K-Pod is back! To kick off Season 5, co-hosts Catherine Hong and Juliana Sohn present a special two-parter. First, they preview the upcoming season, which, as they explain, will look a bit different this time around. Instead of focusing on the lives of individual artists and creatives, they’ll be chatting with experts on a range of Korean American cultural topics. The first of these episodes will focus on language; other episodes in the works will center on Korean cultural traditions and celebrations, Korean American mental health and traditional Korean medicine. (Bet you didn’t know that Juliana’s dad made her and her sisters drink deer blood!) In part two of the episode, we take the time to get to know our co-hosts a little better. Juliana and Catherine discuss being moms of halfie (sorry, “biracial”) children, Juliana’s family’s reaction to her divorce, Catherine’s dad’s touching 87th birthday and the importance of preparing legacy portraits. Bonus: check out the YouTube version to see Catherine’s dog sauntering around her living room.
Catherine Hong & Juliana Sohn
April 18, 2023

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Transcript
Catherine Hong:
Hi, and welcome to K-Pod, the podcast about Korean Americans in arts and culture from Korean American Story. I’m Catherine Hong, a writer and editor.
Juliana Sohn:
And I’m Juliana Sohn, a photographer.
Catherine Hong:
We thought we’d do a different sort of episode this time to introduce our new season, which is season five.
Juliana Sohn:
So, we usually mainly focus on individuals who really work in art. And I think during our interviews with our guests, we’ve noticed that there are certain common threads, or just things that have really piqued our curiosity, and that has a lot to do with our shared culture and the stories around the culture of Korean Americans. And so we decided that we were going to do a whole season based on cultural topics, where it’s less about individual stories, but about the traditions and cultural themes that we grew up with, and how they’ve changed.
Catherine Hong:
So we thought we’d do an episode just to explain how we’re going to shake it up a little bit this season. So, a few of the topics that we plan to discuss: one will be about language; one will be about wellness and medicine, alternative medicine or Asian medicine; and one will be about traditions and rituals; another one will be about mental health. So let’s just give people a taste of what we’re interested in exploring.
Our first guest who we’ve booked is Professor Young-mee Cho, who is a really distinguished professor of linguistics at Rutgers. We want to interview a linguist because during the time we’ve been doing this podcast, we often have so many questions about language as, maybe, we learned it as kids, versus what’s being used now.
Juliana Sohn:
There’s been a change, since when we were kids, to the spelling and romanization of the Korean language. And so I think the Ks became Gs and…
Catherine Hong:
Right, there’s no consistency.
Juliana Sohn:
There isn’t.
Catherine Hong:
So you can look up five different ways to spell bulgogi.
Juliana Sohn:
Yes.
Catherine Hong:
And it’s spelled differently on every website, newspaper.
Juliana Sohn:
And when we interviewed Eric Kim, who writes about Korean food for The New York Times, he said that he struggled, because there were spellings, like two Ts in a row. And I thought all of that was really fascinating.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah. There are many questions that I’m excited to ask because growing up in my family, my mother, who was obsessed with learning English as a young woman, she continues to read a lot, and she’s always calling me and asking me to parse the very specific definitions of words and phrases. And often, she’ll tell me about a Korean word that there is no equivalent in English. And I always think that’s so interesting, like what are the words she wishes there was a way to say succinctly in English?
Juliana Sohn:
Absolutely. And I noticed that too. One of my favorite phrases are the ways Koreans express closeness and intimacy, is the use of the word 우리, like “our.” And “our daughter, our son.” And that isn’t anything that there’s an equivalent of in the US, and that kind of term of endearment. And I think a lot of people can take that, and read into it, there’s the collective, and how Koreans, or Asians, are very community minded, less individualistic. I don’t know how much of that actually is true, but I am curious to ask these questions.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, yeah. So we have a lot of questions for our linguist. One of the next topics: like a lot of Korean Americans, my dad’s a physician, and in my own household, I don’t remember a whole lot of Asian medicine. I think because my family was very interested in assimilating, you know, “Western medicine, rah, rah.” Then, when I really thought about it, I do remember, for instance, my mom had really bad rheumatoid arthritis, and she did go have some herbal teas made by someone, I think a Chinese doctor.
Juliana Sohn:
Hanyak (한약 ).
Catherine Hong:
She had Hanyak (한약) she was drinking tea made from the antlers of a deer, and how terrible it smelled. And I remember her, at the time, telling me that she knew it would not work, but she was desperate and she was going to try it.
Juliana Sohn:
So, did it work for her at all?
Catherine Hong:
It didn’t work, as I recall. And since then she’s had traditional medicine, which has really helped, injections. But recently, I chatted with her about it, and she remembers it working wonderfully. And it’s really interesting, like now, she thought it was the greatest.
Juliana Sohn:
My parents were small business owners. They had a beauty supply store in downtown Newark. They didn’t really speak English very well. They only really hung out with other Korean people at Korean church, and we only spoke Korean at home, and we only ate Korean food at home. And I think because of that, I had a much more Korean traditional upbringing, without as much assimilation. And we had a ton… My mom always said my dad was kind of a country bumpkin, and his family were less sophisticated. So that meant that we had a lot of belief in traditional, superstitious remedies. We did ddah 따, where if we had an upset stomach, my parents would get to do this, where they would take all the blood from my shoulder and arm, and then wind a piece of thread around my thumb, and then they would prick it, and magically, it would feel better. My parents were always brewing something on the stove that smelled up the house. We had to drink it. But we also did things like deer antlers. We live in the country, and so they would try to go hunting deer in our woods. And that also meant that if there was a fresh roadkill on the side of the road, they would pack it up —
Catherine Hong:
Oh my god.
Juliana Sohn:
… in their trunk and bring it home. And we did all sorts of weird remedies and things like that.
Catherine Hong:
So, they would take the antlers off a deer?Do you remember them sawing that thing off?
Juliana Sohn:
… it was “foraged”. Yeah!
Catherine Hong:
Wow. That’s really good, potent, fresh deer antler…
Juliana Sohn:
Not only that, my parents would totally be so embarrassed if I said this, but they actually believed that if you drank the blood of a deer and eat the liver, you would get so much iron, it would really bolster your strength. And they used to make us drink deer blood.
Catherine Hong:
Holy shit.
Juliana Sohn:
From these roadkill animals. So I mean…
Catherine Hong:
I’m learning a lot.
Juliana Sohn:
… a total different upbringing from your Great Neck childhood.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, no, I think my dad was still so excited about antibiotics. He carried around antibiotics wherever we went, like on a ski trip, and if one of us were feeling ill or had a cut, he’d whip out some tube or some pills and just start administering them. So we’re hoping to interview an acupuncturist and maybe an herbalist.
One of our other topics istraditions and rituals, we’ve been thinking about the way that Korean Americans have been celebrating weddings, funerals, chuseok(추석) and in a way, that… Maybe they did it more privately in the past, maybe now with more acceptance of, and celebration of Asian traditions in general, and explosion of social media, people are really doing it up. When you have your child’s first birthday, you can rent these elaborate displays, things that I don’t think you could do to that extent when we had our own kids.
Juliana Sohn:
Well, yeah.
Catherine Hong:
People are really…
Juliana Sohn:
And that wasn’t that long ago. There have always been places where you could rent the plastic fruit in a stack, so that you didn’t have to cut out fruit all the time. And the elaborate 가자, those stacks. Because I remember my mom rented those plastic ones for my son’s dol (돌), and we just put it on a coffee table in front of the sofa in my living room and did some wonky pictures. But by the time my cousin, who grew up in Queens, had his first kid, he’s about 15 years younger than me, it’s become incredibly fashionable to have these almost like bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah style 돌..
Catherine Hong:
And people are inviting their friends from work. It’s not just their Korean relatives.
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s all really fascinating. There was an article recently by Aileen Kwun, and she wrote an article in The New York Times about how millennials and young people are redefining traditions for themselves. And it’s exactly what we have been thinking about. I’ve practiced Jesa (제사) , which is paying respect to your ancestors, with my parents, who are very, very religious. So we would go to my grandparents’ grave, we would do the Jesa, we would do these funerary prayers, and I had to wear black or dark colors for three years after my grandma died. And then when I left my parents’ home, and I’m a college student, and now I’m an adult, I kind of always just followed along their traditions. And if they didn’t call me to come and, “Oh, we’re doing this,” I just never did it.
But now that I’m a parent, and I’m an adult, I realize that I can actually carry on those traditions myself. And to be honest, I don’t want to replicate exactly what my parents did, because that’s their traditions for them. And even though it may be more authentic, I just want it to be more authentic to me, so that I don’t feel like I’m parroting something that doesn’t feel right. So this year I did my first Jesa at home. It was just for me, but it had pictures of all my family members who had passed for the past two generations.
Catherine Hong:
And what did your kids think of that, when they saw the little shrine that you made?
Juliana Sohn:
Emmett looked at it and he thought — Emmett is my 16-year-old. And I put it in the living room, on top of the credenza, where it was on display in the middle of the room. And he thought it was really nice. I left it up there for a week and a half, and it’s actually still up there. A nice, pretty bouquet of flowers. And it’s almost like they’re in your eyesight, line of vision, every time you go to the kitchen, and you think about them. Even if you don’t consciously think about them, you look at them. And he thought it was a really great way to honor your ancestors, because I had to explain to him why I did it, and what it was for. And he loved it.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah. Well, this leads us to talking a little bit about what I think is super cool, which is your funerary projects project. So I should explain that Juliana, who’s, of course, a photographer, one of the projects that she’s been working on for maybe over the past 10 years?
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah.
Catherine Hong:
Has been taking portraits that Koreans prepare to be shown at their funeral before they die. It’s something that can be seen as sort of morbid, but for a lot of Koreans, because they’ve grown up with this tradition, they don’t see it as morbid, more just a way of preparing — knowing, eventually, you’re going to have a funeral, and being prepared, and having a portrait taken the way that you’d like to be remembered by your family. So Juliana, years ago, did a series of these portraits. Many of them were of her family members, but also, seniors she met at a senior citizen center?
Juliana Sohn:
At a senior center, at my parents’ church, and community centers. So I would offer the services for free. And I was following a format that had pre-existed me, because my parents’ church, they would have a parishioner who was an amateur photographer who would set up. And if you look at the Korean newspapers, there are lots of people who do this, where they go to a center in Korea somewhere, or a park, and somebody well-meaning sets up a little photo booth, and they take portraits of the seniors.
Catherine Hong:
It can feel a little bit peremptory, a ind of churning through of people and just taking these pictures. So what Juliana was doing was spending time getting to know the subjects of her portraits and giving them time to relax and express how they want to be remembered, and maybe talk about why they chose to wear what they were wearing. And I think she was able to capture much more personal, lively portraits that really expressed people’s personalities. And in more recent years, Juliana’s been doing that, and exploring even more personalized types of portraits taken in people’s own homes.
Juliana Sohn:
So, when I first started taking these youngjeong sajin (영정 사진) when I first started them, I called them “funerary portraits” because they were used at funerals and at ancestor worship rituals, and that’s just what everyone called them. And then I photographed Catherine’s mother. Catherine’s mom is so bright, curious, and one of the first things she said to me is, “You know this 영정 사진]? Funerary, funerary. It’s not the literal translation. I’m trying to think back to the root of this word and what it really means.” And I was so excited, because I had actually tried to Google it, and had done some research on my own and hadn’t gotten very far. So with Catherine’s mom’s help, she said that the actual root and the meaning of youngjeong (영정) means “veneration”, “commemorative.”
Catherine Hong:
Which is such a nicer way to refer to these portraits.
Juliana Sohn:
Yes, yes, yes.
Catherine Hong:
Because funerary portrait sounds completely depressing and forbidding.
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, it’s also single function, because it’s just for the funeral. And that is an important event, for sure. But these pictures get pulled out for the ancestor worship, and they live on for every ] 제사. So if anything, they are legacy portraits. So that’s what I’ve been calling them.
Somebody who steps into a tradition… I want to help preserve that tradition, and give my sitter what they want. So I just adopted the format that was out there, and I’ve kind of come to realize that I don’t know how pleased or happy they are with that format; where they’re rushed in, they’ve got 15 minutes, 20 minutes to get their picture done, and then they’re rushed out. And it certainly isn’t the way that I conduct any of my other portrait sessions. And, after many years, I got a little brave to think that, “I think I’m going to step in and shake it up. I think I’m going to have to impose the way I work on these pictures, so that I can have a perspective, and direct them, because I think they’re going to be happier with those pictures.” And I scheduled an appointment with Catherine’s parents, and Catherine’s dad definitely wanted the white background, and…
Catherine Hong:
Which is more traditional.
Juliana Sohn:
Mm-hmm. And he wore a suit. And Catherine’s mom was a lot more playful. And we did different variations, where we had this silk screen that she had gotten when she was married, and we used that as a background. We had one that was a cleaner background. We had flowers, and she tried a hanbok, and her favorite dress. Hair up, hair down.
Catherine Hong:
And she loved it. And I think what really struck me was, and Juliana’s sensitive to this fact, that when you become someone in your eighties, men or women, but particularly women, they have a loss of this sense of self-care, attention to beauty, having people look at you. And so my mom really appreciated this opportunity for somebody to come and help her with her hair, and help her with her makeup, and fuss over her a little bit, because she hadn’t had that in a long time. And I think for all these older people that you’re working with, it’s a really memorable portrait session.
Juliana Sohn:
I think that is so enriching and meaningful for me as well. And I think that’s what was missing when I did the signup sheet, and I was trying to photograph 20 people in a day. Where they may get the actual picture that they need, but for me, the whole process really means more to me than the final picture. The final picture is a document of the process and the experience. And I really appreciate the time I was able to spend with your mom, that she got so much out of it, and that the portrait of her is a reflection of how she felt being seen, and talking about her life, and her earliest childhood memories. And I think you can see all those things in her face. And those are the kinds of portraits that I would like to do more of going forward with the legacy project.
Catherine Hong:
Absolutely. Should we talk a little bit about the mental health episode we want to do?
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah.
Catherine Hong:
So, I think last year, I was writing a personal essay for Real Simple magazine, and at one point, I was interviewing some therapists, and I’d heard about this book written by a Chinese-American therapist [Jenny T. Wang] called Permission to Come Home. It’s about Asian American mental health. And I was so moved by it, because she really makes a case for finding an Asian American therapist if you’re an Asian American, and how helpful that can be, because you don’t have to explain these basic concepts that are shared by so many Asian American families, like parental expectations, scholastic pressure, immigrant struggles…
Juliana Sohn:
Filial piety.
Catherine Hong:
There’s nothing new about this, yet I think when you try to talk to even a very sympathetic, maybe Caucasian, therapist, they might spend half a session explaining to you, “Oh, don’t worry about what other people think.” Or, “Don’t worry about your parents, think about yourself,” when it’s maybe impossible, if you’ve been raised with certain ethos, to discard all that. It was so interesting to me to finally talk to someone about this. And it can be hard to find an Asian American therapist, or a Korean American therapist. It can be really hard for an older Asian person who might not have such good English to find a Korean-speaking therapist. And of course, there’s a lot of social stigma still—
Juliana Sohn:
Absolutely.
Catherine Hong:
… in Asian American communities. “Oh, you just got to suck it up. Don’t complain. You think you’ve got it hard? There’s so many…”
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, yeah.
Catherine Hong:
“Think about all the other people, and how hard it was for your grandfather to come here,” you know.
Juliana Sohn:
Can you think of a generation that needs therapy more than the Korean Americans who immigrated here? My mom is just wonderful, but as a woman who married into a family of four men, and she married the oldest son, she talks about how she was treated as a servant for I don’t know how many years of her life, and all her life was just cleaning, caring, doing all the work. And I still think that, even though she suffered a lot of trauma from the war, moving to a new country, some of the worst trauma that she still deals with is how she feels that she was mistreated by her in-laws. How, as a woman, she didn’t feel like she had any value, even though she was contributing so much. And it’s like a song she sings every day. And I really think that if she had some therapy, and a willing ear, somebody who could help her work through this, that it would just make her so much of a happier person, and…
Catherine Hong:
You mean if she had had therapy during the hard time, or…
Juliana Sohn:
No, now, even!
Catherine Hong:
… just now, just to get over what happened in the past?
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, get therapy now. So, finding a Korean-speaking therapist who has an understanding of trauma and generational trauma, I think, would be so beneficial for her.
Catherine Hong:
And we did talk to Jason Kim about therapy, and he talked about how he really searched high and low to find a Korean American therapist. And when he did, it made the world of difference. Lots to discuss there.
I often think about how our kids, when they were younger, they used to look a lot alike, because they looked, as I always thought, they looked half, they looked like halfies, they’re hapa, which is a word that I learned, maybe only when I was 20 years old.
Juliana Sohn:
Emmett and Leo with their cheeks.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah. But then more recently, I’ve learned that we really shouldn’t be using that terminology, “half,” because it implies a lesser than.
Juliana Sohn:
Mm-hmm. The term is…
Catherine Hong:
So, the term is biracial. So we’re both raising biracial Korean American children.
Juliana Sohn:
And in my case, Korean English children.
Catherine Hong:
Exactly, exactly. So I’ve had to almost change my thinking. It could be considered insulting for some.
Juliana Sohn:
Oh, there’s so many things that we grew up with…
Catherine Hong:
How do your kids think of themselves?
Juliana Sohn:
I remember maybe two years ago, Emmett was learning about Marxism, and all the -isms, you know, feminism, and he came home one day, and he said to me, “Mom, there’s so much injustice in this world, and I just feel so guilty. I have so many unearned advantages as a white male.”
Catherine Hong:
You’re like, “Excuse me?”
Juliana Sohn:
And I looked at him and I said, “Emmett, do you see yourself as white?” And he said, “I look white.” And he’s actually… he maybe looks more white than he does Asian. My older son probably looks slightly more Asian than white. And I thought it was interesting that for him, the identity was, “This is how other people perceive me, because this is how I present. I present more white, on the outside.” And so I had to talk to him about, “Well, you’re actually half-Asian. I mean, look at your mom. She’s standing right in front of you.”
And when you think about it, a lot of the time we spend, because his dad’s side of the family all live in England, we don’t get to see them very frequently. Whereas we’re always spending time with my parents, his grandparents. I said, all the traditions that we have and everything, I said, “In my mind, I think you’re growing up a lot more…”
Catherine Hong:
Has he…
Juliana Sohn:
“… Asian.”
Catherine Hong:
… considered himself more white because you were raising him, I think, with a lot of Korean traditions? More than my kids.
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah. Well, high school is still quite young. But my kids, it’s been interesting to witness their growth, because they go to a high school, which is kindergarten through 12th. And from kindergarten to sixth grade, Asians are maybe about 17% of the population, predominantly white. And then starting from 7th grade to 12th grade, they let in students from all over New York City, not just Manhattan. And that ratio becomes 55% Asian.
What’s really curious for me is that my kids ended up thriving more in the high school than in the elementary. They gravitated towards the Asian kids for friends. And now that my older son is in college, most of his friends are Asian. And he just sent me a picture on the 8th, so it was two days ago, and he went to a Korean American Students Association meeting. And I was like, “Holy cow!” I had never asked him to do anything like that, or I didn’t even know that there was something like that on his campus. And so I’m sitting here like, “Oh my gosh, why are you there?” I said, “Who’d you go with?” Because most of his friends are Chinese. And he said, “I went with these two people,” that I’d never heard of, “and, all these non-Korean people.” And I said, “Did you guys go for the food?”He said, “yes, they have kimbap here!”
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, he brought non-Koreans…
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, yeah.
Catherine Hong:
… white guys to the party.
Juliana Sohn:
So you never know what’s going to happen with their identity and how they see themselves. But it’s almost fascinating for me to watch. I don’t have that much control over them, because they are their own individuals. I don’t know if you see that with your kids?
Catherine Hong:
Well, I would say with my son, he, I think, likes to identify with the white side a little bit more. I feel like, that’s probably the accurate way to put it, which is a little disappointing to me, but I understand. In my town, it’s pretty white. He is resistant to a lot of my attempts to push him in, like, an Asian direction.
Juliana Sohn:
Wait, what is an Asian direction?
Catherine Hong:
Well, it’s the playing —
Juliana Sohn:
The cello?
Catherine Hong:
… the classical music, which he barely is still doing, but he’s still playing the cello. This year he took up wrestling, which I was firmly against, and his father too, but he really wanted to do it. And I think, God, that is a white boy sport, wrestling. I cringe just imagining it.
Juliana Sohn:
I don’t know, it’s not as white as sailing or…
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, I guess. Of course, I’d love him to be a little bit more Korean in spirit. And he has time. He does love Korean foodand I have to say that I find very touching and reassuring. In the morning, what he’d rather eat than anything else is some hot rice with some warm stuff ladled over it. He likes kimchi, he loves Korean food. And I have to hold onto that. My daughter, I think she’s interested in her Asian side, very much. She’s much more open to it.
Juliana Sohn:
Is that a recent thing, or she’s always been?
Catherine Hong:
She’s always been that way. And I share a lot with her. I feel, in many ways, that I myself am half-Korean, which is weird because I’m, by blood, 100% Korean. But because I was raised speaking English, my family really had the idea that my brother and I should be as assimilated as possible. My mom made such a heroic effort to try to learn recipes from the neighbors, and cook that ’70s, ’80s cuisine that people were cooking with Campbell’s soup. She gave it a good try. So we had a fair amount of Western food that she cooked, along with Korean food, of course. So in many ways, I feel like I’m half myself. So it’s kind of this interesting thing going on where I’ve only become more interested in my Koreanness in recent years. A lot of it through this podcast.
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, yeah. I have come to Asian American studies lately, very lately. I just kind of always took my Koreanness for granted. I think I’ve said this before, it’s the least interesting part of me. I just wear it, I can’t wash it off, it’s there. I’m just really learning to understand that we have a rich history as Asians in this country, and that we’re kind of shaping that history now as we speak. And right now with a lot of AAPI initiatives going on, a lot of the focus on the violence against the AAPI community during COVID, I think we’re in the midst of this shift and shaking up and change, and I can feel it, and I don’t know where it’s headed. But I can see that there’s different things popping up, it’s rapid growth and change right now, and we’re definitely just right in the middle of it.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah.
Juliana Sohn:
My mom is incredibly diligent with her medical issues, and she’s always walking, and she’s always doing everything that’s necessary. And she gets so upset with my dad for not keeping his diet, not exercising, and she gripes, and then they get into fights. And then I’m the empathetic daughter, so I always hear all of it. And there have been many times when I’ve said to her, “You should just get a divorce, Mom. Why didn’t you get a divorce back then? It’s not too late!”
Catherine Hong:
Do you mean it?
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah. One of the reasons why I say this is because she was terrible when I told her I was getting divorced from Phil.
Catherine Hong:
How many years ago was that?
Juliana Sohn:
That was, oh my gosh, it must be like six to seven years ago? And she thought that prayers and her meddling was going to fix it all. And at one point we were in a car ride, and it was just the two of us, and she just kept nagging at me. And I said to her, “Listen, do you love me, or do you love your reputation more? What is it? You’re worried about what your church friends are going to say?” I said, “Do you want me to be happy? Or do you care more, what your friends at church think?” I said, “Because you have not had a very happy marriage. Do you want unhappiness for your daughter, so you can save face at church? What kind of life do you want for me going forward? Is that why you keep asking me to stop getting divorced? How many times have I had to tell you? We’ve tried. You may not have known about it, but we have tried.”
And after that, she called me up, and she said, “I love you, and I want you to be happy.” And she’s not nagged me about the divorce once since then. She still says, “I wish you could still stay married. Why can’t you two stay the way you are now?” Because I’ve taken the whole Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore approach to divorce, where you consciously dismantle the marriage, but we’ve kept the family intact.
And I think even my ex was really worried about this, because he left his family in England, and my family really embraced him. And I just couldn’t imagine saying, “You can’t come to Christmas. You can’t come to New Year’s.” And I couldn’t imagine even asking my kids to not spend a holiday with them. And so my ex has been a part of every single family holiday, every single birthday celebration, every single vacation, Christmas, New Year. And it’s made my mom really happy, because she has not told any of my aunts and uncles, or my…
Catherine Hong:
Oh, they don’t know?
Juliana Sohn:
… anyone at church.
Catherine Hong:
All right, nobody tell Juliana’s relatives about this episode!
Juliana Sohn:
My mom even says, “Okay, he’s showing up for the family lunch? Great, because nobody knows that you’re divorced. And nobody needs to tell them.”
Catherine Hong:
I kind of think it’s true. Why? Because this way, she’s stopped nagging you. She herself is more at peace with it. But if it lets things be easier with the rest of the family, let them be happy, right?
Juliana Sohn:
I think so too.
Catherine Hong:
I think it’s fine.
Juliana Sohn:
But it’s this whole double bind that the Korean community is in. They’re so incredibly restrictive, but nobody can really adhere to that rigidity. And so everybody finds a way around it. Everyone’s kind of sneaking around, and lying to their family members. And again, I’m thinking about Daniel K. Isaac and his mom, and his mom not having told her church friends that he’s gay, and saying, “Can you drop me off at the corner of the church, so they don’t see you?”
Catherine Hong:
Yet they all know.
Juliana Sohn:
I’m sure they must’ve figured it out. He’s pretty famous now.
Catherine Hong:
So I think your relatives know as well. All it takes is one of them to tell the others, and they’re acting as if they don’t know, to give your mother that peace.
Juliana Sohn:
I think they don’t know.
Catherine Hong:
Okay. We won’t tell them.
Juliana Sohn:
Because who’s going to tell them? I’m not going to go up to them and say, “Do you know I’m divorced?” And my ex shows up at every family function, and we still do family portraits together. And I think the way divorce is generally done in [American] culture is not something that I believe in, which is, it splits apart… half again, this half and that half. We split apart the holidays, we split apart weekends, that kind of thing. But we don’t have anything written down on paper. And the kids are happy, we’re happy. We have game night, and play Boggle all the time, and we have a very amicable and very high-functioning family. And I don’t think that is necessarily Korean or American, I just think that it’s important to make things work for you and your family.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, fortunately you could. I think for some people that’s untenable.
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah. I would say it wasn’t always super easy, but it’s definitely worth it in the end.
Catherine Hong:
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Juliana Sohn:
Are you comfortable talking about your dad?
Catherine Hong:
Oh, my dad’s health?
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah.
Catherine Hong:
Well…
Juliana Sohn:
Now your mom is taking care of him.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah. Well, my dad just turned 87 and, similar to your dad, has not been very diligent about his own health, about doing the exercises he’s supposed to do, the walking.
Juliana Sohn:
What are his ailments?
Catherine Hong:
Wow. He had a lot of medical issues in the last year. He was hospitalized a few times. He had a kidney infection, he had a stroke. He has a heart condition, an underlying heart condition. And at this point, I think it’s just age.
So at one point, my mom said to me, “Cathy, is the portrait ready? Is it framed?” Because Juliana had taken this portrait months ago, and I had it nicely in this cardboard mailer. And I said, “Yeah, Mom, I have it.” She’s like, “Get it framed, ASAP. I feel like your dad could die at any moment.” And it filled me with terror. And it’s just true, because he was so in and out of the hospital, he was so frail, and she was watching his every move, and some days he’d seemed really out of it, and she’s like, “I have this sense. You better get it framed.”
So of course, immediately, I ordered a frame online. I felt very reluctant to be doing this. ‘Oh, now I’m really, literally preparing for his death by putting it in the frame.’ So I rushed it. And I hastily ripped the photograph that Juliana had printed for me, this big, beautiful, oversized portrait. I ripped it in such a way that it just was too obvious. It wasn’t on his face, but I had ripped it. So I couldn’t even tell my mom. I called Juliana, probably at seven in the morning, and said, “Juliana, this could all be fine, but in case my dad happens to… I need this. Can you please reprint this portrait?” She reprinted it, and he’s been fine! That was months ago. So…
Juliana Sohn:
False alarm. Thank goodness!
Catherine Hong:
It was a lot of alarm for nothing. But yes, so that’s our connection.
Juliana Sohn:
Well, I think that every time I get together with my friends, I’m in my early fifties, if they are lucky enough to still have a parent, or both parents, still living, all we talk about is their health. And there is a sense of urgency when I hear about their situation, where I think, “Do you have a portrait set aside?” And I have this urgency of, “You got to do it. You got to get it. Call me in, before it’s too late.”
Not only their legacy portrait, but I really believe that the big multi-generational family portrait is a way to have an event, or an experience, where everyone’s together. And then to look at that picture, think about that day and that time, and that it actually helps people with the grieving and healing process, once their loved one passes. So I really encourage everyone to document your family gatherings, for Thanksgiving dinner, or Sunday dinner, or whatever it is. I think it just helps with the grieving. And if you ever read Marie Kondo, she says the easiest things to let go are the clothes, and then your books, and the hardest things to let go of, because they have so much meaning attached to them, are the photos and letters.
Catherine Hong:
That’s true. So, for my dad’s birthday, my brother and I finally got our act together, and instead of just having a meal, we spent a really lovely day. First of all, we got in the car. He hasn’t really left Westchester in the past few years. It’s hard for him to get around, and he doesn’t have the energy. We took him to Bayside, to his favorite Korean Chinese restaurant, which we had gone to when we were kids. It’s Korean-style Chinese food, which is its own cuisine.
Juliana Sohn: Jiajiangmyeon (짜장면).
Catherine Hong:
It’s Jiajiangmyeon (짜장면) but there’re also all these other dishes that I consider weird, I never came to love. What are some…
Juliana Sohn: Tangsuyuk(탕숭육).
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, which is…
Juliana Sohn: Jjamppong (짬뽕).
Catherine Hong:
Right, like a…
Juliana Sohn:
The greatest hits.
Catherine Hong:
Like a very, very, very fried pork with the sweet and sour orange sticky sauce on top. A lot of abalone and…
Juliana Sohn:
Oh, you splashed out for the good stuff.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah. So we went to his favorite restaurant, which I remember as a kid, I thought it was disgusting and strange. This time around, I liked it a little bit more, but my kids had the same reaction, like, “What the hell is this food? This is not Chinese, this is not Korean! This is a weird situation!” We went there, and then we drove around our old neighborhood in Great Neck where we grew up. We went to visit the outside of our two old houses that I remember growing up in. It really made me appreciate how my dad came to America, and he figured out a way to give us a great childhood. I think the education in the public schools I got were better than the ones my own kids are getting. I really appreciate what he did. And so that was great.
And then, the best of all, we went back to my brother’s house. My brother had prepared a slideshow of the actual slides that we had looked at when we were kids. He had fixed up the old slide projector, that he had to get extra parts for on eBay. He fixed up the carousel, and we watched a slideshow of when we were little, and that was amazing.
Juliana Sohn:
Amazing.
Catherine Hong:
And even our kids were fascinated, because the technology was something they’d never seen before. The pictures had a warmth when you look at them through the slide projector, and it’s great looking at pictures of your parents when they were young, you remember…
Juliana Sohn:
Hong family historical tour.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah, and you remember, “Oh Mom, I remember that scarf you used to wear.” And it all comes back, and it was lovely.
Juliana Sohn:
The power of images.Family pictures. How about your mom?
Catherine Hong:
She is a great example to me. She’s someone who loves literature, is still always trying to learn more language, more expressions. She’ll be reading Shakespeare, she’ll be reading The New York Times Book Review. She’ll be sending screenshots and asking me, “What does this mean?” She’s inspiring to me, she pushes me, because if she can learn English and speak fluently, I never even got my mind around conversational Korean! And she’s still pushing herself to learn and express herself. There’s nothing more inspiring than that.
Juliana Sohn:
I think your mom is pretty unique and amazing. I remember when we went over there to do their legacy portraits, she had this two-inch thick volume, like the complete works of Montaigne on the table.
Catherine Hong:
Montaigne, yeah.
Juliana Sohn:
And I thought, “Oh my gosh!” I don’t think my parents read at all. They watch a lot of TV. My mom loves the singing variety shows, where they have kids coming out and they get scored. And so it’s a really different kind of relationship and the conversations that you have with your mom. And it was really nice to actually have those kinds of conversations with her about root words, and the meanings in history, and how they could have been shaped. I think she’s an incredible resource, with a lot of stories.
Catherine Hong:
Oh, she’ll be pleased to hear that. So, I actually am using my mom as a resource, because when I told her we were interviewing this linguist, she had a lot of ideas for us.
Juliana Sohn:
Oh, I bet!
Catherine Hong:
So, I’m really looking forward to our first interview of the new K-Pod season.
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, I’m looking forward to our next interview in a couple of weeks in New Jersey. And I’m really looking forward to the culture season of K-Pod.
Credits
Co-host, Producer, Photographer
Juliana Sohn @juliana_sohn
Co-host, Producer, Editor
Catherine Hong @catherinehong100
Audio Engineer
AJ Valente
Executive Producer
HJ Lee
Production Manager
Kimberly YoungSun