Korean-Americanism as I know it
The conclusion to my series, "Korea by a Korean-American 'kyo-po.'"
Part 2: Some traveling logistics for Korea
Part 4: On visiting the Korean comfort women memorial
Welcome to the final installment of my series on Korea. What started as a short list of some good Korean restaurants and go-to karaoke songs ended up becoming some four thousand words, including footnotes. And I may even be tempted to write an Appendix.
Besides my family’s trip, my recent thoughts on my culture have been very influenced by it coming into stark relief. To start, my family moved away from the San Francisco Bay Area to Oregon about five years ago. A pretty apples to apples sort of move, one would think, but it actually wasn’t as even in comparison to liberal Portland, the Bay Area is *very* unique. Second, my husband and I became foster parents to a young Mexican-American teenager, now young man. Let’s just say that you can take a foster parent out of Cupertino, but you cannot take the Cupertino out of a foster parent!1 And nothing matters, even culture, when caring for a child.
Lastly, I chanced upon Rob Henderson’s writing, a half-Korean, half-Mexican former foster kid who grew up in Northern California, served in the Army and then graduated from both Yale and Cambridge. Check out his Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class about what it is that actually can help the poor (of all stripes) build a more secure life for themselves. And more importantly, how no achievement, badge, degree or eventual tax bracket can make up for a lifetime of pain and neglect at the hands of your own parents. That pain and neglect is what we need to focus on, and not getting people into Harvard. Excuse me, a small school in Boston. Cambridge, actually.2
I’m also working thru Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Main takeaway: It’s a very good thing that most of us stopped marrying our cousins a long time ago.
Put it all together, and I am much more an organism from a Korean-American petrie dish than I had ever thought. I’ve become contented in my heritage in the process, and happy to pass along whatever I can to my children and our community—Korean, not Korean and otherwise.
Brief outline first, then the body below.
BEFORE THE THREE WARS
ON KOREAN CHRISTIANITY
-
AFTER THE KOREAN WAR
ON KOREAN ADOPTION
ON THE KOREAN CONCEPT OF “HAN”
ON THE KOREAN OBSESSION WITH APPEARANCE
ON KOREA’S WESTERNIZATION
ON THE KOREAN DIASPORA
ON KOREAN MEN
-
IN CONCLUSION: DR. LUKE IK CHANG KIM
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Miriam Hyun to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.