Chai Soo Dunns wife did not ask much from him. There were the four sons and the farmhouse that made up her world, and it was for them she prayed two events happen. First, that her husband consent to becoming Christian and, second, that he arrange for daughters-in-law, who would be of help to her. Both wishes, she thought, were little to ask for. Missionaries came to the country before the 1882 Treaty of Amity was signed with the Americans. Now they were here to stay, preaching their message about Oori Aboji, the loving father who provides his children with all their needs. She went to all the religious services offered in the village, and the Americans preached the same gospel. God is love. Her sons sometimes attended with her. In his free time, her husband walked to the village 10 miles away to gamble. Gambling was in his blood and he seldom won, but it was a passion with him. The gambling den was behind a shabby hostelry run by Innkeeper Park. The law forbade gambling. The innkeeper said, Laws are made to be broken, winking at his one gentleman visitor. The inn served travelers with little money and in need of food and a nights lodging for themselves and their ponies. The animals were better served than the owners who shared a common room to bed down in. The animals had separate stalls and were fed a warm mash in their feedbag. Chai Soo, however, was no ordinary traveler and Innkeeper Park kept a special room for him, off his family s quarters. Again Park would wink. You are like a brother. You are one of my family. Chai Soo overlooked the mans eye habit. The brotherly relationship flourished for several years in this manner; Park repeating over the IOUs, Just put your chop (seal) on the paper. It is good as cash.

The innkeeper had one child, a daughter with a slight hump to her back. Other people in other countries called it a debutante s slouch: fashionable. But Korean parents did not approve of daughters-in-law with a slouch. The girls name was Simoon. She had passed her 16th birthday; no family had asked for her hand. And not likely in that sparse stretch of country-side on the road to Kanggye, the border garrison town. Military and government officials used the highway, along with border crossers to China. The innkeeper made his profit from them (gambling), so was favorably situated as to the girls dowry.
This visit was to be Chai Soo Dunn s last. The night before he had drunk too much and had a head, as it were. He was wakened by scratchings on the door and Park walked in, bearing the IOUs. Two fistful. It was a cheerful Park speaking. It is time to pay up, honorable brother. The honorable brother growled, Not today. Next time. Park repeated, Today. Before you depart. Waiting for a reply and getting none, he said, I have a plan, and insinuated more to come. Today you can quit yourself of debt. You have only to agree to take my daughter Simoon for your first son s wife. She can go with you today. Chai Soo made choking noises in his throat, he did not believe what he was hearing. The innkeeper continued helpfully, She is a good girl. A hard worker. Her mother has beaten good sense into her. She will not disappoint your wife. Your wife has no plans for First Son? His name is Nak Joon, I believe.
Chai Soo shouted he needed something for his aching head before he could think. Park called out, Simoon! Girl! who appeared. Bring your future father-in-law a dish of kook-mul. Now! She disappeared and returned with the kook-mul, demanding angrily of her father, What about him my future father-in-law? He pushed her out but not before she made a face at Chai Soo. After drinking the gruel Chai Soo made up his mind; it cleared his head. He knew he had heard the last of his wifes tiresome nagging: When will you act to get wives for our sons? One day they will be too old, wait and see. The innkeeper s offer (or demand) was the answer, and should keep her quiet for a while! Chai Soo said to the innkeeper, It s a deal. The IOUs in exchange for my first son.

He made no attempt to quibble breaking the news to his wife. He found her in the kitchen and said, I have good news for you. I have found a wife for Nak Joon. There followed the details, which she did not like. Forgetting herself, she yelled, What are you saying? Are you drunk? He was not drunk, he told her with dignity, and what was she so unhappy about? Hadnt she wanted a daughter-in-law all these years? Her answer: Unhappy! A lowly innkeepers child? Why not the butcher s, shed bring a bigger dowry! Chai Soo threw up his hands. How you talk! You prattle about your God who is love. Who loves all his children. Yet you speak with no love in you! I say, Let us be baptized at once. Become Christian so that God s love will fill your heart. Perhaps then, you will find a place there for the innkeepers daughter. She stopped him. Yobo! she cried. You consent to baptism! and threw herself into his arms. He was a six-footer but he could not disentangle himself to say yea or nay. Hearing loud voices Nak Joon and Nak Chung came to investigate and heard their mothers exclamation, which they echoed, Consent to baptism? as a question. Before Yobo could reply, their mother said, Let us pray, and swept them to their knees, including Chai Soo to whom she still clutched. Her prayers were answered. The family was baptized and Nak Joon had a wife. A good ending is a happy ending. But there is more . . . .
With her family about her Simoon too and her parents who brought her to be wed Chai Soo s wife announced, Call me Abigail. It is my Christian name. No one used it, neither did anyone ask her the reason for the choice. Korean customs are difficult to change. She was Chai Soos wife or Nak Joon s mother, that was the custom. It was my father (Nak Chung), on being asked about his mother, said, She called herself Abigail, and added she was a good woman. Further than that he remained mum. I looked up Abigail in the Bible (1 Samuel 25:3) where it says she was the wife of Nabal the Carmelite, who was churlish and evil . Abigail is described a woman of good understanding, and of beautiful countenance. This biblical Abigail took food to David and his men when they were fleeing from the wrath of Saul. Later, Nabal celebrating his evil ways was struck dumb and died. David then took her for second wife. Did Chai Soos wife know the story in First Samuel? Or was she making a statement about herself? That is, making her self a heroine for her new Oori Aboji. Or identifying with the epochal moment in Korean history (Christianity), anticipating the future Korea? I never met her and know only I was born a Christian because of her baptism in the Old Country sometime in the last half of the 19th century.

Was there ever a country like Korea? I think not. Described a little shrimp caught between fighting whales, swallowed like Jonah inside the whale s belly, its ending fatal. And like Jonah regurgitated to live another day. Abigail did not live to see the demise of her homeland, but she was preparing for that eventuality. She blamed the famines that followed her conversion; the missionaries offered a solution to their hunger. Koreans should immigrate to America where there were plantations that would give them work and a new way of life. God was still with them, she uttered to the farmhouse folks. The occupants had increased. After Nak Joon and Simoon married, they had three sons in succession. Nak Chung was found a wife among Korean orphans fleeing from Pyongyang where the Japanese, 1894-95, were routing China, Big Brother (suzerain) to Korea. Impossible to believe their mentor China, whose language was theirs in poetry and diplomacy, should depart from the land, with the Rising Sun flying everywhere with Japanese soldiers bearing the banners aloft, arrogantly as if already masters of the country. Then there was Russia that had reached the Pacific ocean and nowhere to go, turning southward to the Korean peninsula. Again, 1904-05, the likening to the shrimp caught between whales. Abigail was not to know the next chapter. However, she did live to see more grandchildren. There was Second Sons daughter; he had moved to Koksan to direct the family brassworks. Two sons were born to his family and Whaksiri was sent to live with her grandparents on the farm, she was a handful. She met her match in Kyuang Moo, who was to be known as Jacob when he moved to America. She grew up to marry Cha Hwa Sung, who became governor of Kyangsangdo during the annexation. He died before the end of WWII. Whaksiri and Jacob met briefly in 1946 when he was working with the American Military Government (AMG). That is the way her grandchildren lived, ships passing in the night.
When the king s grain collectors upped the taxes to seven sacks of grain for every 10 produced, the farmhouse was sold and the occupants preparing to go to America. Abigail sickened and died in 1902, the year Koreans were permitted to leave the country. Korean custom for the dead was a three-year period of mourning. The Christians in Korea followed the American custom, one year. So Chai Soo, his sons Nak Joon and Nak Chung with their wives and family, and a teenage fourth son (name unknown), shipped from Japan on the steamship Siberia, reaching Honolulu, late February 1904. Abigails children were now immigrants, a lonely word in a lonely land.