Reviews

The kindest insult

That Mrs Park wore a woollen overcoat and scarf on an unusually warm spring afternoon was not disconcerting to me. After all, this uniform is typical of many mentally ill elderly folk living a tenuous existence on the streets of San Francisco. Her paranoid rants about the end of the world and the neighbours who were spying on her also left me unmoved. What was painfully upsetting to me, however, was the anger and offence she took at my need for a Korean language interpreter.

Mrs Park stopped growling and gesticulating long enough to appear hurt

"If he is Korean, why does he need someone to speak his language for him?" Mrs Park exhorted through the translator as she eyed me suspiciously. The interpreter shifted nervously through her own embarrassment as she channelled this message to me.

Having grown up in the only Korean family within several counties in rural Ohio, I did not place learning my "native tongue" high among my childhood priorities. Not that my immigrant parents didn't try to teach my brother and me the Korean language; but what language skills I did develop eventually withered away from lack of use and interest. After all, most of my peers were white, and learning the latest rules and nuances of popular culture were increasingly important as I grew older.

A fierce nationalism characterises most Koreans, within which the primacy of identity is closely tied to fluency in the Korean language. During my first trip to Korea, taken after graduation from medical school, I vividly recall anger and embarrassment when a taxi cab driver took a maliciously circuitous route around Seoul, in order that he could have more time to berate both my mother for not teaching me Korean, and me for not being dutiful or interested enough to learn the language myself.

Koreans here and abroad have had an ambivalent relationship with the United States, stemming from many reasonsnot least of which are the Korean war and the persistent division of North from South Korea, determined by forces from without the Korean Peninsula. The history of Korea is filled with episodic occupation by other countries, including Japan. Subsequently, the survival of Korean language and culture is testament to the nationalism, pride, and resistance to assimilation demonstrated by these "Irish of the East" through the centuries.

Now, as Mrs Park interrogated me further about my psychological shortcomings related to my Korean muteness, I tried in vain to turn the tables on her and raise my own agenda.

"Please tell Mrs Park that her blood test for syphilis is positive, and because of our concern for her mental illness, we would like to do a procedure called a spinal tap."

As the translator and I attempted to convey this message, Mrs Park stopped growling and gesticulating long enough to appear hurt, instead of angry.

For a moment I imagined she was recollecting painful memories of a past life in Japan, where she served as a "comfort woman" for Japanese infantrymen during the second world war. Stigmatised forever, reviled by both the Japanese who had physically and sexually abused her, and the Koreans who had spiritually disowned her, she became a woman with a language and culture, but without a country.

This reflection was short lived, however, as she quickly resumed her diatribe of anger and insults of which I made out a few threads, including "traitor" and "ingrate."

Frustrated at my inability to get on with a busy clinic schedule, I muttered in exasperation, "gijebeh." As a child, I had heard my mother and her friends use this word to describe any woman with whom they were angry or disappointed.

At this utterance, which translates roughly as "little girl," Mrs Park's face lit up, and she laughed heartily, embracing my hands warmly. The translator even covered her mouth and giggled, as she looked away from my confused gaze.

The act of calling an elderly woman a "little girl," within the Korean culture of hierarchy and filial piety, should have been one of both great insult and disrespect. However, Mrs Park stopped laughing long enough to shake my hand again, and to tell me that she would consent to the lumbar puncture. In fact, she genuinely connected with me after that visit, greeting me with a smile and often regaling me with stories of her youth during her subsequent office appointments.

I never asked her why she suddenly accepted my cultural naivety, or what motivated her to tolerate my inadvertent affront to Korean pride that was inherent in my inability to be a "native speaker." Perhaps my remark was the kindest insult she had ever received, which had arisen out of my desperation as a fellow Korean who, like her, was in many ways still a foreigner in America.

Jonathan Han, physician. 

New Kensington, Pennsylvania
hanjk{at}msx.upmc.edu