Actor Cha In-pyo (58) opened up about his family history.
Cha In-pyo appeared on the the 11th broadcast of MBC's 'Songs That Survived Today-Playlist 109'.
When asked about difficult times, Cha In-pyo began by saying, "If you look at celebrities with golden spoons, I'm always on that list."
DinDin remarked, "Your face looks like a golden spoon," and Lee Seok-hoon added, "You have a luxurious vibe," to which Cha In-pyo replied, "(Actually) it's not true."
He revealed, "Just as every family has its own circumstances, ours did too. My parents divorced when I was 13 years old."
He continued, "Even after the divorce, my father tried hard to support his children. There were three siblings, and after our parents' divorce, we lived with our mother."
Reflecting on that time, he added, "It was unimaginable for a single woman to raise three children alone, and in the 1980s social climate, everything was blamed on women."
His mother decided to emigrate.
Cha In-pyo shared, "My mother said, 'Let's go across the ocean to America and live there.' So when I turned 20, my mother, my younger sibling, and I moved to New Jersey, USA. Suddenly, I became the head of the household. Not knowing English, I grew anxious and worried as I had to take care of my mother and sibling."
Cha In-pyo, now the family's provider, started working part-time jobs.
He recounted, "I worked as a paint assistant when painting houses and as a waiter's helper at restaurants. As I kept getting pushed down in these roles, I thought, 'Am I destined to be an assistant forever? Can't I ever enter the main stream?' It felt like walking through a wilderness."
He further added, "Whenever I think about when things were hardest for me, it's always when adapting to new environments. That includes the time I moved from Korea to America with my mother and sibling, the period when I transitioned from being an actor to writing novels, and the moment 33 years after my debut when I faced a major life change. Going to places I've never been before is frightening."
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