From an Ostracized Class, a Hero for Koreans
By Choe Sang-Hun
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, February 22, 2006

 
Shaun Best/Reuters
An unusual hero for South Korea, Hines Ward, a half-Korean U.S. football star,
was named Super Bowl MVP. Most Amerasians in South Korea are treated as outcasts.

Bae Gee Cheol had a vasectomy, at age 24, because he feared that his children would suffer his fate: being the object of constant ridicule and contempt.

Park Keun Shik swallowed 50 sleeping pills on a train to Seoul. A conductor found him unconscious and rushed him to a hospital before it was too late. In his pocket was found a suicide note addressed to South Korea's president, in which the man tearfully appealed for better treatment of people like him.

The two men belong to a minority group known here as "mixed-blood people," children born to Korean mothers and abandoned by their fathers in the U.S. military, following the Korean War. They are the most disparaged class in South Korean society, where schools teach students to be proud of their "racial purity."

This month, they likely felt vindication and saw hypocrisy when the country fervently embraced Hines Ward of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, who was named the Super Bowl's most valuable player. He was embraced for the same biological fact that made them outcasts: Ward is a half-Korean.

Ward's father, an American soldier, took him and his Korean mother, a nightclub waitress, to the United States when he was a toddler.

The Super Bowl star speaks little Korean, and he plays a sport virtually unknown here. But the fact that Ward's mother was Korean was enough to make him an instant national hero.

Catching a pass, Ward scored the winning touchdown in the big game. Photographs of the touchdown were splashed on the front page of every South Korean newspaper. The papers carried close-up shots of Ward's upper right arm, tattooed with Mickey Mouse and his name spelled in Korean. Web bloggers called for honorary citizenship and parades if he visits here.

South Koreans have never been so proud of anyone since Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean scientist whose international fame crumbled when his human cell cloning experiments proved to have been faked.

"I am proud of Ward," said Lee James, a singer whose full name is Lee James Edward Shobe. "But people here have treated us as aliens. Now they are all chanting, 'Ward is Korean, Ward is one of us.' I see the two faces of Korean society. Since when have they shown so much interest in half-Koreans?"

Lee's father, a black American serviceman from St. Louis, met his mother, a widowed refugee from North Korea, while stationed in Seoul. When Lee was 2 years old, his father returned home leaving Lee, a daughter and the mother behind. Lee is now 44.

Lee said that he was disparaged as a "darkie," a stigma that followed him everywhere. "I live my life endlessly explaining why I am what I am, excusing my existence," he said.

The gushing over Ward by South Koreans may be a spontaneous soul- searching over the mistreatment of the Amerasian children and their mothers, experts said. For decades, the children were ostracized as tugi, or "half-breed," and their mothers despised as the lowest class of prostitutes: yang kal bo, or "prostitutes for Westerners."

No official data exist on how many children have resulted from the 55-year- old U.S. military presence, here since the start of the Korean War. Thousands were taken to America by their fathers or adopted into American families. Thousands remain, experts say.

Today, South Korea is becoming increasingly multiethnic. One out of every 10 weddings is biethnic, a pattern driven mostly by men in rural South Korea seeking brides from other Asian countries. Businessmen and academics working overseas sometimes return home with mixed-race children.

Two biracial actors raised in the United States - Daniel Henney and Dennis O. - have a huge following here.

Youngsters flock to plastic surgeons to look more Caucasian. But except for a few who succeed as singers or athletes, most Amerasians growing up here languish under institutionalized prejudices.

"Classmates ridiculed me as 'Big Nose,'" said Oh Jae Kyoung, 39, whose father was a white American soldier.

The U.S. government has not taken any responsibility for tracking down fathers or providing assistance to the children and women left behind. Mothers often cannot make a claim for child support because many were not officially married to the men.

Bae, the man who had a vasectomy, said his mother, a housewife, gave birth to him after she was raped by an American solider. She and the baby were expelled from her family.

"To the nation, we were an embarrassment to think of; a problem to conceal," said Bae, 50.

For many Koreans, Amerasians are a painful reminder of the war and foreign military intervention. Their fate was seldom debated under governments that inculcated the populace with "pure-blood nationalism" and emphasized the alliance with the Americans.

With South Korea becoming more cosmopolitan, the old bias is easing, but not fast enough for Amerasians, who are often rejected at one job interview after another. Until this year they were even banned from military conscription, which makes them ineligible for government jobs and benefits.

"The first thing the teacher says in primary school is that Koreans are a homogeneous people and we should be proud of it," Lee said. "I felt as if everyone in the classroom was staring at me."

Amerasians here say they envy Ward because his father took him and his mother to the United States, where they had better opportunities. In interviews with Korean media, Ward's mother said that after she divorced, she did not move back to South Korea because of discrimination.

Many Amerasians refused to be adopted into American homes because they did not want to leave their mothers.

"My mother lived as a sinner for no sin she has committed," Bae said. "American troops came to defend our nation from communism. We are a byproduct of it. The nation must clean our mothers' names by publicly acknowledging their sacrifices and helping the needy Amerasians find jobs."

Park, 54, who attempted suicide with sleeping pills in 1973 after writing a letter to the president, said he recently ran unsuccessfully for village chief.

He failed, he said, because "neighbors said it would taint the village's image if a person like me becomes their leader."

"I am determined to remain in South Korea even if all other mixed-blood people leave and I become a museum piece," Park said. "I want to tell other Koreans, 'Wake up from the brain- washing about homogeneity. Look at me. This is your history.'"

Park's mother used to tell neighbors that she picked up her baby from the street. It was only when his mother was 54, the year she had her first grandchild, that she brought Park an old photograph of an American soldier and a U.S. Army blanket that she used as a swaddle for Park.

"It was the first time I saw the man," he said. "I tore the picture in front of her face and burned the blanket."

Lee's father used to send cash and letters before he died in the mid-1970s.

"Mother took the letters to an office where they translated it for her. Father said how he loved 'my baby' and how he would bring us to America in no time. Mother cried," Lee said. "I grew up hating my father for creating me and America for not caring about the seeds its people spread here."

Lee dropped out of high school after its soccer team refused to accept him because of his skin color. He drifted among menial jobs and became a nightclub singer. Nightclub owners bill him as an American singer and require him to only sing American songs.

More than one in four Amerasian children abandoned by their American fathers drop out of school during or before middle school, according to a recent survey by Pearl S. Buck International Korea, which supports mixed- heritage youth.

"My life is full of absurdity," Lee said. "I tried desperately to be Korean, although other Koreans didn't accept me as one of them. I sing American songs, although I dislike America.

"When people chant 'Yankee go home!' at anti-American protests, I feel as if they are pointing at me."

Lee has a son and daughter from a South Korean wife. He said he is concerned about them. Children of African-American fathers face harsher discrimination, said Yeo Han Koo at HiFamily, a group that advocates minority rights.

"Watching my children growing up, I am changing my mind about my father. I sometimes miss him," Lee said. "Maybe I want to visit America one day, find his grave and lay some flowers."