Monday, September 05, 2005
Princess Amy
Her Highness Princess Hai Kyung (Jewel of the Sea) of the Yi Dynasty
also known as Amy Haikyung Lee in the Columbia University staff listing,
and as Princess Haegyung in Korean history books
(searchable in google and in wikipedia as "Yi Haegyeong")
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Yi Dynasty (also known in history books as the Joseon Dynasty) was the royal family of Korea from 1392 A.D. until the American installation of democracy in 1945. One of the last members of that Dynasty was Prince Ui, who had many wives, and 27 children. (He was also known in history books as Prince Gang.) After he died, his "official" widow (Amy's mother) became the girlfriend of a general in the very corrupt South Korean army. The general was in charge of all supplies going to the army (guns, tanks, fuel, food, etc.), and he put Amy's mother in charge of the food-supply part of it. Because of food scarcities, she needed to have a special part of the army guarding the supply lines, and it became her own little private army.
Japan had taken over the country (in 1910), and while Ui was still alive, the Japanese insisted that he become a prince in the Japanese royal family. Prince Ui never reconciled himself to that fact, since he hated the Japanese conquerors. During a formal holiday party, he publicly shot the Japanese governor of Korea and escaped to Manchuria, where he had assembled an army of rebels against Japanese rule. He led that army in a revolution, but Japan defeated them. Instead of killing him, the Japanese dragged him back to Korea and insisted that he resume being the prince (very much like MacArthur's insisting that Hirohito remain in place under the American occupation). Amy said that he became a little bit crazy and spent his time siring children. According to Korean folklore, at his funeral, his corpse had an erection that became visible by lifting the middle of the sheet(!).
One of Amy's older brothers had studied the German culture at Heidelberg University, and he became the Japanese ambassador to Germany. The Yi family owned a hotel-size brick building in Seoul, which they leased out as the German embassy in Korea. Another older brother became a general in charge of the Japanese army's tank corps, stationed in Hiroshima. He died there, in the first atomic bomb attack.
Amy got a B.A. degree in music from Ewha Women's College, "the Wellesley of Korea." She was faster than any other Korean female ice skaters, but her family would not let her represent the country in the women's Olympics speed skating event, because it would be undignified for a Princess to lose, in case she did. Amy was very emotional, and both she and another Ewha student fell deeply in love with their music professor. During the war, the two girls followed him to Pusan in the south. When he rejected their declarations of love, they both started to jump into the cold river. However, they couldn't actually go ahead with that icy death, and both ended up laughing deliriously, instead of jumping.
Amy had a lot of sympathy for poor people and gave secret information to the Communist party. During the Communist takeover, she became their Minister of Education. However, she quickly began to see how brutal and deadly the Communists really were, and she then started warning various important people, just before they were about to be assassinated. After a few of them successfully went into hiding, it was realized that Amy had been the "reactionary spy" who had saved those people. Fortunately, she herself got warned in the nick of time, and she escaped, hiding in the attic of a friend's small house. She lived there for a month, subsisting mainly on a gallon can of U.S. Army peanut butter, plus occasional rice and water.
After the U.S. takeover, Amy became the librarian for the large U.S. Army Headquarters in Seoul. My friend Philip Cavanaugh, whom I had previously befriended while we were both in "The States" awaiting further orders, had gotten assigned to be a photographer for the U.N. in Seoul. He took pictures of the evidence of Communist atrocities (many mass killings). In his free time, he often hung around in the library.
After the war was over, competent typists were rare, so I was pulled out of the infantry and assigned to write the "Morning Report" at the 25th Division headquarters. This gave me special privileges, including a lot of free time. Therefore I managed to hitch rides in the ambulance that regularly went down to Seoul, where Phil introduced me to Amy.
The war ended, a week and a half after I got to Korea, and I only went on two "patrols" before all the fighting stopped. A soldier next to me in line (but several yards away) stepped on a landmine. We never heard for sure, but the rumor was that he died later in the hospital. Fortunately, my only injury was temporary loss ofhearing.
Princess Amy had a Steinway grand piano, which she sold for 500 U.S. dollars (a fortune in war-torn Korea), to buy her way to America. She was accepted in grad school (at Baylor, in Texas), and I was scheduled to return home to civilian life (June, 1954), so we planned to meet in New York and possibly get married. My parents were absolutely scandalized that I might marry a non-Jewish girl (and of a different race!), and Amy's mother was even madder.
Amy and I lived together every summer for several years. We never married, because of the extreme opposition from her mother, and also from my own parents (my mother got severely depressed whenever she thought about it).
I married a non-Jewish girl (Elizabeth Davis, Wellesley '60 and Columbia M.A.). My parents pretty much accepted this. in spite of her not being Jewish, because she was plenty high-class enough for them. (In fact, my wife came from a pretty distinguished family --- her father was Vice Pres. of a big ad agency, and her brother is a Harvard Med. School grad and prof. at Columbia Med. Sch., etc., etc.)
I didn't have any contact with Amy Lee until about 50 years later, when we found each other via the internet. My wife never did let me visit Amy. However, by e-mail, I found out that she had become a boss-librarian at Columbia University, in charge of a famous collection of Asian literature, from which she eventually retired a few years ago. She had written an article (in a Korean intellectual magazine) about her father's interesting life. Amy also wrote an article in an American library magazine, about the Columbia collection, and she gave some talks about the collection at universities in California. She went back to Korea once, to donate her Princess ceremonial gowns to a museum there, and also to give a lecture about her father at Seoul National University.
Amy never married, but she had a 30-year relationship with a Caucasian music teacher, who had been the accompanist for her singing recital in Carnegie Hall. He had once gone through a bitter divorce and didn't want to ever marry again. He had taught for a while in Korea, and both he and Amy had many friends among the Asians hanging around Columbia U., and various other artists in that community.
[Literature reference: in either the website http://en.wikipedia.org, or in http://google.com,
search for "yi haegyeong" without the quotation marks.]
also known as Amy Haikyung Lee in the Columbia University staff listing,
and as Princess Haegyung in Korean history books
(searchable in google and in wikipedia as "Yi Haegyeong")
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Yi Dynasty (also known in history books as the Joseon Dynasty) was the royal family of Korea from 1392 A.D. until the American installation of democracy in 1945. One of the last members of that Dynasty was Prince Ui, who had many wives, and 27 children. (He was also known in history books as Prince Gang.) After he died, his "official" widow (Amy's mother) became the girlfriend of a general in the very corrupt South Korean army. The general was in charge of all supplies going to the army (guns, tanks, fuel, food, etc.), and he put Amy's mother in charge of the food-supply part of it. Because of food scarcities, she needed to have a special part of the army guarding the supply lines, and it became her own little private army.
Japan had taken over the country (in 1910), and while Ui was still alive, the Japanese insisted that he become a prince in the Japanese royal family. Prince Ui never reconciled himself to that fact, since he hated the Japanese conquerors. During a formal holiday party, he publicly shot the Japanese governor of Korea and escaped to Manchuria, where he had assembled an army of rebels against Japanese rule. He led that army in a revolution, but Japan defeated them. Instead of killing him, the Japanese dragged him back to Korea and insisted that he resume being the prince (very much like MacArthur's insisting that Hirohito remain in place under the American occupation). Amy said that he became a little bit crazy and spent his time siring children. According to Korean folklore, at his funeral, his corpse had an erection that became visible by lifting the middle of the sheet(!).
One of Amy's older brothers had studied the German culture at Heidelberg University, and he became the Japanese ambassador to Germany. The Yi family owned a hotel-size brick building in Seoul, which they leased out as the German embassy in Korea. Another older brother became a general in charge of the Japanese army's tank corps, stationed in Hiroshima. He died there, in the first atomic bomb attack.
Amy got a B.A. degree in music from Ewha Women's College, "the Wellesley of Korea." She was faster than any other Korean female ice skaters, but her family would not let her represent the country in the women's Olympics speed skating event, because it would be undignified for a Princess to lose, in case she did. Amy was very emotional, and both she and another Ewha student fell deeply in love with their music professor. During the war, the two girls followed him to Pusan in the south. When he rejected their declarations of love, they both started to jump into the cold river. However, they couldn't actually go ahead with that icy death, and both ended up laughing deliriously, instead of jumping.
Amy had a lot of sympathy for poor people and gave secret information to the Communist party. During the Communist takeover, she became their Minister of Education. However, she quickly began to see how brutal and deadly the Communists really were, and she then started warning various important people, just before they were about to be assassinated. After a few of them successfully went into hiding, it was realized that Amy had been the "reactionary spy" who had saved those people. Fortunately, she herself got warned in the nick of time, and she escaped, hiding in the attic of a friend's small house. She lived there for a month, subsisting mainly on a gallon can of U.S. Army peanut butter, plus occasional rice and water.
After the U.S. takeover, Amy became the librarian for the large U.S. Army Headquarters in Seoul. My friend Philip Cavanaugh, whom I had previously befriended while we were both in "The States" awaiting further orders, had gotten assigned to be a photographer for the U.N. in Seoul. He took pictures of the evidence of Communist atrocities (many mass killings). In his free time, he often hung around in the library.
After the war was over, competent typists were rare, so I was pulled out of the infantry and assigned to write the "Morning Report" at the 25th Division headquarters. This gave me special privileges, including a lot of free time. Therefore I managed to hitch rides in the ambulance that regularly went down to Seoul, where Phil introduced me to Amy.
The war ended, a week and a half after I got to Korea, and I only went on two "patrols" before all the fighting stopped. A soldier next to me in line (but several yards away) stepped on a landmine. We never heard for sure, but the rumor was that he died later in the hospital. Fortunately, my only injury was temporary loss ofhearing.
Princess Amy had a Steinway grand piano, which she sold for 500 U.S. dollars (a fortune in war-torn Korea), to buy her way to America. She was accepted in grad school (at Baylor, in Texas), and I was scheduled to return home to civilian life (June, 1954), so we planned to meet in New York and possibly get married. My parents were absolutely scandalized that I might marry a non-Jewish girl (and of a different race!), and Amy's mother was even madder.
Amy and I lived together every summer for several years. We never married, because of the extreme opposition from her mother, and also from my own parents (my mother got severely depressed whenever she thought about it).
I married a non-Jewish girl (Elizabeth Davis, Wellesley '60 and Columbia M.A.). My parents pretty much accepted this. in spite of her not being Jewish, because she was plenty high-class enough for them. (In fact, my wife came from a pretty distinguished family --- her father was Vice Pres. of a big ad agency, and her brother is a Harvard Med. School grad and prof. at Columbia Med. Sch., etc., etc.)
I didn't have any contact with Amy Lee until about 50 years later, when we found each other via the internet. My wife never did let me visit Amy. However, by e-mail, I found out that she had become a boss-librarian at Columbia University, in charge of a famous collection of Asian literature, from which she eventually retired a few years ago. She had written an article (in a Korean intellectual magazine) about her father's interesting life. Amy also wrote an article in an American library magazine, about the Columbia collection, and she gave some talks about the collection at universities in California. She went back to Korea once, to donate her Princess ceremonial gowns to a museum there, and also to give a lecture about her father at Seoul National University.
Amy never married, but she had a 30-year relationship with a Caucasian music teacher, who had been the accompanist for her singing recital in Carnegie Hall. He had once gone through a bitter divorce and didn't want to ever marry again. He had taught for a while in Korea, and both he and Amy had many friends among the Asians hanging around Columbia U., and various other artists in that community.
[Literature reference: in either the website http://en.wikipedia.org, or in http://google.com,
search for "yi haegyeong" without the quotation marks.]
