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I wonder if there’s such a thing as being too good a human being. “We’re a lot more selfish in the West.”
“Independent,” he clarifies. “You’re more independent.”
Of course he spins it into something positive. “Did you have any suggestions today?”
“Someone thought we should paint the walls a color other than white.”
“Was that someone you?”
He bursts out laughing. “Me? Why me?”
“You don’t seem like someone who likes white.”
“I love white. My apartment is white.”
“All white?” I don’t believe him.
“There might be some yellow pillows, but that’s because Eomma forced them on me,” he proclaims.
“You’re wearing yellow right now.”
“It’s more of an off-white,” he says, plucking at the front of his pale lemon button-down with its rolled-up sleeves.
“Only if you’re color-blind,” I tease.
He stops in front of a row of bicycles and waves his wallet in front of a sensor. “Are you saying that yellow isn’t my color?”
“I don’t think there’s a color in the Pantone catalog that would look bad on you,” I reply as he rolls a bike out of the rack.
Slightly pink in the cheek, he holds it out for me. “Is that right?”
I smile at his mild embarrassment over my compliment. Yes, I decide, Yujun is too good and too pure and I hope he’s always like this forever because the world needs people like him.
“Are you going to tell me about the river?” I say as we pedal along the wide boulevard. There are joggers on the path along with quite a few people walking their dogs, and then there are people strolling along. The sun is going down and the air is cooling. It’s a beautiful night and not just because I’m with my new favorite person.
“What would you like to know?”
Everything because I know nothing. “Where’s the island you talked about?”
“The opposite direction. The river is . . . eighty kilometers long? Something like that. Well, not the river but the bike path. Obviously the river is much longer. It goes all the way up to North Korea. From the city, it empties into the Yellow Sea. When Korea rebuilt after the war, Westerners called it the Miracle on the Hangang. They say Korea advances so quickly that the Seoul you see today is not the one you will see tomorrow.”
“What was it like in the nineties?” What had my mother faced? Couldn’t she have sought help from the government to keep her baby? What about family support? Was she an orphan? Did her father kick her out when he discovered she was pregnant? Did she run away? What about Lee Jonghyung? Did he really not know that his girlfriend was pregnant? Would he have married my mother if he learned he was going to have a kid? Or would he have abandoned her? These questions pour out like candies spilling endlessly out of a vending machine until there are so many at the base of my brain my head starts to ache. When Yujun doesn’t answer right away, I feel foolish. Why am I asking him questions about a time period when he was barely old enough to read? “I mean, if you know.”
He slows down near a small park and climbs off his bike before replying. “I don’t know much of any detail, but there were difficult times in the nineties. We had to get a loan from the IMF. It seemed astronomical at the time and many countries did not think we were a good risk. But we paid it off early.” He gestures for me to follow him to a bench.
“How so?”
“We had a yellow-ribbon campaign.” He waits until I sit before continuing. “I know in the West that’s a sign of remembrance, but for us in Korea, it was a symbol for gold and selflessness. Everyone in the country, no matter how rich or how poor you were, gave up gold to the government to be melted down and delivered to the IMF to repay our debt. It was a national campaign. Everyone participated. Well, I was too young, but I remember that my grandmother gave up jewelry that she’d had since before the war. They put together a whole chest of things. Plates, jewelry, gold bars. Lee Jong-beom, a baseball player, gave up five years of trophies and medals. We paid off the debt three years early because of it.” He starts to unpack the bag.
“Wow.” This cultural identity—my cultural identity, one that I hadn’t ever known existed, one I hadn’t cared to explore, is fascinating. If I’d kept going to those Korean exchanges in the city with my mom, would I have learned these things? Would I have been prouder of my heritage? I would’ve at least known of it, right? My eyes fall to my lap as I recall how irritated I was at my coworker for asking about Korea and how proud I was to be ignorant. I’m American, like you. Hadn’t I said that with my whole chest?
