DNA tests have been popular on social media lately, and one of my daughters got the whole family to do one for fun. My parents always told me our family line is Korean, from them to my grandparents to their grandparents to their grandparents and so on. My husband is also fully Korean, so I was sure everyone’s DNA tests would come back as entirely or almost entirely Korean. Turns out, I’m 23% Japanese.
I asked my parents about it, because 23% is a significant amount that points to a recent family member being Japanese. My dad was extremely uncomfortable but eventually told me that the grandfather I grew up with wasn’t my biological grandfather, he was the man my grandmother had an arranged marriage with to avoid the shame of having a baby (my father) out of wedlock. Where did this baby come from? One day in 1945, when Korea was a colony of the Japanese Empire, my grandmother (a 15 year old) was walking home when she was grabbed off the street by a group of colonial police and gangraped. She got pregnant from it. When her parents found out about the baby, they quickly married her to my grandpa, who was a very poor orphan, because he didn’t have the social standing to object to marrying a “dishonoured” girl.
I’m not even sure how to process this right now. To know that my biological grandfather is an evil man? I feel so angry because I know those men went right back to Japan after WW2 ended to lead long, happy lives; I feel so sad because I love my grandmother so much.
My poor sweet grandma. I knew she was young when she married, but I never thought much about it because my grandpa was quite young too (18) and that was normal back then for every Korean. This is so much worse. I grew up with her and she was such a cheerful, amazing woman who always comforted me and took care of me when my parents were too busy. And she was so loving to my father, it feels impossible to imagine he was the product of the worst moment of her life. She died 3 years ago and all I can think of is that I never could’ve even guessed that she carried so much pain her whole life.
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Damn.
What happened to her was horrific and infuriating. While it changed the course of her life, it seems not to have defined her life. She seems to have not just survived. She seems to have thrived. She found joy and had laughter in her life. Think of her the way she was. Your precious, sweet grandma who loved her family. That’s who she was for the majority of her life.
I lived in Korea twice. The last time I went there I visited the House of Sharing and was lucky enough to meet the 할머니 living there. These were the “comfort women” that were sent around the Japanese Empire to be raped in brothels. Their stories are horrific. And the way they were treated if they managed to survive must have been a slap in the face.
What your grandmother went through was horrible. But if she was anything like the 할머니 that I met at House of Sharing she was certainly a woman who was not only tough, but a woman who raised her son right who in turn raised his child right.
I’m not going to begin to try to understand what you’re going through right now, but I just hope that you’re able to process it as best as you can. I don’t know if you’re in Korea or not or how often you visit, but if you go, consider visiting House of Sharing. Those women are getting older and older (I think they’re in their 90s) and will soon be gone.
Follow your grandmother’s example and love your family and don’t give power to the animals who harmed her
Have any of your Japanese relatives popped up online? Any one reach out? Are you inclined to connect with any of them?
Hi! My grandfather was a product of a rape, but I only found out after he died and he never knew at all. I understand and know the feelings that finding this out can bring. Feel free to message me if you’d ever like to talk.
When she looks at you, she doesn’t see the grandchild of an evil asshole, she sees her grandchild. An awful situation, but show her some love.
I do family trees for different people and have come to the conclusion that these people in our trees do not define us. We are all by-products of terrible events that were almost never spoken about.
This is definitely a very sad story but I’m glad that it ends happily. Your grandmother went on to live a long and happy life. Whatever struggles she had to endure, in the end she emerged a winner.
That happened a lot. You may have heard of “comfort women.” Korean women, more like girls, the Japanese kept as prostitutes.
I wish this was a relic from the past, but it still happens.
Take a lesson from your grandmother. She was cheerful and took care of you. She was a survivor.
What about your grandpa? What was his life?
Sorry you had to find out the way you did.
We all have the capacity to commit acts of great kindness or harm but wars tend to bring out the worst in people — they require aggressors to dehumanize their targets. People fall into herd mentality and justify violence to their fellow humans. Victims endure unspeakable horrors, and those who survive find strength to carry on — often carrying the burden of shame for something they had no fault in or control over.
Unfortunately, societal pressure and attitudes towards constructs like purity/virginity and towards crimes like rape, put the burden on the victim. Women are especially conditioned from an early age to accept male authority and endure sexual harassment. To make matters worse, consent and body autonomy are not a concept that many cultures or religions prioritize.
It’s ugly to think of ourselves as the product of a violent past — especially of something as hateful and despicable as sexual violence.
If I can offer some advice:
Try to separate your worth from a past you can’t change or control.
Know that your choices and actions matter more than your ancestry or biological make up.
If you’re having a hard time coming to terms with these news, consider counseling.
Lastly, consider become an advocate for victims of sexual violence. We live in a world where everyone is connected and can access information instantly, and yet the voices of sexual assault victims get drowned in all the noise.
Be kind to yourself and others.
I am fairly ignorant of the details of the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula but from what limited reading I’ve done on the subject, it points to an extremely brutal & heinous reign of terror they inflicted on the local civilian population. And they got away with it as well. I’m not sure even today if they have issued a public apology to Korea and China for their atrocities.
Thank you for sharing. I’m halfway through Pachinko, and truly the most beautiful aspect of Korean culture is the resilient people. As a Filipina, my heart is with you. War is hell, colonialism purgatory
I’m sure your grandmother felt a lot of complicated thoughts after what happened to her and she found out she was pregnant. I’m sure it was deeply traumatic and she carried that with her for life.
But that’s what living with trauma is like, it doesn’t go away, but people find a way to live with it.
Remember your grandmother as she was, the loving, doting grandmother who loved her son and grandchildren.
I wonder how your dad must have found out! Did he grow up knowing his dad wasn’t his? Did he look different?
Discovering such a painful family secret after so many years must have deeply shaken your sense of identity and trust. It’s natural to feel anger, sadness, and confusion all at once. Carrying the weight of your grandmother’s hidden trauma likely brings a mix of empathy and grief, reshaping how you see your family and yourself. Healing from this will take time, but acknowledging these feelings is a powerful first step.
Unfortunately that’s just kind of how patriarchy works. Everyone is a product of rape if you go far back enough.
Not your father’s fault, and total kudos to your gran for rising above such an awful attack and not have taken it out on the child. Also total kudos to your grandad (he absolutely IS your grandad in every way that counts) for having raised the family and done it with honour and integrity.
Have the Japanese ever apologized yet? Last I checked, they didn’t.
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Most people in history were. Unfortunately evolution favours those who reproduce mindlessly and at the expense of everyone else. Thus rape tendency’s are extremely common. A large portion of men would do it if they could get away with it. They’d do it to well beyond underage girls as well. There’s so much evidence to back this up that the general population would be utterly disgusted if they knew.
The best we can do is to not reproduce and end the cycle of misery that is existence.
My grandmother is a product of my great-grandmother being raped by her grandfather. She was raised believing the person who was her mother was actually her sister (although she was told this when she became an adult.) She sadly passed away due to leukemia over 20 years before I was born, but every story my mom tells me about her gives me so much respect for her. If I could meet any person, dead or alive, it’d be her.