I purposely didn’t respond to Peggy and Jessie’s comments on my Thanksgiving trip. It just ain’t something that belongs buried on page two of the daily news. This is something that should be headlines, above the fold, in bold print.

So, here it, folks. The big news:

I’m Getting Married

Both Peggy and Jessie are correct: meeting the family isn’t done in Korea unless its serious. And it is. Probably not a huge surprise to most readers. I dated plenty of women since I got divorced in 2001 and while many of them are great women, have wonderful talents and multiple assets, none measure up to MyeongHee. She’s a fabulous woman and I love her.

We don’t know when. We haven’t set a date. There won’t be any ceremony, other than a civil signing at city hall. She’s been married before, too, so neither of us need the big deal wedding and party and blah blah blah. We’ll wait until the home she’s living in gets sold, which is uncertain. I explained, way back in March, about the concept of “key money” here in Korea. Essentially, she’s put up around $40K to live in her house for a set period of time. When she moves, she’s supposed to get it back. The landlord was supposed to make his profit by investing it. However, he not only doesn’t have her money, but owes his bank additional money, so they’re taking the house and auctioning it. After the bank gets their money, she might get some of her $40K. We just don’t know when that will be, so we haven’t made any official announcements. When it happens, she’ll live here with me in Cheonsang. Her son, who is 15, will live here, too. We’ll build a bedroom for him.

So, having written all that, I’m sure there are questions people have. I’ll answer the big ones I expect here:

• Will we stay in Korea forever? – No. We expect to come to America. No time frame. Her family has been briefed that she may eventually live in the US and they are happy for her.
• Will we have kids? – Oh heavens, no! (But if we did, they’d be cute!)
• Will I adopt her son? No, he’s a big boy. He’ll be in high school in January, so he’ll be in school nearly all day – 12+ hours. We won’t see him much.
• Will I come back to America for a visit? Yes, I hope to come back for a couple of weeks in early 2008.
• What so damn great about Korea anyway? Why am I here for so long? That’s back in the archives, too.

Got more questions? Fire away!