“When I got older, there were moments I wondered. My half sister was fully Korean; Dad had adopted her when he married Mom. What if I was adopted, too? Then I realized all I had to do was look at my birth certificate.”
I handed Becca my birth certificate so she could see it. It said my father was Gary W. Gibbons and my mom was Son Chae Hong.
Then lastly, I let Becca know that, “I’ve talked to friends who are scientists and geneticists. I asked, ‘Is it possible that I can be a child of a white man and a Korean mom and look a hundred percent Korean?’ They said ‘Absolutely.’”
Becca listened and nodded and said she understood. But whenever the subject came up, she would remain silent, her body language communicating that she wasn’t buying it. My wife is a woman of complete honesty. Her face will not lie about what she’s feeling. Truth and complete honesty, no matter how painful, is what Becca is all about.
After my father had passed away, I felt it was time to get to the bottom of the question. The truth of my roots. I wanted to settle this once and for all. I was looking forward to Becca discovering she was absolutely wrong.
Without telling Becca, I ordered a DNA test, a kit where you take a cotton swab of your saliva in your mouth and send it back to be processed. With each step, I was already celebrating her imminent capitulation. I relished each moment that brought me closer to being proved right. I couldn’t wait to say, “I told you so.” But I planned not to say a word after handing her the test results. I would just smile and let her feel the energy of my delightful gloating.
The day I received the e-mail with my results, I quickly clicked the link to go online to see my ancestral roots. I was already getting giddy about the results, which I was preparing to print and show to Rebecca. There it was, a color wheel displaying the breakdown of my ethnic roots, showing that I am genetically…
100 percent Asian.
What?!!
At that time, the results showed that I was around 80 percent Korean, 10 percent Japanese, and there were also some Chinese origins and a little Southeast Asian. But as the years passed and more people took the genetic test, the accuracy of the data got better. My results now convincingly confirm that I’m 100 percent Korean.
Like a dog with its tail curled, slowly walking to the master, I reluctantly approached my wife.
“Rebecca, I took a genetic test. Guess what? I’m not Caucasian at all. I’m 100 percent Asian, most likely pure Korean.”
Becca smiled. She didn’t gloat or rub it in, but I knew she was pretty dang happy. She was all smiles inside her. She had known it all along. My four kids were surprised, and then concerned for me, worried about how I would take the news. I had essentially lived with this false understanding of my bi-ethnic racial identity my entire life.
Oddly enough, I wasn’t rocked by this revelation, because I’d lived with the remote possibility of this conclusion for years. But I would counter any question of my ethnic origins with what my dad told me when he said I was “American.” Truth is, he didn’t actually say I was from European roots, that I was “white.” He didn’t say I was his biological son. Technically, he could still be honest by saying that I was culturally and legally an American, an American citizen.
Or, I wondered, what if he didn’t know that I had a different birth father? Had he guessed, but never known for sure? Was this what he had meant when he’d told me I didn’t “know everything” about Mom? I wondered if he discovered that he wasn’t my birth father. That must have been shocking for him. Could I have been the reason he started distancing himself from Mom, and then eventually having his affair with Carolyn?
I’ll never know.
Who was my biological father? What did he look like? What were his traumas? Was he responsible? Did he take advantage of my mother? I have searched with private detectives and government agencies, and have even gone to Korea to find him, but with no success. I’m still searching for my biological father. Still wondering if he’s alive. How am I like him?
“Chong, you’re not going to believe this,” I said to my sister. “I took a DNA test hoping to show Rebecca that I’m genetically American as well as Korean. However, the test results came back and revealed that I’m a hundred percent Korean. Did you know?”
“Dave, I didn’t know. I always thought you were like Doug, a blend of Mom and Dad.”
“Well, that’s not what the test says.” Then, I had a startling thought. “I wonder if your birth father is my birth father?”
“I don’t know,” Chong said with a stunned look.
This sent me on a quest to unveil this enigma of my birth father. I started with a search for my only living relative I knew on my mother’s side, Uncle Sung Hwan, who had resided with us in Arizona while he adapted to life in America. But his whereabouts were mysterious; he was possibly somewhere in Texas and rumored to be divorced. At the time, my search for him proved fruitless. Then I went to Mom’s best friend, Kim Ahjumma. She now had dementia and didn’t know. Yet I wondered if she was holding things back because of a possible promise she made to Mom.
Eventually, I’d travel to Korea, enlisting the service of a well-connected detective procured by a friend. I went to the city my mom called home to uncover the truth. I was told police stations keep meticulous records of residents. Serendipitously, a friend’s father—a humble and prominent figure in a local megachurch in the same city where my mother lived—had connections throughout the city. These connections included the chief of police and a leader of a radio station and a news outlet. Becca and I conscientiously engaged with each person hoping they might point us to the key to unlock the information about my birth father. I engaged in interviews trying to get national attention to my plight both in print and social media. But no new information emerged. The identity of my birth father would still be a mystery.
Accompanying me was a younger friend who was adopted. He, too, was traveling to Korea with us to pursue knowledge of his biological roots. He had difficulty as well, yet he was able to procure his birth certificate, revealing the stigmatizing phrase “illegitimate child” on one of the lines.
Although my birth certificate bore no such derogatory label, I couldn’t ignore the stark reality that I would have been branded as such if circumstances hadn’t aligned to connect me to my American father.
My DNA results initially triggered a profound sense of astonishment—an undeniable revelation that upended my perception of self. However, as I gradually processed this truth, the fact that I was 100 percent Korean didn’t trouble me. Curiously, a therapist connected to my family speculated that this newly uncovered secret might cause a traumatic episode for me, discovering that my biological father wasn’t the one I had always assumed. The passage of time and the wisdom of years, however, allowed me to embrace this reality with understanding. Despite the enigma of my birth father’s identity, I am fortunate to have had a father who steadfastly loved me the best he could. And while my dad didn’t fulfill every expectation, individuals like Nick or Dave Bunt stepped in to bridge those gaps. Numerous people have assumed the roles of nurturing figures—both fatherly and motherly. Among them, Nick, for instance, saw facets of me that were obscured from my own view.
So I am a wonderful, spicy, salty, and sweet fusion of cultures, 100 percent Korean and 100 percent American.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Epiphany
Rebecca was softly crying, barely audible. Her body turned away from mine. For a moment I hesitated to say anything.
I hustled between the two worlds of business and institutionalized religion. I was still struggling with the operational side of leading a faith community that was integrating and collaborating with the city and county leaders. Our church was in the middle of the transition from the upper-middle-class educational environment of Irvine, California, to Santa Ana’s more urban, Latin, Hispanic, Mexican culture. I had gone through the difficult process of downsizing a large staff who focused on program to a team centered more around people and their dreams. Transitioning staff is not easy; it feels personal. Some of the people I had to let go were friends and longtime associates. The young leaders saw me more like a father than a senior leader, so it was especially painful. I often felt misunderstood, hurt, and betrayed. Worse, I now recognized that I made other people feel the same way, too. The feelings of betrayal are the most difficult for me to personally overcome. If something smells of betrayal, my body goes back to that day my mom locked herself up in that car.
I used to say that it’s harder to be a leader in a for-profit space than a nonprofit. Having worked in both spheres now, I have changed my mind on this and believe being a leader in a nonprofit space is much more challenging. You have to take care of all the same types of systems, but also raise capital from donations and work with primarily a volunteer crew. But at this time of my life, most of my work was like I was driving an all-terrain vehicle, but it seemed my new calling was to start doing the dirty, detailed work under the hood of the car. I felt my life was focused on the very thing that was not my strength and gave me the least energy. I felt like I was physically aging, filled with constant anxiety about people. Their criticisms, their expectations, and their needs were a part of who I was. It was my job to help others share their burdens with me and our team.
While I was in this crisis mode, I really didn’t want to go into a protracted conversation with Becca that night. I was tired.
Maybe Becca just needs this alone time without me intruding on her.
As much as I tried to reason with myself, this didn’t feel right. So finally, as tenderly as I could, I asked, “Becca, why are you crying?”
“I felt God spoke to me.” She paused. “I know you need your sleep, and it can wait till morning.”
Becca doesn’t ever speak this way. In fact, she thinks people should be more careful making such pronouncements like, “God told me to tell you this.” She’s seen how some have claimed it was God but it obviously wasn’t. That’s why her saying this was quite unusual.
At that time, the church was facing severe headwinds. People were struggling with my leadership, vision, direction, decisions on staff, and our financial picture. It was probably the lowest point in the life of our church. It felt like we were going through the slow death of a dream. Yet what was happening was that all the important elements of the dream were being reimagined into something that was going to help the church flourish for generations to come. We were doing the ugly, behind-the-scenes dirty work of reorganizing the church to adapt to who the world was becoming.
I knew I was not in a good state of health or mind. I found myself tired. Irritable. Easily upset. And pointing fingers at people who I felt had betrayed or abandoned me at church. Also, I was bitter with Becca because she, too, had shared with me that I shouldn’t leave Newsong even though I was suffering. I thought she cared more about what I’d helped to build than she cared about me. It had gotten to the point that a few years before this, before coming back from my time in Bangkok, I had asked my best friends and Becca to please understand that I was not supposed to be the one to lead the church to its next season. I felt it would kill the church and destroy me in the process if I had to carry the church. The responsibility of starting the church weighed heavily on me. I couldn’t just leave when things were dramatically changing in our world. So until I could at least get Newsong back on track for the next person to take over, I was committed to seeing the church through, just putting my head down each day and trying to hustle harder to keep the community from falling apart. When things go well, everyone seems like your friend. When the sheesh hits the fan, you feel alone, even though that is not entirely true.
