Simon Lee
Simon Lee: Looking Back On The Last Forty Years
Looking back on the last forty years….
May 12th, 1975. It was a beautiful Spring day in Seoul with a clear sky.
However, as I was leaving the bosom of my motherland that I loved for 27 years, the sky above Gimpo International Airport where many planes were coming in and going out was crying because of the sorrow of farewell that gave me a heartburn over the span of several sleepless nights, for the memories of 18 years of my childhood in Kukje Market in Busan, about 9 years of life in Seoul as a university student, a teacher, and a part of a children’s choir on television.
Back then, there was no Korean airline, so my partner, our two children, a 4-year-old and a-2-year old, and I flew Northwest Airline on a 36 hours long flight to Calgary, Canada.
All we had in our hands were $3,500, which was the maximum amount of emigration fee allowed by the government, and three luggages.
The wife of the principal of the school where I worked grabbed me around the neck and wept in sorrow for it seemed like we were not going to meet again while alive.
They had refused to take my letter of resignation for a year because they considered me as an outstanding individual much needed for Korea’s musical education.
However, because I was adamant about my decision, they blessed my future and told me something I still cannot forget.
“You have fire in your heart! That fire is a disease. You must be able to put out that fire!”
I sobbed for a long time, and leaving the guests at the farewell, I found a quiet corner and bowed towards the Blue House (the Korean presidential residence).
“Mr. President! I am very sorry.
I graduated from the Seoul National University of Education, received excellent treatment as a teacher, and was given chances for three children’s television shows. I lived the last 5 to 6 years like fire.
However, now, I am going to the wider world to learn a lot more and grow to be a bigger person, and I will come back to my motherland.
I will serve my motherland like Mr. President and live like fire.
I am going to achieve my goal in 10 years and come back.”
I remember it like yesterday, the memory of praying towards the Blue House for a long time.
Via San Francisco and Vancouver, about two days later, we arrived in Calgary, Canada.
Upon arrival, we spent about $1,000 for renting the apartment and buying daily necessities.
All we had was $2500 in our hands for our family of four to live on.
During the day I was at school. In the evening, from 6-10pm, I washed dishes at a restaurant, and from 11pm to 3-3:30am, I cleaned the building of a Ford dealership.
My wife also worked at a restaurant during the day, spent the evening with the children, and from 11pm, all four of us went to work at the Ford dealership.
The basement was a space for the mechanics, so the space was covered with grease, and it was a hard labor washing the space with hot water and scrubbing it.
The first floor of the building had about 20 different cars displayed on a shiny tile floor and 10 rooms for the salesmen.
The floor above had about 10 offices and a café.
As soon as we arrived, we took the children to the café, put two tables together, and gathered several chairs, so that they could have a space where they can read books and fall asleep there.
My wife vacuumed and cleaned the table, and I did the most important show room cleaning where about 20 cars were displayed.
In every long winter evenings, the floor of the car show room was muddy with clumps of dirt and snow.
It was my most important and big floor cleaning duty to wash the tile floor with hot water for about two hours and wax the floor twice a week.
After about three hours of work, the moment I open the back door of the building and throw out all the garbage bags I collected that day, the cool of the winter night of about minus 2-30 degrees greeted me with gratitude and delight.
In Calgary’s winter, the temperature is about minus 20 to 30 degrees for about 6 months out of a year. Harsh cold, but an affluent city – Calgary of the oil boom is the place where we spent the painful first days of immigration, but it is also where I shed the most tears of appreciation in my life.
At 3am after all work was done, when I, covered in sweats, would go to pick up my children at the café, the books they were reading were open on the tables, and the two children were sound asleep on the chairs.
I held my two babies in my arms and wrapped them with my top, and we cried out to God while moving the children into the car on the icy road.
“God! Please give our family good health. We only have you to rely on.”
Actually, I regretted so much for about a month or two since we first arrived.
My family was so pitiful.
I tried surviving by working at a factory by myself doing all kinds of chores, but I could not study.
In the end, my wife and I had to work together and have the children sacrifice.
The first year of life as immigrants passed as we slept about 4-5 hours per day on weekdays and took some rest on weekends, and we were able to appreciate and be deeply moved, thanks to our faith.
However, after a little less than a year passed of our immigrant life, I found that there was not much that we have achieved.
Compared to and the level of sacrifice the children made and the way my wife devoted her life to school life and the means of living, there was not enough development to celebrate and fruit to harvest.
The conclusion we made was to give up school for the time being and dedicate 100% to work to prepare financial resources.
Since then, to make the maximum income, I worked indiscriminately at convenient stores, foundries, restaurants, etc. for 16 hours per day in average.
Encountering armed robber, a scene of violence with teenagers with knife near midnight, and all the stories I told God with tears of appreciation while I was lying in bed, covered with blood, in the emergency room…. I had to tell these stories to my family after we moved to Vancouver a few years later.
The first year of my life as an immigrant was the time I learned how to survive, but in the second year, because of my belief that I prepare financial resources by giving up the school I was attending and working full time, earn living expenses enough for at least 5 years for my family, and return to school, I was able to save about $50,000 over the span of 2 years. $50,000 in 1976-77 would worth about $200,000 now, 40 years from then.
In July 1977, I received an offer of becoming a choirmaster at a Baptist Church in Vancouver.
To me who have been immersed in work preparing financial resources in the streets of affluent Calgary, this offer came at me with mysterious powers.
“Do I choose the visible wealth or do I choose Canaan, the land that flow with milk and honey…..???”
It seems like yesterday that in meditation, I was struggling for about a month on the test stand where the wisdom of the land and the wisdom of the sky were being tested like the parting of the Red Sea.
At that time, Calgary was an affluent city with abundant amount of black oil, reveling in its wealth, and Vancouver was a lonely city, though with excellent natural landscape, from which people were leaving to find jobs.
In November 1977, one rainy afternoon, with the help of the church family, we settled in Vancouver.
About 3-4 months later, an old and big hamburger restaurant was put on sale because of weak management.
I was able to find out that the sources of their sales were every evening and weekends past midnight from 12 to 2.
According to my thorough month long research, the reasons behind weak management were: natural loss due to the owner’s absence, the lack of speed that is half the desired speed at peak times, and the absence of enthusiastic and creative new menu.
As the first Korean to do so, at the age of 31, I decided to give the biggest hamburger restaurant in Vancouver a try.
First of all, I was extremely amazed by the support Canadian banks offered to small businessmen.
On the first day with financial support of about 65%, we carefully opened the door and walked in, and two chefs handed us the key.
They had already submitted their resignation to the previous owner two weeks ago.
Two out of the three chefs resigned immediately, and one Chinese chef stayed with me.
There was only one way of escaping from this crisis.
We had to become chefs ourselves. That was the only way.
On the first day of taking over the restaurant, I saw the past thirty years of my life flash before my eyes.
The memory of helping my grandparents by selling roasted sweet potato and roasted squid at a small store in Gukje market in Busan from childhood in the mid 1950’s, the red sky in the middle of the night and the scary cry of flames, the back of my father who shook off the hands of the firefighters and ran into our rice store……
The middle-aged women who were crying on the watery ground of the zones 2 and 3 the next morning….
“I need to survive here!”
I made a frightening resolution, crying at the life of Korean-Japanese people, like my grandfather and grandmother, who came crowding in Busan after Korea’s independence, the tough life of tens of thousands of North Korean citizens post-Korean war in the Gukje market in Busan, and the faces of the leaders who stood firm from matters of life and death and began to lead my motherland with the new power from the successes of the first and second economic development.
“Right here, this hamburger restaurant is where I will die!”
That night, my frightening challenge began.
How can I make a more delicious hamburger?
How can I make the hamburgers faster so that I do not lose any clients?
I as the chef and my wife as the guest, we used about 10 plastic chips of different colors to constantly train ourselves.
We would close the store at 2am, clean it for about an hour, come back home, and come back out to the store at 10am. Every day was an intense battle.
One of the main reasons behind the constantly reoccurring accidents and complaints by the employees was racial discrimination.
It was because at this restaurant where the main menu is hamburger, the ex-owner and the employees were white, and most of the customers were white, as well.
In early morning on weekends, without fail the window was broken here and there, and the insurance company was at a point where it was through with business …… after that, in the building, I remember holding a Taekwondo class from 8pm for an hour and trained with children in the neighborhood in the building all night.
Slowly I began hiring many second generation immigrants and solved the problems, and I would go to famous hamburger restaurants in Los Angeles, Oregon, and Tacoma, etc. to find new menu and gain new ideas,
For about two years through the history of struggle, after earning the reputation as the best in Vancouver and sufficient income, I began planning a new business idea. The birth of the new business idea started in 1980, and since then for about 20 years, through 2-3 new projects a year, I created companies that were to become Vancouver’s attractions.
In February 1998, when my two children were almost finished with their Masters of Music at The Juilliard School and the University of Georgia, I fell into depression.
The firm promise where the goal was to study music and go back and serve my motherland in 10 years was not met at all, and because of the guilt and feeling of helplessness from the results of the past 25 years of my life that were like empty promises, the flaming passion I had was completely gone.
On one of the sleepless and painful nights since then, a volcano erupted in my empty heart.
The sorrow and resentment of the past 25 years of my life I spent passing on my dream to children erupted like a volcano.
From that sleepless night I passed with anxiety and restlessness, I suffered from awful social phobia that resulted from serious insomnia and anxiety and restlessness.
I became so weak that whenever I am alone, I spent the time crying.
I was sick to the point where I could not spend one day without a tranquilizer.
The advice I received from the principal 25 years ago, “You must be able to put out the fire in your heart. That fire is a disease!” started to echo in my heart.
During the 25 years of my life as an immigrant, I lived with tenacity, and though I created businesses that have become attractions of Vancouver and have had my two children finish their masters at the world’s top music schools, I myself fell into a deep depression and was at a dangerous point where I could not stand a second without a tranquilizer.
For about 5 years, I was worn out by medication, and for another 5 years, I fought to stop the medication.
After 10 years, I was able to put out the fire that was blazing in my heart through deep meditation and conversation with God while I walked in the forest for 2 hours every day.
On the other hand, in the midst of the pain, the business kept growing, and many employees were living life to the full as our soul family.
Most of them were young new immigrants from ethnic minorities.
They were not children I gave birth to, but because I was raising them, they were my soul children.
From the end of 2000, a new chapter of my life as an immigrant began.
“I am going to live a life where I am good to others and serve others!
I need to reach a conclusion on this piano sonata!
A conclusion on my life!
Although I broke my promise with my motherland, I am now going to raise young immigrants who have left their motherland to find a new life, as if they are my own children, with love and excellence!
Although the children I gave birth to with my body have fully achieved independence as professional musicians, I have many soul children who follow me like chicks follow a chicken, so I should give love and attention to these children, have them live as the 2nd and the 3rd Simon Lee, and raise them to be great member of the society contributing to this society and this country.”
This is the conclusion I made before God and people; a new promise and a burning hope.
In January 2006, I received a standing ovation from about 500 people in the leadership at the place where I accepted the 2005 Award for Small Businessmen from the Canadian Businessmen’s Association for the promise I made to spend the rest of my life helping, being kind to others, and serving others, and I shed a tear of appreciation to God.
Now, I look back on the last 40 years of immigration.
For the first few years, I fought with all my strength to survive.
For the next 20 years or so, I dedicated my time for the thriving business and the success of the children I gave birth to.
For the next 7 or 8 years or so, I passed the dark and scary valley of death.
Ah! The shadow of death that always came after midnight in the valley of death I no longer want to think about, and the heart-wrenching stories that I experienced since I was a child torturing me all night and the evil forces fading away only when the morning comes……
Now, I am going to fully keep in my heart the new sky and the new promise and new hope on this new land and again do my best today for the valuable end.
Life is a journey!
I will live my life as a good person with sincerity by cherishing every one I meet, sharing, loving, and serving for the last road of emigration from this finite world to the eternal world that I would have to go back to at some point, and appreciating the fact that I was born as a Korean on planet earth.
From Vancouver, Canada. Simon.