From Annie Han: "My grandmother, Bok-Jae Park was a fortune teller for more than 30 years in I-Tae-Won, a neighborhood known in the 1970's & 80's as Seoul's red-light district. She consulted with many hundreds of people over the years, most of whom were facing some form of difficulty and desperately in need of advice and direction. She did this out of her small rental house and so I was witness to much of what occurred. I remember her writing out complex symbolic equations based on elaborate Buddhist reference texts and the analysis often spanned multiple pages. During her sessions she explained to her clients what they could expect on the road ahead. She also made small drawings on thin strips of rice paper bearing Chinese characters that were supposed to protect, deflect, invite, and capture all things they needed to make their lives better and their problems go away. It took place in her tiny room that could host no more than four people in sitting positions on the floor, which had a raised shrine that was set into the wall a few feet, lined with old scroll paintings, writings and two Buddhas (one large and one small). The smaller of the two was rumored to have a solid gold inside the Buddha- an unimaginable value to our household and a memory of the aristocratic North Korean family she married into before the war. There were many brass bowls of offerings immediately in front of the statues, filled with uncooked rice, beans, fruits, incense, and rice cakes. When there weren't any customers she was busy studying her books, polishing brass bowls and cutting rice papers & preparing red ink which she used to make the drawings with. My grandfather also used the shrine to meditate and there were always chants and murmurs that came from the room. My mom (her eldest daughter) took my sister and I to live with our new stepfather in Portland Oregon in 1982. I visited Korea once in 1991 and little had changed in the intervening nine years except my Grandfather had passed away and my Grandmother's youngest daughter had also died after a prolonged paralysis. The middle sister, my aunt, eventually married a GI in this period and also came to Oregon. With no immediate family left and her own health beginning to fail, she made the difficult decision to move to America as well- leaving behind her life, profession, language and her lifelong friends. Before leaving her apartment in Seoul, she packed all of her life's belongings into several boxes and two large trunks containing everything of value, including her Buddha statues, fortune telling texts, clothes, jewelry and everything from the shrine. All of this was to get free transit courtesy of the US military relocation services because her second daughter's husband was still serving military duty in Oregon. By the time she arrived in 1992, I was off to college and so Grandma was to stay in my old bedroom my parent's suburban Portland ranch house. In the years since leaving Korea, my Mom had converted to Christianity and when my Grandmother began packing her belongings, my mother was very insistent that she not bring any of the Buddhist artifacts. But my Grandmother was not about to let that stop her and we all knew that no one will succeed in telling her what to do. Inside the luggage that came on the plane, my Grandmother brought only a few personal items and photographs. It took a few months for the military boat shipment to arrive with the remaining boxes and crates containing everything else. When they did arrive, all that came were the small boxes containing only some fabrics, clothes and blankets. The two large crates containing the shrine artifacts and Buddhists text never arrived. Month after month we'd check with the shipping officials and nothing ever showed up. Beyond their report of missing shipments there was no further information- no tracking or accountability. My Mom and Stepdad did as much checking as they could, eventually gave in to the awful fate that they were lost or stolen. My sister and I were teenagers, too self absorbed and young to understand the Grandmother's incredible loss. We didn't make much of it until we noticed Grandmother becoming more reserved, eventually succumbing to an unshakable grief from the growing reality. She laid in bed?for months. Eventually, however, she did pull herself up and strangely, never spoke of it again. She never got to see her Buddha or touched her books again before she passed away with a liver cancer in 1995. Every once in a while I think about her during that time- how unbelievably devastated she much have been - that her spiritual treasures vanished in the transit across the ocean. Grandma, wherever you are now, I hope you found your golden Buddha and all the things that meant so much to you. "

Korea 028.001