Watermelon.
I look at the dark green watermelon atop the wooden cutting board in the kitchen. My mom stands, knife in hand, facing the watermelon. My brother and I are sitting around the kitchen island, kicking our feet in the air against the ceramic stand. My dad comes in from the backyard with my uncle; they had been watering my aunt’s tomato plants, and my uncle had been smoking. My aunt comes out from the bathroom, and my cousins come upstairs from the basement, where they had been playing video games on our GameCube. I jokingly chastise my uncle for smoking, and our cousins join us at the kitchen island.
We chat and chat and chat, about what, I no longer recall. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mom chop downwards. The two halves split apart and roll onto their backs, juice spilling from the middle and staining the chopping block. I watch in wonder as my mom flips the halves onto their faces and deftly hacks downward with her entire arm, cutting them into jagged triangles.
My mom sets down plates of the freshly cut watermelon in front of us. I sink my teeth into its flesh with a crunch, and watermelon juices run down the sides of my face. My shirt is sticky! I exclaim, and I laugh. After devouring the fruit down to just before the rind, I get up to wash myself off in the bathroom.
As cold water runs over my sticky hands, I can’t help but notice the smell of cigarette smoke lingering in the air. The butterflies painted on the wall observe as I stare at the cigarette butt in the toilet. I cough, and, walking back to the kitchen, I announce that the bathroom reeks of cigarettes. No one says anything, so I say it again. My brother shakes his head at me, so I stop. I sit back down at the island. My brother tells a joke, and we laugh. There’s another watermelon slice at my seat; I take another bite–slowly, slowly, slowly this time, and the sweetness overrides the smell of smoke clinging to my head from the walls of the bathroom.
Tangerines.
My dad brought home a large box of tangerines again, the leaves of which spill out from the tan box onto the dark, hardwood floor. I greet my dad, and I pull a tangerine out by the stem and sit at the kitchen table. My dad is still taking off his trucker’s vest at the front door, and my mom is putting his clothes into the laundry basket. My dad immediately heads to the bathroom to wash up, and my mom joins me at the kitchen table.
As I focus on peeling my tangerine, my mom lets out a deep sigh. I look up and ask her what’s wrong. It’s your brother, she says. I really don’t know what to do about him, she says.
Why don’t you trust him a bit more? I’m sure he does things other than play video games, I say.
Your dad’s always complaining to me that your brother still makes mistakes at work. And now he’s quitting to do God knows what. And then your brother complains that he hates working with your dad and that it makes him depressed. What am I supposed to do? I’m his mother. Of course I want him to be happy. I see nothing wrong with him trying out something new; he’s young! The issue is that I don’t see him putting in any effort towards anything. Don’t you think he should at least pretend to be putting in effort? The least he could do is show us some small progress to get us off his back.
Yeah, that really sucks. I pick at the pith on the tangerine and peel it from the center towards the end.
I’m always having to keep their complaints about each other to myself. Thank God I can at least tell you.
Why don’t you just host an intervention? Have them talk to each other?
You know how they are. They’ll just get mad and yell at each other. At least you’re home from college now, so I can tell you. And thank God we can at least trust you to do well in anything you do; you’re always putting effort into things.
I bite into a tangerine slice.
Ugh.
Sour.
My dad comes out from the shower and joins us at the kitchen table. How are the tangerines? My dad asks. They’re a little sour but otherwise okay, I say.
I get up from my seat at the kitchen table. I told my friends I’d play games with them, I say. Okay, have fun, my mom says. My dad doesn’t hear me; he’s already on his phone.
Apples.
I hear a knock at the door. I stare for a moment before calling for them to come in. My mother stands at the doorway with a bowl of freshly peeled and cut apples. She looks at me for a moment before she wordlessly passes them to me and leaves, shutting the door behind her gently.
My SAT II Math II exam is in a week. I haven’t touched my textbook since last year. The last time I took it, I got a 650–nowhere near good enough, and this was after going to tutoring.
My mother found out I hadn’t been studying for my second try today. The look of cold disappointment she gave me is still on my mind, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
The bowl is full to the brim with Kiku apples. I bite down; it’s quite juicy, and its sweetness is reminiscent of tart candy. My teeth hurt from the cold sting of the chilled apples. But nevertheless, I eat and eat until the bowl is empty.
I recall the look on my mother’s face. I dread the dinner table, but for now, I dust off my old textbook and begin to study.
Reflection
I would like to preface this reflection essay by acknowledging that it is really long, longer than it has to be for the purposes of this project. Also, while this was meant to be the reflection, it ended up being something of a personal essay, though I did not write it with that in mind. I tried to make it shorter, but navigating contemporary Confucianism is really difficult because of how contradictory people are in being “Confucian,” not to mention that the intersection of different identities strongly influence how people experience and practice Confucianism. I found that this held true for me while trying to think through how it is present in my life today–I, myself, have parts of me that distinctly conform to Confucian ideals and others that violently despise them. I struggled quite a lot, both while writing the stories and while writing this reflection. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything creatively, so I’m honestly kind of disappointed that I was unable to express a lot of what I wanted to. For example, I wanted there to be an ominous feeling that something wasn’t quite right beside the strange smoke smell in Watermelon, but I feel that I did not achieve the unsettling feeling that I was going for. In Apples, I couldn’t express my trying to resolve my guilt and shame over having betrayed the trust of my mom, who had given up so much to give me a chance at a more comfortable life in the US (supposedly, anyway–sometimes I wonder if this was truly the reason), nor could I express the immense stress I was under at the time to do perfectly at school while maintaining my identity as a good Korean girl. I do wonder if my inability to express these things through writing (especially given the style I chose to use) says something about the Confucian/ East Asian experience; it seems to parallel how a lot is lost in translation between people because true feelings are left unsaid and communicated through action. Also, while the writing style (no quotations, only explaining the actions happening around me) was intentional, I wonder if there was a better way to write it. The simplistic style purposefully kept thoughts and anything other than actions/ observations vague (Apples being a bit of an exception) because I feel that it is the same way in many Asian families–you only have actions to go off of, and you need to decipher them and figure out the emotions behind them. These stories were meant to help organize my thoughts on my experiences with Confucianism, but I’m not sure that they got that job done, and I leave this project deep in thought about my identity and my childhood experiences (as well as current ones).
The short stories that I wrote center around fruit motifs. Watermelon focuses on childhood innocence and the things that go unnoticed, often due to adults sheltering children. I specifically wrote about one of the many instances I had during childhood when there would be a really strong smell of cigarette smoke in the bathroom when there should have been no smokers in the house at the moment. As far as I knew, the only smoker in our house was my uncle, and the mystery smoker was something that I was curious about for a long time. As is implied in Watermelon, my aunt was the second, secret smoker in our house. Looking back on it now, my parents shielded me a lot from the “darker” (in quotes because some things that I was sheltered from were not as bad as others) sides of the people who I loved. My aunt didn’t want me to think of her as anything other than perfect, so she hid her smoking habits from me.
I didn’t write about this in Watermelon, but the specific example that comes to mind is my uncle. When I was in elementary school, my parents decided to move in with my aunt and uncle’s family (our cousins) because my aunt was going out of the country for work (she used to be a famous actress, not so much anymore–search up 노경주). I know now that it was a decision made not because my aunt would sometimes be in Korea but because my uncle was not present for his kids; he was borderline neglectful. I also had no idea about our family’s finances when we were younger, and it breaks my heart when I recall throwing a tantrum over a $60 toy that I ended up never playing with. So for me, the truth behind darker things–“the smell of cigarette smoke”–often went unnoticed because they were deliberately kept hidden from me, and my attention from anything that seemed strange was easily moved towards something happier and more fun–“the sweetness overrides the smell of the smoke.” Anyways, even within the narrative of my aunt and uncle, contemporary Confucianism as it is supposedly present in South Koreans is troubled. Keeping it a secret that my aunt was a smoker and that my uncle was a terrible parent maintains social harmony by keeping the children idolizing the adults and by making it so the children see the adults as respectable people to listen to and obey. My parents are also still very cordial with my uncle (again, maintaining social harmony). On the other hand, in this particular situation, it’s clear that my uncle does not fulfill the familial roles that are expected of him, highlighting that these experiences do not apply to every South Korean in every situation. Even so, he maintained social harmony in other ways. He was home just enough to not be abusively neglectful (people who didn’t know him well would have had no idea), and he tried his best to earn money for the family. He went to lots of workplace and church drinking and golfing events, which function as a way to maintain social relations and thus social harmony between co-workers. So it’s not as if he was radically non-Confucian; he maintained social harmony in ways that benefited him (earning money, getting along with coworkers, keeping up appearances as a good father) but not in other ways. I would say that most South Koreans have these contradictions present within themselves. No matter how Confucian people try to be, there will always be moments of slip-up where people go against the grain. I don’t think that this difference in behavior is always calculated, but there are definitely people who do use this to their advantage, and there are people who aren’t normally calculating who may occasionally weaponize maintaining social harmony. Heck, I do it. Apologizing for something I feel no remorse about to get my parents to stop scolding me or subtly implying that someone is being rude to get them to be more considerate are a couple of things I do a bit more often than I’d like to admit. So when people romanticize South Korean “respect culture” as extremely Confucian and always aiming to maintain social harmony, I cringe a little bit.
Although I deny that all South Koreans fit this model of Confucianism on an individual level, I cannot deny that maintaining social harmony is a major part of South Korean culture. It is extremely common for South Koreans to use alternative ways to communicate what we feel or to entirely conceal what is being felt. You can see in Tangerines that my mother keeps my dad and brother’s frustrations with each other to herself (and to me) because she wants to keep the peace between the two. You can also see that I simply leave while saying an excuse instead of stating that I’m tired of hearing her rant about the same thing every day or that I’m leaving just in case my dad tries to ask me about what I want to do with my future; doing so would be disrespectful and would disturb the social harmony, and you can also see that I dampen my dislike of the tangerines because they were brought home for us by my dad, and to truly express how much I disliked the tangerine (“ugh”) when my dad brought it home while thinking of us would be plain rude. In general, my family keeps quite a lot to ourselves to keep the peace. For example, as long as my dad doesn’t complain about how tiring work is, he can maintain the image of being the perfect, breadwinner father. He does, however, inadvertently reveal his exhaustion in the way he immediately crashes and goes to sleep after washing up after coming back from work. Fruit as a form of communication maintains this social harmony as well; confessing your true feelings can shake up the social harmony because your negative emotions can affect others, and if my mom or dad were to admit that they were in the wrong, they undermine their power and thus shake up the social hierarchy in that way. So they instead do symbolic gestures as a means of apology. You can see this in Apples (fun fact: there is a homophone for apple in Korean that means “apology”). The angriest my mom has ever been with me is when she found out I hadn’t been studying for my SAT II Math II exam (essentially finding out that I’d been lying to her for the past month). I had never felt such cold disappointment from her before; it was quite scary. Anyway, I guess she felt bad (my entire family is full of emotionally unstable softies), and she brought me a bowl of fruit as a way to show me that even though she was angry and upset, she still loved and cared for me. It was a way for her to continue to express affection (as well as maintain her identity as a good, caring mother) while maintaining her disappointment in me. However, the fruit was also somewhat of a cruel reminder that she was, indeed, extremely upset with me, and the only way she was willing to interact with me in that moment was by giving me a bowl of fruit (hence, the fruit is “chilling” and hurts to eat, but I eat it anyway because I know that it is also a reminder that my mom loves me regardless). I’m not sure how I feel about the secretive nature of feelings for South Koreans; on one hand, I think that it is immature and frustrating that we are unable to properly communicate with each other, but I also think that something about expressing ourselves through action is beautiful. Having to truly examine and understand the other person in interactions fosters deeper connections if one is able to overcome the mental hurdles of interpreting other people. But of course, I am extremely biased in saying this because I have grown up in this environment, and the feeling of receiving fruit or food from others is a form of expressing affection that I hold very dear to me.
There is also the aspect of social hierarchies and power structures that plays into who can say or do things, what they can say or do, and to whom. For example, members of a company who are lower on the social hierarchy would not defend themselves even if their superiors joke around in such a way that genuinely hurts their feelings (Kim & Plester). In school, students do not express disagreement with things that the professor says because students are lower on the social hierarchy and to go against the professor would disturb the social harmony, not to mention that passersby will not stand up for foreigners being subject to racist tirades by older Koreans (Huber). In short, people in positions of less power often quietly accept punishment, even if it is unjust, because it is the easier way out. Just as an example, during my senior year of high school, there was a string of incidents involving Asian students getting into mishaps with administration to which the Asian students responded passively. There was my close friend whose property our vice-principal trespassed on; there was the club that tried to create an inclusive space for international students (AHA) only to be accused of trying to create board positions for college applications; and there was me and my brother, who got the cops called on us because I had a mental breakdown in school and my brother came in to defend me. None of us pursued any further action against the school besides getting out of the situation as quickly as possible. My friend chose not to pursue any action against our vice-principal for trespassing on his property, who, by the way, literally went in between trees when it was dark out after seeing one of our female friends going through them to enter his backyard. He wanted to see if we were drinking and literally walked to my friend’s house through the backyard, opened the back door and took a step inside, and grabbed and sniffed the red Solo cups we were drinking out of (which had SODA in them). Absolutely insane. I’m not sure what would have ended up happening with AHA had covid not happened, but I recall the club members laying low for a while so administration would stop harassing them. As for me, my family and I just stayed silent when we met with administration to discuss my punishment, and I was kicked out of my club (which I was president of and had been a member of for all four years of high school) for “canceling the meeting without asking our advisor first.” We all wanted to maintain social harmony, so we chose to move past these incidents and not make a big deal out of them. This was also for our own benefit because we were seniors who were about to graduate, and none of us wanted to create issues that could interfere with a peaceful graduation months before leaving the school. So maintaining social harmony is also done as an easy way out of a difficult situation, oftentimes when the powerful are abusing their power, something that is not condoned in the original Confucian Analects.
The prostration of people who are lower on the social ladder to people high on the social ladder is one of the things I hate most about today’s Confucianism; I do think that there are some things that are inappropriate to say in certain situations and should be discouraged from being said, but to have to tank insults and derogatory remarks just because they come from someone with more power than you is cruel and nonsensical. However, it’d be rather hypocritical for me to call it only horrible when I actively partake in it and take advantage of these power structures. I consider it ungrammatical for me to stand up for myself in certain situations (working on unlearning this because it isn’t right for me to take a verbal beating). Because I knew growing up that my parents would give me more freedoms if I showed that I can be trusted to do well in school, I learned how to have good grades and learned good behaviors early on (i.e. being respectful), and now it isn’t even a conscious decision to act in these ways. You can see this in Tangerines; while my mom complained about my brother always playing games, it doesn’t bother her that I do the same thing. It’s weird for me that my parents consider me a really hard worker because I regard this as a baseline rather than some extraordinary action (again, it’s second nature to me now), but I’m not going to be the one to tell them that when their opinion of me is higher from thinking so. I hold other people to high standards since I told myself to a high standard, and I’m often disappointed when people do not reach my expectations (though I would never admit this to the other person, as holding these expectations are quite toxic and unfair, and I don’t want to hurt the other party’s feelings). Though I am respectful in general, I may kiss up a little bit extra in order to secure a good impression of myself in their eyes. I also love being treated to food (though I personally prefer treating other people), and I act surprised when people pay for me at the end of a meal even when I could sense what their intent was so that I don’t come off as obnoxious. These are only a couple of examples I can think of right now, but as you can see, there are quite a lot. Most of these actions are not actually calculated on my part (I don’t actively sit and think, “Hm, I will act in this way to get social credits”), but they are certainly things that I do because I know instinctively from learning in the past that they either make me a better person or make me seem like a better person. Even Lady Hyegyong, who seemed really humble in her memoirs, wrote intentionally in this way to be able to serve her own political purposes (Lady Hyegyong). So while I still disagree with the rigid social hierarchies, those who are lower on the social hierarchy in Confucianism do have ways to benefit and protect themselves within the system and are not entirely without agency or autonomy.
None of my stories address the internalized (and often explicit) misogyny that is present in many South Koreans, mostly because I was not sure how to cover it. The “ideal of male superiority within the patrilineal family” that is present in South Korea today is not inherent in the Analects themselves but arose from interpretations by later Neo-Confucianist philosophers (Park & Cho). Neo-Confucianism stresses the “rule of three obediences,” or the idea of obedience “of daughters to their fathers, of wives to their husbands and mothers to their sons in later years” regardless of the man’s treatment of the woman. This philosophy is in stark contrast with “classical Confucianism” in which “it is morally despicable… for men to quarrel with, let alone abuse, women” (Jin). Unfortunately, South Korea has adopted a Neo-Confucian view of life. As much as I want to say that my family completely falls into the classical Confucian family, I can’t say that with good faith. Although my mom and I can, for the most part, say and do what we want, we have to do so without upsetting my dad. He does not get physical, but he does get mad if he perceives that he is being disrespected or being attacked (if I keep arguing with him or imply that he’s being racist, or when my brother questions his requests and decisions). Additionally, while my parents respect and love each other and consider each other best friends, they fall into the traditional gender roles. My dad works, and my mom takes care of us at home. On one hand, it’s possible that these interactions are not necessarily from internalized misogyny but from our interactions as unique human beings with our own pasts. It is not inherently misogynistic for the man to work and for the woman to stay at home, and this is certainly the case for my parents; they were both going to work, but my mom saw no reason to when my dad made a lot more than she did, so she quit to take care of and my brother and me at home. Additionally, my dad had a pretty difficult childhood, and I can see why he feels the need to take care of others. However, it is also undeniable that the social situation in South Korea makes it shameful for the men of the family to not be the sole breadwinners, as that means that they do not make enough to support their family; it’s very possible that my mom still wanted to work but quit knowing that continuing to work would emasculate my dad, which would bring shame to our family by extension. There are many more ways in which my family has internalized misogyny in ways that reflect greater South Korean society, such as when the things my mom and I say are doubted whereas the things my dad and brother say are taken as fact. There’s also the disapproval of feminism and feminists that both my dad and brother have when they’re severely misunderstanding and ignorant of the situation (they think feminists hate men and think they’re insane), and my older brother often implies that the rape victim was also at fault for putting themselves in a situation where it was possible to be raped. The situation is much worse for most South Korean women. Women’s rights are severely under-protected in South Korea, with South Korea having “the biggest [gender] wage gap among developed countries” (Bicker), and sexual crimes against women often go unpunished, with “just over 28% of those found guilty… sent to prison.” I feel that these issues also help justify why misogynistic Neo-Confucian practices continue, as it makes sense for whoever earns less to take care of the kids and it makes sense for men to become “protectors” of a group that is so vulnerable. Neo-Confucianism becomes state-sponsored in the sense that the state does nothing to solve the issues that may be encouraging such misogyny to be widespread. So while my family is not Neo-Confucianist in the sense of men straight up abusing women, there are many ways in which misogyny is still deeply entrenched within our family, and actual conditions in South Korea are even worse than what I experience.
Academic achievement and prestige are still extremely sought after. The stereotype of the smart Asian child and the creation of the model minority myth don’t stem from nothing (though I’d argue that they don’t originate completely from Confucianism itself, as these topics specifically are strongly impacted by anti-Asian sentiment in the US and internalized racism). Interestingly, I’ve felt the most pressure to perform well academically from my older brother rather than my parents themselves, probably from an internalization of “Asian” beliefs that academic achievement is the number one way to success that arose from trying to emulate “Asianness.” It’s not that my parents don’t share this belief, because they definitely put pressure on me as well by insinuating that even Wesleyan isn’t good enough and that I have to go to Yale for graduate school, but they aren’t so unreasonable that a single test grade below 90 is considered the end of the world. As I mention in Apples, I retook the SAT II Math II exam after barely studying. I ended up getting a 750, but even then I was really disappointed in my grade and considered it too shameful to be sent to top colleges. Academic achievement and prestige are seen as ways to further yourself in society and are thus determiners of your worth in society. I would say that this is the one area that does reflect the original Confucian Analects; the importance of education in being virtuous is shared in the past and now, and education is or is seen as the number one way to become a successful member of society.
While reflecting on my own experiences and thinking about those of others, I can’t help but notice the grim reality of Confucianism in South Korea. Misogyny and abuses of power don’t stem from Confucianism; they are things that people misuse Confucianism to justify. Calling South Korea a Confucianist country is excusing the terrible behavior of the people in power behind a fancy label. It’s generations and generations of misogyny that lead to a type of generational trauma that breeds more misogyny in younger people. It is one thing if women truly want to be at home and take care of the kids and take care of the finances; it is an entirely different situation if women express their desire to enter the workforce only to be met with waves of backlash. So with this, I conclude that Confucianism itself isn’t the issue, but the people interpreting it for their own benefit are. And why would anyone reinterpret it when doing so is not beneficial to them? The lack of clarity as well as the amount of contradictory behavior in individuals surrounding Confucianism in South Korea today implies, to me, that these actions and cultural elements arose not from Confucianism itself, but from highly biased people whose interpretations of Confucianism expressly benefit themselves the most in today’s society. The message is clear when South Korean men yell, “Me first!” when South Korean women cry, “Me too!”–the presence of the separation of roles, power structures, and filiality is no longer due to love and mutual respect but exists to maintain rigid hierarchies that benefit one group while completely neglecting the wellbeing and wishes of the other.
Works Cited
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Jin, Yutang. “The Issue of Gender Equality in Confucian Culture.” The London School of
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https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2016/01/18/the-issue-of-gender-equality-in-confucian-cultu
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Kim, Hee Sun, and Barbara A. Plester. “Harmony and Distress: Humor, Culture, and
Psychological Well-Being in South Korean Organizations.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol.
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Accessed 6 May 2022.
Lady Hyegyong. The Memoir of 1805. Translated by JaHyun Kim Haboush,
www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Hyegyong_Memoirs.pdf. Accessed 6 May
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