Recently, my wife and I attended a wedding, in Boston, of a very fine young woman whom we love very much. We are very close to her because when her parents got married, some thirty years ago, I stood as the surrogate father-of-the-bride.

I acted as the father-of-the-bride a number of times, but this one was - somehow - very special; we kept in close touch with them all these years.

The new bride and her sister, both of whom are medical doctors, as witnessed by their scholastic and societal accomplishments, are very bright people. Yet, until they were around twenty years old, they thought my wife and I were their real grandparents; that’s how close we are.

We were enchantingly delighted, at the wedding, because of a number of things: I thought the wedding party was a microcosm of the United Nations or an order of the new world. The eight sets of bridesmaids and the groomsmen were of every race, color, nationality, religion; you name it, they were there.

At the reception that followed, we were seated with the groom’s parents, and got to know them quite well. The groom’s mother is a Chinese/American and the father is a Jewish/American. We talked about a myriad of things, among which were religion, humanity, fanaticism, young people, etc.

I mentioned my observation that so many members of his family (many of whom are MDs and Ph’Ds) were there in attendance, in contrast to my own niece’s wedding, to a Jewish/American, when no one - absolutely no one - from the groom’s side of the family had attended the wedding.

My friend from across the table - also from the other side of the chasm of religion and race - asked me if my niece’s husband’s side of the family were of the Orthodox Jewish faith; I said, yes.

I was shocked with his reaction to my response that they were Orthodox Jews. Whereas my surrogate granddaughter’s father-in-law (a Ph’D) had been jovial and soft spoken throughout the evening, to that point in time, he was now serious - in tone and volume - excoriating not the beliefs but, the practices of the Orthodox Jews.

He said he is a Regular Jew believing in the Old Testament, but not to the extent of adhering fanatically to the biblical laws as interpreted in the authoritative rabbinic tradition and seeking, at all costs, to practice absolutely everything that are commanded in it. He believes that most of the anti-Jewish sentiments stem from the actions and the perceptions projected by the Orthodox Jews.

My attention then turned to the Korean Christians, to the so-called Jesus Freaks, who also believe zealously in the literal meanings of the words of the Bible.

To this day, my sister’s family and their in-laws, to the best of my knowledge, do not have the close relationship that they should. What a tragedy; all because of over-zealousness.

Everyday we see, on the evening TV news, all kinds of tragedies. In addition to the weather, traffic, entertainment and sports, we see crime, drugs and all kinds of bad deeds committed especially by young people.

When I saw the young people there in Boston, all down to earth, bright and progressive in demeanor and thought, I thought, yes, "There Is Hope" for our future.

Our friend’s second daughter will be marrying in the near future. She is going to marry a Spanish/American young man, also a Ph’D. When I see how easily and without anxiety their daughters are getting married, compared to the unmarried thirty year old daughters of some of our closest friends, I see as their main reason, among some other minor reasons, the insistence of the parents that their daughters must marry Korean young men.

In a book I recently finished reading, titled the "Accidental Asian," written by Mr. Eric Liu, a Chinese American, he wrote that, "Today, close to 50 percent of Asian Americans under the age of thirty-five are marrying non-Asians." I believe this trend will continue even to a greater extent, especially among our daughters. Our own family bears this out, our daughter being married to an Irish-German/American and our son being married to a Korean/American. I wonder about the future of my own granddaughter whose blood is a mixture of Irish-German-Korean, although she always claims to be (no doubt her grandmother’s influence) a Korean-Irish American.

You might ask why our young people, when they marry outside the Korean culture, tend to marry a Jew or an Irishman. Perhaps, the parallel between the Jews and the Koreans are that they both start out as outsiders, dedicate themselves to education, successfully overcome the societal barriers faster than other minorities, etc. As for the Irish, consider their music, their island/peninsula geographical setting, their historical dominance by larger nearby nations - the Irish by England and the Koreans by China and Japan. Whatever the reason, the attractiveness seems to be present.

To me, the current stage that we Korean/Americans are living through can be likened to the stages of the development and the life of a butterfly. We start out as a plain, perhaps even an ugly caterpillar, live through the cocoon stage in which we feed and mature, go through a transformation, and then emerge as a beautiful butterfly.

One thing stands in the way of our children becoming the ultimate complete human beings; the insistence of the first generation that we remain at the cocoon stage, that we insist on continuing to develop our children in our own image. We must recognize, as nature has, that the cocoon is necessary but only a temporary thing that must be discarded.

Do we want to, for the sake of our own needs (egos), keep on being a cocoon, or go on to the ultimate butterfly stage? We must emerge, we shall emerge, in all aspects of life. This does not mean that we should abandon our culture and heritage; no. We can still keep our beautiful tradition and meld it with the best parts of the American way of life. All we, the first generation, have to do is to stop insisting that our children must live, and think, as we do.

If we truly love our children, as we say we do, we must free them to live their own lives. I think we can do that. Yes, "There Is Hope."


Joseph Yi came to America in 1940, at the age of 10, and has lived basically in the Chicago Metropolitan Area. Although Mr. Yi’s professional life was in the mainstream society, he has actively participated in the voluntary social services for the Chicago Korean community.