Richard Brandt's An Affair With Korea

Based on what was learned about the Korean family from our class, the roles of the males in the family are very prevalent and the relationship between fathers and sons are covered in Richard Brandt’s book, An Affair With Korea. The ideas of the importance of continuing the family lineage were also reinforced in lecture when we discussed the role of the first son as well as posthumous adoption. With the roles of the daughter in the family being the ones who are to leave the family, the roles of the males are to stay within the family and carry on the lineage. However, in Gitzen’s thesis, he expounds on the relationship between mothers and sons in Korea, and how being gay affects such a relationship. While the father-son relationships were traditionally seen to be stiff and distant, the …show more content…
For one of his subjects, Changmin, Gitzen explains how the mother was more upset with the fact that her son would have to live a more difficult life, rather than being upset with herself or her son. This was something that the gay character in the drama Life Is Beautiful, Taesub, also went through when he came out to his mom and stated “Let’s not fight him, curse him, or say he can’t. He already wants to kill himself, isn’t that enough?” (Gitzen, 127). While another friend, Yoochun, didn’t want to have his shame of being gay spread and burden his mother. What was interesting about Yoochun’s mother’s response was to tell her son that before Yoochun, she had aborted two female fetuses in order to give birth to a male. By revealing what she thought was her most filial act towards her family, she was demanding filial piety from her son. This is comparable to when filial piety is being tested in Brandt’s book as well in the chapter about Fathers and Sons, when Yi Pyŏngbu wanted to leave his family for Seoul, but eventually came back after leaving (Brandt,