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My Life Of My Father

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On the 15th of February, 1986, I was born Yuri Choe in Songtan, South Korea. Bringing me into this world must have been a tremendous task for my mother because she reminds me often how difficult birthing me was. My mother unconditionally loved me the way I was and bought me a lot of dresses that a princess would wear in a fairy tale book. Also, she encouraged my learning and bought me more than hundreds of books to broaden my insight of the world. However, my father was a traditional, patriarchal Korean man who was immediately ashamed that his first born child was a girl instead of the preferred boy. He believed that women do not need higher education but they were born to support men and for domestic work. In fact, he did not like my mother spending money for my appearance or education. Also, he often disagreed with mother on almost everything. Reflecting on my childhood, I feel my parents lived together in the same apartment but in two different worlds. My father was frequently absent and my mother worked every day in a city far away. As the family pressures grew, my father became more violent toward my mother and me. As a result, when I became six years old, we left him and we moved into my grandparent’s house. Thankfully, my grandmother provided us with a wonderful home and took care of me with her endless love. However, she had her own problems as well. She bore the stigma and shame of birthing 5 girls in a row. In traditional Korean society, any woman who has only

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