“Daughters Are Useless”
Pohang is far, far away from Bugang, but that didn’t stop my parents from visiting their parents every Lunar New Year and Korean Thanksgiving. By car, the trip would have taken about four hours, but we didn’t have one. Instead, we’d set out early in the morning on an all-day journey, taking one bus after another until we finally reached our destination late in the afternoon.
On top of managing two small children—Sori and me—my parents lugged every kind of bag imaginable: duffels, plastic bags, paper bags, all stuffed with clothes for our multi-day trip and presents for my grandparents, such as a Styrofoam box with a huge octopus or bundles of dried squid or filefish. Whatever else my parents thought their parents would love to have—especially seafood, since Pohang had plenty as a coastal city while Bugang, tucked in the mountains, had almost none.
By the time we stepped off the last bus onto the dirt road, I was just glad we had arrived—until the smell hit me: the pungent odor of cow dung. It was so strong that holding my nose wouldn't help, and breathing through my mouth was even worse—it felt like I was tasting it. But after a minute or two of plodding through that thick fog of odor, my nose adjusted. By the time we reached my grandparents' mud-walled, thatched-roof house, a mile's walk from the bus stop, I had forgotten all about the smell.
By the time we stepped off the last bus onto the dirt road, I was just glad we had arrived—until the smell hit me.
Once the open entrance came into view—there was no gate, just a stone wall with an opening—I bounded inside, leaving my parents and Sori far behind. She was three years younger and that much slower. I called out, “Halmoni!”
Then Halmoni, my father's mother, would appear, whether from the kitchen—that sooty, dungeon-like room with no window—or from behind the door made of slender wooden slats and white paper. “Aigo… you've arrived!” she would say.
My parents trudged in after me, letting out a deep breath, then headed straight for the narrow wooden porch that ran along the front of the house, eager to shed the bags that had weighed them down all day.
As she helped them unload, Halmoni would say, “It must have been a long trip. Aren't you tired?” She looked happy and worried all at once.
“No, we're okay, it wasn't that bad,” my father said, never admitting otherwise, though he was breathing hard from exhaustion.
Then Halmoni would ask another question, always in the exact same order: “Have you eaten yet? Aren't you hungry?” Before waiting for an answer, she'd hurry into the kitchen.
“You don't have to bother, we already ate,” my father would call after her.
“You must still be hungry!” she would insist, collecting bowls and dishes from a small kitchen cabinet—the wooden kind with sliding doors and three shelves inside, creating three stories. With no refrigerator, she kept side dishes in the cabinet too, at least protecting them from mice and other unwanted guests. She arranged them on a round metal tray with three or four skinny legs that could collapse under the top. But now the legs clicked open wide, balanced precariously between two giant black iron pots sunk deep into the hearth.
By now, my mother would join Halmoni in the kitchen, despite her own fatigue. A Korean daughter-in-law would never simply watch her mother-in-law work without helping. Halmoni would say, “You don’t need to,” but never actually stopped her.
Meanwhile, my grandfather, having heard our lively voices and Halmoni’s delighted greeting, pushed open his door. All the doors opened to the outside, where you could step onto the wooden porch before stepping down to the ground. He sat with one elbow resting on the raised threshold, a gentle smile on his face, waiting patiently for his turn to say hello. Then, with Halmoni back in the kitchen, he would finally say, “You’re here.”
I knew what came next. Without fail, my father would call, “Yuri, Sori, time for a jeol.” Time for the big bow to our grandparents.
As I, six, pulled Sori, three, next to me across from our grandfather so we would stand side by side, our backs to the opposite wall, he would call out toward Halmoni, “You'd better come in now! The kids are about to jeol!”
Then she would drop whatever she was doing in the kitchen, duck through the tiny door that connected the kitchen to the room—I never understood why it was so small, like it was built for little people—and settle beside him.
When I saw they were both ready, I clasped my hands together, one palm beneath the other, near my forehead, then crossed my legs at the ankle and lowered myself into a seated position until my butt gently touched the floor. Then, folding at the waist, I bowed deeply, the back of my hands still at my forehead. It was a tricky move, but after years of practice, I had mastered it.
Sori, on the other hand, struggled. Instead of gracefully crossing her legs and lowering herself, she simply plopped onto the floor. At least her hands were raised to her forehead—I'll give her that. As I raised my head back up, I would give her a mean glance, disappointed at her lack of skill. She was so clumsy. But our grandparents found her shortcut amusing. They laughed while our parents clicked their tongues.
I liked Halmoni, but not as much as I could have. The problem was that she expected something from my mom that she had no control over: a grandson.
She often asked me, “When are you going to have a baby brother? It'll be soon, right?” I knew she wasn't really asking me—she was asking Mom, who was nearby and within earshot.
According to Halmoni, daughters were “useless” because they couldn't hold jesa, the ancestral memorial rites that only sons were allowed to perform. I couldn't understand how she could be so warm and sweet to Sori and me, yet call us “useless” to our faces.
There was also something else Halmoni didn't like about Mom: the fact that she didn't make money. “How come your umma just stays home and does nothing?” she would whisper to me, throwing glances in Mom's direction, making sure she could be overheard. “Your appa is breaking his back to support you girls. It would be nice if he got some help.”
I couldn’t understand how she could be so warm and sweet to us, yet call us ‘useless’ to our faces
After a day or two at Halmoni’s house, we would head to Okcheon, my mom’s hometown. It was another long trip: two more bus rides, a mile of walking, and our load just as heavy as before, since Halmoni had sent us off with rice, beans, kimchi, and who knew what else, all wrapped in black plastic bags and cloth wrappers.
I liked Wae-halmoni—my maternal grandmother—better than Halmoni. She never talked behind my mother’s back or pressured her through me, except to ask, “Your father still drinks a lot?” Since my father did drink, sometimes heavily, I felt the question was fair.
Wae-halmoni and her husband, who passed away when I was very young, raised six children: four sons and two daughters, my mom being the second youngest. They owned some rice fields and vegetable plots—a detail Mom proudly whispered to me, noting that her family had been more prosperous than my father’s, who didn’t own any land and lived in a hut-like house until I was about ten.
Yet despite their relative wealth, they hadn't supported the education of their daughters—Mom and her older sister—beyond elementary school, while my father's parents, despite their poverty, had managed to send all six of their children—three sons and three daughters, my father the second oldest—through high school. Maybe that's why Mom wasn't particularly warm toward her own mother—I'm not sure. I don't really remember them having affectionate conversations, like my father did with his mother, other than Wae-halmoni telling Mom that she needed a son and Mom snapping, “You think I don't know that?”
One of my earliest memories was of Mom threatening to leave Wae-halmoni’s house earlier than planned—this was before Sori was born, so I must have been two or three. I remember Wae-halmoni trying to stop Mom as she furiously gathered her things, screaming, “I will never, ever come here again!”
Looking confused and helpless, Wae-halmoni kept repeating, “I didn’t mean that.”
I don’t recall what set Mom off, but I do remember how bewildered I felt at Mom’s rudeness toward her own mother. With one hand gripping my wrist and the other hauling her bags, she stomped out of the brown wooden gate of her childhood home, dragging me along so fast my feet barely touched the ground.
When I glanced back, I saw Wae-halmoni standing at the gate, watching us leave. A few steps later, just before we rounded the corner, I looked back again. She was still there—motionless and forlorn, like a sad statue.
Mom often said, when we were alone, “Your halmoni hates me. If I had a boy, she wouldn't treat me like this.”
Then I would look her in the eyes and say, “I know, umma, but don't worry. You'll have a boy, and I'll have a baby brother. I know it.”
“Your halmoni hates me. If I had a boy, she wouldn't treat me like this.”
I wasn't making it up—I had an absolute conviction that God would give our family what we needed most, and then we would live happily ever after. My mom, the person I loved more than anyone in the world, would finally be happy. She would smile real smiles at me, not the forced ones even I could see through.
Yuri promised everyone it would be a boy this time. She was wrong. And everything changed.
© 2025 The SteelMaker’s Daughter by Yuni J. All Rights Reserved.
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