Rebellious Daughters (16 page)

LOOKING FOR HAPPINESS IN AUSTRALIA

SILVIA KWON

I came to Australia when I was nine, in 1977, with my parents and two brothers, from Seoul. South Korea had begun to prosper after a war, but many of its people, if they had a chance to emigrate, did so.

We arrived here in the middle of the night with only a handful of suitcases, no furniture and little money. Within a matter of hours, we found ourselves marooned in a strange terrain of English-speaking Westerners, having only each other to rely on, figuring out our new world
like a puzzle to be solved collectively, and individually. Consequently, the ties that bind us as a family became tighter and, from my perspective, more constraining.

Although it was not altogether an unhappy time, as we revelled in many things – open spaces, clean air, houses with backyards, all sorts of epicurean luxuries we could actually afford, like bananas, chocolate and meat – it was clear to me that my parents were not happy. For them, it seemed the notion of happiness was almost irrelevant, as their lives were not about them, but the children.

As I grew older, I didn't like being at home, with its stifling environment circumscribed by expectations of getting ahead financially and of academic achievement and unspoken unhappiness. My parents' marriage wasn't good and their relationship worked best when my father worked away from home, on construction sites for lengthy periods of time, as he had done in their early years together when my mother was able to peacefully raise the children without worrying about him. But when we migrated to Australia, he was around a lot more and his moods cast an awful pall over the household. His temper at times turned violent. He would upend tables and smash furniture, and these unexpected outbursts made us nervous and wary for many days afterwards. It was like living with a time-bomb, as we tried to anticipate the next time he would strike out. My parents had
no idea – perhaps owing to the difficulty of their early lives and also because of their high tolerance for hardship – that their suffering was adversely affecting me and my brothers. From their point of view, we children were lucky to have such hardworking, self-sacrificing parents.

As soon as I could, around the age of 17 or 18, I began to stay out late. I had finished school and was enjoying the unstructured timetable of university hours. I learnt how to drive, I learnt to drink alcohol, I met people I never would normally come across in my neighbourhood in Perth, and I learnt to go to nightclubs. I loved the way that those darkened spaces made you forget your problems, and even who you were. I never had the money to buy many drinks, but from my jobs in fast food outlets, I had enough to pay for entry and I would roam these spaces all night, high on just being there, instead of home.

I listened to music – punk, pop and rock – coming out of the UK at the time and tried to copy the fashion as well. I bleached my hair and teased it with copious amounts of hairspray and gel. I read
Smash Hits, NME
and
The Face
. I was drawn to art and films. I developed a fascination with David Lynch's
Eraserhead
and
Blue Velvet
, and loved independent films like
Sid and Nancy
and
Prick up your Ears
, the biopic of Joe Orton, the English playwright from the ‘60s. It was an altogether
different type of cultural sensibility, different not only from the Korean one, but even from the Australian suburban one. In many ways, I felt closer to London than Perth. But more important, inspired by the fashion and music, was a different attitude that I adopted about what it was to be a person, whether female or male. I was not afraid to say ‘Fuck you'. This attitude was not only anti-authoritarian, it was also about being unafraid to stand out from the crowd, unafraid to assert myself as an individual visually and vocally – things which were not only unfamiliar to my parents but which they were afraid of. As migrants, they wanted to fit in.

Once I had saved enough to buy a car, I could escape the house any time and I soon became intoxicated by this freedom and the sense of independence that came with my status as an adult. I also began to realise that I secretly relished the power that came with my ability to defy my parents. There were many nights when I didn't come home until early morning. After hours of dancing in the nightclubs of Northbridge, clad in black, eyes rimmed with excessive quantities of kohl, I would drive my little Honda Civic over the Causeway bridge, with the wide and blue Swan River below me as the sun was coming up over the city, delighting in the quiet roads, satisfied with my nocturnal adventures.

Sometimes, I would fall into my bed at dawn, only to hear my mother get up in the next room for her early
morning cleaning job. My father, although physically there, was mostly absent in every other way. He had no idea and little interest in what my life was about. It was my mother who did the parenting, and she was too tired to do anything other than to confront me with questions I refused to answer about where I'd been all night and who I'd been with. At first, her face would grow stone cold, then she'd look at me with a wilting helplessness, realising the pointlessness of her interrogation.

She, of course, couldn't help but worry that things were getting out of control, that she had mistakenly given her daughter too much freedom. Back in Korea, daughters never would have been allowed to stay out late or frequent nightclubs. Although things were probably only a little different for girls in Korea in the late ‘80s, my mother held on to the traditional attitude she had brought with her to Australia. She was worried that she had come all this way to a foreign country only to have her children succumb to the ‘wild' lifestyles that she associated with the ‘loose' morals of the West.

It was in one of those nightclubs that I met a guy who was on a working holiday from Scotland and, without my parents' knowledge, ended up going out with him for six months before he had to return home. To me, he appeared exotic in the way that I must have seemed to him. Of Irish-Scottish ancestry, he was dark haired and green eyed, with pale skin, and his thick accent was full
of Celtic romantic yearning which for me was a major turn on. He was also seven years older than me.

When I announced to my parents that I was planning to go and see him in Scotland, it did not go down very well. They were, not surprisingly, horrified and worried. What kind of a person was he? What did he do? What did this departure mean? You are dropping out of university! What will you do in Scotland? Where will you live? Who will look after you?

I was 19.

In an Anglo-Australian household, a girl that age would be expected to have a boyfriend. But not in my family. My parents, having left Korea only a decade earlier, were struggling with the vast cultural gap that existed between their Korean values and those they confronted in their new homeland. In Korea, children typically lived with their parents until they were married to a so-called ‘suitable' partner. Many would have romantic liaisons but marriage was another matter and in many cases, these potential partners would need to meet the approval of the parents. My parents' own marriage had been arranged by a distant uncle of my mother's.

So my intention to travel to Scotland to be with a man whom they had yet to meet caused an uproar in the household, with my parents surmising that this would be the ruination of me. By this stage, though,
they were starting to resign themselves to the fact that I was beyond their control, that I had not only stopped listening to them, but that I had fully fallen under those Western influences they feared so much.

And that was the truth. I had learnt quickly about the personal freedom women in the West could have, and was excited to embrace it. My parents, of course, couldn't sway me from changing my taste in music and film or from seeing the Australian friends I was making. They had wanted me to assimilate, but only to a certain degree. Still, they were beginning to understand that they could not impose Korean values on a daughter who was being transformed beyond their understanding.

At the airport, my departure for Scotland felt both liberating and excruciating. The anguish on my mother's already weary face – aged through her years of working as a part time cleaner to make up the shortfall of my father's erratic working life and the burden of raising three kids pretty much all by herself – was almost unbearable. But at no time did I want to stay and comfort her.

I looked at her for the briefest moment, in full awareness of what I had done to her – there were no kisses or hugs – and headed towards the departure gate without turning back. I felt heavy hearted but relieved and so exhilarated by the adventure ahead that my pulse raced. I didn't know when I would come back and had very
little money but since I was in possession of a working visa, I knew I wouldn't end up sleeping rough.

After arriving in Scotland, the first thing I did was search for a job, which I found at the Italian fashion chain, Benneton, on the main street in Edinburgh. Now that I had income, I promptly moved in with the Scottish guy. To my family, I deliberately kept my living arrangements vague, telling my mother only that I was sharing an apartment, and that I was working and enjoying myself. I also told her that, as phone calls were expensive, I would not be phoning home often. I didn't write letters that much either, simply because I didn't want to know the family news in my absence, in particular my father's latest moods and whims. Of course, this behaviour also allowed me to keep my parents in the dark about what I was up to.

Through this period, I was aware that I was not only defying my parents but the traditional notion of Korean femininity, a fairly sacrosanct and revered ideal of womanhood which I found abhorrent and had vowed early on to never succumb to.

Although South Korea had improved rapidly economically since the end of the Korean War in 1953 to become a first world country and one of the most industrially advanced in the East, its social values, particularly regarding the status of women in Korean society, are still
very much defined by time old traditions (although I hear that divorce rates are climbing at an unprecedented rate).

The overwhelmingly dominant ideal of a woman, in Korean terms, centres on her role as wife and mother. A woman who chooses not to marry, or put career ahead of marriage and family, or remain childless, is regarded with suspicion and considered an oddity. I remember on a trip to Korea in my early thirties, my relatives and my mother's friends would openly enquire about my marital status: ‘Why is she not married? Is she going to get married soon? She had better be careful, time is getting on for her.' My mother reassured them that there was indeed ‘someone special' (she did not mention that I was then living with my boyfriend who later became my second husband) and things were looking up for my prospects. By that point in my life, I found Korean attitudes merely amusing. They were, I felt, incongruous in the modern, industrialised society I saw around me. There is a huge dating scene in Korea. Introduction agencies and websites dedicated to group dates and fostering romantic liaisons boast huge number of members. In this environment, remaining cautious about entering into marriage or, worse, rejecting the idea, is inconceivable to many Koreans.

Once married, a woman is not only expected to put the needs of her husband and children first, but make this sacrifice willingly and happily, embracing her fated
destiny as a devoted daughter, wife and mother. She must also be, in appearance and personality, demure, self-effacing, agreeable and immaculately groomed.

In Korean culture, women's suffering could take on a magnificence and magnanimity. I grew up hearing hallowed stories of women who held it together against the odds, defying truly unimaginable physical and mental limitations to fight and endure for the sake of the family unit. My mother's relative, for example, stayed with her alcoholic and gambling husband for the good of the children right until his death from liver failure, and when the two children from this particular marriage succeeded beyond all expectations, all the credit went to this supposedly saintly woman who had stoically sacrificed her personal happiness for the good of others. She is still spoken of by our extended family in hushed, revered tones. I vowed to myself that I'd never fall into this role.

I had been reminded of this ideal, which a Korean girl is taught to uphold unquestioningly from an early age, time and again by my own mother who, ironically, was also struggling to live up to it. In fact, I just could not take this model of womanhood seriously when I saw the way it trapped my mother so miserably in her own marriage. Even though she was immensely unhappy, she was unable to entertain the idea of ending it.

At times I suspected that my mother held onto her suffering too intimately, that it defined her as a woman of
strength and virtue. She had hoped our move to Australia signalled a fresh start in her marriage, but quickly learnt that although everything about our lives had changed, my father had not. And so I grew up watching my mother carry all the burdens of family as my father made irrational financial decisions without telling her, as he lost job after job, disappeared and reappeared from time to time, took no interest in the children. In later years, he fell deeper and deeper into religious mysticism of various Christian sects, which also seemed a kind of betrayal to my practical mother who had little time for such abstract matters.