Lesson 3 For the Love of Our Country
The Secret of My Father
In ____, a strange man visited me and asked, “Are you Mr. Kim Yonghwan’s daughter?”
For me, this was an odd question because I was more used to being called the ____ of a parakho.
“I’m your father’s friend. You may wonder if it is true, but your father... ,” the man ____.
At that moment, I was ____ disappointing news since I did not have good memories of my father.
____ in the 1920’s, whenever people saw me in the village, they would say, “There goes the parakho’s daughter.”
My father was a son from a very ____ family. Instead of living the life of a seonbi, he was always at the gambling house.
That is why he was called a parakho, which ____ someone who ruins his family’s fortune.
“Your father has gambled away all of the money, and ____ he’s asking for more.
Go and tell him that we have no more money left,” my mother would tell me whenever she sent me to the ____ house.
Then, my father would yell at me angrily, “Why did ____ come empty-handed? Bring me more money!”
When I was sixteen years old
When I was ____ years old, my family had already made an arrangement for me to marry Mr. Seo.
As part of the wedding tradition, Mr. Seo’s family sent my ____ some money to buy a new chest for clothes.
Right before the wedding day, my mother came into my room and said, “Your father has ____ the money for the chest.”
I asked angrily, “How could he do ____ a horrible thing? What should we do now?”
“We have no choice. ____ have to take your aunt’s old chest,” my mother said.
“How embarrassing for the family,” people ____ whisper behind my back.
____ the first day of marriage, life at my husband’s house had been difficult for me.
“Your father, my dear ____...,” my father’s friend continued his story.
“He was not a ____. Your father sent the family money to the independence fighters in Manchuria.
He made ____ look like a gambler to keep this a secret from the Japanese officers.”
At first, I was not sure if he was telling the ____.
But afterwards, I found out the truth about my father and I realized that I had ____ wrong about him.
Ever since that moment, I have been proud to be the daughter of a parakho who had ____ his life to the independence movement.