Being half Korean is something that I will struggle with until the day I die. My mother is Korean and my father is white. It wasn’t until somewhere around middle/high school when I, like many kids at that age, start to become curious about finding their identity. I lived in Korea when I was young and spoke fluent Korean at the time. Even though I went to an English speaking international school, I lived in a 10-12 story apartment building in downtown Seoul, roamed the streets of the city with other Korean kids, played with them outside every day, and walked across a freeway overpass by myself to go to piano lessons. I lived the life of a Korean kid (minus all of the studying 😅). When we moved back to the U.S., I eventually forgot how to speak it because I did not use it anymore…even though I was always around other Koreans.
In high school, I learned how to read Korean, watched hours and hours of Korean dramas, and always listened to K-pop. I loved my Korean heritage and culture. I wanted to be accepted as being Korean. Unfortunately that was rarely the case. My closest Korean friends treated me as Korean, but that’s where the line was drawn.
What was this divide? I slowly realized that the most important part of “being Korean” is how you look. I don’t look Korean at all. Most seem to assume I’m of hispanic descent. Mexicans almost always assume I’m Mexican and I can sense disappointment when I don’t speak any Spanish. I noticed Koreans will automatically feel closer to other asian nationalities before they do to me even though I am half Korean, lived in Korea, and have been so close to Korean culture most of my life. On the opposite end, white people don’t see me as being white either. Culturally, I feel like an alien, as if I don’t belong anywhere in this world. An outsider.
Most will think I’m just making a big deal out of something not important, but those who are also mixed race with a culture that tends to be homogeneous and have cultural pride will understand where I’m coming from. I also don’t want anyone to think that I live in depression or anything because of this. That is not the case at all. My real identity is in Christ and I know who I am. Being half Korean is just something that I have been coping with for almost 40 years so it’s a part of me. I wrote this to share something I almost never talk about nor anyone will ever realize, but it’s on my mind all of the time.
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