Julia Mullock, Korea's last princess, is 83 this year. Her right arm has been paralyzed for a decade and her finger joints are heavily deformed. But even though she can no longer move freely, she still vividly remembers the day she got married to Korea's last imperial prince, a.k.a., citizen Yi Gu, 48 years ago.
"We got married at a Ukrainian Catholic Church on East 7th Street in New York on Oct. 25, 1958," she recalls. "We didn't have many guests. Yi Gu was humorous and energetic. He always smiled... His life would have been very different if he hadn't come back to Korea. I don't have any regrets, though."
Mullock has avoided any interviews after Yi Gu died in July last year, but she changed her mind, saying, "I have a few words to say."
The Chosun Ilbo met her at an apartment behind Deoksu Palace in Seoul. After leaving Korea last summer, she came back in May for consultancy about a film on her life and has been living in the apartment since then.
On the desk in front of the window are hundreds of pictures she is sorting for the film. On it is also a framed picture of Yi Gu. The film, temporarily titled "The Julia Project" and jointly produced by Korea's L.J. Film and Focus Features, a division of NBC Universal's Universal Pictures in the U.S. "I show and explain those pictures to the screenwriters," she says.
The happiest time of her life was when she stayed at Nakseonjae in Changdeokgung, Seoul with Yi Gu in 1963.
◆ You said you have something to say.
"I was never his legal wife because my name wasn't registered in his family register. This gave me trouble when I needed a divorce document in the U.S. recently. He and I took care of a girl since 1965 and adopted her in 1969. Her name is Eun-sook (47). She lives in Hawaii. Yi Gu's family clan council, which is involved in various matters regarding descendants of Yi dynasty, is also aware of her presence, but no one mentions her. I wanted to make the fact known to the public before I die."
◆ Why were you not registered?
"I don't know. When I got divorced from him in 1982, I learned that I wasn't in his family register. Maybe the clan council, who didn't like me, was one reason. We separated in 1974. He saw Eun-sook once, probably in 1978, and didn't contact us after that, and there was no financial support for us."
Mullock met a small, fragile girl when doing charity work at an orphanage in Myeong-dong, Seoul in 1964. She used to have the little girl sit on her right when typing. When she took her to hospital with a heavy cold the next year, the doctor prescribed "heartfelt love" to cure the girl.
"I immediately called Yi Gu and said, 'Let's adopt her.' And he readily agreed." Eun-sook lived in Nakseonjae in Changdeokgung until 1975 and was sent to a missionary family in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. She was educated and got married there and now lives in Hawaii.
◆ Do you feel bitter about Yi Gu, your ex-husband?
"Do I need to? It was my destiny determined by God. Yi Gu would have had a very different life if he continued to live in the U.S. For a schoolboy, a graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, being a member of the royal family of a then-ruined dynasty, was such a heavy burden. If I got worried, he would say 'You don't even have to know.' Life in Korea exhausted him."
◆ Do you accept him and love him now?
"There are various types of love. Physical love, love that is sympathetic by nature... but I can't tell you what kind of love I felt toward him exactly." Mullock leaves Korea on Wednesday to get treatment at a veteran's hospital in Hawaii and then meet the screenwriters in New York. She comes back in November.
"We had a memorial mass at a church of the Order of Friars Minor Korean Province in Seoul to commemorate the first anniversary of his death last month. Altogether 26 people took part in the mass. I couldn't visit his grave in Namyangju. I had no one to take me there... I couldn't be buried beside when I die. I've never been his legal wife and I got divorced. But when I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in Nakseonjae in Changdeok Palace. It was a happy home."
