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The next day, I take the metro to a bookstore Jules recommended and buy a couple of books on learning Korean. I spend the rest of the afternoon practicing the Hangul characters, and by the time dinner rolls around, I feel like I have the hang of it. With help from the workbooks and YouTube tutorials, I can recognize the characters and make the basic sounds. It’s putting them together to form actual words that’s the problem.
But I have the tools now. I downloaded the Korean keyboard on my phone and laptop. I have apps, the textbook, access to videos. If I apply myself, I can learn. Of course, I should’ve done this before I came, but I’m doing it now and that’s the important thing.
I know enough to begin my search and I start from the top: Kim Eunshil. It’s not an uncommon name. There are hundreds of search results and based on a couple of the pictures, one is a doctor or, perhaps, a scientist given the lab coat she’s wearing. Another one is dressed in a suit, and there are a few in their school uniforms. The thing is that none of the pictures strikes any chord of recognition. I scroll through so many photos and pages that it becomes a blur, like a Mark Rothko painting with giant swatches of colors bleeding together.
My flatmates come home from work, one after the other, looking tired. When Jules arrives, she’s carrying two white plastic bags with something heavenly in them.
“Korean fried chicken,” she says, plunking them on the table.
“Ten thousand won?” That was the buy-in price the first night.
“Yup.”
I dig out the appropriate bill and slide it toward Jules. Anna pockets it instead.
“I paid.” She sits down next to me. “Whatcha doing?”
“Looking up these names.” I point to my list.
“What names?” Jules calls from the kitchen.
“She’s trying to find her birth mother,” Anna answers for me. “Remember? I told you she had the funeral a couple of days ago.”
“Wow. You just got here and had to go to a funeral? That’s rough.” Mel carries over a stack of plastic cups and a pitcher of water. Behind her, Jules trails with plates and napkins and clear plastic gloves to handle the chicken.
“So these are your mom?” Jules pulls a glove on one hand and picks up the photos with the other. “What happened to these two?”
“Coffee accident.”
“Sucks. Looks like the names are gone from these two. What else have you found?”
“Not much.”
“Give me one.” Mel wiggles her fingers.
“Yeah, I can do one, too,” Anna volunteers. She plunks a picture in front of Jules. “You, too.”
Jules makes a face.
“It’s fine,” I say quickly, reaching for the picture. “I’ve got this.”
Jules moves it out of my reach. “I’ll do it, but you should eat the chicken with chopsticks or you’re going to get grease on your photos.”
We all do, forgoing the plastic gloves in order to keep the photos in good shape. It’s a thoughtful gesture from Jules, who oftentimes comes off as cold.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
She shrugs and stuffs a piece of chicken into her mouth. With the photos passed around, phones and laptops come out. In between bites of crispy chicken—no wonder there’s one on every block, the stuff is delicious—my flatmates and I search up the names.
“God, who could believe there are so many Kim Eunshils. This one is twelve.” Anna holds up her phone for everyone to see. “She won a presidential award for excellence in linguistics, which means she speaks English well.”
“Japanese, too,” Mel suggests. “Everyone here learns two languages. Sometimes three, depending on how much money you have. How many languages does your chaebol speak?”
“Yujun?” I don’t bother to correct her assumption that he’s mine. “He speaks English.” He had come back from a business trip to Hong Kong. “Maybe Chinese?”
“Oh, probably. And Japanese, too.” Mel nods to herself. “That’s pretty common for high-level execs. The more languages you speak, the better.”
“How about this Kim Jihye? She kind of looks like the picture?” Jules interjects.
Anna turns Jules’s phone screen around and holds the photo of Kim Jihye next to it. In my photo, Jihye is wearing a light-colored skirt with a high waist and a red T-shirt. A long necklace dangles low. Her hair is cut short and she has small circle shades on. The image on Jules’s screen is a mere headshot. The hair is slightly longer, a little like Mel’s chin-length bob. Her red lips are a straight, unsmiling line.
“It’s hard to say because of the sunglasses.” Jules squints at the screen. “How old is your mom?”
“My mother is—my adoptive mother is fifty-five.”
“I think your bio mom would be younger,” muses Jules. “Most women who give up babies are young, right?”
I have never done any demographic research but it’s what I’ve assumed, too. “I don’t know exactly, but it sounds right.”
