Heart throbbing, head spinning, and chest heaving, I felt my throat turn into sawdust. My mind blanked right in the middle of the interview with the Korean News reporter and I stammered. What should I say? How do I say it in Korean? Was my pronunciation eccentric? As an international student who lived abroad in Canada and spent most of my time speaking English, Korean didn’t come easy. Thousands of questions bombarded my mind during my debate tournament interview but one confused me the most out of all: how was I unable to speak my mother tongue?
To my despair, my interview was later cut from the TV broadcast, I felt excluded from my own country and the assurance of my Korean identity. As social creatures, humans emotionally need recognition and social acceptance from the rest of their communities. By feeling like part of a large group, humans fulfill their innate desire of giving and receiving attention from others. Not being able to fluently understand and express myself within the boundaries of my own culture stripped away my sense of belonging and affirmation that I desperately needed. It humiliated and angered me, but I couldn’t do much about it.
Torn between two cultures, two languages, I lost a sense of who I was. My whole family lineage was rooted in Korea and yet I felt so detached from the values, history, my ancestors, the Korean language, and customs. Not being able to fluently speak and understand Korean was a sacrifice of my cultural identity, as it reflected on my inability to communicate my thoughts and be cognizant of Korean politics, cultural stances, and issues. News about Korea had to reach to me after weeks of listening to the tidbits of my parent’s conversations as I couldn’t directly process the information on Korean broadcasts and newspapers. Language is unique to each culture, which evolves over time but is always rooted in deep origins. Language represents my history and is my connection to society, yet, I couldn’t truly speak it. With all factors into consideration, was I a true Korean? Did my identity lie somewhere else? What was identity anyways?
My mind grappled with these questions. Who was I? I felt even more unsure, recollecting all the memories with my friends in Korean public places like shopping malls or movie theaters. All the cold, cruel glares of the students from Korean schools would penetrate us whenever we walk around with brown or blonde dyed hair and speak in English. People would give us the weird looks and shun us when we giggle in English and make us feel alienated from Korean culture. They would even harass and pick on students from international schools for speaking English because they perceived it to be a form of flaunting. All these moments were daunting, they made me wary of the language I was speaking. I was always pressured to speak in Korean in these environments and would be worried about how these people would perceive me: an ill-fitting, condescending American.
But my memories of such isolation and fear of not being able to fluently speak in Korean swept over me whenever I was shopping for clothes. Cashiers would catch us speaking English and by the time we got to the register, they would speak to us in English. They thought we weren’t Korean. I always felt the need to reassert my identity as a Korean by resorting to the Korean language. Yet, I could only answer back in terse Korean phrases. It was exasperating to constantly prove myself as a Korean.
Even though people around me question my identity, I was still a Korean and I share the cultural values and traditions of Koreans. I use euphemistic language around people, know the typical Korean slang words, and I am just as proud when Korea wins in an international competition. Growing up exposed to the international school curriculum, I learned more about the fluidity of culture in world history classes; learned that every culture is interconnected in various ways. Every culture affects one another through the exchange of ideas and goods, and there isn’t some standard definition of what it is to be Korean or American. The fact that I prefer the American language and celebrate American holidays doesn’t make me less Korean, just like my celebration of Chuseok and Korean family heritage doesn’t make me less American.
Identity is subjective, it is for each individual to decide. Identity can adjust and adapt, there is nothing called a fixed identity based on what kind of country people live in. My identity was a mix of both American and Korean cultures, and instead of being ashamed or doubtful of who I am, I would stand up for my identity, who I decided I was.
