This is the story of my growing-up years in South Korea from the
mid-1930s to early 1956, when I came to the United States to
receive more substantial undergraduate education. South Korea was
in the throes of reconstruction-both chaotic and uneven-after the
end of the Koran War, which lasted three years and left a
devastated country in ruins. Little learning went on even in the
most prominent institution of higher education in Korea, Seoul
National University. My desire to lay a firm intellectual
foundation for my adult life during my undergraduate years overcame
all possible negative consequences of leaving my parents and home
for the first time in my life. Never did it occur to me at the time
that I would not return to my native land to live but instead make
a home in this country. I came to study for just a few years. I
have now lived in United States for 57 years. The title, Phoenix in
a Jade Bowl, is the literal translation of my given name Bongwan,
which consists of two Chinese characters, bong, a phoenix, and wan,
a jade bowl. My father gave me an atypical name for a girl because
he believed that a typical girl's name can prejudice a child from
an early age. He wanted me to convince myself that I must not feel
limited as a female and be strong enough to rise from the ashes
like a phoenix (bong), a legendary bird, but at the same time, be
grounded (wan) in a solid jade bowl. The book attempts to capture
the rapidly disappearing old Korea, before the Miracle on the Han,
a phenomenal economic development. As poor and economically
underdeveloped as it was, the old Korea had its charm:
multi-generational household of my grand parents, their sprawling
traditional house, and the delicately balanced husband-wife
relationship of my parents. But the Korea of my childhood also
endured unbearable pain of Japanese colonialism, the division of
the land along the 38th parallel and chaos and turmoil following
the end of WWII, the another foreign rule of the American Military
Government, the establishment of separate governments in the north
and south of the parallel, the Korean War, and the starvation
bordering refugee life during and after the war. All during these
times, I, Bongwan, Phoenix-in-a-Jade-Bowl, grew up and matured, at
first unaware of stormy world outside my parents' house,
experienced self-awareness, and discovered the wider world. It is
the story of a young girl's coming of age in a small, unknown,
underdeveloped, unsettled Asian country of Korea and her drive to
go beyond the boundaries of her natal home and country.
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