Kwang Seok Seo

Kwang Seok Seo, of San Diego, died on May 5, 2018, in Masan, South Korea. Cause of death was a liver that couldn't decide between being cirrhotic or cancerous, so it cruelly settled on the one-two punch of being both.

The date of death is not a typo. This long overdue obituary is indeed being published in 2024, six years later, because quite frankly, that's how long it's taken his daughter to reluctantly accept her status as a card-carrying member of the Dead Dads Club.

Born on August 12, 1955, in Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea, he was the third of six children to Seo Jeong Yul and Jeong Young Hee. He emigrated from Korea to the U.S. in 1980 and flourished in a community (kamsahamnida to San Diego's Convoy District) that sustained and supported him for nearly forty years.

As a non-native English speaker, communication with his American-born daughter wasn't always easy. But with the compromise of "Konglish" and the understanding that prepositions were optional, there was a deep, implicit love between father and daughter. Plus, the father's frequent usage of the Korean parent's shorthand - "Have you eaten today?" - always covered the bases about the daughter's general well-being.

For thirty-seven years, he was her Appa.

He made his living as a carpenter in San Diego. The fact that he worked with his hands was sometimes framed as a cautionary tale. Growing up, the daughter engaged in a nightly ritual with her father. "Look at Appa hands," he would say, holding them out. And she would feel the rough-hewn surface; the callused, textural grooves and pits. This ritual, of course, had the distinct tenor of the immigrant parent's mixed symphony - blending together the notes of self-sacrifice and hope.

He named his carpentry business "Magic Interior." The specific back story is unknown, but likely not complicated. 'Magic' offers easy translation with its universal cultural equivalence - we either need it or want it or rely on it to explain things that challenge the natural order of life. Perhaps he was accounting for his version of the inexplicable, this notion of building foundations amid building a life in a new country with all its indignities and promises, impossibly hard R's to utter and uninspired starches to stomach.

At some point, he unofficially adopted the business name as his personal one. "Kwang Seok" gave people too much heartburn to pronounce anyway.

"Just call me Magic," he would say.

The daughter would roll her eyes, freely exercising her birthright to be mortified by him. But the man could back up such a lofty self-anointed name. From gleaming, serpentine sushi bars to intricate beam work in specialty boutiques to a life-sized shoji screen light installation perched atop a sprawling indoor catwalk, Magic the carpenter conjured all of it before your very eyes.

He frequently invoked his "Immigrant Parent's Right to Silence," keeping many things about himself close to the chest. So, the daughter cannot fulfill this part of the obituary that would include highlights from his childhood and pre-America years.

But here is what the daughter did know about her father. To his many friends, he possessed an infectious charisma and extroverted flair (genetic traits that skipped the daughter's generation). Despite his 5'8 height, he had an ass-kicking stature shaped early by Taekwondo and his mandated military service in Korea. Rocked the popped collar look way past its heyday. "Ave Maria" made him weep. Was better than many at golf, bowling, go-karting and animated storytelling. He was a karaoke legend, belting out popular Korean songs or even the occasional classic in English (like Stevie Wonder's "I just called to say I love you"). Relished kimchi jigae with obnoxiously loud, slurping gusto. Loved a good steak and insisted he wasn't ruining it with A1 sauce. Referred to himself in the third person. Never had anything bad to say about Sylvester Stallone and didn't mind Ronald Reagan. Occasionally overconfident, e.g., the Heinous At-Home Hair Cut of 1986 from which the daughter still has not sufficiently recovered as a grown woman. (She looked like Tattoo from "Fantasy Island" and if you don't get that reference, then you likely have not experienced random joint pain and don't say things like, "Yeah, we really needed that rain.")

In truth, the father was magic to his daughter, too.

Magic made his daughter's many anxiety-induced stomachaches disappear when she was a child. He constructed the most impressive and structurally sound sandcastles on Mission Bay beach. He made Space Mountain not terrifying. He used smoke and mirrors only when absolutely necessary. One day, seemingly out of thin air, he conjured up a 4 ft, generously stuffed Big Bird doll. An outsized gesture in every way, the fluffy Muppet was an effective distraction from the divorce and dysfunction that clouded that particular day, her sixth birthday.

He manifested a disappearing act before he even died. Dying in America became too hard - culturally, financially, linguistically, personally. He would trade one coastal city for another, albeit 6,000 miles apart. Kwang Seok "Magic" Seo returned to his native Korea and died there three months into his homecoming.

He is survived by his daughter, Miun Gleeson, a son-in-law, and two granddaughters who were just 6 and 3 when he died - two beautiful girls he loved so deeply for so briefly. They were too young to fully remember him, but old enough to know in their little bones that he meant the world to their mother and that has always been enough for them.

In the six years since his passing, Magic's death has revealed a kind of grief that can shapeshift. Gratitude, happiness, brokenness, all of it. He appears in his daughter's dreams - an exquisite, but rare occasion - offering the formerly inconceivable notion that he is everywhere and nowhere at once.