Testing
Even as an infant, Helen and John Koh’s firstborn had a calm temperament and an accommodating disposition, as if he appreciated what it meant to be a jangnam, with the attendant privileges and responsibilities of primogeniture. Bo never seemed to let the burdens of being the eldest child overwhelm him. He exerted himself in the classroom and on the sports field; he got along well with his peers. A nice-looking and thoughtful young man, Bo was a blessing and a relief to his busy parents.
All three children had been born in Paramus, New Jersey, while John was working for a Japanese trading company in New York City. The Koh family had lived in New Jersey for six years, Seoul for four, then Sydney for almost six, prior to their return to Seoul. In the U.S., Australia, and South Korea, Helen’s friends had constantly asked her how she was bringing up her eldest son. Was there a method to rearing such a fine student and good boy? Helen, however, insisted that the credit belonged neither to her nor to John. “Bo came that way,” she would say.
Bo’s mother could admit this truth not because she was modest but, rather, because the experience of having more than one child in the same household amply demonstrated to any self-aware parent that each child was entirely unique. Eventually, all small humans—even when they were flesh of one’s flesh, which should have provided some illusion of predictability—asserted their individuality, no matter how much a parent tried to control, shape, or design them.
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As educated and earnest middle-class parents, Helen and John had provided more than the basics, and certainly more than they themselves, both the children of poor parents, had been given. Parenting was a haphazard experiment for even the best intentioned, and Helen and John observed their offspring, Bo, DH, and Mido, with profound fascination, as only parents can. Each child was immutably distinct from the others.
When Helen read a sad story in the news about a child who had gone astray, she very rarely assigned blame to the parents. Life had taught her that the debate between nature and nurture was almost moot: Excellent parents sometimes had badly behaved children, and careless parents could have progeny who performed admirably. The bond between a mother and her child was binding, yet it had to be loosened. A mother had to love, and a child had to grow up. The results were often out of one’s hands.
In America, Bo was eighteen years old, but his Korean age was nineteen, as the time in the mother’s womb was counted. Girls admired his glossy chestnut hair, olive complexion, and large brown eyes. He spoke English like a native, which had made him an exotic curiosity at a public high school in Gangnam, and he studied from morning into the night, barely sleeping. In the evenings, his sister, Mido, studied as well, but she could never stay awake as long as he could. Helen did her best to stay up with Bo, but even she had to turn in eventually, because she had her job the next day and had to prepare breakfast for the family.
Most remarkably, Bo had maintained an impressive grade-point average, in the second stanine nationally, and he was now allowed to apply to Yonsei University. His school did not think he should test for Seoul National, his father’s alma mater, which was reserved for the very top students, but his rank was high enough that his advisers thought Yonsei might be possible, especially if he applied for sociology, which was a subject he wanted to study. This was fine by Bo. He preferred Yonsei’s old-fashioned campus and admired the university’s alumni.
In Bo’s homeroom class, there was a precocious beauty named Ara Yang, whom he liked, and who adored him. After school, Bo usually went to his cram school, and, once, she showed up at the hagwon and invited him to her house to study, and, right there in her bedroom, she proposed sex. Stunned, grateful, and naturally tempted, Bo made a deal with her: after they were accepted into college, they would make love. Whenever he masturbated after that, he fantasized about the twin possibilities of attending the college of his dreams and having sex with Ara.
Bo took the Suneung in November of 1994. In addition to that dreaded national college exam, in his year he also had to take the bongosa, a specific exam for Yonsei. He believed that the tests went well enough.
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As soon as Bo and his classmates finished the bongosa, they rushed back to their hagwon. Their tutors had been more or less flying blind, because there were almost no prior tests from which to teach. Each student, fresh from having taken the exam, was asked to recall the test questions, and three tutors recorded the questions and typed out their speculated answers. The bongosa question Bo would never forget was “Describe the difference between digital and analog.” For his answer, he had written that a digital clock stated a moment in time, whereas an analog clock revealed the process of time. Bo’s tutor said that this answer was terrific. Not that it mattered.
Bo’s Suneung score was what kept him out. A perfect score was 200. He received 153, a strong showing but not invulnerable, and, predictably, given his focus on studying for the college exams, his high-school G.P.A. had fallen to the lower end of the second stanine, so he was no longer in the top four per cent nationally.
Ara had been accepted to Sungkyunkwan University, but she told him she’d be happy to wait for him as he prepared to take the Yonsei exam again. Almost everyone took these exams more than once, especially for schools as hard to get into as Yonsei, she said, trying her best to encourage him. Bo, guilt-ridden at the heavy expense of his failure, told her firmly that he would not hold her back. To make the situation clearer, he told her that they should not even be friends.
Bo wanted to take the exams again. Helen did not know what to do. The Suneung was offered only once a year, in November. And John, after falling out with his boss and not finding anything good in Seoul, had just been rehired at his old office in Sydney, albeit with a demotion and a lower salary. He and Mido were now staying with Helen’s brother, Kenny, who worked for Qantas, and his wife, Lily. Thankfully, DH was still doing fine at Andover. Helen had to consider the cost of maintaining housing in Seoul and Sydney, Bo’s hagwon fees for another year, and the family’s stretched expenses.
Helen’s sister, Sonya, lived in an apartment complex made up of many separate towers in Apgujeong. In the elevator in Sonya’s building, Helen finger-combed her hair, tucking the loose wisps behind her ears. That morning, she’d noticed new gray hairs sprouting from her side part. No doubt her sister would comment on this. Each week that Helen held off on getting her cut-and-color, she could put aside more for the children’s school and hagwon fees.
When the elevator opened on Sonya’s floor, a uniformed maid stood waiting at the apartment’s front door. Sonya’s home, which was owned by her husband’s uncle, Chairman Mun, was larger than most houses in Seoul—a full floor, two apartments combined. Three generations lived in the two units, separated by a small hallway. Sonya spent her days taking care of the household—her husband, Yong-gil, their two sons, and the Chairman. She managed a sizable staff, with a formidable housekeeper, two maids, a cook, and a driver.
The maid guided Helen to Sonya’s home office, which was the size of Helen’s living room. A large square of southern light flooded the elegant space. Behind the modern oak desk was a green mohair-wool sofa where Sonya read in the evenings. Stacks of art books covered a low hand-carved Korean-pine table. Tall branches of persimmons filled an enormous cobalt-blue fishbowl on a rosewood pedestal.
The maid remained at the door while Helen took a seat on the sofa, and Sonya frowned.
“I can’t believe you’re going to leave. Again. You’ve barely been here,” Sonya said, too exasperated to bother with pleasantries. She asked the maid for tea, and the young woman bowed before closing the door.
“Is she new?” Helen pointed toward the door.
“Just the niece of the cook,” Sonya said, then regretted sounding so dismissive. “She is part time. I don’t really need her, but the cook asked me. She’s recently divorced. There are two little kids.”
Helen understood. Everyone asked her older sister for help, and Sonya had a hard time saying no.
“Did John find a house in Sydney?”
“They’re still at Kenny’s.”
“Still?” Sonya raised an eyebrow.
“Well, Kenny and Lily said it’s fine, and Mido is helping with the kids.”
“Are you O.K. with money?” Sonya asked bluntly.
“It’s tough,” Helen admitted. She drew a breath. “Bo didn’t get in.”
“Oh, no!” Sonya exclaimed. “Was he close? I bet he was close. Bo is very smart. The hardest-working boy. I shouldn’t have favorites, but he is the best. Nicer than my sons,” Sonya said, then smiled. “Then, are you going to stay another year so—”
“I can’t stay. The apartment lease is ending, and we need that deposit back so we can get a place in Sydney. We can’t keep relying on Kenny and Lily. Bo missed the test by just a few points, and the counsellors said that this year’s Suneung was a nightmare.”
Helen folded her arms and closed her eyes, unable to forget what her son had said after the test results came out: “Umma, I want to take it again. I failed you and Appa. I’m sorry.”
She’d told him that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He had never failed them, but Bo could not be consoled. Her oldest child did not cry or waste more words. He was certain that, if he had studied harder, he would have passed. Acceptance was within his grasp. Three points, maybe four? He did not want all this expense and time to be squandered. How could she say no to a child who wanted to study harder? Helen could not. For her son, passing that test would be his redemption.
The boy’s apology continued to press down on his mother’s brain like a tiny ball of tungsten, a deceptively heavy metal she had once held in her palm in a chemistry class.
“It doesn’t make sense for me to stay here and lease a smaller place,” Helen said.
Sonya shook her head. She understood. Helen’s growing expenses were unsustainable, and how would she ever save for the children’s weddings and her own retirement?
“Sister, I was wondering, I know the Chairman wouldn’t like it, but do you think Bo could stay here to take the test again? He’d be at the hagwon most of the time and wouldn’t be underfoot. I know it’s a big—”
Sonya had been afraid of this. She felt unable to refuse her little sister but unable to say yes either, because this was not her house. With her head bowed down, Sonya sat, not saying a word.
“Never mind,” Helen said. She understood. Her sister couldn’t ask the Chairman. He felt strongly about not allowing anyone outside Yong-gil’s immediate family to stay overnight. He had never liked Sonya’s relatives. For her sake, he tolerated them. “I was thinking of renting a room for Bo. I can’t decide if he should stay at a boarding house or a gosiwon.”
“I’ve heard that boarding houses can be terrible about meals,” Sonya said, wanting to be helpful. “The newer gosiwon can be nicer,” she said. “They’re more like motels now than dorms. The rooms are small, but some of them are better run. I can help you with that. I am sorry about this. You know that if the Chairman and my husband weren’t so against—”
“We’ll be fine,” Helen said, feeling foolish.
“I can help you with the cost,” Sonya assured her. “Find the best gosiwon for him, right next to the hagwon. The boarding houses are often far away, and you don’t want him to waste time commuting. Just pick the best one, and I’ll take care of it. I’ll check in on him often. I promise.”
Sonya paused. “You look tired,” she said. “The sweater is pretty, but the lilac color highlights the gray in your hair. You look older than me! Get an appointment and get your roots done. I’m a mean older sister, aren’t I? But who else is going to tell you to take care of your looks?”
Helen touched her head. Her sister was picking on her because she felt bad. Sonya had married a man from a wealthy family but had quickly learned that none of the family money was hers. The Chairman controlled every decision and expense, and Sonya did everything she could to please him. She nagged or teased only two people in the world—Kenny and Helen. With everyone else, she was detached, her behavior unimpeachable. To everyone else, she appeared flawless.
Sonya crossed her arms and tilted her head slightly. “Why is Bo doing this? It makes no sense. He should be studying in America.”
“He likes being here. He feels closer to the people. He was even thinking of trying to get into military service,” Helen said, mystified.
“Has my favorite nephew lost his mind? My sons would be overjoyed if they didn’t have to go through this. It’s crazy enough that Bo wants to take the test again and live in Korea. Do not allow him to give up his American citizenship to do service. I will not allow that,” Sonya said sternly.
Helen nodded.
Sonya glanced at the clock. “Listen, let’s have something to eat now. The Chairman will be back soon.”
Bo failed on his second try. An impossible philosophy passage and a confounding geometry proof. A few points shy.
On November 13, 1996, he took the Suneung for the third time.
The day before, after his last hagwon class had ended, he’d got on a mostly empty subway car heading to the Yonsei campus and sat in a seat near the back. Cold, he tried to warm himself by tucking his blue woollen scarf into his faded black parka.
“If you want to be a Yonsei student, you have to behave like one,” Kim Teacher, his hagwon instructor, had told him. “Go to the cafés where Yonsei students have their snacks, read the books they read, and inhabit the peace of mind of being an admitted student. Visualize. Draw the picture in your mind.”
A Suneung wizard who got one of the top scores in the country for his year, Kim Teacher charged an extraordinary tutoring fee, which Bo’s aunt Sonya paid. As a bachelor, not yet forty years old, Kim Teacher earned more than several lawyers and judges combined and already owned two commercial buildings in Hongdae. It was rumored that he didn’t have to work for money anymore; he just enjoyed teaching. His specialty was retakers, the ones who had not passed on their first or second tries. Kim Teacher was convinced that Bo would pass this time. His practice scores were in the safety zone, so he focussed on building Bo’s mental game.
At a corner table, by the window of a popular two-story café near Sinchon station that was frequented by students, Bo picked up a discarded copy of a Yonsei literary magazine and read it while drinking his tea. All around him, young men and women huddled together, warming their cold hands on hot coffee cups. Attractive girls in bold patterned sweaters and jeans discussed politics in hushed tones, ignoring the boys sniffing around them.
Bo tried to imagine himself as one of the young men writing in their notebooks or reading. A female student with short, permed hair resembled Isul, his friend at the gosiwon who was studying for the civil-service exam. The woman was reading “The Stranger” in French. Bo hadn’t had time to read fiction since the summers during high school, when he used to read classic European and American novels in English.
He’d always imagined himself living and working in Korea, but he also wanted to be the kind of Korean who knew more about the world—through books, film, and history.
In less than twenty-four hours, he would take the Suneung again, and, for the past three years, he had done little but sleep, eat, and study for this exam. He had failed the Suneung in his last year of high school, and then again after graduation, and he hoped that tomorrow’s Suneung would be his last. He felt good about the test this year and ready to put it behind him.
Earlier that morning, after class ended, Kim Teacher had asked him to stay behind for a moment. Bo stood awkwardly while the teacher remained seated, his long brown face tilted in deep thought. The teacher was unusually tall, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. Even when he smiled, he looked more like a former professional athlete than a once stellar student from a strawberry farm in Goseong.
“You will do very well,” Kim Teacher pronounced. He handed Bo a paper box filled with the customary taffy. “Make the score stick! This is the best yeot in Seoul. Not everyone can get this.”
Bo smiled his thanks.
“One more thing,” Kim Teacher said, digging into his vest pocket to pull out a five-hundred-won coin. “Take this with you tomorrow. It’s a good-luck charm from your old teacher. When you get nervous, just touch it. Remember, you’re not alone. Think of the millions and millions of students who have taken difficult exams before you. Now you’re part of this group of strugglers. It is good to be examined. A young person should learn and be tested so that he can retain knowledge.”
Surprised, Bo stared at the coin in his palm. He wouldn’t have pegged his teacher as superstitious.
“My hagwon teacher gave me a coin when I took my test. I passed and got into S.N.U. for the hardest course. A farm boy got a top score!” he said, laughing. “So here I am, training you to take an exam, giving you a coin, and wishing you luck.”
Bo bowed and thanked him.
“How are you feeling?” The instructor prided himself on checking in with his students. He felt that his personal approach was the reason that his students got their best scores and shook off their past failures.
Bo grinned, staring at the pale-blue walls of the large classroom.
“I’m well, Teacher. I believe I’ve prepared as much as I could.”
“You will have fine luck, too. You deserve it.”
“I guess I haven’t had much luck before.”
“Sometimes it isn’t just preparation. It’s timing, circumstances, and personality. You have good habits, and you did the work, Bo. You’re a good person. Go easy on yourself. Make sure you go to sleep early tonight. Tell yourself that the exam is just another practice test. You’ll be fine.”
At the café, several tables had cleared out, and Bo was alone in his corner. He put down the literary magazine for the next person who might want something to read. When he went to the cashier to pay the bill, he could feel the worn edge of the five-hundred-won coin in his coat pocket. He took the train home and stopped at the grocery store near the gosiwon to pick up supplies for dinner.
Sonya had selected the best gosiwon near Bo’s hagwon, and it rarely had a vacancy, because it was so well maintained. But it was still a pay-by-the-week lodging, filled with transient students, day workers, and ghostly figures who came and went, and, of course, it was nothing like home. The kitchen for the residents was a modestly sized rectangular room. There were three rice cookers and three electric kettles on a long white counter by a deep sink and a dish rack. Residents were required to wash their own dishes.
Bo found Isul at the communal table, her eyes closed, with her head propped up on a civil-service study guide. An aluminum ramyeon pot with rounded handles simmered on the stove. Isul wore her usual indoor clothes—black sweatpants, gray sweatshirt, white ankle socks with black-and-white plastic slippers. She was bone thin and tiny, and although she was four years Bo’s senior, she looked like a primary-school girl wearing her older brother’s clothes. Severely nearsighted, Isul wore eyeglasses with thick plastic lenses, which obscured her lovely, small eyes.
Bo had met Isul in the communal kitchen on his first day at the gosiwon. Within a week, she’d made a point of sitting him down to tell him that he was nothing like the other residents.
“You’re not a loser like most of us. You’ll have a bright future. Keep studying.”
She had already graduated from Pusan National with good marks, but she hadn’t been able to get any office jobs. Dejected at the thought of continuing to apply for white-collar positions, she had taken a break for a few months to work as a bartender at a restaurant owned by her aunt, who had borrowed money so that Isul could study in Seoul for the civil-service exam. Isul had failed twice already. On her first try, she’d made it to the interview stage but had caught a severe cold and lost her voice on the day of the interview.
Isul’s windowless room was one of the smallest in the gosiwon, and she had to share a bathroom on the women’s floor. She teased Bo for being a rich kid, because he had his own bathroom and a transom window that opened, allowing him to get fresh air from the lobby windows. Isul and Bo had made a deal that whoever passed on the third try would buy the other a beef barbecue dinner.
Every day, they ate at least one meal together in the third-floor kitchen, where they could have as much rice, kimchi, and ramyeon as they wanted, all supplied by the gosiwon. With the allowance that his parents sent, Bo bought eggs, sausages, tofu, and tins of jjajang tuna, and he shared his groceries with her, though she ate so little that her intake was hardly noticeable. Whenever her aunt sent her fish or banchan from home, she shared it with him. She called him her little brother.
The ramyeon in the pot burbled over, and Bo hurried to the stove to turn off the gas.
“Sister! It’s done, right?”
Isul didn’t open her eyes, and he nudged her shoulder gently, feeling the sharp edge of her shoulder blade beneath the thick sweatshirt.
He saw that she was sleeping soundly and had forgotten to take off her eyeglasses. As he removed them from her small face with both hands, Isul still didn’t wake up.
Big Uncle, a middle-aged security guard at a downtown bank, peeked into the kitchen. A longtime resident and a kind of mayor of the gosiwon, he favored Isul and Bo. Six years ago, after his elderly father died, Big Uncle had moved into one of the back rooms with a bathroom and never saw the point of finding a bigger place of his own. He preferred the bustle of the gosiwon to the idea of living alone and took great care to remember the birthdays of both residents and staff. On a birthday, he’d buy a red-bean bun from his favorite bakery and leave it in the kitchen with the person’s name and a smiley face in a heart drawn neatly on the paper bag.
“Our little Isul looks tired,” Big Uncle said. “Maybe we can get Manager Hwang to open her room, so she can sleep properly. Her neck is going to hurt if she sleeps that way,” he said, clucking his tongue. “Manager Hwang is at the store now. He’ll be back in half an hour or so.”
“Sister, Sister!” Bo jostled Isul’s shoulder but got no response. He spotted the familiar green lanyard with her room key in her sweatpants pocket. He turned to Big Uncle. “Maybe we can take her ourselves. She must weigh forty kilos, if that.”
Big Uncle bent over her chair and scooped up the young woman in his arms like an infant.
“She weighs less than a small sack of rice,” he said with concern.
They both checked that she was breathing.
Taking her key, Bo walked ahead of him to open Isul’s door. Having never seen the inside of her room before, he was startled by how small it was, less than half the size of his.
She had almost no possessions. The white walls were bare and the sheet-of-paper-size patch of floor immaculate. On the clothing rack hung a navy winter coat, a black interview suit, one white dress shirt, and a Burberry scarf that Isul’s aunt had sent last Christmas. Every centimetre of her desk was covered with heavy piles of test guides and notebooks. Her bed was made and covered with a thick red-and-green checkered blanket. On the pillow was an open box of cold medicine from the corner drugstore. Six of the capsules had been removed from the tabbed aluminum sheet.
At the hospital, the doctor pumped Isul’s stomach and gave her fluids. She would be fine, the nurse told them. Big Uncle had to meet someone and asked Bo to stay with her until her aunt could come from Busan. When Isul woke, a few hours later, Bo was struggling to stay awake in a chair next to her bed. Isul looked startled.
“Bo, what am I doing here?”
“You troublemaker,” he said, relieved that she was back to normal.
“Where are my glasses?”
Bo picked them up from the bedside table and handed them to her.
“Did you take all six pills?”
“What pills?”
“The cold medicine.”
“I don’t think so. I took two at first. They didn’t work, so I took some more.”
“You dummy,” he said. “You need to take a child’s dosage, and you probably didn’t eat. I can’t believe you have a college education and still don’t understand basic science.” He looked at her sternly but started to laugh.
“Watch it. I’m still your elder,” she said, smiling weakly.
“How do you feel?”
“I have a cold. And my throat hurts.”
“They pumped your stomach. They thought you tried to—”
Isul raised her hand briefly from the bed as if to stop him from speaking, then let it drop. “Bo, I’m so tired. Let me sleep. I just want to stop feeling so tired and sick. I keep getting these colds, and it makes it hard to study. My poor aunt. She wants me to work in an office. I’d better get well soon.”
Bo watched her fall asleep. When her aunt finally arrived, he left Isul a note, promising to return the next day.
It was four in the morning when Bo returned to his room, and he closed his eyes for a couple of hours, washed, and remembered to pack what he needed for the test, including his exam ticket, identification, a packet of tissues, and the hard candies he liked. He tossed the box of taffy into his backpack.
As soon as the proctor allowed them to open the exam booklet, Bo plowed through the questions. After the first section, there was a short break, and that was when he began to feel dizzy, the exhaustion hitting him all at once. He had taken his seat at 8:10 A.M., and the exam would end at 5:20 P.M. There would be another short break and an hour for lunch, and it was during the breaks that he felt most nauseated.
His head was heavy and hot. When he reached the literature section, he couldn’t puzzle out the meaning of the questions. He stared at the reading passages, trying to make sense of the sentences. The short questions were more confusing than the longer ones. He reached into his trouser pocket and fumbled with the five-hundred-won coin. The indecipherable words began to swim in his mind.
What had made him think that he could go to Yonsei at all? He was born in New Jersey, and grew up there and in Sydney, before moving to Seoul, and he was sitting in a room filled with students who had been living, breathing, and eating in anticipation of this exam since they were in primary school. This year, the bongosa exam had been eliminated, so the Suneung was everything. Bo opened his eyes as wide as he could, doing his best to wake himself from his stupor. His mind didn’t go blank; rather, all the what-ifs multiplied like exponents, crowding his thoughts and rendering him unable to envision anything else.
The proctor told the students to stop, and Bo handed in his exam papers.
At the train station, a beggar was sleeping soundly on a bench. Easily over eighty, the man had a deeply furrowed brow, but the lower half of his face was oddly cherubic—jowls plump and a small pink mouth, almost smiling. By his left hand, there was a polished brass bowl and a laminated sign: “Blind from birth and abandoned by my mother. I ask for mercy. I wish you good fortune.”
Bo placed the coin in the man’s bowl.
Kim Teacher paged him twice but Bo did not call him back.
The results came out right before Christmas. Alone, Bo read his scores on the slip of paper and sat down on the bed in his rented room. That year, the number of possible points had changed from two hundred to four hundred, and the newspapers reported that this test had slaughtered hordes of top students. The highest scorer hit 373. Bo had not cleared 300. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know how long he sat in his room, but eventually he walked out of the gosiwon and applied for a job at the nicer of two convenience stores, a block away.
Working full time as a cashier and stocking shelves, Bo felt productive. The store manager, a thirty-two-year-old man from Daejeon, admired Bo, who was punctual, responsible, and honest. When other employees came late or didn’t show up, he picked up extra hours. One evening, the manager mentioned in passing that he had graduated from a college that no one in Seoul recognized and hadn’t been able to get office work no matter how hard he’d tried. He didn’t see the point of the years and years of hagwon payments and countless job applications, all to end up at this convenience store, but the degree, matted and custom-framed, had made his late parents proud. The manager’s cheerful wife, who was a head taller than he was, also worked at the store. They did not plan on having children.
Bo’s parents offered him a ticket to Sydney, but he asked for time to consider his options. Moreover, he asked them not to send any money until he knew what he was doing. With his own earnings, he was able to keep living at the gosiwon. At the end of the workday, a store employee could purchase discounted meals, and often the manager and his wife saved him the best of the expired goods, which were still perfectly fine to eat.
Between Bo’s mother and father, it was Helen who took the news harder. She had trouble sleeping and couldn’t focus at work. Even as Helen completed everything she had to do—her job, family-meal preparation, housecleaning—her mind dwelled on her disappointed son in Korea. It was difficult to imagine her brightest child selling cigarettes and beer and sweeping the sidewalk. Hearing that the manager and his wife were being kind to him gave her little comfort.
If Helen hadn’t been worried about losing her job, at a department store in Sydney, she would have flown back to Seoul to get him. Her husband asked her to be patient.
“Bo will figure it out,” John said.
Helen called Sonya anyway.
When Sonya met Bo at a tonkatsu restaurant, she wore a simple camel-colored dress and wasn’t carrying one of her expensive handbags. Bo arrived on time and took a seat across from her. He looked remorseful, as if he deserved to be reprimanded.
“I ordered your favorite set and a cola with ice,” Sonya said, smiling.
“Thank you, Aunt.”
Her nephew had just turned twenty-two, but to her he was still a boy. He was the size of a man, but she could see only his familiar baby face behind his glasses.
“I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you. The tutor you found me was very good. It isn’t his fault.”
“What are you talking about? I think you’re amazing, Bo. I imagine this feels awful right now, but this could be providence,” she said. “I believe this needed to happen. Your aunt is over fifty years old, and this is what I’ve learned. Sometimes the things you wanted most and didn’t get are terrible things you’ve been delivered from.”
Bo looked up, his mouth open a little.
“It’s still upsetting. I understand.” She paused, sensing that he might resist her next proposal.
“I talked to an admissions counsellor about you, and she said that you should go to America.”
Bo’s expression darkened. “Aunt, I can’t give up. I should take it again. I already spent three years on this, and my scores were really high in my practice exams. I don’t even have to learn that much more for the next Suneung. I just have to wait another year.”
“The admissions counsellor had an idea, and I think it can also help your parents.”
The server placed the tonkatsu sets on the table and left them. They bowed their heads and prayed silently, then she gestured for him to eat.
“Nephew, this admissions counsellor is famous. She is the best in Seoul, and she has a plan, which apparently she’s used many times with her students who can get visas. You move to California and go to a community college for two years. After you establish residency, then the cost will be almost nothing. You can pay for it by doing part-time jobs if you like working so much. If you do well, and I know you will, you can transfer to a Cal State school, or one of the University of California schools, or any four-year school. You could transfer to an Ivy if you wanted to. The rich schools give financial aid. Bo, you can start again. I know you will flourish. It’s not your fault that—”
She stopped herself. The boy was obviously upset, but trying not to show it.
Bo felt worse. She was clearly assuming that he couldn’t pass, yet he could not defend himself, because the evidence against him was irrefutable. He had failed. Three times. None of the context mattered, only the results. He chewed the fried pork but tasted nothing.
“Aunt, I can pass. I know this has been a terrible burden, so I thought I’d save the money from this job and try to do it alone—”
“Bo. Listen to me. I know you can pass, too—but what for? Is it worth it? Do you really want to live here, or did you just want to know that you could get into Yonsei University? If you really wanted to live here, you could have chosen an easier school to get into, isn’t that right? This system of testing just to weed children out is unfair and unpredictable, and I don’t know why you should bear it any longer.”
Bo said nothing. He had believed in his plan, and in a few sharp, well-reasoned words his aunt had pierced his logic and his purpose.
“How would I get there?”
“Uncle Kenny will get you a ticket to Sydney, and then, after you see your parents, you can go to Los Angeles.” Sonya held her breath.
“I guess no one thinks I can get into Yonsei.”
“You’re wrong,” she said, unwilling to indulge his self-pity. “I get that you feel embarrassed. You want proof that you can get in. That’s normal.”
Bo put down his fork and knife and wiped his mouth with the paper napkin.
“I know you can get admitted. There were some tough breaks, and I’m positive that if you keep taking it, you will pass. But, if you go to California and study there, you won’t be vulnerable to all these exam and admissions changes. You won’t keep delaying your life year after year to prove you can do something that everyone already knows you can do. None of this is your fault. Life is terribly unfair but we have to—”
Seeing his disheartened expression, Sonya took another breath, not wanting to say any more. Then she continued.
“I spoke to Kim Teacher. You’re the best retaker student he’s ever had. All of us believe in you, Bo. We don’t believe in this exam.”
He stared at his barely touched plate.
“We don’t believe in the Korean education system. Do you understand?”
“I don’t blame Korea,” he said.
“Eat your food,” she said as kindly as she could.
After he finished, he told her that he’d think about it.
Two days later, he ran into Isul in the kitchen. She was drinking her first coffee of the morning and looked chipper.
“Thank you for the toast bread and strawberry jam.”
Isul was referring to the day-old baked goods and expired jams he’d brought back the night before. The gosiwon residents were delighted to supplement their rations with Bo’s regular food bonuses. No one paid any attention to the expiration dates. More than one of them had joked, “If only the store could give us expired soju.” She slid her plate of toast toward him.
Bo nodded thanks but didn’t say anything. He poured boiling water over the powdered coffee in the bottom of his mug.
“My parents want me to go to America.”
“Go,” Isul said. “I’m glad somebody is making sense. Yah—you better go. I’ll kill you if you don’t go.” She raised her fist, grinning.
On seeing his expression, she put her fist down.
“You don’t want to go? Why?”
“You, too?” He shook his head. “I want to take it again.”
“Forget Yonsei. You can pass next time. I’m positive. I would bet my eye-surgery savings on that. And when you pass, so what? Have you seen how hard it is to get a good job here? You don’t have any connections, right? Does your rich aunt know any conglomerates that are hiring?”
“I spent three years,” he whispered.
“Big deal. Go. Listen to your parents. I wish I had smart parents.” Isul smiled to soften the blow of her words. “You speak English perfectly, you have U.S. citizenship, and you’re a genius. Forget this hell. If I had your choices, I would’ve been gone a long time ago. You foreign-born Koreans are all messed up. You think you have to prove something. Prove you’re Korean. C’mon. There’s no test for that. There are Koreans who are born here who hate being Korean. Hey, maybe that’s what it means to be Korean!” She laughed, then grew serious. “Do you need money for the ticket? I don’t have much, but I would give my little brother some of my eye-surgery money.” Isul still felt terrible that he had not slept the night before his Suneung on account of her.
“My uncle works at Qantas. He can get cheap tickets.”
“Wow. If you weren’t such a nice little brother, I would not like you. You have it made. What are you upset about?”
“I failed the Suneung three times. I’m twenty-two years old.” It occurred to him that in the U.S. he would be twenty-one, and it sounded much younger, though he was still the same person.
“So damn what? I failed my exam twice. By the time I get a job, if I get a job, I will be an old lady with thicker glasses. But you know what? Your gosiwon sister will pass this son-of-a-bitch civil-service job test, ace the interview, and I’m going to get my nearsightedness corrected. I’m not so bad-looking, and I’m going to have some fun. I’ll have tall, good-looking boyfriends who like short women, and, one day, I’m going to buy my aunt a little building back home. It’s not expensive like Seoul.” She put her hands on her hips, her bent arms as thin as twigs. “This is my plan. I believe it is a good plan. Every day, I work to make my plan into reality.”
“You will definitely pass. I’m positive you will,” Bo said.
“Go. You go to America. That’s a better plan. But, first, you have to get to work.” Isul gestured to the kitchen wall clock, then picked up her toast and jam.
Bo laughed.
“I’d better go.”
Isul winked, and, when Bo left the kitchen, she imagined the big gosiwon without him, which was depressing. She made herself another coffee and opened her study guide. ♦
This is drawn from “American Hagwon.”