Lesson 3 For the Love of Our Country
The Secret of My Father
In 1946, a ____ man visited me and asked, “Are you Mr. Kim Yonghwan’s daughter?”
For me, this was an odd ____ because I was more used to being called the daughter of a parakho.
“I’m your father’s friend. You may ____ if it is true, but your father... ,” the man said.
At that ____, I was expecting 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 rich family. Instead of ____ the life of a seonbi, he was always at the gambling house.
That is why he was ____ a parakho, which means someone who ruins his family’s fortune.
“Your father has ____ away all of the money, and now he’s asking for more.
Go and tell him that we have no more money left,” my mother would tell me whenever she ____ me to the gambling house.
Then, my father would yell at me ____, “Why did you come empty-handed? Bring me more money!”
When I was sixteen years old
When I was sixteen years old, my family had ____ made an arrangement for me to marry Mr. Seo.
As part of the wedding tradition, Mr. Seo’s family sent my family some money to ____ a new chest for clothes.
Right before the wedding day, my ____ 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 take your aunt’s ____ chest,” my mother said.
“How embarrassing for the family,” people would whisper ____ my back.
Since the first day of marriage, life at my husband’s ____ had been difficult for me.
“Your father, my ____ friend...,” my father’s friend continued his story.
“He was not a gambler. Your father sent the family ____ to the independence fighters in Manchuria.
He made himself look like a gambler to keep this a ____ 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 ____ that I had been 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.