Broadcaster Seo Dong-ju opened up about the mixed feelings of love and resentment she felt after the sudden death of her father, the late Seo Se-won.
The late Seo Se-won died in Cambodia on Apr. 20, 2023. At the time, Oh Chang-soo, president of the Korean Missionary Association in Cambodia, said, "Mr. Seo Se-won went into shock and died while receiving an IV at a hospital around 1 p.m. Cambodia time." Seo Dong-ju immediately flew to Cambodia to bring her father's remains home and held the funeral.
In recent lectures and interviews, Seo Dong-ju said, "When I think of my father, I felt very fond of him but also resentful; I didn't want to resemble him, yet there were many ways in which I did," adding, "complex feelings of love and resentment were mixed." He said, "I wrote to avoid hating my father and to avoid being disappointed," and said that writing through his new book '완벽한 유결점' was a time of self-comfort.
The relationship between Seo Dong-ju and Seo Se-won changed around 2002. Seo Dong-ju recalled, "When I was young we were well off, and my parents' relationship wasn't bad. But after my father returned from detention in 2002 many things changed. It felt as if he had come back as a completely different person."
His father's sudden death left him with an indescribable emptiness. Seo Dong-ju said calmly, "At that time my feeling was simply 'emptiness.' I realized a person can disappear in an instant." She added, "My father and I had a love-and-hate relationship. But when that person disappeared, there was nowhere to pour my emotions, so I felt empty," confessing as she wiped her eyes.
His loss did not end there. The day after the funeral rites for his father, she said the longtime companion dog also died. "A healthy child went to heaven in a matter of weeks. It felt like everything was collapsing," Seo Dong-ju recalled, saying that amid her mother's illness and financial difficulties she "wrote and painted to avoid dying."
Seo Se-won and Seo Jeong-hee caused a stir when a comedian 16 years older married a high school model of stunning beauty. But in 2015 a shocking incident occurred between them. Along with a beating incident and adultery allegations, painful wounds hidden in the family were revealed. Seo Jeong-hee disclosed to the public, "I met my husband at 19 and was subjected to something close to sexual assault, and I married two months later and lived almost like a prisoner for 32 years. I was so afraid of my husband that I didn't dare demand a divorce and endured it. I did my best to keep the family because I believed that if I made my husband a pastor everything could change and because of the children, but in the end my husband did not change even after becoming a pastor." She said there was a fight in March 2014 over her husband's issue with another woman and she demanded an apology, but she claimed Seo Se-won threatened, "If you touch that woman I won't let it go; if you demand a divorce I will kill you," and then left the house. CCTV footage was also released showing Seo Jeong-hee falling to the floor and being dragged into an elevator by the leg by Seo Se-won, shocking viewers.
Seo Dong-ju married a Korean American man in 2008, but the couple divorced in 2014. When this later became known, Seo Dong-ju said last year on her Instagram, where she posted several law school graduation photos, "I became a lawyer. I divorced four years ago and decided to start a new chapter in my life."
Seo Dong-ju and Seo Jeong-hee each found new love and are living happy second lives. Meanwhile, Seo Se-won passed away tragically in Cambodia in 2023. Remembering her father, with whom she had a love-and-hate relationship, Seo Dong-ju is once again resolved to live bravely. <
[Photo] provided
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