"At twenty weeks, the right arm below the breast is absent." The obstetrician spoke softly. On the ultrasound screen the news spread across my husband Jun-hyeok’s eyes like a crimson chrysanthemum. No, not a flower—because this was a congenital absence—a hole we would never be able to fill.
A Decision Left on the Fridge
That night Jun-hyeok laid a single sheet of A4 on top of the refrigerator. Across it, in bold type, the words Prenatal Diagnosis Report.
If we all want to survive—us and the child—someone has to be sacrificed. He spoke between sips of beer. The foam in the clear glass vanished quickly. I heard the logic tucked inside his sentence: the arithmetic that an “imperfect” child would make us all unhappy. And how brutally simple that arithmetic was.
White Towel vs. Red Rose
Jun-hyeok brought up his cousin. She had divorced while raising a son with Down syndrome. He recounted the shadows beneath her eyes as if they were evidence. “At kindergarten the kids teased him, said that man wasn’t his dad.”
I wondered suddenly: was he afraid, not of the missing arm, but of the living proof that we might be imperfect parents? The dread that guiding a one-armed child to walk would expose our own shaky balance, and that dread might curdle into resentment.
Cécile’s Choice, Mi-yeon’s Choice
Case 1 | Cécile (name changed), 34, Incheon
Cécile still keeps a screenshot of the text her husband sent.
Wednesday, 3:08 p.m.
Husband: I talked to Mom. Our child has to be perfect.
She swallowed her tears in the hospital corridor and chose her husband’s choice. The guilt of not choosing her child became an “un-grown arm” that pounds her chest every dawn.
Case 2 | Mi-yeon (name used with permission), 29, Seongnam
Mi-yeon’s husband slid a contract across the table: an abortion consent form.
Just sign. We can always have another baby later.
Mi-yeon set the pen down. “If you’re the one giving birth, I’ll sign.” The argument lasted three months. In the end Mi-yeon delivered alone. The child was born without a right arm. The first time her husband looked at the baby his eyes were ice; the moment the infant cried, the ice cracked. Mi-yeon realized then: what terrified him was not the child’s body but his own reaction. He finally lifted the baby, and Mi-yeon taped a family photo to the refrigerator instead of divorce papers.
Why Do We Obsess Over Perfection?
There is no child I cannot love.
The truth is, I’m afraid I won’t be loved.
Marriage is an institution two people build, but a child is the mirror that splits us in two. The child’s flaw becomes the parents’ flaw. So we try to fix the child instead of ourselves.
At the core of the desire lies the fantasy of the “perfect family,” which in the end is only the delusion of being perfect parents. Raising a one-armed child teaches us we will never be perfect—and that knowledge is what we fear.
Still-Cold Toes
I gave birth. His name is Ha-jun: one small round palm and one empty sleeve swinging in air. The first time Jun-hyeok held him, he wept. It was the last tear we ever shed together. We are now in the middle of divorce proceedings.
“I was awful,” he says. But I think what was amputated was not the child’s arm but something missing between us long before the birth—perhaps the courage we never grew.
Each night I touch my child’s toes. Even with one arm missing, they are as warm as any child’s. And each night I ask:
If it had been you—could you ever have altered love’s single condition?