“My duties as a father are just about done.” Those words were spoken by my boss, Kyu-Pal Choi, as we sat in his office on Friday afternoon, March 18, 2011. He said them because his daughter, In-Sung, would be tying the knot on Sunday. His two sons, In-Jae and In-Ho, are already married. (I attended the latter’s wedding in February 2009, shortly after moving from Daegu to Seoul.)
The two aforementioned young men are patent attorneys at Hansung, and In-Sung has a law degree herself. She and I forged something of a bond over a period of two months when we worked on her English in preparation for an internship at the BSKB law firm in Virginia. Since her then-fiancé, Jong-Hyun Go, was in West Lafayette, Indiana, working on a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Purdue, In-Sung’s sojourn to the USA served two purposes. She came back to Korea and began planning their wedding, which was to be in the Regency Room of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, in the shadow of Namsan.
Some 250 persons were in attendance, eight of them—other than family members—from Hansung: Gyu-Hyung Lee, the company’s general manager, Kyung-Hee Park, Eung-Ju Kim, Jae-Woong Yoon, Eun-Shik Park, Kee-Young Kwak, Jung-Il Bae and yours truly. I may be mistaken, but I appeared to be the only foreigner there. Before the blessed event, I greeted Mr. Choi and his wife, and was introduced to Jong-Hyun. I told him that he was lucky to be marrying In-Sung and that she would be a fine wife. He concurred before introducing me to his parents. Kee-Young escorted me to a small room where In-Sung sat, looking resplendent in her wedding dress. Every bride is a bit breathless on her wedding day, and she was no exception. A lot of people wanted to visit with her, so I just told her she looked great and I was happy for her before returning to the big hall.
Our table was situated at the end of a long runway leading up to the altar. It was like sitting directly behind home plate, if I may use a baseball metaphor. Such a location conferred both advantages and disadvantages. We watched a montage of photos of In-Sung and Jong-Hyun when they were young, and as a couple. Soon enough, the groom walked up the aisle. He was followed shortly by Mr. Choi and his daughter. This was done to Wagner’s famous “Bridal Chorus” from the opera Lohengren. I do not doubt that much of what happened over the next half-hour was symbolic and thus went over my head. The man in charge of the wedding gave a fairly long speech which my table-mates informed me was the usual admonitions to “be good and faithful to each other.”
One thing seemed odd; the lady designated to take care of In-Sung was quite fastidious. Even as the ceremony was proceeding, as the bride and groom stood side by side, she was straightening, adjusting and re-arranging In-Sung’s dress and long veil. This, I can only assume, was to be sure she was in perfect proportion for the wedding photos. And two people with cameras got extraordinarily close to the participants. I would suggest that these three—who, I realize, were just trying to do their jobs well—should have been more discreet. In other words, get the heck out of the way!
But how can I complain? It was a beautiful and happy ceremony, and we all clapped when husband and wife walked back down the aisle. They soon changed into hanbok outfits as the rest of us dined on a sumptuous five-course meal that included tuna tian, shitake mushroom soup, champagne sherbet, tenderloin of Australian beef with lobster and crunchy chocolate cake. Jong-Hyun and In-Sung visited each table, including ours, and got hearty congratulations.
I later saw In-Sung off to the side, holding and playing with her four-year-old nephew. I took that opportunity to go over and speak with her. She said they would be boarding a plane for the USA in the morning. Their honeymoon is scheduled to take place two months hence, in Spain.
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