Lesson 3 For the Love of Our Country
The Secret of My Father
In 1946, a strange man visited me and ____, “Are you Mr. Kim Yonghwan’s daughter?”
For me, this was an odd question because I was more used to being ____ the daughter of a parakho.
“I’m your father’s friend. You ____ wonder if it is true, but your father... ,” the man said.
At that moment, I was expecting disappointing news since I did ____ have good memories of my father.
Back in the 1920’s, whenever people saw me in the village, they would say, “There goes the parakho’s ____.”
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 ____ he was called a parakho, which means someone who ruins his family’s fortune.
“Your ____ has gambled away all of the money, and now he’s asking for more.
Go and tell him that we have no more money left,” my ____ would tell me whenever she sent me to the gambling house.
Then, my father ____ yell at me angrily, “Why did you come empty-handed? Bring me more money!”
When I was sixteen years old
When I was sixteen ____ 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 ____ the wedding day, my mother came into my room and said, “Your father has taken the money for the chest.”
I asked angrily, “How could he do such a horrible thing? What should we do ____?”
“We have no choice. You’ll have to ____ your aunt’s old chest,” my mother said.
“____ embarrassing for the family,” people would whisper behind my back.
Since the first ____ of marriage, life at my husband’s house had been difficult for me.
“Your ____, my dear friend...,” my father’s friend continued his story.
“He was not a gambler. Your father sent the ____ money to the independence fighters in Manchuria.
He made himself look like a gambler to keep this a secret ____ the Japanese officers.”
At ____, I was not sure if he was telling the truth.
But afterwards, I found ____ the truth about my father and I realized that I had been wrong about him.
Ever since that moment, I have ____ proud to be the daughter of a parakho who had devoted his life to the independence movement.