{TSE 17.

3 (2011)337-352] (print) ISSN 1355-8358

(online) ISSN 1745-5170

Coming Home/Coming Out:

Reflections of a Queer Family and the
Challenge of Eldercare in the Korean Diaspora

Su Yon Pak1
U n io n Theological Sem inary
3041 B roadw ay
N e w York, N Y 10027
USA
sp ak^uts.co lu m bia.edu

A bstract

This article is a theological reflection on one Q u e e r A sian A m e ric a n

w o m a n 's exp erien ce of carin g for h er m o th e r w ith A lz h eim e r's dis-
ease. U sing C o m in g O u t/C o m in g H om e as a fram e a n d m e ta p h o r, th e
a u th o r explores the com plexity of "h o m e" for m a n y K oreans/K orean-
Am ericans w hose very lives intersect w ith and are d isru p te d by m ajor
events in Korean and w orld history. For them , the act of com ing h o m e is
com plex, te x tu re d , a n d layered w ith ex p eriences of loss, tra u m a , dislo-
cation, resilience and hope. T hrou g h d is-ordered m em ories of a m oth er
w ith A lzheim er's, this article attem pts to re-order w h a t it m ean s to come
home. Grace C ho's "ghostly h au n tin g " prov id es a m ethodology. Layering
theory w ith personal narratives, stories and a dream , ot is an ex p erim en t
in perform ance —phantom ogenic w o rd s that becom e "staged w ords." In
three parts, "com ing hom e", "ghostly h au nting s", an d "tug-of-w ar", this
article perform s com ing hom e /com ing o u t of one q u eer fam ily's experi-
ence of caring for a m other w ith Alzheim er's.

K eywords: A lzheim er's disease; Asian A merican; cam p to w n p rostitution;

C h ris tia n ity in Korea; co m ing out; com fort w om en; h a u n tin g ; hom e;
im m ig ran t experience; Korean D iaspora; K orean War; m e m o ry ; m e n tal
illness; m ilitary sexual slavery; queer; spirituality; theological reflection.

1. Su Yon Pak is the Senior Director and Associate Professor of Integrative and
Field-based Education at Union Theological Seminary. In ad d itio n to teaching field
education, she oversees new initiatives at U nion including the Edible C hurchyard;
Institute for W om en, Religions and Globalization; a nd C ongregational Revitaliza-
tion. H er life an d research passions include food justice, crim inal justice, elderly a n d
spirituality, religious w o m en 's leadership, and integrative educatio n pedagogies.
She is currently w o rking on a book called Untangling the Yarn: Meditations on Remem-
bering , Forgetting and In-between Place Called "Home. "

© Kquinox P u b lis h in g L td 2013, U n it S3, Kelham I louse, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, S3 8AF.
338 Theology & Sexuality

Introduction: Where is Home?

"Ya, ga ja. Let's go. Let's go hom e." My m o ther says, agitated, p u tting on
her shoes.

"W here are you going, Mom? You are home. This is y o u r hom e." I say,
placating her and rem oving her shoes.

"No, this is not my home. I w an t to go hom e." She persists.

So, I ask her, "M om , w h ere is y o u r hom e? W here is hom e?"

Every day, my mother spends her time packing up her precious belong-
ings in a bo-dda-ri—a wrapped bundle —and waits for me to come home
from work. As soon as she sees me, she is almost out the door putting on
her shoes asking me to take her home. Since Alzheimer's took a hold of
her, she acts out her sense of dislocation in child-like ways. I suspect that
her feeling of dislocation is not a result of her Alzheimer's. Rather, Alz-
heimer's lifts the veil of inhibition and suppression and gives her per-
mission to embody and perform acts of dislocation —dislocation marked
by primary traumas in her life. This daily exchange shakes me out of my
complacent normative world of social consent where an agreed-upon
order and an agreed-upon sequential, linear time, chronos, is constantly
disrupted by another order, another time, kairos; these m oments ere-
ated by events, traumas, markers of my mother's life draw me in. And
I am caught up in her kairos time, losing track of mine. As Grace Cho,
in her book Haunting the Korean Diaspora describes, the "temporality of
trauma is nonlinear." It "operates at the level of what can be neither for-
gotten nor fully remembered." My mother's experience of time "hovers
in the liminal space between forgetting and remembering."2 "The past
becomes part of the present. It asserts itself and it becomes this constant
presence in her life."3 Trying to remedy the deep longing for home, she
waits for me every day to take her home. Home. Where is home? Is it
her place of birth, her ancestral home, Ui-joo, way up north in Korea
where she spent her affluent formative years under Japanese coloniza-
ti on? Or, is it Busan, way down south where she fled to as a refugee from
the North where she struggled with extreme poverty and dislocation?
Or, is it Seoul where she gave birth to her four children, worked hard to
make ends meet in the post Korean War economy and the place where
her mother died tragically? Or, is it New York, where she began her

2. Grace M. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten
War (M inneapolis: U niversity of M innesota Press, 2008), p. 53.
3. G regg Segal's "R em em bered: The A lzheim er's P hoto grap hy Project" at http://
w w w .g reg g segal.com /ph o to g rap h y /rem em b ered .sw f (accessed N o vem b er 15,2011).
Segal com bines a p resent-d ay portrait of a person living w ith A lzheim er's w ith a
projected im age from the past.

© E quinox P u b lis h in g L td 2013.

 Pak Coming Home/Coming Out 339

life as an immigrant, speaking a different tongue, eating different food?

When 1 ask her where home is, she simply says, "You know, home, over
there. Ga-ja, Let's go."

Part I: Coming Home

They came. My p aren ts cam e to live w ith us. July 4th, 2009, A m erican
Independence Day. Ironic, since th a t's w hen we lost o u r in d ependence,
Kathy and I. They came, m oved in w ith all their stuff, d em o ns an d m em -
ories packed in old suitcases like w ell-w orn 30-year old clothes w h ich
smelled of o u r life in Astoria and Mineóla. I am very fam iliar w ith tha t
smell. It rem inds me of those early days of o u r im m ig ran t life, those days
w h en life seem ed up sid e d ow n, inside out, w h en it w as h a rd to tell reality
from a fairy tale (American fairy tale of Am erican Dream). Smell of gas sta-
tion my father ow ned, of Lord and Taylor's—m y m oth er's favorite depart-
m ent store, of h ug e church parties, of late n ig h t p ray e r m eetings. Smells
of sweat, tears a nd delayed gratification; of tired an d w o rn bodies. Smells
of everything that was saved, leftover food, piles of k etch u p an d su gar
packets long passed their sell-by-dates, old kimchee jars an d em ergency
m oneys h id de n in used Estee L auder face-cream jars. Those im m ig rant
sm ells, th e ones I left a long tim e ago. T he sm ells of old k im chee, fer-
m ented bean paste and mothballs. Yes, those smells, p e rm ea te d th ro u g h
o ur house. Like ghosts and dem ons, cam e in like u n w a n te d guests settling
into o u r nooks and crannies. They cam e home.

Telling "coming out" stories in the Queer community is a powerful rit-

ual of owning identity and building community.4 This ritual parallels
another ritual my parents told me of Korean refugees. Before and dur-
ing the Korean War, many northern Koreans were forced to flee from
their go-hyang, their ancestral homes to the South to escape communist
rule. They talk about crossing the sam-pal-sun, which literally means, the
3-8-line. Korean Christians who crossed the 38th parallel from the north
to the south in the cloak of the night would gather early m orning up on
a mountain in Seoul to hold a worship service. They w ould ask each
other, "When did you cross? How did you cross?" They would tell each
other the "crossing over" story. This was the genesis of one prominent
Presbyterian church in Korea.
So, I too, enter into this ritual of telling my coming out or crossing
over story.
Coming out is a complicated life-long process. Coming out to my
parents was likewise, complex and gradual. I never used the words,
"same sex" or "lesbian" or "queer." But when Kathy and I purchased
a house together in 2006, they came to see this house that had two bed­

4. See David K undtz and Bernard Shlager, M inistry among God's Queer Folk:
LGBT Pastoral Care (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2007), ch. 4, for a h elpful discus-
sion on the process of com ing out.

© Kquinox P u blishin g l i d 2013.

340 Theology & Sexuality

rooms, one for us and one for our younger daughter, Chloe. Our older
daughter, Jocelyn, who was already in college, had what we called the
"Harry Potter nook‫ ״‬in the basement. My father, a man of few words,
peering into our bedroom with one queen size bed, asked Kathy, "Su
sleep here?" Kathy said, "Yes." He said, "You sleep here too?" Kathy
said, "Yes." He said, "Hum," trying to make sense of that. My mother,
on the other hand, was not at all concerned about the bedroom arrange-
ment. When her friend used to visit from Korea, my mother slept in the
same bed with her friend while my father was relegated to a guest bed-
room. My mother was concerned about the kitchen. When I told her that
Kathy and I had purchased a house together, she said incredulously,
"One kitchen?" And 1 said, "of course." She said, "One kitchen? How
can you share a kitchen?" For my mother, sharing a kitchen was more of
a sign of intimacy and being a couple than sharing a bed. Kathy became
my parents' Italian daughter and that was how they framed our rela-
tionship for themselves.
This story highlights the complexity of everyday negotiations
around coming out. Negotiating the degrees of "outness" is a delicate
dance that requires thought, judgem ent and begs the question "w hat
is the purpose of coming out in this situation?" To my siblings, I am
out. To my parents' prim ary doctor, I am out. My cousins —out. My
uncles and aunts —not out (though I suspect my aunt knows.) To the
Medicaid case worker —out. Korean home care —not out. My parents'
church friends and pastors —not out. 1 constantly ask myself, how
will it affect the care of my mother by me being out? And this is fur-
ther complicated because this has to be negotiated in our own space
called home. "Coming out" assumes that there is an "in" from which
to come out. But when your own home has stirrings of "unhomely"
moments, to use Homi Bhabha's term, home can seem an unfam iliar
and a strange place. Bhabha quotes Toni Morrison which so accurately
portrays our experience:
"W hose house is this? W hose night keeps o u t the light in here? Say w ho
o w n s this house? It is not mine, I h a d a no th er sw eeter... The H ouse is
strange. Its sh ad o w s lie. Say, tell me, w h y does its lock fit m y key?"5

While coming home for my parents dragged me home to a place I left

many years ago, for Kathy, it made home a strange place where she was
at times, "the girl who lived upstairs." Also, the vertiginal movements

5. Homi Bhabha, "W orld and Hom e," in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and
Post Colonial Perspectives ed. A nne McClintock. (M inneapolis: U niversity of Minne-
sota Press, 1997), p. 445. "U nhom ely" m o m en ts blu r the b o rd ers b etw een the h o m e
and the w orld. "The public and the private becom e p a rt of each other, forcing u p o n
us a vision that is as d ivid ed as is confusing."

© K quinox P u b lis h in g l i d 2013.

 Pak Coming Home/Coming Out 341

of constantly negotiating being in or out, chipped away at the root of

our relationship, eroding away the foundation. At the same time, stir-
rings of "unhomeliness" in our home were met by "graced moments" of
homeliness. Here is one such vignette:
In her old age, there are only few things that M om really cherishes. H er
knitting basket, h er ging er candies an d Robitussen. Because of M o m 's
chronic cough and c o ug h in g sp asm atic attacks, she has le arn ed to rely
on ginger candies and her Robitussen. We b uy them in b u lk at Costco. So,
cherry-flavored Robitussen, becam e h er lingua franca. Father panics w h e n
we are ru nn in g o u t of them. We have m ad e m a n y late n ig h t trips to o u r
local CVS to stock u p on R obitussen—w hich she frequently hides in the
m ost ingenious places.

Once, Kathy w as hom e, sick w ith a chest infection w ith a b a d cough.

Every time she w o uld cough, Mom w o u ld feel b oth in solidarity w ith h er
(she u nd ersto od her pain), and guilty for fear th a t she h a d given h e r the
illness. There was one graced m o m en t w h en M om p o u re d a capful of Rob-
itussen, offered it u p to Kathy, insisting that she take it. C oncerned for
h er health, Mom took her m ost prized possession, cherry-flavored Robi-
tussen, pou red it and gave it to her to drink. A Eucharistie, sacram ental
m om ent. I could alm ost hear it, "C hrist's blood p o u re d o u t for you." It is
as the Catholics say in their liturgy before taking the Eucharist, "O nly say
the w ord, and I shall be healed." Offering u p her m ost prized possession
in faith that it has the p o w er to heal.

This got m e thinking, w h at m akes a family?

A marriage? A m a rriage license? A legal recognition? (If so, in M assachu-

setts, a gay couple was a family in 2004 b u t n o t in M aine u n til M ay 2009,
then not a family in N ovem ber 2009, and finally a fam ily in D ecem ber
2012, and in N ew York, not a family until July 2011.)

W hat m akes a family? A formal blessing by clergy? A w itness of a con-

gregation? These rituals help, certainly. But it is the daily ru b b in g of skins
and elbows and steadfastness to see each other through. It is the com m it-
m ent and love th at comes from daily confessions—y o u r people are m y
people, and y o u r God, my G od.6

Part II: Ghostly Hauntings

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals he's w aiting and w atching,
Watching for you and for me.

6. G regg Segal's "R em em bered" project visualizes this sam e com m itm ent. Segal
says, "In all the cases, I think, caregivers, p articu larly spouses, sh o w tre m e n d o u s
u n derstan d in g for their loved ones. My sense w as th a t so m an y of the couples I met,
their devotion is just unflagging. And it really resonated for m e because it is th at
com m itm ent you m ake w hen you say y o u r w e d d in g vow s th at w as being carried o ut
here."

© Hquinox P u blishin g I I d 2013.

342 Theology & Sexuality

Com e home, com e home;

Ye w h o are w eary com e home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

My mother's favorite hymn which she sang whenever she was cook-
ing and working in the kitchen. I could still hear that voice, quavering,
slightly tone-deaf; in an off-key way, she would sing this hym n with
gusto in Korean accented English. She learned this from the American
missionaries who ran the Severance Hospital where my mother trained
as a midwife. Severance Hospital, founded by Dr Horace Allan, an
American missionary doctor in 1885, offered many war-torn, displaced
Korean young women to be trained as nurses. As my mother tells the
story, my mother cried and starved herself for three days to get permis-
sion to go to Seoul alone, from Busan, to train as a nurse.
One of the early warning signs of Alzheimer's is hoarding and sav-
ing everything.7 We did not realize this at first because of my mother's
inherent inability to throw anything out. When we cleaned out my par-
ents' apartment, Kathy counted 70 empty kimchee jars stacked away in a
storage cage, closets and other unlikely locations. Another sign of Alz-
heimer's was her compulsive need to write and copy pages and pages

7. For an excellent g u id e on A lzheim er's disease an d caring for people w ith Alz-
heim er's, see N ancy L. Mace a n d Peter V. Rabins, The 36-Hour Day, 4th ed. (Baltimore,
MD: Johns H opkins U niversity Press, 2006). Characteristic behavioral sym p tom s of
dem en tia include: m e m o ry loss, overreacting or catastrophic reactions, com bative-
ness, pro b lem s w ith speech a n d co m m u n ic atio n , loss of coord in atio n, a n d loss of
sense of time. These sy m p to m s d o no t progressively get w orse in a linear way. At
times the sym p tom s are better, a nd other times worse. D em entia is a term to describe
a g ro u p of sym ptom s; it is not a n am e of a disease. Different diseases or illnesses
can cause dem entia, such as Parkinson's disease, HIV/AIDS, a n d Lupus. A lzheim er's
disease is the m ost com m on cause of irreversible dem entia. It is caused by structural
changes in the brain called neuritic (senile) plagues an d neurofibrillary tangles. (See
ibid., ch. 18 for further discussion.) Plaques b uild u p b etw een nerve cells. They con-
tain deposits of a protein fragm ent called beta-am yloid. Tangles are tw isted fibers of
an other protein called "tau " that form inside d y ing cells that block com m unication.
So, m y m other is literally in tangles.
This connects w ith the w ay Koreans talk a bo u t "han." Han is a K orean w o rd to
describe the d ep th of h u m a n suffering. Koreans talk ab ou t "u n tan g lin g " the han to
m ean healing from the suffering. H er A lzheim er's and the state of h er b rain a nd
the tangled han of her life invites m e into this space of connection. In addition, m y
m o ther was an avid and expert knitter b u t w ith h er A lzheim er's she tangles u p all
the yarn and is unable to knit. She sp e n d s h er time u n ta ng lin g the y a m she tangled
rather than knit. T an gling -u n tan g lin g serves as a pow erful m e tap h o r to describe m y
m o th er's life now.
G regg Segal, in his p h o to g rap h y project, talks a bo u t it this way: "the w ay I visual-
ize it is this unrav elin g a spool of yarn and eventually y ou arrive back at the origin,
the core."

© E quinox P u b lis h in g Ltd 2013.

 Pak Coming Home/Coming Out 343

of Bible passages. She filled more than a dozen notebooks with Bible
passages and other writings of her life. In cleaning out her stuff, I had a
Hitchcockian moment. I found pages and pages of writing which con-
tained the same four stories which she wrote over and over again, in an
attempt to "perfect" the story. The titles of these four stories are: (1) Day
of Liberation, August 15, 1945; (2) Crossing the 38th parallel—the sec-
ond try; (3) June 25,1950, the day Korean War broke out; and (4) remem-
bering May 25,1971 —the day we landed in the US as immigrants. These
are four traumatic events that forever marked her life. This compulsion
to repeat trauma played itself out in her notebook. The traum a that was
written on her body was re-inscribed in these 99-cent spiral notebooks
in a compulsive attempt to perfect the imperfect story.8
Grace M. Cho, in her landmark book, Haunting the Korean Diaspora:
Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War, brings to our line of vision, ghosts,
transgenerational hauntings of the personal and collective trauma of the
Korean people. Drawing on Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's the-
ory of transgenerational haunting, Cho conjures up the ghost of yang-
gongju which literally means, Western princess, but is used derogatorily
to refer to Korean women who provide sexual labor for the US military.9
By ghost, she references Avery Gordon to mean "one form by which
something lost, or barely visible, or seemingly not there to our suppos-
edly well-trained eyes, makes itself known or apparent to us, in its own
way, of course."10
As a metaphor, or the "ground zero," of the atrocities and secrecies
around the Korean War, Cho traces the history of the ghost of yang-
gongju, starting with the well-established system of sexual slavery,
called the "comfort women" during the Japanese colonization. This

8. See Bessel A. van d er Kolk, "The C om pulsion to R epeat the T rau m a Re-
enactm ent, Revictimization, and Masochism," Psychiatric Clinics of North America
12.2 (June 1989), pp. 389—411. Survivors of tra u m a have u n articu lated co m pulsion to
repeat traum atic events. This can take the form of p utting oneself in situations simi-
lar to the original traum atic event. These acts are not alw ays conscious. As Serene
Jones articulates in Trauma and Grace (Louisville, KY: W estm inster Press, 2009), p. 17,
"Victims describe them selves as 'h a u n te d ' by feelings an d associations th at circulate
thro ug h their interior w o rlds in a ghostlike m anner, affecting everything b u t never
appearin g explicitly on the surface." Some experts say th at the repetition is in o rd er
to look for a different outcome, a way to heal. For discussion of tra u m a as som atic
markers, see Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma
and Trauma Treatment (N ew York: W.W. N orton, 2000), pp. 59-61, w h ere she dis-
cusses A ntonio D am asio's theory of connectedness of em otio n an d the body.
9. Grace M. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame , Secrecy and the Forgotten
War (Minneapolis: U niversity of M innesota Press, 2008), p. 3.
10. Avery G ordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
(M inneapolis: U niversity of M innesota Press, 2008), p. 8.

© liq u in o x P u blishin g L td 2013.

344 Theology & Sexuality

ghost reappears in 1945 when the comfort women stations for the Japa-
nese Imperial Army transitioned to the system of camptown prostitu-
tion for the US military. This ghost again appears and migrates to the
US as GI wives scattering her body across the Korean Diaspora. Cho
writes that "the yanggongju as GI bride and her kin make up about
half of ethnic Koreans in the United States, meaning that Koreans as an
immigrant group arrived in the United States primarily through means
of American military dom ination."11 And the Korean Diaspora's mar-
ginalization and silencing of the GI wives make fertile ground for these
hauntings.
My mother's compulsive repetitive writing is an act of "outing" the
ghosts. By "outing" the ghosts, she comes out as a vessel, a container
for these hauntings. The secrecy and shame around the unimaginable
atrocities she experienced have haunted her whole life. But through the
deteriorating power of Alzheimer's, she is able to voice/"out" the ghosts
of yanggongju into full view. While my mother's life has not much in
common with a life of yanggongju, they are inextricably connected
through common trauma, common history and the US military domina-
tion. Her life has been constituted by these hauntings. And in her dimin-
ished mental capacity, my mother is freed to allow yanggongju to speak
through her. It is as Cho explores, "irrational perception, whether it
takes a form of a ghost or that of schizophrenic hallucination, as a model
of thinking that offers productive possibilities"12 and can be reconceived

11. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora, p. 23. U nm entionable w o rd s like " yang-
gongju. Yankee w hore. W estern princess. GI bride. Yanggalbo. Yangssaekshi. GFs play-
thing. UN lady. Bar girl. E ntertainm ent hostess. W ianbu. Fallen w om an. Form erly a
com fort w om an. Form erly called a com fort w om an. D aug h ter of a com fort w om an.
C am p to w n prostitute. Military bride" dictate an entire fam ily's history an d give sus-
tenance to the p hantom . Secrecy an d sham e n u rtu re s the ghost of Yanggongju, as an
"u nsp eakable and ph antom ogenic w o rd " for Korean d ia spo ra (Cho, Haunting the
Korean Diaspora, p. 3). Cho asserts that K orean d iasp ora is n o t only "transgenera-
tionally h a u n ted by the u n sp ok en trau m as of w ar" b u t it is also "constituted by tha t
h aunting." She writes: "The Korean D iaspora in the U.S. has been h a u n te d b y the
traum atic effects of w h a t we are not allow ed to k n o w —the terror, a nd devastation
inflicted by the Korean War, the failure to resolve it, an d the m ultiple silences sur-
ro u n d in g this violent histo ry ... If the historical condition of possibility for K orean
diaspora is the Forgotten War, the psychic condition is th a t of enforced forgetting.
[As a result] one is often an u n w itting participant in o ne's o w n erasure." Cho, Haunt-
ing the Korean Diaspora, p. 12. At the sam e time, this act of forgetting a n d erasure
proliferates the very trau m a that is being denied. The tension of this troublesom e
relationship is, C ho asserts, em bodied and acted o u t in the dia sp o ra's relationship to
yanggongju.
12. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora, p. 23. "The yanggongju, as b oth the sham e-
ful secret that is passed d o w n unconsciously to her children a n d the agent th a t rup -
tures the very story lines from w hich her history has b een erased, distributes h er

© E quinox P u b lis h in g L td 2013.

 Pak Coming Home/Coming Out 345

as a method for reading erasure.13 "Altered repetition of past experi-

enees‫ ״‬performed through my mother's writing is a way to "flesh out"
the ghosts of yanggongju.u
Here is one such performance. I translated my mother's story about
the day of liberation piecing it together from multiple copies of the same
story. An excerpt from her writing:

Remembering the Day of Liberation

A ugust 15th 1945 is the d ay of o u r co u ntry 's liberation from 35 years of
Japanese colonization. Several days before that day, m y m o th e r told m e
and my older sister, "Since it is very hot today, let's go d o w n to the river
to bathe this evening." Excited, my sister and I followed M other to the riv-
erside. We im m ersed o u r bodies in the clear, still w ater w ith o u r m other.
It w as a calm, brightly m oon-lit night. A nd M other b eg an to sing quietly.

Dong-hae mul-gwa Baek-du-san-i ma-reu-go dal-tor-ok

Ha-neu-ni-mi bo-u-ha-sa u-ri na-ra man-se
Mu-gung-hwa sam-cheol-li hwa-ryeo gang-san
Dae-han sa-ram Dae-han eu-ro gi-ri bo-jeon-ha-se.15

M other ta u gh t us the first verse of this song I h ad never before h ea rd h er

sing. It was o u r national anthem . She told us to m e m o rize it im m ediately.
So, excited, in a loud voice, my sister and I sang it over a n d over again,
com m itting it to o u r m em ory. She ta u g h t u s the second, th ird an d fo u rth
verse. A nd we sang. C autioning us in a soft voice, M other said, "The tim e
has not yet com e w h en you can sing this song, so y o u m u s tn 't sing it yet."

On A ugust 15th M other w oke u p early to dig ou t the tae-guk-ki , the K orean
flag which rem ained hid d en in a safe place. She ta u g h t u s the m e an in g of
o u r flag. Then she h urriedly m a de several K orean flags. D ressed in n ew
clothes M other m ade us, and carrying the Korean flag, one in each h a n d ,

h au n tin g across bodies in the d iaspora" that are affectively connected to her. This
creates a diasporic vision that generates a n ew kind of visibility, p ro d uctiv e possi-
bilities, vision from the future.
13. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora , pp. 23-24.
14. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora, p. 166. She connects "listening to the voice"
to "seeing the traum a." She writes: "In searching for bodies th ro u g h w hich to speak,
the ghost is distributed across the time-space of the d ia spo ra in o rd e r to create
an other type of body, an assem blage body w hose p u rp o se is to see a n d sp eak w ith
trau m as that could n o t be seen an d spoken by those w ho directly lived them ."
15. h ttp ://w w w .n ation alan them s.in fo /k r.htm . It was su n g to the tu n e "Auld lang
syne" until 1910 w h en Japan invaded Korea. The Koreans w ere fo rb id d en from sing-
ing the national anthem . The current tun e was com posed in 1937 by A h n Eaktay
which was officially a d o pted in 1948. This is the translation of the national anthem :

Until that d ay w hen the w aters of the Eastern Sea ru n d ry and Mt. B aekdu is
w orn away,
God protect and preserve ou r nation.
Three thousand Li of splendid rivers and m ountains, filled w ith Roses of Sharon;
G reat Korean people, stay true to the G reat Korean way!

© Kquinox P u b lis h in g Ltd 2013.

346 Theology & Sexuality

we w ent o u tsid e to join the m ultitude. Filled w ith em otion, faces w et w ith
tears of joy and tears of han, people g ath ered in the elem entary school
yard. They began the celebration of liberation and in d ep en d en ce by sing-
ing the Korean national a n th em tha t w as bu ried d eep in the recesses of
o u r m em ory. Then, w aving the Korean flags, w e shouted, " Dae han dong
lip man sac ", "long live Korean independence!"

W hen I recall this day, I am o v erw helm ed by m an y losses.

First, we lost o u r language. O u r m o th er tongue w as Japanese an d the

second language w as Korean. At school, w e h ad K orean lan guage class
one h o u r a week. By 5th grade, even th a t one h o u r of Korean language
instruction disap p eared . We w ere forced to speak Japanese at school.
W hen we w ere ca u g h t sp eak in g K orean to o u r friends, w e got a ticket
and w ere p un ished. I anticipated th at o u r p aren ts w o u ld be u p se t to h ear
that w e got a ticket for speaking K orean in school. But instead, m y parents
w ould say, "ed ucation is ed u cation no m atter the language it is ta u g h t
in. So, stu d y h ard and get good grades. Som eday, we will have o u r inde-
pendence. A nd you can 't be a le ader if you d o n 't have a good education."
I un d ersto o d this only later in life.

Second, we lost o u r nam e. T here is a saying in Korean, "Even the dog

does not change its family nam e." This m eans w e w ere treated w orse
than dogs. My family nam e, "Kim " w as "K aneshiro" an d first na m e w as
"Chioko." At school, I w as K aneshiro Chioko. At hom e, I w as Kim Yang
Sook. Even now , m y childhood friends call m e "K aneshiro C hioko" an d
do not kn o w m y K orean nam e.

Third, we lost y o u n g w om en. M any y o un g w o m e n from p o or villages a n d

rural areas w ere forced to becom e "we-an-bu", com fort w om en. They lost
their bodies th ro ug h illness and d eath an d could n ot re tu rn home.

Fourth, we lost m a n y nationalists. They w ere arrested an d killed for their

involvem ent w ith the in d ep en d en ce m ovem ent. I w itnessed m y m other
receivin g p riso n u n ifo rm s w ith a n u m b e r a n d m a k in g w a rm , cotton
q u ilted clothes to sen d aw ay so m ew h ere, I d id n o t k n o w w here. A n d
she never spoke a w ord ab o u t it. I only found o u t later that h er yo un g est
b ro th er was im prisoned for his nationalist activity.

Ah, how can I speak of these with m y limited knowledge and failing memory?

"Ah, how can I speak of these with my limited knowledge and failing mem-
oryl" Hauntings or han of living under Japanese colonization was pain-
ful enough but to lose her facility in the Korean language, substituting
Japanese words where Korean has failed, seems almost cruel, especially
because my mother is not aware of this herself. Imagine my mother's
siblings as they watch Mom sing forbidden Japanese war songs as her
memory can only retain those. At a farewell party on the eve of my
mother being admitted to a nursing home, I saw this vision, almost
apocalyptic. It was like a vision of those "left b e h in d /' after the faith-
ful have been taken up in Rapture. My mother is in the middle of a
circle and my two uncles, two aunts and Mom's close friend dancing,

© E quinox P u b lis h in g L td 2013.

 Pak Coming Home/Coming Out 347

singing those Japanese songs which we were not even allowed to utter.
We were prohibited from even having any Japanese products in our
house. I saw pained expressions in my uncle's face. And yet, because
of their love and care for her, they sang the songs of their enemies that
were buried for over 60 years in a desperate attempt to connect with
her, reawakening the ghosts. Ah, how can I speak of these with my limited
knowledge and failing memory?

Part III: Tug of War

With the progression of Alzheimer's, my mother is visited by delusional
episodes. Though it is not clear whether the contents of her delusions
stem from fears and traumas of her life, what is unnerving is the delu-
sion's ability to disrupt the certainty of reality as we know it. She has
repeated delusions about someone coming into the house to do things
that threaten her stability, whether it is to steal things, or to have sex
with my father, or to destroy the house. These delusions are real to her
and any effort on my part to correct her or re-orient her leads to a feel-
ing of even further isolation. Virginia Stem Owens in her book, Caring
for Mother: A Daughter's Long Goodbye, narrates a similar situation with
her mother who has dementia. Owens is asleep and her mother comes
into her room at two in the morning:
"Gin," she w ould say, "y ou 'v e got to get up. S om eone's trying to get
in the house."

"No, Mother. Go back to sleep. It's nothing." I w o u ld try to keep the

irritation from my voice. But she w o uld stand in the doorw ay, backlit by
the hall light, her breath com ing short and hard.

"All right," she'd say, her voice breaking as it rose, "you'll see w h e n w e
all b u rn dow n."

So I w ould get up, slowly, acting o u t m y annoyance. She'd shuffle

tow ard the front d o or and point across the street.

"See those lights over there?"

"No, Mother. There's nothing there. I told you. N o w go back to bed."

She'd look at m e then w ith furious incredulity.

At such times, 1 am certain my m oth er w as convinced of the reality of her

visions. She refused to be reasoned o u t of her hallucinations. In h er m ind,
we were bent on discrediting those visions an d th u s consigning h e r to
inconsequence.16

16. Virginia Stem Owens, Caring for Mother: A Daughter's Long Goodbye (Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox Press), p. 42.

© Hquinox P ublishin g L td 2013.

348 Theology & Sexuality

In addition to these visions that visited my mother daily, she lost her
ability to tell the difference between waking reality and dreaming real-
ity. Sometimes, she would tell me her dreams like she was telling me
something that had happened to her the day before. She knows that it
was a dream, but the boundary between the dream world and the wak-
ing world is so porously draw n that it is as if she walks in and out of her
dreams fluidly. It is like the haunting, like ghosts that visit her and give
meaning to her existence. Very often, her mother, my grandmother, vis-
its her in her waking and her sleeping. Her mother, who died tragically
from an accident in 1957, is never too far from her heart and mind. With
Alzheimer's she has the power to raise the dead. Every day, she wants
to see her mother. And very often, she does. I wrote this in my journal
after a breakfast conversation with my mother:
My m oth er had been getting d ental w ork d o n e so she could n o t eat solid
foods for a couple of weeks. O ne m orning, w hile h aving breakfast, she
began to smile as if she rem em bered so m eth in g pleasant. Then in a play-
ful childlike, alm ost b ragging tone, she declares:

"Na uh juh gge, by ill na ra got da wat da!" "Last night, I w en t to 'th e country
of stars'" (referring to heaven, or the otherw orld, n ot this earthly w orld.)

With my persistent pro m p tin g , she began telling m e her dream .

"I flew there in clothes m y m o th er m a d e me. My m o ther alw ays m a d e m e

the m ost beautiful clothes. She alw ays said that I was the prettiest girl in
school. I flew there in clothes my m o ther m ad e me. But w h e n I saw m y
m other, she asked me w h at I did w ith all the clothes she m a d e m e and
w hy 1 was w earing w h at I w as w earing. I told h er th a t I co u ld n 't find
them. She asked me w h y I looked so tired and worn. I told h er that I d id n 't
have any teeth so I c o u ld n 't eat well. But I told h er that you are taking care
of me and how you are cooking things th at 1 can eat.

"She offered m e som ething to eat. But I co u ld n 't eat because I h a d no

teeth. I told her that I am okay. I sp e n t the w hole n ig h t w ith her a n d w h en
I w oke up, she was gone. She h ad flown away. I w a n t to see h er again. I
told her tha t I w anted to be w ith her. She told me, 'You are not long in that
w orld, so 1 will com e back soon' and flew away. She w as w earing a w hite
dress! She is an angel.

"I w as w earing a w hite dress b u t m y m o ther said th a t m y dress was shape-

less. I flew there to the co untry of stars b u t I d id not have the right clothes
to get into that co untry of stars. So 1 just sat an d talked w ith m o th e r w h o
flew in from the other w orld. I so b adly w an ted to see her and to be w ith
her, b u t w hen I w oke up, she was gone."

1 h ad heard th a t w hen som eone dead ap p ears in y ou r d rea m and offers

you food, you sh o u ld not eat it. If y ou eat it, th a t m eans you becom e p art
of the other w orld. Like Persephone, the G o ddess of the U n d erw o rld . Per-
h aps this is w hy Jesus ap p ea red to his disciples on the ro ad to E m m aus
and ate w ith them . He was p artak in g in a ritual tha t firmly p lan ted h im
in this w orld. It was in the breaking of the b read th at his disciples rec­

© E quinox P u b lis h in g l i d 2013.

 Pak Coming Home/Coming Out 349

ognized him because m aybe that is w hen he becam e fully resurrected in

bodily form —in eating the food of this w orld, he becam e of this w orld.
I am relieved that she rem em bered in h er dream th a t she h a d no teeth
and could not p artake of the food her m oth er offered her. I am also glad
that she did not have the ap p ro priate attire to fly w ith h er m o th er to the
country of stars, because if she did, she m ay not be sitting here eating h er
porridge w ith me. I am rem in ded here of the parable of the w e d d in g ban-
quet in Matt. 22:1-14 w here the invited g uest is th ro w n o u t of the b a n q u e t
because he did not h ave the ap p ro p riate w ed d in g attire.

Heavenly language, heavenly food, heavenly dress a n d m y g ra n d m o th e r

as an angel, all te m p tin g m y m o th e r to fly to the co u n try of stars. I am
p la y in g tug-of-w ar w ith m y g ra n d m o th e r. My g ra n d m o th e r tu g s h e r
from the other w orld. I am tu gging and h u g g in g h er to rem ain in this
world. Three generations of strong-w illed Kim-Pak w o m en inextricably
tied together by traum a, mem ories and stories, not just across generations
b u t across this w orld and the other w orld. A thin place, th a t's w h a t m y
m other is. Celtic spirituality speaks of a thin place as a place w h ere the
veil betw een this w orld and the other w orld is th in.17 They believe th at
beings from other w orlds visit this w orld th ro u g h thin places. W ith Alz-
heim er's, my m other becom es this thin place, negotiating the veiling an d
the unveiling, allow ing the tw o w orlds to meet.

I know that I will eventually lose the fight. My m oth er will inevitably eat
the food her m o ther offers h er and will w ear the dress she m akes for her.
My g ran d m o th er will tug one last time an d m y m o th er will fly ho m e w ith
her to the country of stars.

"C om e hom e, com e hom e, all w ho are w eary com e hom e;

Earnestly tenderly Jesus is calling, calling, O, sinner com e h om e."

Conclusion: Coming Home/Coming Out

These reflections are about "coming out.‫ ״‬Coming out is a powerful act
of confession —no, not in a sense of confessing our sins; rather, confes-
sion as credo —1 believe. I confess that this is who I am. It reminds me
of my evangelical Christian days when we emphasized the importance
of confession —that Romans 10:9 confession: "That if you confess with
your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord/ and believe in your heart that God raised

17. See Tim othy Joyce, Celtic Christianity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998). Celtics h a d
an intense belief in the afterlife. A nd the other w orld w as very close to a n d inter-
acted w ith their p resen t life. They believed tha t beings m oved easily from this w o rld
to the other. Spirits of ancestors can be found in certain places an d tim e s—called
"thin places" and "thin times." Deaths, wakes, the an n ual feast of Sam hain (arou n d
N ovem ber 1—All Souls, All Saints in the Christian calendar) are such thin times.
Thin places are b o u n d ary points betw een the m aterial w o rld a n d the other w orld.
Some places are sacred by their very n atu re —islands, m o u n tain o u s h ig h places, the
sea. O ther places are cemeteries, ring forts, m o u n d s in a field and wells. A veil th a t
obscures the other life is lifted in these thin times an d thin places.

© Kquinox P u blishin g Ltd 2013.

350 Theology & Sexuality

him from the dead, you will be saved/' This was the litmus test for
whether you were born again or not. Do you confess with your mouth?
Coming out is like that. And these reflections show the relationship
between coming out and coming home. I began with a story of my own
coming out and how it challenges the reductionist thinking of having
one coming-out story —like being saved once and for all. It is a contin-
ual living into and acts of re-commitment that by that very action, we
come home.
The second section, on ghostly haunting, is about secrets and shame
that have been so deeply closeted that we don't even have any memory
of them. Ah, how can I speak of these with my limited knowledge and failing
memory? Alzheimer's powerful disruption of these unspoken narratives
releases the ghosts —allows them to come out of the closet so that we
may know the "other" that haunts the self. In this way, we can acknowl-
edge the unknowable and explore new possibilities to hold each other
in that new space/new home.
The third section, Tug of War, is a coming out for my Mom, the person
she buried and hid for many years. Alzheimer's stripped away much of
her reserve, etiquette, propriety and bitterness that hardened her heart.
She dances, she sings, she dreams and delights in delicious treats. And
through that childlike spirit, my mother becomes a thin place and my
access to the other world. I hear Jesus saying, "Let the little children
come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs
to such as these" (Matt. 19:14).
Using personal narratives, stories and a dream, this article is an ex-
periment in performance —phantomogenic words that become "staged
words." I end here with Grace Cho's staged words which powerfully
evoke where I am.
I have alm ost arrived at a final destination. N ear the brid g e th a t crosses
into that other w orld m ad e strange by death, a sh ad o w y figure w aits to
m ake a reparative g e stu re —to perform the rite of u nk n o tting o u r tightly
w o u n d han, u nk n o ttin g it in a w ay th a t leaves us tied b u t loosens th e bind-
ings. A nd there at the edge, in the space th at hovers over the gap, I can
see her som ew h ere below —n o t w h ere we th o u g h t w e h a d secretly b u ried
her, b u t in the texture of life, in the g ro u n d of possibility for the thing I
call my self.18

B ib l io g r a p h y

Bhabha, H om i. "W orld a n d H om e." In Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Post
Colonial Perspectives, ed. A nne McClintock. M inneapolis: U niversity of M inne-
sota Press, 1997.

18. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora, p. 196.

© Eq uin o x P u b lis h in g Ltd 2013.

 Pak Coming Home/Coming Out 351

Cho, Grace M. 2008. Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten
War. Minneapolis: University of M innesota Press.
Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. M inneapo-
lis: University of M innesota Press, 2008.
Jones, Serene. Trauma and Grace. Louisville, KY: W estm inster Press, 2009.
Joyce, Timothy. Celtic Christianity. M aryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998.
Kolk, Bessel A. van der. "The C om pulsion to Repeat the T rau m a Re-enactment,
Revictimization, and Masochism." Psychiatric Clinics of North America 12.2 (June
1989), pp. 389—411.
Kundtz, David, and Bernard Shlager. 2007. M inistry among God's Queer Folk: LGBT
Pastoral Care. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.
Mace, Nancy L., and Peter V. Rabins. 2006. The 36-Hour Day , 4th ed. Baltimore, MD:
Johns H opkins U niversity Press.
O wens, Virginia Stem. 2007. Caring for Mother: A Daughter's Long Goodbye. Louisville,
KY: W estm inster John Knox Press.
Rothschild, Babette. The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma
Treatment. N ew York: W.W. N orton, 2000.
Segal, Gregg. "R em em bered: The A lzheim er's P h oto g rap h y Project." h ttp ://w w w .
g reg g segal.com /photography/rem em bered.sw f (accessed N o v em b er 15, 2011).

© Kquinox P u blis hin g L td 2013.

Copyright and Use:

As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use
according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as
otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement.

No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the
copyright holder(sV express written permission. Any use, decompiling,
reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a
violation of copyright law.

This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission
from the copyright holder( s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of ajournai
typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However,
for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article.
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific
work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the
copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available,
or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s).

About ATLAS:

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously

published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association
(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American
Theological Library Association.