Like father, like daughter

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Sun, December 3, 2023 | 20:55

Thoughts of the Times

Like father, like daughter

Posted : 2023-07-02 16:30

Updated : 2023-07-02 16:30

By Yi Woo-won

Far back in the past, I was rummaging through the contents of boxes for an old book, when I encountered a diary that my youngest daughter Ji-seon had kept when she was a fourth grader in elementary school. Out of fatherly curiosity, I thumbed through a few pages and found some lines that caught my attention.

In a neat and orderly script, she wrote: "During math class, my teacher wrote a problem on the board, asking the class if anyone knew the answer. A hand went up quickly and it was the same guy who always called out the correct answers. It was the same answer I had in my mind but again he raised his hand before I did. I was frustrated and berated myself severely for being such a coward."

Seeing her reproaching herself for being cowardly affected me profoundly with a pang of guilt. I thought I was partly responsible for her response because I had often been weak, irresolute and hesitant in making decisions on many things in my daily life. Therefore, she had just inherited those practices from me ― like father, like daughter. As a matter of fact, she has a lot of my personality and a few of my interests.

On that day when I took a stealthy glance at her diary, she was already a senior in high school. She was living in an apartment in Daegu with her siblings. Like hundreds of thousands of high school seniors across the country, she was under strain and weary, cramming for the College Scholastic Ability Test, which was conducted simultaneously across the country around the end of the year. With the ever-increasing number of "repeaters" each year, the competition rate that year was at a record high. Due to mismanagement of the education policy, it was an endless yearly torment, mentally and physically, for both the students and their equally concerned parents.

There was a growing trend nationwide that parents, out of desperation, were moving their children to bigger cities, some illegally, to hopefully attend better schools with more competent teaching staff. After long and serious deliberation, I also ended up following suit. Contrary to my expectation, however, my children showed no signs that they were doing any better in their new schools and rather faced some setbacks. It was utterly my fault. It was the dumbest and most senseless decision I had ever made in my life. My children, who were still naive socially, had to suffer a great emotional shock by living away from their home and parents and struggling to accommodate themselves to the unfamiliar circumstances in their new schools. I felt painfully sorry for them.

One early morning not long after they had moved into the apartment in Daegu, I was startled out of my bed when Ji-seon called me on my mobile phone. Frightened by a sudden call in the early morning, I kept asking her to tell me what was wrong, but she just sniveled on the phone and didn't tell me anything. When I shouted at her finally in anger, she then whispered almost inaudibly that she had missed her school bus. I was struck speechless but was relieved hugely after hearing what she had to say. She had missed my fatherly affection for so long.

After Ji-seon's emotional outburst on the phone that morning, I made it a rule to stay at their apartment for two days over the weekends. I took along with me some side dishes and groceries and did lots of household chores like cleaning and laundry. Ji-seon's room was invariably messy. Books and papers were lying everywhere and her bed was littered with towels, clothes, cushions and a dozen stuffed animals. I let out a sigh at her perpetual untidiness as well as the guileless childishness that hadn't changed over those many years.

Ji-seon applied to the second-best university in Daegu and passed the competition to study French in the foreign languages department. She said she was sorry she couldn't get into the best university where I had taught decades before. I told her it was my fault, but she still had a chance to be a great success.

Yi Woo-won (yiwoowon1988@gmail.com) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province, and has been writing since 1986.