::A Geek in Korea::

I’ve got Korean relatives that I really like. Because of the hierarchical system based on the age of the people married into the family relative to their ages, we refer to them differently. On my wife’s mother’s side, there are three aunts, and two uncles. The “Second Uncle” means the second oldest uncle by age in the family. His wife, or how my wife talks about her is, “The Second Uncle’s Wife”, is a real scene stealer when it comes to making problems with insensitivity in regards to others in the family.

Her disgressions are well documented. Her only slight against my wife and I directly was when she showed up at our wedding, skipped the ceremony, took ziploc bags into the buffet line as it was closing, and stole all of our best food before we got a chance to eat the food we had paid for the entire guest party. She stole a large enough portion of the food to entirely fill up the large bag she brought with her for the event. I tell this story every time I go to a wedding. My crazy aunt with the ziploc bags. It’s pretty awful, but we’re not the only ones she likes to torment. This isn’t the only thing she’s said or done around people in the family to make others miserable.

We don’t vacation with the relatives because of scheduling and general sanity reasons, but we’ve been told that the rest of the family pays her so that she DOESN’T vacation with them. They bribe her so that the rest of the family can vacation in peace! She uses the vacation days when her family leaves her behind to go shopping with the money she extorted from them. If she doesn’t get this money, she comes on vacation with the family and intentionally makes everyone miserable to remind them why they pay her off in the first place. She’s ruined so many family vacations today that everyone else will intentionally schedule secret vacation spots so she can’t find out about them. If they don’t, she will show up to ruin people’s time in the middle of the week when she runs out of money. Unbelievable, but true.

Even the matriarchal leader of the family, my wife’s Grandmother, is distrustful of her stingy ways. When I went to holidays at Grandma’s farm, the Second Uncle’s wife has plundered Grandma’s cache of food for anything she couldn’t make or buy. She’ll leave with an entire trunk full of organic, home made, country fixings that Grandma prepares for herself. It’s like a payment to get her to leave without too much nagging. She’ll pick over the foods and then talk about how there isn’t enough of this or that. It’s awful. I’ve also heard that if Grandma spends time at her favorite son’s home and brings anything comfortable, the Second Uncle’s wife will do laundry and “lose” the clothes just long enough for Grandma to leave. She then wears the clothes herself! She steals clothes from her own mother-in-law! She steals clothes from an elderly person! She STEALS CLOTHES?!

The latest transgression was insulting the cooking of one of the aunts I really like. My aunt took Korean cooking classes and is certified to be a cook in a Korean restaurant. Whenever I go over to this aunt’s house she prepares a feast of amazing dishes that I beg my wife to learn how to prepare. This aunt takes pride in her cooking. My mother-in-law and this aunt had gone in together to buy a large portion of beef for the Chuseok holiday. They prepared “Galbi” (Barbecue short ribs) for everyone in the family. This is one of my top Korean meat dish favorites, so even though we weren’t celebrating with the relatives, my mother-in-law gave us a large pot full of ribs. I was excited to have them.

My wife and I had invited over some friends to eat with us because of the ribs. My wife tried her best to prepare them, but they ended up a little too chewy. They were fine, but a little too tough to completely devour like I normally do. I’ve had worse at restaurants, and none better at home. It just wasn’t nearly as superb as stuff we normally eat given to us by the family. If we had spent a few more hours cooking them they might have fallen off the bone, I don’t know. It was mearly “very good” instead of excellent.

When the Second Uncle’s Wife got her FREE serving of ribs graciously given to her by my mother-in-law and this aunt who had prepared it for the rest of the family, the she couldn’t let this nice deed go unpunished. She complained about the meat, of course. “Your beef is so stringy. You should buy higher quality, more expensive meat, please. Who would ask a guest to eat such cheap meat? This must have been the cheapest stuff on sale, huh? It sure tastes like it.”

Wow. That’s setting the bar high, even for her. My aunt that prepared the dishes and is a well regarded cook in the family is still fuming about it. If anyone knows about buying beef in Korea around Chuseok, it’s not cheap no matter what you end up buying. When we heard about this latest comment we were told to be quiet because the aunt in question was in the room and might overhear. It apparently took quite some time to calm her down after she heard it the first time.

I don’t know why this particular person is so intolerably unpleasant ALL the time. If I hadn’t met her myself I wouldn’t have believed a person that completely repulsive could exist. She does make for some interesting stories however.