is how literary the story is,” says Shim. “People say there is no such thing as an original story. It’s almost like in Greek times with gods, you really have no control over your story. … If the father had not died, this whole thing would not have happened.”
In one clip from the documentary, a tearful Andrew, who kept vigil at his father’s hospital bedside, reveals that his dad’s dying wish was for the then-11-year-old to take care of his mother. Andrew, urged repeatedly by his sister to “do it for mom,” believed he was doing that when he killed O’Dubaine eight years later. “I was under the impression that I was doing the right thing, you know?” says the handsome and articulate Andrew, with a hint of naiveté still in his 33-year-old voice.
Before the mother’s death, Andrew hated his sister for being the troublemaker of the family, but after both his parents were gone, Catherine was all the 13-year-old had. “People don’t understand Catherine was like his mom, so she had this strange power over him,” explains Shim.
Catherine’s own voice will likely not be featured in the documentary. An inmate at Dwight Correctional Facility, she has not responded to requests for interviews. Prison guards told Shim that Catherine has not had a visitor since 2001, and she has cut off ties with Andrew. Shim still wants Catherine to be represented as a “real person,” not just a one-dimensional heartless killer, and the filmmaker will rely on interviews with people who knew her to help shed light on this troubled figure.
***
Fourteen interviews and about $13,000 into this filmmaking process, “House of Suh” is still about 10 interviews and thousands of dollars shy of reaching feature length. So far Shim has relied on fundraising parties and donations hustled by her now supportive, church-going mother to pay for equipment and other filmmaking expenses. The unpaid film crew of five is hoping to generate additional funding from film organizations and grants.
In the meantime, Shim keeps a day job as a part-time administrative assistant at the Korean Chamber of Commerce in Chicago. She hopes to wrap up filming by the end of the year.
“House of Suh” is Shim’s first stab at directing, producing and even working on a documentary. She was pursuing training in narrative feature filmmaking when the opportunity to make this documentary arose. Because of that background, she originally attempted to write a script based on the Suh family’s story, but discovered that, in this case, truth proved more unbelievable than fiction.
Filmmaking, regardless of genre, is all about telling a story, Shim concluded. Although the sordid details of this case made for juicy tabloid material when it first came to light 14 years ago, this, at its core, is a family story, the 25-year-old says. It is one of countless stories that comprise the Korean American experience, the Asian American experience, and its unique details illustrate just how different each story can be.
“[It doesn’t] fit into this mold,” says Shim. “This is not the Asian American experience.
“We need [to tell] more stories,” she adds. “Each story has its own merit.”
In the days following the Virginia Tech massacre, Korean community members across the nation gathered at prayer services and vigils to mourn the victims.
By Michelle Woo Photos courtesy of The Korea Times
When South Korean officials learned that the person responsible for the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history was one of their own, they did something that seemed unheard of to many Americans.
They apologized.
Korean ambassadors and many first-generation Korean Americans expressed guilt and responsibility for the actions of Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech on April 16.
At a candlelight vigil, South Korean ambassador Lee Tae Shik urged the Korean American community to “repent,” suggesting a 32-day fast, one day for each victim.
Many shared his sentiments. The day after the tragedy, TV news reporter Janet Choi walked the streets of Los Angeles’ Koreatown, home to thousands of Korean immigrants.
“Talking to people in the community, the No. 1 word that comes up is ‘shame,’” Choi says. “It’s amazing how much responsibility a community can feel.”
More than a month after the massacre, such a response remains puzzling to outsiders, including 1.5 and second-generation Korean Americans, who learned of their community’s “shame” primarily through TV and Internet news reports.
“When Koreans automatically feel ashamed and responsible, that’s completely ridiculous,” says David Yi, a student at USC. “With the shootings at Columbine, should all Caucasians feel ashamed? No, of course not.”
The disagreement on whether Koreans, both in Korea and the U.S., should have apologized for the Virginia Tech tragedy represents a division between generations, an internal clash of subcultures. But for some Korean Americans, this tension serves as an opportunity for exploration and understanding, as they ask the big question: Why?
Why did Koreans apologize? And, because they did, what consequences are in store for Korean Americans?
At the surface, as heavily reported by the mainstream media, Koreans felt a fear of backlash, as early headlines highlighted the fact that Cho was a “Korean national.” Perhaps the apology, therefore, was a pre-emptive move to defend themselves. It’s a predictable fear, considering America’s history with racial profiling, seen during World War II with Japanese American internment, and, more recently, after 9/11 with Arab Americans. And many Korean immigrants still feel the reverberations of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when they were cast as oppressors.
The morning after the Virginia Tech shooting, when it was revealed that the killer was Korean, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said its government hoped the tragedy would not “stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.”
That day, 21-year-old Myungyu Jung of San Diego received a call from his parents.
“They told me to be extra careful at school,” says Jung, whose mom and dad are both immigrants. “I unwillingly took off the Korean flag badge that had been proudly placed on my backpack.”
But is fear enough to provoke apologies? Experts on Korean American history say the apologies were more than just a defense mechanism. In order to fully understand the guilt and shame, one must look to Korea, where expressions of sorrow are instinctive and the line between individual and collective responsibility is blurred.
Koreans and many first-generation Korean Americans carry what veteran journalist K.W. Lee calls “Confucian baggage,” an East Asian mentality that places the emphasis on the collective. He says it’s part of the ancient Korean concept of han, a shared sense of injustice, self-pity and grief caused by years of political oppression.
“[Koreans] share the common fate of everlasting victimhood,” Lee says. “They cannot blame outsiders for their misery. They are bent on exterminating themselves.”
In Korea and in Korean America, han is still present. “Just as a parent apologizes on behalf of [his or her] child, our community should come together and apologize for this child’s mistakes,” explains Hong Jae Lee, 57, of Glendale, Calif., who immigrated to the U.S. in 1979. “Something of this magnitude requires a big gesture. It took so long for us to be accepted again after the Saigu incident — we don’t want to lose all that again.”
But Kyeyoung Park, an associate professor of Asian American studies at UCLA, says that some of the the apologies may have been misunderstood. Park, who has explored the Korean immigrant experience extensively, says she became uncomfortable when she heard of the apologies, knowing how they might be interpreted.
“The meaning of ‘sorry’ [in Korea] is different,” Park says. “They really felt sorry morally and wanted to do something about it because it was such a horrific incident. [Apologizing] was how they showed their emotional reaction. They didn’t mean it legally. Over here, ‘sorry’ means you committed something wrong. This wasn’t conveyed properly to the American public.”
To non-Koreans, these expressions of shame and regret remain curious, and some wonder what effects they might have on the way the Korean American community is perceived. Some believe the apologies could simply be seen as an overreaction. Others believe they could send the wrong message that Koreans somehow share Cho’s guilt.
“It takes the focus away from the individual and puts the focus on the larger community,” says Elliot Lee, program director of the Korean American Coalition (KAC) Washington, D.C. chapter. “It insinuates a sort of responsibility.”
As a response to the tragedy, KAC, along with several other Korean American nonprofit organizations, created a Virginia Tech memorial fund for the victims and their families. Lee says this is something these organizations would have done whether or not the shooter was Korean.
Adrian Hong, executive director of Liberty in North Korea, a Washington D.C.-based human rights organization, says the apologies might reveal something about what Koreans value.
“On one hand, people might think, ‘Wow, Koreans are honorable. They take the blame for something they’re not even responsible for,’” Hong says. “But it also came across as being kind of selfish. Like, ‘Yeah, this sucks, but we’re looking out for ourselves.’ … Why don’t these people cry for things that don’t publicly shame us? Why don’t they cry for domestic abuse, drug abuse or other issues plaguing our country?”
Park says that by turning the spotlight on themselves through their apologies, Koreans set themselves up to be seen as “foreigners.” She says that what Koreans in America should be doing is joining national discussions on gun control, school safety and mental health — issues that must be addressed in order to help prevent this type of tragedy in the future.
Today, as the Virginia Tech tragedy has faded from the media screen, a major backlash against the Korean American community has yet to be realized. Perhaps this was partly due to the quick, proactive apologies by the Korean community. Or maybe it’s simply a testament of how far America has come.
Jin Nam and Soo Chung of Custom Cleaners
Photo courtesy of The Korea Times
- Ellyn Pak
Call it a case of fancy pants. Or the pantsuit.
It started when a Washington, D.C., drycleaner misplaced a pair of Roy L. Pearson Jr.’s gray wool pants in 2005. Two years later, Pearson is seeking more than $67 million in damages from the owners of Custom Cleaners for a slew of reasons that stem from this one pair of pants.
Pearson’s argument: Soo and Jin Nam Chung, the owners of Custom Cleaners, and their son Ki, owe him the millions for putting him through “mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort” and causing him to incur legal fees. Pearson is basing his case on Washington, D.C.’s consumer protection law, which imposes $1,500 per day fines for each violation. Twelve violations multiplied by 1,200 days, in addition to multiplying that number by three for each of the Chungs.
In addition, the suit demands that the Chungs pay him $15,000 so he can rent a car every week for 10 years to drive to a different drycleaner, as well as $500,000 in emotional damages and $542,000 in legal fees.
“It’s been very difficult for them, emotionally and physically,” said Chris Manning, an attorney hired by the family who spoke on behalf of the Chungs. “This has taken a toll for two years. … They don’t really understand how one pair of pants can turn into a lawsuit like this.”
The customer-client relationship, which began in 2000, unraveled in 2005. Two years before that, the Chungs had given Pearson a $150 check to replace a pair of pants that Pearson said the family lost. He took the money, but continued to patronize the business, Manning said.
In May of 2005, Pearson dropped off a pair of pants for a $10.50 alteration and told the cleaners — who had signs posted that read “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same Day Service” at the store — that he needed the pants two days later. He wanted to wear the pants for his new job as an administrative judge.
When the owners couldn’t find the pants on the pickup day, Pearson was not happy. He wanted more than $1,000 from the Chungs to buy a replacement suit because he claimed the missing pants were part of an expensive Hickey Freeman brand suit set.
When the drycleaners found the pants a week later, Pearson claimed they weren’t his. The Chungs insisted, and still argue, that the gray trousers are his. And the pants weren’t Hickey Freemans, according to Manning.
Pearson refused to take the pants and decided to sue, claiming that the signs at Custom Cleaners were misleading and amounted to fraud.
Time passed, and the Chungs offered $3,000, then $4,600 and then $12,000 to opt out of the case. The figure ballooned to $50,000. Pearson wasn’t satisfied.
He wanted $67 million.
“Claims such as these are ridiculous,” Manning said. “He’s trying to claim that he has a right to have a drycleaner four blocks from his house.”
The case, which will be heard by a second judge, is slated to go to trial this month. Pearson, whose term as administrative law judge in Washington, D.C. expired last month, is no longer hearing cases and is representing himself. He earns more than $100,000 per year and is up for reappointment.
Pearson was a contract hearing examiner for the Office of Police Complaints in the District two years prior to his appointment as a judge. He was also an attorney with the Neighborhood Legal Services Program from 1978 to 2002.
The following statement was included in a press release e-mailed by Pearson to KoreAm Journal:
“As an attorney I am restricted by the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct from making statements about a pending lawsuit in which I represent myself if I know my statements could create a serious and imminent threat to the impartiality of the judge hearing the case. In my judgment, that ambiguous standard makes any comment inadvisable.”
The American Tort Reform Association, an organization that works to reform the civil justice system, said the District’s consumer protection laws allows people like Pearson to pursue such claims. The organization has urged District officials and a four-member board to re-think the reappointment of Pearson as a judge.
“[But] how do you fire a guy who is pursuing a lawsuit, which in theory is any American’s right? This is an extraordinary and apparently vindictive lawsuit that seeks to manipulate the vaguely-worded consumer protection law here in the District of Columbia,” said Darren McKinney, a spokesman for the association.
“He’s certainly a laughing stock here in this region, although those who live here have developed a tolerance to crazy stories out of D.C.’s bureaucracy,” McKinney added.
The association has even offered to buy Pearson a new suit.
Manning said that the Chungs’ move to the United States in 1992 to attain the American dream has become a nightmare. The family currently resides in Northern Virginia and is considering moving back to their native Seoul.
Online bloggers, columnists and Howard Stern alike have used the “pantsuit” as fodder and say Pearson’s demands are ridiculous. In addition, tremendous national attention has spawned the Custom Cleaners Defense Fund.
Manning said community members have shown an outpouring of support for the Chungs.
As for the pair of pants, estimated to be now valued at about $100, Manning said he keeps them in his house. The pants, he said, belong to Pearson and are not the brand the judge claims they are.
“The tags on the pants match the tags on the receipt,” Manning said.
How one pair of pants turns into $67 million
Damages under D.C. consumer protection procedures act: $1,500 (violation fee per day) x 12 (no. of violations) = $18,000 x 1,200 (no. of days since the incident) = $21,600,000 x 3 (no. of defendants) = $64,800,000 + $542,500 (legal fees) + $200,000 (punitive damages) = $65,542,500
Common law claims:
$1,500 (fraud/conversion/negligent bailment) + $15,000 (car rental fee) + $500,000 (emotional damages) = $516,500 x 3 (no. of defendants) = $1,549,500 + $200,000 (punitive damages) = $1,749,500
GRAND TOTAL: $67,292,000
By Regina Apigo Illustration by Ian Kim
As I peeked at the adults in the living room, I thought, Silly Mr. Morrow. Why is he saying everything to Appa? Doesn’t he know Umma makes all the decisions?
Mr. Morrow was our real estate agent. He was telling my dad how to make our two-bedroom house more sellable. Appa nodded his head vigorously. The agent hardly looked in my mom’s direction. Umma stayed silent except to encourage Mr. Morrow to eat the peanuts, dried squid and sliced apples.
I was only 8 then, but I knew where the unstated power in our family lay. Yet Mr. Morrow didn’t catch on. And how could he?
Everyone has a public face that differs somewhat from the private self. I was privy to both sides of my mom. Mr. Morrow had access to only one.
Ultimately it was my mom who would decide what improvements would be made to the home, when we would sell the home, for what price she would part with it and where we would move to.
From the big, to the small, Umma always had her say. She chose whether we ate at the Korean mall or McDonald’s. She banished Appa from wearing a plaid outfit to church in favor of a dark suit. She determined what school grades she expected of my sister and me.
In financial matters, it was no different. Umma found which type of insurance to buy for the home and the family store. She decided when money would be spent for improvements to the family store. Or how money should be saved or invested.
At home, with just us, Umma was and still is very animated. She resembles a sports commentator with her running stream of opinions.
“Ayy, another Alzheimer’s halmeoni,” she’ll say as we watch a Korean soap. “Why do they always have so many Alzheimer’s grandmas?”
At theaters, in my company, she will get upset at the violent content of movies, saying she doesn’t understand why American movies give “the crazies” more ideas. She rails against injustices, such as the killing or injuring of Korean-store owners that gets little press outside the Korean newspapers.
Yet you wouldn’t know that from the person she morphs into outside our nuclear family. She grows quiet among white Americans, whether it’s the real estate agent, banker, waitress or grocery clerk. But she grows even quieter among traditional Koreans. Instead of chatting, she fades into the kitchen, although she doesn’t relish being there (practically a crime for Korean women of her generation). It’s Appa who enjoys cooking fish soup, firing up thinly sliced beef on the table grill and marinating vegetables. He’s the one who mixes vinegar, sesame oil, garlic and red pepper paste to good results. He too might be committing a Korean crime, doing so-called “women’s work.”
Yet with the Korean visitors, it’s Umma who shuttles nearly invisibly, back and forth from the kitchen to the table with trays of bean sprout soup, kimchi, rice and side dishes. Her head, usually held up, seems heavy and drawn to the ground.
Her voice rises femininely at least an octave and turns from a boom to a whisper. After everyone eats, she clears the table and washes the dishes as her guests talk. She might encourage people to “eat more, eat more,” but she doesn’t give her opinions or defend herself from insults.
“Ahh huuut,” my uncle will say with his disapproving grunt as he surveys my mom’s food with disdain. “Why can’t you cook better?”
One time when Appa told my uncle that Umma had gone to the hospital for chest pains, my uncle lectured my mom on the virtues of Pepto-Bismol. He went to some lengths to describe what the pink stuff was and how and when to take it.
She used to be a pharmacist! She knows what Pepto-Bismol is, I screamed inside.
Yet my mom does not respond back. She just takes it all in. She is virtuous and yamjeonhae — demure. What I consider her beautiful spirit is dampened in favor of what others consider acceptable outside our immediate family. This mom is sadly foreign from the feisty Umma I know at home.
Maybe what makes me mad is that I see the same characteristics in myself. I am the type who fires off angry letters to politicians who claim that sending sexually explicit emails to interns is merely, “being overly friendly.” I will fax letters to the head of a business asking for the reinstatement of a fired columnist. I will write stories about injustices I see and submit them to publications. But I too have a hard time speaking out in public, even during a school meeting for my children.
Umma and I both have fire inside of us, but among certain crowds, we become quiet and yamjeonhae in a way I know we are not in private.
When an aspiring Korean food traditionalist can’t take the heat in the kitchen, she ends up calling in backup.
By Serena Kim
Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi
In 48 hours, my newborn daughter Plum would turn 100 days old. Back in the day in Korea, infant mortality was so high that it was considered a great achievement for the baby to survive this long. My father and his wife were flying into Los Angeles all the way from Illinois for this “joyous occasion.”
I didn’t have a Baegil (100 days celebration) myself, but I wanted to have one for Plum because we had tried for so long to have a baby. Plum’s father is Filipino and Mexican so the culture of our home is mixed, but my mission was to throw a Baegil feast for Plum that adhered to the books as much as possible.
I envisioned myself gracefully preparing the traditional foods of the Baegil, like seaweed soup, jellyfish mustard salad, shikhye (sweet rice drink), and baeksolgi (the majestic steamed rice cakes specific to the event). My parents will be so proud, I thought, with a glazed look in my eyes, oblivious to the ridiculous amount of kitchen work that awaited me.
Admittedly, I was functioning on only a few hours of sleep because I had stayed out late attending a rap concert on Sunset Boulevard the night before for my job as a music critic. And I still had to haul ass to the market in Koreatown Galleria, buy all of the ingredients, chop great quantities of pungent ginger and garlic to marinate the meats, prepare beef stock out of brisket, and wash untold bunches of earthy green vegetables in several rinses of water. Time was running out.
The art of Korean cooking can be painful. Just making the side dish japchae requires the peeling and slicing of zucchini and carrots into perfectly uniformed slivers. Then you are supposed to cook the glass noodles, and the sliced ribeye steak separately, only to toss everything together at the end with sesame oil.
No wonder Korean women of my grandmother’s generation lived a life as sequestered and oppressed as that of many women in the Islamic world. My halmeoni’s entire existence took place in the kitchen, bless her soul. During her long life, she spent every waking moment either praying with her rosary beads or fermenting beans for stinky soybean paste. She usually had a simmering stockpot with dried anchovies going, too.
She didn’t have a career or any agenda for personal fulfillment. She didn’t need the “48 Laws of Power” or “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” to find her salvation; her only goal was making sure our stomachs were full. When I came home from school, she’d have salted egg-shaped rice balls sprinkled with sesame seeds waiting for me. I can still hear her continuous refrain: “Eat some rice, eat some rice.”
The kitchen was undeniably a Korean woman’s prison, but it was also the hearth where she raised and showed her bottomless love for her children. The Korean kitchen’s nourishment begins before birth. When I was pregnant, I frequently craved spicy, burbling clay pots of sundubu jjigae to the point of tearful desperation.
Then after Plum was born, I slurped miyeokguk in the delivery room at the hospital. Koreans believe that new mothers should eat lots of seaweed soup. You’re actually supposed to eat five bowls of it a day for 21 days. The seaweed is high in iron, which is essential for replenishing blood and effective in producing really great breast milk.
As my daughter starts eating solid foods, I plan on making her soothing rice porridge (juk) when she gets tummy aches and rewarding her with sweet rice treats and persimmon punch, like my halmeoni and mother would make for me. Maybe, when she’s all grown up, she might even pass these traditions on to her kids, too. For me, maintaining this Korean culinary heritage is critical in a time when store bought banchan and jjigae are sadly becoming the norm.
As a militant make-it-from-scratch foodie, I have been studying a cookbook called A Korean Mother’s Cooking Notes by Chang Sun-Young (1997, Ewha University Press) with the zeal of a fundamentalist. Along with the English-language recipes and descriptive photos, she describes how she makes fresh homemade tofu out of soaked beans and fries fish fillets in egg batter to place on the offering table for her ancestor’s memorial rites. I took careful note when she said Koreans celebrated the Baegil with rice cakes made from pearly white grains donated by 100 houses.
I lovingly pored over all of the traditional recipes for fancy dishes like the “Nine-Section Dish” and “Stuffed Cucumbers” that I longed to try. The cookbook felt like a connection to all of my female ancestors and the things that mattered to them, like the freshness of pale daikon turnips for pickling.
My mother, who hails from the same Gaesung region as the author, prepares her dishes from rough measurements in her head — a pinch here, a handful there. Chang’s meticulous instructions were invaluable to me, because I was accustomed to cooking from recipes American style.
Thanks to the book, I had successfully recreated the homey Korean dishes I grew up eating, like a fiery beef stew called yukgyejang. Brazen with my newfound confidence, I felt ready for the Baegil challenge, like it was some kind of reality show. I had, however, glossed over the fact that preparing all those labor-intensive dishes in such massive quantities wasn’t going to be that interesting or stimulating. It was just plain old drudgery.
I guess when I was planning this Korean food feast, I had pictured a compound of hanbok-wearing women with leathery brown hands making a happy hum in the kitchen along with me. But there were no halmeonis making doenjang from scratch. There were no aunts and neighbors pounding out steamed sweet rice to make ddeok. Nobody to soak the mountain roots and the fiddlehead ferns.
As my mom would say, making this stuff “requires many hands.”
And we didn’t have many hands. Just hers and mine.
My mother, Soraya, is a skilled Korean cook who still makes kimchi at home with salted Napa cabbage, flaming red pepper powder, and succulent oysters for that irresistible fishy taste.
As for the other hanbok-clad women of the family? No dice. Plum’s aunties were busy with their own distinctly modern lives. My sister Mirena, a fashion designer, was busy working out patterns for tunics and leggings in her downtown L.A. studio. My other sister Elaine, a mother of two, had prior commitments planning a fundraising event for her kids’ school.
This crazy Baegil feast was my idea, they reasoned. I made my bed, and now I had to get in it. My dad had already checked into the hotel near my apartment. There was no turning back.
Fortunately, my mom had the brilliant idea of mixing catered foods with a few homemade dishes. Like any snobby Korean food purist worth her roasted sea salt, I demurred at the suggestion. But the thought of frantically scrambling dozens of eggs and slicing them into paper-thin strips while a stove-top full of boiling pots screamed for my attention made me shudder. I relented and reached for the car keys and the credit card.
The author chops some green onion.
We spent the entire afternoon zipping around K-town, knocking items off my to-do list. My mom ordered a foot-tall baeksolgi from a ddeok store on Vermont Avenue and Seventh Street. It was a towering white cake, still warm from the steaming, topped with sweet, bloated raisins that spelled out “100 days” in Hangeul. We cruised by Gaesung Kimchi to score a few pounds of Korea’s national dish, made with the regional flavoring of my mother’s hometown. Our final stop was Nagwon Catering to order namul, a variety of vegetable dishes in three eye-popping colors, a giant jug of the shikhye, and a big aluminum tray of the ever-popular japchae.
Despite all of our flagrant cheating, I still had to make kalbi and bulgogi, miyeokguk, and vats of fluffy steamed white rice, the requisite grain for the Baegil, which was most definitely not going to be made from rice donated by 100 houses.
We set out the kimchi and red bean paste just in time for the guests who started to arrive at 5 p.m. They oohed and aahed over the various colorful dishes, lavishing me with undeserved praise. They downed bottles of Hite and gobbled up plates of piping hot pork bulgogi. They drank seaweed soup in porcelain bowls. We took pictures next to the baeksolgi. When the last of the shikhye had been consumed, I brought out the Asian pears, which I peeled and carved into boat-shaped wedges until my fingers curled up into little arthritic knots. Like a good Korean girl, I made sure to serve the elders first.
As you’d expect, the dishes I made from scratch tasted better to me than the catered ones. But after washing a pile of dishes higher than Pektu Mountain in a soju-induced stupor, not for one second did I regret mixing modern solutions with traditional culinary arts to survive Plum’s Baegil.
You see, it’s all about the mix.
Here’s my recipe for miyeokguk:
INGREDIENTS
• 1/2 pound of beef brisket (the more sinews and ligaments, the better flavor stock you’ll get)
• 3 handfuls of dried seaweed (miyeok, which is a thicker, leafier kind of seaweed than the paper-thin nori which is used for sushi)
• sesame oil
• soy sauce (specifically guk ganjang for soup stock)
• black pepper
• garlic
• Making the beef stock is the most time consuming part. I make mine the night before. Boil the brisket in about 10 cups of water until it has reduced by half. Will take about two hours. Along the way, make sure you skim the foam off the top because those are the impurities that you don’t want to feed your kids. When the stock comes to room temperature, refrigerate it overnight. The next morning, skim the hardened fat off the top with a slotted spoon.
• Take out the beef and shred it with your hands into small bite size pieces. Then add one tablespoon of sesame oil, two tablespoons of soy sauce, two cloves of crushed garlic, and a few generous twists of freshly ground black powder. Massage thoroughly with your hands and set aside for a bit so the flavors can mingle.
• In the meantime, soak the seaweed in hot tap water for at least 10 minutes, though it can sit for longer. Once the seaweed is pliable and delicious, cut into one-inch bite size pieces. Kitchen shears make quick work of this task.
• Heat up a stockpot to medium-high heat. Sauté the beef with the seaweed until both are completely blended together and you can smell the garlic cooking. Then add your five cups of beef stock and boil for 10 minutes. Add more soy sauce and black pepper if it’s too bland.
• This is nice accompanied with white rice that has been steamed with a few green peas. The trick I discovered was to add the peas at the very end of the steaming process, rather than at the beginning of the cooking, so that they are perfectly green and al dente and not soggy and gray.
FOR ONLY $28!
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