Mr. Kim came to Canada; he had dreams; did he realize them?
(지난 호에 이어)
Love is a set of mutual feeling of tenderness, compassion, eagerness to help each other; such mutual feeling presupposes mutual recognition of quality and respect. Love is not an end of something; love is not a state of something; love moves; love changes; love evolves. Love can grow; love can regress. Thus, love is something which is complex; love is not static; love is dynamic.
The process of love goes by step.
First, man and woman should be autonomous psychologically, intellectually and spiritually. Love is the result of psychological, intellectual and spiritual interactions. Therefore, without such autonomy it is not possible to have productive interactions.
Second, the interactions are not possible without knowing each other. We must understand that when two individuals meet, they meet two different universes.
Each has different family background, different psychological traits, different philosophical trends and different world perception. These elements of a personality are already formed and the other person can do little about it. This personality is the value system of the person. And this personality does not change; it is unreasonable to hope to change it by love.
Third, one must accept the other person’s personality. However, accepter something presupposes knowing it; knowing it presupposes analyzing it; analyzing needs frequent meetings and conversation.
Fourth, the process of love involves a stage where a common value system is formed. This new value system must be based on the full acceptance of the previous values of each side.
In other words, one cannot build a solid and sustainable relation without considering who the other person was, is and will be.
It means in practical terms that one must not try to change the other person; on the contrary, one must build a new emotional, psychological and spiritual world in which man and woman can develop as human being and flourish.
Kim wondered if he could apply this model. Before he immigrated to Canada, he knew little who Sookja was. He married her after the family encounter of family negotiation; he had no time to know her. In reality, he could not really know her, because his relation to Sookja developed through the overall family relations.
In fact, the family relation dictated his conjugal relations. His relation with Sookja was a part of the whole system of family relation designed to promote the welfare of the whole of the family, rather than the bilateral husband and wife relation.
Was this system wrong? Not in the Korean context; on the contrary, it provided the stability of the marriage.
However, this system fell apart once Kim left Korea. Kim knew that the Korean system would survive as long as neither he nor Sookja suppress their individuality. But in the immigrated life, the very individuality is the sine quo non condition for the survival.
Kim and Sookja were no longer in the Korean System of family relation; they could no longer rely on the passive role; they had to become active; they had to rely on individuality to survive.
In short, they had to begin from the stage number one. That is, though very late, they had to begin to know each other. Kim tried hard, but he did not what to say to Sookja. But one advantage he had was the numerous occasions of being alone with Sookja; every day, Sookja came to join him at the depanneur.
“ Yobo, what is your most precious memories in your life?”, asked Kim, thinking that this would allow him to understand Sookja’s emotional make-up.
“Well, let me see, for me, the most precious memories are my childhood memories; when I was kid, I loved to go to nearby brooks and see the small blue birds; I prayed that my life would be as beautiful as the bird.
I just loved the nature; I thought that the nature was a poem itself; I was wondering in my small head who would have composed such a poem”, said she with tears in her eyes.
This remark by Sookja made Kim realize how decent and beautiful Sookja’s mind and heart were.
“ Nancy Appa, how about you?”, she asked in her turn smiling and happily.
“Me, I had no lucky childhood period like you to have known the beauty of the country side. But, at night around the Thanks Giving Day, I enjoyed counting the twinkling stars in the cool sky and I had the urge to touch the biggest one”, recollected Kim with tender look in his eyes.
Sookja never thought that her husband was such a romantic man. It was a big discovery for her.
This simple conversation brought them closer to each other.
One day, they were serving a client. The telephone rang; Kim took the receiver; it was from Kim’s brother, who announced the assassination of the president Park Chung Hee on 26th of October 1979.
“ Yobo, President Park is dead; he was assassinated!”, reported Kim with alarmed face.
“Do you think that Kim Il Sung would take an advantage of the situation?’, asked Sookja worried
“I think that without president Park, Korea could have remained one of the poorest countries in the world. I knew that human rights were violated, but I was sure that one day Korea would be democratized”, continued Sookja.
Kim was impressed. His wife had a definite political opinion. Kim asked her another question.
“Yobo, what do you think about the language law of Quebec?”, asked Kim.
“ I understand the reason for the law. But it is pretty hard for non-French speaking immigrants like us!”, commented Sookja.
These conversations allowed Kim to know Sookja’s political and social philosophy and he was pleased. He did not know that his wife was an intellectual.
The psychological and intellectual interactions continued. It was after the Sunday sermon. Kim thought that in Korea, church ministers seldom deal with social sins such as poverty and the violation of human rights; they seldom deal with social justice. (다음 호에 계속)
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