WHY I AM FILLED WITH RAGE . . .

. . . because my father never knew his father, a North Korean doctor conscripted to aid the North Korean army at the outbreak of the Korean War.

. . . because my father, my uncle and my grandmother suffered the crossing into South Korea, not knowing if my grandfather and aunt would meet them later or had died.

. . . because my father, as a toddler, had to prop himself on the roof of a train traveling through South Korea, fleeing the North Korean army, keeping himself awake so he wouldn't slide off and onto the tracks, and emerging from tunnels with a soot-covered face.

. . . because my father grew up in a tiny shack shared with 10 other people.

. . . because my father was so poor that he couldn't afford schoolbooks, but was so smart that he tutored his classmates and used their books to study for just a few hours before exams.

. . . because my father went to a top-tier university anyway.

. . . because my father has no memory of eating in North Korea, but even now craves North Korean cuisine.

. . . because my father was so poor that my mother's family didn't want Mom to marry him.

. . . because my father had enough grit to make money, and enough integrity to wait for her.

. . . because my father thought a cup of moldy rice, an ounce of laundry soap powder, a can of Spam, and a square of Hershey's chocolate was a luxury that no one else in the world knew about.

. . . because my father still can't believe he can have red meat whenever he wants.

. . . because my father emigrated to the States with nothing but an enormous English vocabulary stored in his humongous brain.

. . . because my father and mother picked up a used twin-size mattress from the street and slept on it for their first year in New York, "the most romantic year of their lives," they claim.

. . . because my father had to walk a mile to the grocery store to buy half-priced days-old bread and eggs to nourish my pregnant mother.

. . . because my father learned English faster than any of you because he had to, and because he could.

. . . because my father dragged me to church every week as a child, knowing my faith was a freedom no one could deprive me of.

. . . because in 1994, my father learned his father had died in 1975, two months before I was born.

. . . because my father also learned his father had remarried, creating an insta-half-family of younger half-brothers and half-sisters that he would never see.

. . . because my father found his sister and her family somewhere in the barren wilds near PyongYang, then learned she was dying of cancer, and all his learning and training and access to medicine couldn't do a darn thing about it.

. . . because my father receives letters from his North Korean family expressing concern for OUR well-being.

. . . because my father put my brother and I through school, and doesn't remind us that he did.

. . . because my father's mother died in 1996, having never remarried, having never heard from her husband or her daughter again.

. . . because my father works 11-hour days and considers his income a gift.

. . . because my father calls his life of fatherless, powerless, status-less poverty in Korea "the good old days."

. . . because my father lived his life in spite of a crazed, selfish, delusional, self-centered, irrational, evil man whose son continues to carry on the less-than-illustrious legacy of starvation, isolation, deprivation, falsehoods and murder, and to whom, if I was ever given the chance, I would simply pose the question "Who the HELL do you think you ARE?" Then I would wait, staring at him quietly and shaking with rage, as he tried to explain himself and his godliness and his wisdom and his policies, until his explanation sputtered down to " . . . nobody."

. . . because there are children today who are experiencing the very same thing.

But don't be concerned about me. I'm not going to go postal. I'm not going to threaten, attack or kill anyone. I'm not going to trash my home, throw dishes against the wall, scream hysterically or hurt myself or anyone else. I'm not going to make some insane pilgrimage to North Korea and storm up to his ridiculous Mercedes Benz with the ugly spoiler on the back and demand reparations. I'm not even ANGRY. I'm just fueled. I'm simply going to remember daily why I'm here in the first place, and keep getting up in the morning and doing my thing, in silent rebellion against those who seek to oppress, and in honor of my father, who has already survived.