Coming To Terms With My Koreanness

I first started to resent my Koreanness when I was six years old.

It wasn’t some kind of falling out within my family, or the revelation of something huge and controversial. In fact, it happened during the lunch hour at school, as many things tend to happen. I was surrounded by my fellow six-year-old classmates, just as excited as they were, if not more, for the thirty minute break. You see, that day my mother had prepared my most favourite food ever — jajangmyeon. A very delicious noodle dish with black bean sauce, often topped with pork. It was very popular in Korea and many other parts of Asia, yet you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knew the dish in Canada in the early 2010s. However, there was no way for little-me to know that, nor would I have cared.

So, beyond excited, I retrieved my lunch kit from the depths of my backpack, opened up my Tupperware container, and—

“Ewwwww. What is that?” a girl to my right scrunched up her face and plugged her nose, pointing to my food with her free hand. “That looks disgusting.”

Shocked, I stumbled to defend my favourite dish, but before I could get a single word in, another girl butted in.

“Yeah, ewww. They look like worms! Are you really going to eat that?”

“Yes,” I said earnestly, pushing the dish towards the girls, convinced that if they at least tried it, they’d love it. “It’s really good, I promise. Not worms.”

But instead of the reaction I was hoping to get, the girls began to shriek.

“Ew, gross! Get that away from me! It smells disgusting! Eugh!” they said, scrambling away from me, and drawing the attention of everyone in our vicinity, including one Korean girl. The moment I saw her, I stood up, calling out for her.

“Hey,” I desperately drew her attention, switching to speaking Korean amidst my hurt and confusion. “Hey, you know this, right? You know jajangmyeon, right? Please tell them it’s not gross, please stop them. You understand me, right?”

But instead of responding to my Korean, like I knew she could because my mother knew her mother, she just backed away. She turned to her friends, and in English, proceeded to berate me for speaking Korean and pretend that she didn’t understand. She validated the girls who had made fun of my jajangmyeon, saying that she didn’t know what it was, but it sure did look disgusting. 

Back then, I didn’t cry. I didn’t yell, or try to defend myself anymore. I didn’t hate that Korean girl for what she did, and nine years later, I still don’t blame her. I now understand why she said those things, and I understand that she was already going through what I would soon go through. But to six year old me, none of it made sense. I wasn’t mad, because of the way they made it seem like I was in the wrong. No, I was worse than mad. I was sad, and scared, and confused, and felt utterly, completely alone.

That day marked the first time that I didn’t eat my jajangmyeon. I have a vague memory of coming home that day and unpacking my bag. My mother, who couldn’t understand why I did not eat my favourite meal, became angry at me for not eating anything. I, not wanting to tell her what had happened, let her believe that I had just had too many snacks to be hungry.

Eventually, I must have repressed or forgotten about that memory. I would not mull over it, or try to understand what had happened until many, many years later, by which time there would have been no point in confronting my classmates about what they had said to me. However, even when I had forgotten it, the effects of that day continued to affect me in many different aspects of my life. By age eight, I had lost nearly a third of my Korean skills due to an insistence to speak only English and Spanish, languages that I regularly used in school. By age ten, I became overwhelmingly proud of my Canadian identity, proudly posting a Canadian flag on my wall and bellowing the Canadian anthem at any chance I got. Perhaps it was a coping mechanism, or perhaps it was my way of rebelling against my Korean mother. All I know is that I would beg my mother to pack me “Canadian” lunches and refuse to listen to Korean music. 

What must have devastated my mother the most occurred in late-2018, just before I turned 11. She announced to me that, come February 2019, we would be visiting South Korea. My first reaction, much to her dismay, was an open reluctance and annoyance. It was only made worse when I learned that I would be attending school while in Korea. I did not understand why I had to go to school, nor did I understand why we had to visit again, despite having visited multiple times throughout my life. I was convinced that it would be the worst experience of my life. And oh, how utterly wrong I was.

By the time we left Canada in 2019, I had already warmed up to the idea of going to Korea, as well as toned down the flag-waving and anthem-singing that I had had going on the past year. Upon landing in Incheon Airport, near Seoul, I enthusiastically greeted my grandmother, who had driven out to pick us up. Although she didn’t show it, I’m sure my mother was relieved that I wasn’t being petulant and rude.

The first month in Korea was to re-familiarize ourselves with the country after not having been there for a couple of years. We explored the city, made some friends among the neighbourhood children, and drove out to Lotte World and a couple close cities. By the second month, my mother had managed to enroll me into an elementary school a few neighbourhoods down, and I learned how to take the bus. Luckily, all of my new classmates were amazing and kind and very welcoming. It didn’t hurt that they were endlessly curious about Canada and my ability to speak both English and Spanish. I made many new friends, and my Korean began to improve in strides. I helped out during English class, and experienced a whole different way of learning Phys Ed. Ironically, I loved lunch time and couldn’t imagine not eating Korean food every single day. In fact, being in Korea helped improve my rocky relationship with food, although that is a whole other story.

Without me even realizing it, my visit to Korea began to chip away at the unconscious bias and anger that I had harboured against my Koreanness. I was having fun, speaking in Korean, learning in Korean, singing in Korean, and blissfully surrounded by Korean culture and traditions. However, that wasn’t the end of my journey to accepting my Koreanness. In fact, it was only the beginning. 

Years of hurt and bias did not disappear that easily, especially not when I wasn’t even aware that I was hurting and biased. When I returned to Canada later that year, I went right back to speaking English and having my mother pack me “Canadian” lunches. The only minor differences were that I enjoyed bringing Korean food to school sometimes, and delighted in my friends’ fascination with my chopsticks. I did not know it then, because I wasn’t yet online or on social media, but by the late 2010s, the Western world had warmed up considerably to the idea of Korean culture. Through its cuisine, music, movies, and TV shows, South Korea had begun to take the world by storm, giving it no choice but to pay attention to its remarkable beauty and people. In fact, it was exactly that that pulled me through to the most important stretch of my journey.

The events of 2020 are fresh in all of our minds. The sudden, chaotic hold that Covid-19 had on our world, the control that slipped from between our fingertips. The protests, controversies, and tragedies that took place, and the devastating events that happened one after the other. Amidst all of that was us, the children and teenagers who were robbed of some of the most fun, precious years of our lives. It wasn’t easy on any of us, but the world’s children experienced the pandemic through very, very different eyes than the adults.

To ignore everything that was happening, many of us found outlets and new hobbies to take up our time. For me, that outlet served as not only an outlet, but a huge source of comfort, happiness, and connection to my Koreanness. The South Korean band that had previously taken the world by storm: BTS.

BTS is a group made up of seven members, whose stage names are RM, Jin, Suga, J-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook. They debuted in June of 2013, and at the time of writing this, is nearing their 10-year anniversary. In the summer of 2020, when I was first introduced to them, they had just celebrated their seventh anniversary, which was supposed to be huge, as seven is a very important number to them. However, because of the pandemic, all of their plans and their entire world tour had to be postponed, until eventually, cancelled. It was rather hard on them, and they didn’t attempt to hide that. They openly talked about their concerns, confusion, and struggles while coming up with things to do in their spare time. 

But most relevant to what we’re talking about today is how much BTS has acted as a bridge between me and my Koreanness. Since 2020, my mother hasn’t been in my life as much as she used to, which has led me to feel very detached from my Korean side. I’ve lost a lot of the language, and begun to feel like I’m just not Korean enough to call myself Korean. That is not helped at all by the fact that I take after my father in that I have a very brown-skinned, Filipino complexion. However, BTS’ presence in the media that I consume has really helped to ensure that I remain proud of my Koreanness.

The fact that BTS sing and speak in Korean while doing things like attending the Grammys, speaking at the United Nations multiple times, topping the Billboard charts, and many other activities in the west is absolutely amazing. They have amassed a fanbase of tens of millions of people from all over the world, who love and respect them, regardless of their Koreanness. Despite receiving hostility and being faced with racism and xenophobia more than once since their American TV debut in 2017, they have stayed true to their roots and their culture, and have introduced many people to the Korean culture and language. All of these factors, and more, have instilled a sense of pride in me regarding my Koreanness. The three years that I have spent as an Army, or a BTS fan, have benefited and helped me to accept and love me for who I am and where I came from. Finally, to top it off, I have had a huge amount of growth in my ability to read and write in Korean, and even my vocabulary has grown to include many more words.

As I grow older, I know that my relationship with my identity and Koreanness will not stay the same. Identity is not something that remains stagnant, because as you grow and age, you experience and learn new things that change your perspective. But if there’s one thing that I’m certain of, it is that I will forever have pride in the fact that I am Korean. This struggle that I have with my ethnicity is a very common one among children of immigrants or second and third generation Canadians. I only hope that each and every one of them — of us — will one day be able to connect and reconnect to our roots and cultures, and learn to love and appreciate who we are, and where we came from. Because if nothing else, it sure feels good to tell people that I am a Korean-Filipino who was born in Canada, and that I can speak multiple languages.

Special thanks to Mr. Joon Lee, whose February 2022 article led me to reflect upon my own journey with my Koreanness:

How BTS helped me bridge my Korean and American identities

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