Here’s a story about generational trauma. This weekend is 추석, a holiday celebrated by all of Korea, north and south. It’s the harvest festival, full moon, and changing of seasons. This is a time when we honor our elders and pay respect to our ancestors. So in the spirit of 추석, I want to share a little bit of Korean history through the lived experience of my mother.
Sometimes I’ll be out in the world with my parents in any country in the world it can be, and we walk by something, a sign, a product name, and say there’s Japanese on it. My parents and I, we are Korean.
And it never ceases to shock me that they will read and can read Japanese. And the reason behind this is so so ancestrally painful. They never intentionally took Japanese classes or wanted to learn Japanese. They are able to speak and read Japanese because of the Japanese invasion in Korea when they were just kids. They both even have Japanese names, which of course they don’t use, but they were made to use at the time.
My mother as a kid witnessed her friend and her friend’s entire family get killed by Japanese colonists. This happened to my parents who are still alive. The Japanese occupation of Korea wasn’t that long ago, despite what imperialists make you want to think and erase.
Just think about that, and how that reverberates through your entire life experience and how it gets passed on to generations. That 한, that sadness, that grief, that anger definitely got passed on to me.
I have not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that it is also absolutely why I do the work I do to fight against oppression.
The Korean sense of 한 is so so deep for Korean people and I can tell you I deftly feel it every waking hour and minute of the day.
It’s what drives me, and it’s what grounds me.
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