I was visiting Seoul when it happened the first time, and it left me with a bitter taste.
In my last year of college I studied abroad in Korea. To find my roots, so I told people. I thought that semester would be enough, but I was drawn back every year, each time feeling like a homecoming of sorts. Being born in the US but with Korean ancestry, I was told it was only natural to be curious, encouraged even. But there was something else I couldn’t quite pinpoint, a yearning that kept beckoning me back.
On one such trip I planned to meet a friend. He gave me the name of a club. When I entered, I sifted through stalks of bodies pulsating in lockstep with the DJ, who was spinning atop a pulpit, past the gratuitous swimming pool, before I spotted Boram at the bar, struggling to get the bartender’s attention. Most people called him Bo. He was a burly Korean guy with a brass voice. I first met him at Korean School, that Saturday morning drudgery when we all donned bowl cuts, a faux pas to which we were oblivious. So I still called him by his full, feminine Korean name. We slapped hands and I asked him how he’d been, shouting into his ear.
Boram motioned for me to follow as he parted the sea of partygoers. We reached a table adorned with bottles on ice. A clique of Korean guys decked out in black loitered nearby, their postures stiff, their euphoria masked by cold stares. Boram put his arms around one of the guys and pulled him over to me, shouting his name into my ear, which I couldn’t make out. I shook his hand.
I was then introduced to the next member of the clique. He was inches taller than me and dressed in sharp collars and a sleek blazer. I didn’t quite catch his name but I later learned it was Marc. I put out my hand, straightening my back to close the gap in height. But my hand couldn’t raise a defense in time as I was welcomed with a smack against my mouth. I tasted blood.
Luckily Marc didn’t catch me square on the jaw; he had mostly missed, reeling back from the momentum of his own swing. He tumbled to the floor and I was now standing over him, frozen, as I attempted to register the sudden reversal. When I finally did, the bouncers had their hands around my arms. I tried to explain the situation but my words dissipated into the relentless drone of the club. They strong-armed me toward the exit until I was outside.
Boram came blasting through the doors. “What the fuck just happened?” he asked.
“I have no clue.”
“Everyone thinks you punched that guy.”
“Me? He took a swipe at me and fell to the ground,” I said, exasperated. “You know that guy?”
“Not really. He’s a friend of a friend. He was already wasted by the time I arrived.” As Boram said this, a stocky Korean guy with a bulldog of a face came out of the club entrance.
“Is this him?” the bulldog asked, pointing at me menacingly. “The one who punched Marc?”
Boram blocked the bulldog from coming closer. “Wait, just chill for a second. He didn’t punch Marc. Marc punched him.”
“Okay, let go,” the bulldog said as he pushed Boram aside. “Marc wouldn’t do that unless he was provoked.”
“I don’t know but he was clearly drunk,” Boram said.
“And who’s this guy?” the bulldog asked Boram while glaring at me.
“This is my friend from DC. Trust me, he’s cool.” Boram said. “He works for the US State Department of all places, on nukes and peace and shit. Clearly not someone who would start a fight.”
“Well, he must’ve done something to rile Marc up.” As Boram struggled to keep him at arm’s length, the bulldog barked at me, “Look at this pussy, he’s a different person now behind his big, bad friend.”
I finally interjected, “Look, I don’t know that guy. Nor have I ever seen him. I was just trying to shake his hand when he threw a punch.”
“Alright, alright. How about you tend to Marc. Let me handle my friend.” Boram turned the bulldog toward the club’s entrance.
“Okay, but if I ever run into you in the streets, you’re a dead man,” the bulldog said as he pointed at me once again. “Putains de connards…”
After the bulldog walked back through the door, I said to Boram, ”Who is that guy? Did he just swear at us in French?”
“Possibly. I think he and Marc might’ve gone to school together in France if I remember correctly,” Boram said.
“Seems like a major prick. Fuckers.”
Boram laughed. “Pardon your French.”
***
Oral wounds tend to heal quickly but I kept wondering if that punch was really intended for me. Did I give him a look? Was my body language offensive? Had I met him before and conveniently forgotten about it? These questions were left unanswered, slowly fading from daily ruminations until they were given life again a couple years later.
My work involved North Korea, namely its nuclear weapons program, so I had petitioned my bosses for better security practices. In return they tasked me with creating a security policy. This responsibility eventually spilled into my personal habits; I became fixated with protecting the version of myself in the Cloud. Ultimately, I put in a request to attend a cybersecurity symposium in San Francisco.
After checking in and getting my badge, I wandered around browsing the various booths. I was talking to someone about the shortcomings of facial recognition when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hey there, recognize me?”
I couldn’t place him.
“It’s James. James Lee.” He pointed to his name tag. “We were in elementary school together. And I even came to your birthday party once.”
I went to an elementary school where I was the only Korean. But then in third grade, a new student came into our class, “fresh off the boat” from Korea. He didn’t speak any English so they sat him next to me, the teacher occasionally calling on me to translate for him. Eventually our mothers met at a PTA event and for my birthday party Mom had forced me to invite him. I assumed he must’ve later given himself an English name, James.
“Hi, James. You recognize me?”
“Yes, you still look the same. And your birthday party was the best one I’ve ever been to. Every trip to the amusement park after that was a letdown.”
My birthday party had been in a very modest backyard. But perhaps an American-style birthday party must’ve been eye-opening for him at an impressionable time.
“I’m glad it was memorable for you,” I said with a forced smile.
“It was. The best of times and also the worst of times.”
I wanted to laugh and say, “What the Dickens?” But instead I asked, deadpan, “Do you want to elaborate?”
“Well, the way you treated me, singled me out, in front of all those kids. I wasn’t sure what I had done wrong. I mean we were just kids but…” He rubbed his mouth as if to stop himself from speaking any further.
I wasn’t quite sure what he was referring to. But I had an inkling. He had funny socks and funny shoes and I didn’t want to be associated with that. So during a game of hide-and-seek, my friends and I left him behind. In the alley. Later I received a stern rebuke from his mother. And my own mother stood behind her, devastatingly silent.
“I’m sorry if I did anything that upset you back then. But we were kids. I was just a kid.”
James nodded. “We are such different people in our pasts, aren’t we? Yeah, I’m sorry I even brought that up. And thank you for humoring me. I feel like an ass.”
After we moved away, my mom kept in touch with his mom. She would occasionally talk about him. First place in a statewide essay contest. Medals from a national competition for young cellists. Class president in high school. And finally, Stanford.
“But it seems like your life turned out pretty good after that. Stanford, right?”
“San Jose State.” Then he scoffed. “But you probably already knew that. Look, so you graduated from Stanford Business School. Almost everyone from our class knows. But you don’t need to rub it in.”
“Wait, Stanford? That wasn’t me. Uh… I thought you…” Did Mom just make up those stories to shame me? “Uh… sorry that wasn’t my intent.”
“I guess it’s true. Once a bully, always a bully. Well, it was a pleasure seeing you again.” Then he closed with something that sounded like “Chuck” before turning around to walk away.
“Excuse me, what was that?” I yelled with restraint. But he was already disappearing into the swarm of attendees.
***
The notion that someone thought of me as a bully lingered like a virus, replicating every time I doubted that my pristine memories were ever that clean. I always tried to be an upstanding person and in my mind such an accusation felt like a stake through my identity. Jokes I would have cracked before I began to suppress. I carefully gave out compliments after surveying them for duplicity. When drafting emails I found myself endlessly parsing phrases to ensure they were scrubbed of any innuendo or insinuation. I made sure to presume and assume nothing. I feared being mislabeled again. But a couple of years ago when I was at work in Washington, D.C., my efforts seemed for naught.
I had moved to a think tank, focusing on inter-Korean relations and its security implications. At my job I worked with another expert in the region. She was raised in England and every time she spoke I was smitten by that accent.
Lucie and I had been steadily getting to know one another while working on a paper together. North Korea and the legacy of the Tonghak Revolution. Though the revolution was ultimately crushed in 1894, one change it brought was peasants starting to adopt surnames, a practice which had been previously reserved for the elite. By being a Kim, Park, or Lee, one could technically, at least in name, close the equality gap with an aristocrat. I had teased her, Lucie Kim, a couple times by suggesting she had peasant roots rather than yangban ones.
One day Lucie asked when I had last visited Korea. I thought maybe she wanted to go together at some point. And (I hoped) explore our individual histories and the possibility of a shared future.
“I went in January. Why do you ask?” I responded, suppressing a smile.
“My friend in Korea said she went on a date with you.”
The urge to smile vanished as heat flashed across my face. The trip in January was because of my grandmother’s funeral. I barely had time for myself, not to mention time for a date. I thought maybe she was just joking. “I went because of family stuff. I’m pretty sure I didn’t go on a date when I was there.”
Lucie squinted at me. “London School of Economics, eh? She showed me the Tinder profile because I also went to LSE. And your picture was on there. That’s why I knew it was you. I can’t believe you would lie about your schooling. And your name.” She pronounced my name, shaking her head and clicking her tongue. “Do you go by ‘Charlie’ for short?”
She was right. I did have a Tinder profile. And on it I had mentioned I was a fan of Charles Dickens. I wondered if that was the reason for the ‘Charlie’ comment. But I didn’t put my schooling on there let alone lie about it.
I stammered, “Uh… I was just playing around with Tinder because I was bored one day and I accidentally matched with someone. Was that your friend?”
Having the app on my phone violated all my security principles. I had been curious. Swiping through the pool of candidates and imagining their fates entwined with mine, the storylines were too intriguing to resist. But the conversation with the Tinder match didn’t lead anywhere. Perhaps Lucie was equating being matched with going on a date.
Lucie crossed her arms. “Yes, and she didn’t have anything good to say about you.”
I became conscious of the sweat beading around my temples. I hadn’t really said much when I briefly chatted on the app. I had turned off notifications so I wasn’t very responsive to new messages. Maybe the Tinder match thought that was impolite or that I had ghosted her.
“I’m sorry if I did or said anything to offend her… or you.”
“I guess people take on a different persona outside of work. But you… I didn’t realize you were like that. Do you always take girls you meet for the first time to expensive hotels just to ghost them afterwards?”
“What? Hotels? LSE? Charlie? I really don’t know what you are talking about.”
But Lucie brushed past me as she muttered, “You’re no royalty, you know.”
I stared at the wall, alone. My eyes settled upon the shadowy outline on the plaster, the discoloration faint yet unmistakable, my mind unable to recall what had once hung there, or if anything had at all.
***
I replayed the incident over and over, questioning where I had gone wrong. I found it troubling that others would find me unscrupulous, especially the one who I had been hoping one day would stay with me for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. Eventually I got over Lucie and the once promising bond between us when I met this girl at a networking event. Several text message exchanges later we went on our first date.
She was multiethnic, a curious blend of histories and identities. It was a stark contrast to my purely homogeneous stock. I had recounted to her that I didn’t resemble any of my parents or relatives; I had no siblings for comparison. It left me musing that I must’ve been found under a bridge. An orphan, I had joked. And so for my birthday she gifted me an Ancestry.com DNA kit. But I had reservations about signing over such sensitive information. I had grown increasingly defensive in protecting my online presence and privacy: password managers, VPNs, throwaway email addresses, encrypted messaging apps. In the end, curiosity got the better of me.
When the results came back, I wasn’t surprised it estimated my Korean ethnicity at over 95%. But I jolted up, my stomach dropping, when I saw listed an unnamed individual with a “>99%” DNA match. It was clearly a mistake, I thought. I emailed customer service to complain they had contaminated my DNA with someone else’s. Probably someone with my same name, one that when googled yielded too many results. I closed the email with a subtle jab about being better with sensitive customer data. Short of a revolution, these companies would never be incentivized to be better with their data, I lamented to myself.
A week later I received an email from customer service. They said they took great steps to produce accurate results and a mistake was highly unlikely. I closed my eyes, trying to contain the rising nausea, as I thought about the ramifications of this not being a mistake.
I had to lie down.
The jokes about being found under a bridge now became a haunting possibility. My mother had passed away years ago and I was estranged from my father. I tried to think if Mom ever mentioned the circumstances of my birth. But why would she if there was nothing extraordinary about it? And I had never seriously doubted being her ordinary son.
I debated whether to reach out to my DNA match, my fingers lingering over the keyboard during each deliberation. It all seemed surreal. I was still sure it was some sort of mixup. I spent many late nights googling the word “doppelgänger.” I read stories about Victorian Age writers and poets having ominous encounters with their doubles. I shuddered at the thought of this being some sort of omen.
One night, feeling the afterglow of a couple of drinks, I wrote a short message to my doppelgänger on the Ancestry.com site: I believe they contaminated one of our DNA samples. What incompetence! Anyhow I thought maybe it would be cool to connect.
A day later I found a reply waiting for me. After staring at the screen for several minutes, I instinctively looked away as I clicked to reveal its contents. I slowly turned my gaze forward to read the message, knowing it might fundamentally alter everything I believed about myself.
My name is Charles Chung. I live in Seoul, Korea. How about you?
The message didn’t bite as hard as I had feared or hoped. I was violating my principles again when I decided to reveal personal information to a total stranger online. I wrote that I was born in Chicago, now living in D.C. Charles told me about having been born in Chicago as well, though he spent most of his childhood in Korea. Then high school in Paris. Undergrad in London. MBA at Stanford. Silicon Valley. Now the family business.
I became fixated on the Chicago part. When I dug further I found out we had the same birthday in the same year. Then he sent me his Instagram page. At first I was thoroughly confused. Then embarrassment seeped in, masquerading as anger, from the thought that I had been the victim of a cruel, elaborate joke. But as I scrolled, it dawned on me that it wasn’t me being photoshopped into that life. Rather it was actually him, his resemblance uncanny.
His life was curated with supercars, Swiss watches, special edition sneakers. Ambient light, skewing purple, shaded a night’s revelry, arms slung around proud companions, including a few whose nagging familiarity hinted at minor celebrity. Mediterranean or Pacific vistas of cinematic blue seas and watercolor horizons. And it was all headlined by his to-die-for follower count. My Instagram was practically dormant. The few posts I had left up were only visible to my small follower list which I had culled without bias. And even these were bland, devoid of any personality. Just some quotes about lives not lived and second chances and a meme echoing liberty, equality, and fraternity.
My existence was being overthrown.
I began to hypothesize we were identical twins, separated at birth. I had always felt like a bit of an outsider. In school, at work, even at home. Like there was this other half that was lacking. Lacking that little boost that could’ve put me in that gifted track. Lacking the charisma to compensate for the meekness presumed of my own kin. Lacking the gene that would’ve made my parents proud.
It was as though my identity was finally being validated, one side of the larger equation, until Charles mentioned he already had a twin brother. And that pathetic hope I had begun to foster all but disappeared, another door clicking shut upon my eager approach.
***
I continued to exchange messages with Charles for a couple of weeks, and then he told me his mother wanted to meet. I perked up. I had been long overdue for a trip to Korea and I was going to be in between jobs in the summer. I told him I might be visiting in the months to come, though I had already made up my mind to go.
When I arrived in Korea one of the first things I did was meet up with my old friend Boram. We decided to go hiking and I suggested Bugaksan. The mountain had reopened to the public after being closed for years due to security concerns. Along the path we saw markers pointing to bullet holes in the trees. I told him the story of the North Korean commandos in the 60s that had used this very mountain as cover. They were able to get within several hundred meters of the Blue House. Their mission had been to infiltrate the presidential compound and assassinate the South Korean president. The incident left a bitter taste in the relations of the two Koreas.
Boram asked my opinion about the possibility of unification in our lifetimes. I told him it probably wouldn’t be feasible since the two nations were already so divergent. Culturally, socially, economically. They would be left conjoined but forever existing separately.
As we descended I also told him about the Ancestry.com story and how I was supposed to meet them the next day at their home in Pyeongchang-dong, an affluent neighborhood in the hills not too far away from the mountain. Home to crusty business tycoons and throwback politicians.
“Dude, that’s a crazy story. So you have an evil twin, huh?” Boram said.
“I never said he was evil.”
“Dude, that incident at the club. The Frenchies. It was him all along. The one who should’ve been at the receiving end of the punch. Now it all makes sense.”
“Well, we’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Nervous?”
“You can never be too safe these days.”
“Knowing you and your habits, that’s quite an understatement. Worried they might be organ harvesters?” Boram said with a grin.
I forced a laugh. “Something like that. I’m worried they might not be who I had hoped.”
***
The next day, Bastille Day as my phone would have me believe, I took the bus to Pyeongchang-dong. When I got off, I took one look at the route and felt I knew the way, as if I was homed in on a familiar path. It was hot and muggy and my shirt was already patched with sweat when I rang the bell at the front gate. When it opened, I came face to face with Charles. It was as though I was watching myself on screen, an uncomfortable likeness projected back at me. We both stood there, unable to acknowledge the other. Finally, Charles put out his hand and flaunted a smile that felt amiss, his eyes disconnected from the gesture.
The house itself was hardly visible from the outside due to the high perimeter walls. But standing in the garden, I saw the long path pristinely manicured until it reached the entryway. Inside, the house was cavernous. Charles led me to a room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out into the landscaped yard. Monuments to his father lined the gleaming white walls: plaques, a self-portrait, photos with dignitaries. Charles asked if I wanted anything to drink; the help had the day off, he mentioned. He called out for his mother and left the room.
A few minutes later his mother came in with a tray of drinks. She took one look at me and her face contorted with a mix of shock and delight. I just stood there and bowed. She floated slowly toward me in her modernized, pared-down hanbok, muted with grey tones, a floral pattern fluttering down her willowy chima. As she approached I put out my hands, a half gesture to offer help, unsure if I was being polite or meddlesome. But with a demure whisper she told me all was fine: gwen-cha-na-yo. I could smell the cooked jujubes and the warm honey, reminiscent of those Insa-dong tea houses I had visited when I had studied abroad here. After putting down the wooden tray of twin stoneware teacups, she held out her arms invitingly and I leaned in for an uneasy hug which landed as a pat on the back.
“When Charles told me about you, I was shocked at first but now I’m just speechless,” his mother said in Korean.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said in my stiff, formal Korean.
His mother laughed. “My, you have impeccable manners. But you don’t need to be so formal.” She hesitated after seeing my unchanging expression. “Can you understand everything I’m saying?”
“Yes, mostly.”
“Your Korean is very good.”
“It’s only okay. I should be better.”
“You were born in Chicago, my son tells me. Grow up there?”
“Yes but now I live in Washington D.C..”
“Oh, look at my manners. Please, have a seat.”
I sat down on the side of the sofa directly across from her in her armchair. She surveyed me with additional questions about my job (in between), upbringing (middle-class), parents (passed and estranged), siblings (none), and education (state school). She asked if I had told anyone about my trip here to their home. I considered mentioning Boram but stopped myself, perhaps following an instinct cultivated from all the good internet hygiene I had been practicing. Instead, I reached for the teacup and took a sip. Her eyes were fixed on me, her expression untouched just like the stoneware in front of her, brimming with the deep amber tea, the floating dried jujubes and pine nuts now completely still. I became worried I had made a cultural blunder by not waiting for her to drink first. To bridge the hesitation and gloss over the questionable etiquette, I spit out that I hadn’t even told my relatives about my trip here to Korea since it was last minute, which seemed to quell her probing. During the lull in the conversation, I looked around at the monuments in the room.
“The chairman…” the mother started but her voice began to quiver. “I mean, Charles’s father had a stroke a couple months back and he’s still in intensive care.”
I didn’t know the word for condolences and so I resorted to an apology. My own father was always distant and after my mother passed away he became increasingly distrustful and paranoid. Our last exchange was years ago. And so the apology I uttered seemed like an admission of guilt for my own estrangement.
“It was all of a sudden. Now we are just preparing for the inevitable. The machines are keeping him alive as we figure out the inheritance issues and all that ugly stuff when a person passes from this life.” She turned her attention to the thick stack of documents piled on one side of the coffee table. “See, all this paperwork just to sort out inheritance, taxes, and other burdens,” she said, standing to collect the documents before sweeping them aside. “Where was I?” she asked as she glanced back at me.
“You asked about Chicago.”
She sat back down. “Ah right. When I gave birth to Charles and Chul-soo in Chicago, there was another Korean lady there who had given birth around the same time.”
“Chul-soo?” I asked.
“Oh, dear me, I forgot to mention him. Chul-soo is Charles’s twin brother. He was born with a sickness and needed a lot of care and attention. He’s in a special facility now. But there was something always nagging at me about Chul-soo, like he was disconnected from our family in some way. Not because he had a disability. God forbid, I loved him more than words can describe. But his face was unfamiliar, which I chalked up to the mental disability he was born with.”
She strained to keep emotions from surfacing before she looked away to dab her eyes. “But now seeing you, I know the thing I’ve always suspected did in fact happen.”
I wanted to reach for the box of tissues but it was inconveniently out of my range. She then turned to face me directly, showing her tears without shame. “You and Chul-soo were switched at birth.”
I had danced with the possibility of something like this after she extended the invitation. But hearing it directly from Charles’s mother, or rather our mother, was a different emotion entirely. As I looked at her, I realized for the first time in my life I was seeing familiarity in a parental face. A beautiful ache shivered through me, leaving the tips of my fingers tingling.
When I went off to college, Mom drove me the two-and-a-half hours to campus to help me move in. During the car ride we probably had our longest conversation ever, as she told me about her childhood in the rubble of the Korean War and Dad’s origin story. When I asked her who I resembled more, her or Dad, she undoubtedly paused before responding that I took after both of them equally.
In my dorm room, Mom had prayed for me. When she was done she had tears in her eyes. She told me she loved me, which was the first time I had heard her say it in English. But then she just stood there for a second too long as if she wanted to tell me something else.
Had I finally come home?
“At first I didn’t believe Charles and so I had to see for myself. You can never be too safe these days.” Her face became stern again. “There are always stories of parasites coming out of the woodwork at inopportune times, claiming to be a long-lost illegitimate child. But the facts seem to point to you being my very legitimate biological son.”
She put on a taut smile through the tears. “My son, my poor son,” she said to me, holding out her arms like she did before. And this time I walked toward her. Mom never embraced me when I was young but she tried later in life. But I had already built up a callousness for physical affection. After she passed away I always regretted never reciprocating her attempt at atonement. Now here was redemption in the flesh. A second chance to embrace my mother. I had been recalled to life.
Yes, I was finally home.
Mother held me tight. And then she whispered gently into my ear, “I will protect my family at all costs.”
I began to feel a little lighter. My murky existence, finally beginning to clear. The colors began to bleed into monochrome, my old world slowly dissolving. I felt my eyes droop and I didn’t resist.
It was going to be a far, far better rest than I had ever known.
***
He is helping Mother when the phone buzzes with a notification. He unlocks it using Face ID. Boram: How’s your twin? What organ do they want from you? (tongue out)
He pauses to think before sending his reply: I’m doing fine (heart)
