동포- Joining Korean diaspora

 I once read an autobiographical story of  a man who was fleeing from the harsh rules of Imperial Japan during the colonial era in Korea.  Going across Eurasian continent and heading to Germany in a train ride, the author described sorrows of departing the beautiful  Korean town where he grew up in the long journey. As he started living in a foreign country, he felt terrible homesickness, and then it slowly subsided; the emptiness in his heart was slowly getting smeared with something warmer, which perhaps might had been brought by sole getaway from all the tribulations back in Korea.  However, despite the escape, he could not shake off loneliness completely, and his soul was still searching and yearning for more perfect place where he could feel warmth.  

 Having grown up in Seoul during my childhood more than several decades later, I can still feel that impact of the tumultuous time the country had for the past decades with scars of war in the eyes of old folks and remnants of destruction from the war, through which I could understand what it must had been like for author to leave his hometown in desolate feeling. Although things were not as rustic as may had been at the time when the author grew up in his hometown, after more than two decades Korea gained its independence, it was still a hard time for the country recuperating itself from devastation of the war in a new state of being "divided." Growing up in Seoul, I still saw similar thatched roof houses that would have appeared on Korean War films on T.V. in out-skirt of the Shinchon, nothing much different from the scenes from the T.V, by which U.S. solders trudging along in narrow paths in rice paddies carrying ammunition on their back.

During my childhood in 70's, I witnessed Korea going through quintessential period in the time of the republic's history where its traditional and rustic rural country atmosphere was getting its facelift  turning into becoming an industrialized country; the traditional houses, Han-Ok, were getting demolished and new western style houses were built in the places.  As uptake on the industrialization kicked in, psychological, political, and sociological changes in the society started taking place. 

Every year, in the beginning of December, I watched Kimchi pots getting buried underground in the front yard as flurries stated popping up from the overcast sky while my uncle was huffing and puffing digging the ground bellowing steam out from his mouth, and watched my great grand mother walking up to it drawing a bowl of Kimchi as a dog housed at the corner of the front yard noticed her coming and started barking to call her attention and then the sound of it turning into a growl in disappointments as she went out of sight going into the kitchen with no regards for him. On the fortnight, as the hallowing wind was blowing in the depth of cold winter,  the dog, having not received much of attention from her, would moan sporadically interleaving its sound in the wind, upon which my great grandmother would open the sliding door from her room and peer out making a brief kind statement for him which surprisingly quelled the night. 

In later winter, I helped digging a hole for a pot to be buried underground in preparation for making Donchimi, and when the Donchimi was ready, I tasted the cold Dongchimi that was freshly drawn from the pot in a bowl in which ice chips were floating. 

My grand mother used to get the fire going on the inlet of Ondol outside at the front yard burning woods for heating her room every evening in the winter and some time later, she would gather the embers in a Wahro that made out of clay to be brought into her room for additional heating inside, and we would often gather around the Wahro after dinner and talk with great grandmother. She would toss in a sweet potatoes or chestnuts for a treat. What a bonding experience that it was!! 

How else one's psyche can be ingrained deeper into becoming a Korean?

Like the author escaping from the brutality of Japanese occupation, many Koreans emigrated to other countries in search of  freedom, prosperity and better life thereafter, and the diaspora of Korean has been ongoing over a century. I also hopped on the bandwagon heading to America, not in time of tribulation, but one a early summer day as my great-grandmother whom I never seen outside my house in Shinchon crying at the end of path where a taxi was waiting.   Like the author of the story, I hopped into the bandwagon thinking that something better out there for me, catching a long fight without knowing its full name other than the acronym "U.S.A."


 The Korean immigration history in the U.S. is shorter than that of other countries such as China, Russia or Japan, but whatever their motives and reasons to leave Korea may have been,  in 21st century, the mosaic of Korea population around the globe has become as colorful and diverse as world is getting closer.  More than two millions of Koreans now live in the U.S., and four times more people are living in other countries outside of Korea. This is interesting phenomenon as S. Korea is also becoming multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society, which was inconceivable even twenty years ago.

As diaspora of Korean expands, the norm of Korean does not only applies to the people living in the Korea but it encompass the breadth of population with a wide spectrum of the people, even the people who want to identify themselves with having endowed with a little bit Korean heritage and Korean adopted children, throughout the globe.  For the Koreans who emigrated,  their lives may have not been easy in the new land where culture, people's sentiments and custom are markedly different from Korea. The early immigrants to the U.S working in Hawaiian sugar plantations had to endure harsh environments with their daily backbreaking work, and as recently as in L.A. where Korean convenient store owners grappled with their stores in flames as the racial conflicts between Black and Whites due to Rodney King's verdict took a diabolical turn making the Blacks to air their frustrations racketeering the Korean shops; the blacks destroyed their valuable assets causing more than 1.3 billion dollars in damage.

After all, whether we like it or not, immigration is, by definition, setting a foot  and sailing into a new uncharted territory; it maybe a lifelong experience that no people in Korea would get a firm grasp of its understanding as each immigrant would have a unique experience in the new land.  People in Korea might call anybody who have emigrated as 'DongPo," but the sound of it may strike with unfamiliarity even to some people who have lived in the new land over several decades as their memories of Korea still fresh.

More than three decades ago,  I was sitting on a couch at home in Shinchon one day reading an newspaper article about Koreans who had been taken by Imperial Japan and sent on forced labor to Sakalin Island of Russia, above north of Japan. They were being stranded after Japan lost the war, as the Soviet Union repossessed the island.  Even several decades after end of the war, they were still stranded in the island, unable to move back to their homeland due to subsequent Cold War. As the Republic of Korea had no diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union,  Korean government had to ask Japanese government who was culpable, but mere echos of fuzzy gestures would be returned as Japan could not do anything for them either. Ever since, the feeling of angst ran down amongst Koreans for inability to bring them back, and sympathy for the people ran high in the country especially during the holidays.


After immigrating to the U.S. in my youth, at least in the initial stage, my life was like theirs when they were taken with apprehension initially, living in the unfamiliar land.  Although it was nothing comes close to the sufferings that the people in the island had to endure, the depth of my homesickness ran pretty deep initially. As time went,  it slowly subsided and my thoughts on the people had long been forgotten.


However, the presence of the people resurfaced in my memory after ten years later, in 1984, still in Cold War, on a summer day, when a friend of mine at UW, who had spent several years teaching English in Japan, introduced me a Korean girl who was visiting a school nearby to learn English. The girl came to the school along with Japanese students from Japan. I met her in a local Cafe at a table by the glass wall looking through the street side.  She told me that she had N. Korean passport, and took out her passport with its reddish cover that says "조선인민공화국," which struck me with qualm in my stomach initially for I had never met anybody carrying a N. Korean passport; all along in youth in Korea,  I had been taught nothing but strong sentiments against North Korean Communist Kil Ill-Sung regime. However, contrarily to the sentiments and politics that would have dictated my mores, I sat face to face as a human being transcending above politics and the sentiments, which I found it odd and interesting.  It was a good feeling because I felt all the stifles that bounded between North and South politically had been suddenly expunged with no restriction as if I found a new freedom; I had a illusion that I was meeting a girl from N. Korea in a Cafe in Seoul as if the two countries were being united.  It was a strange experience meeting her and drinking coffee together after having being separated for over thirty years with no talks in between two parties at that time.  After talking with her several hours, I focus sifted to pain that I had felt when I read the article about the stranded in the island. The girl's parents was most perhaps be like those people who had been victimized by the Imperial Japan which had inflicted insurmountable pains to Koreans. Talking with her, I felt that chapter of Korean history under the occupation of Imperial Japan had still not ended as she seemed to hide the prejudices and mistreatment that she had to endure living in Japan as Jainichi.


Personally, it was my first time I had ever encountered the reality of long standing chapter of Korean saga with Japan.  I could not sleep on that night, not because I have fallen in love with her, but rather thinking about the prolonged sufferings that the people still had to endure  for the unfathomable chapter in history still has not been closed, that is not explained in details in the history textbook.


Several decades have past since I met her, and the world has changed: Berlin Walls and the Soviet Union have collapsed, and China opened its door and become a major economic power.  If I ever meet the girl again,  I would relate to her better as I feel more a person in her shoe, separated from the main group, drifting further away.

Several years ago, I read an interesting article published in a Korea newspaper which was written by a person who had just returned back to Korea after living many years in the U.S.  She  stated that her reason of returning back to Korea was due to "not making her children lost in between two cultures" as her children were becoming teenagers.  For me, there is no sense of losing my identity or losing myself in between two culture since I came to the U.S. after my identify had been well established.  Furthermore, I corresponded with my friends back in Korea and I visited Korea on number of occasions meeting my friends and relatives. Nonetheless, time wore it off, eventually losing intimate touch with  Korea.  However, the major breaking of that intimacy seemed to be getting broken when my close relatives have passed away.  Especially, when my uncle in Korea whom I related closely in my childhood passed away recently, I felt the pain of my intimate connection to Korea getting broken.

Reading this newspaper article, I asked myself what she meant by that at the time when Korea started to embracing multiculturalism.  Nowadays, Korea is getting more diversified, and when her children become adults, Korea will even be more culturally diverse. As a Korean, it's hard to imagine that the country has long been homogenous in culture is going multicultural and undertake task of "embracing" which is a leap forward concept that has never been dealt with.


After I left Korea in my childhood, the country was set in the faster track moving toward industrialization, eclipsing many facets of what I had known as Korea; lots of mountains, buildings, city layouts and cultural artifacts were demolished, changed its layout, removed and changed indiscreetly.  There also has been political economic shifts, and changes in landscape with the mega churches, the huge apartment complexes; big changes in physicality entails big changes in mind, sentiments and mind.  Korea is NOT the Korea I used to know.  Nowadays, most of Koreans are living in complete different life styles; living in tall apartments, driving cars and using smart phones, and bullying in school is as rampant as in the U.S. which was virtually none when I grew up. Nowadays, if one wants to experience the rural atmosphere that was so close within the reach, it would take four hour ride on a train.

After living in the U.S more than three decades, my understanding for the people stranded in the island has gotten bigger than thirty five years ago, in the way that their emotion and sentiments have been shaped after along separated culturally so long. Luckily, I have been blessed with the modern technologies allows me to watch Korean news to keep me updated, but my sentiments has been changed unable to watch all kinds of Korean comedies. Those people in Sakalin island had lived their lives wishing to return to Korea, but when the Soviet Union collapsed and they became free to leave, some of their offsprings no longer identified themselves as Koreans due to no Korean cultural contacts, but wanted to identify themselves as part of Korean diaspora.

So the thing is that we, whether we live in Korea or outside of Korea, we all share something in common: we are all part of this Korean diaspora moving toward becoming a "better Korean" and "better human being."  The Koreans living outside of Korea can share their experiences and come to understanding of each other to foster good environments for future generations to live in their adopted land. They have to juggle many things such as adapting to the new culture and embracing integration into the newly founded country. 

Historically, marriages tend to form mainly within the same cultural group or within geographical proximity since likelihood of two persons meeting for courtship would be within same culture boundary. But this trend has long been broken in parts of the world centuries ago in Europe, where couples of loyal families of two different countries marry each other as a result of migration and colonization were prevalent historically in European countries. On the contrary, migration seldom occurred until the turn of the century as people escaped from the colonial rule and as door opened for migration; people seeking better living in other parts of the world has been fairly recent. There are now more than seven millions of Koreans and their descendants live outside of Korea, and now Korea diaspora has spread over even to regions of the world that used to be considered remote.  As Korean diaspora expands, even Korea is now increasingly  becoming more multicultural society, which was not hard to imagine some fifty years ago. Interracial marriage is now common as the country become more multicultural. This is something unimaginable since Korea has been formed its own culture as closely nit society for so long.

In light of multicultural impacts on the society,  Koreans would have different ideas for all facets of their living including their marriage. It has been such that the people weighs heavily on marriage, requiring lots of money spent on the ceremony following preconceived notion on societal norms.

 If we follow the norms of  the society, marrying will be tougher. The boundary which to make the inclusion should be wider.  Nowadays, Koreans' thoughts on marriage have been changed drastically; lots of people stay unmarried.  Nonetheless, since basic motivation for getting married is to have their offsprings, 'staying unmarried' maybe temporal and the marriage institution would survive with introduction of new ideas and concepts such as interracial marriage.  If you are a conformist following the societal norm for marriage, it would be quite difficult to marry someone because you would need meet all the criteria; finding a mate and having a wedding is quite expensive, it has become virtually impossible!

Many of my relatives in Korea have passed away, leaving me fewer and fewer people to visit when I go back, which gave me thoughts to feel the vacuum has been formed in my heart that seem to be bothering as I was getting older.  The human relations that I had enjoyed in my neighborhood and the coziness that I had experienced with my extended family members in my youth seem no longer attainable.  The whole thing that I took for granted will be missed as I become older, that I know, despite all the development of social media.  That emptiness starts slowly dissipated as I open my eyes for new way of relating to humanity: like what I grew up watching the beauties of Korea in my childhood, other people I meet in the U.S. and other countries would have had same experiences in their childhood that are so unique in their cultures. I see Korea in other people: the humanity that I felt is reached beyong Korea to Korean diaspora and to the people in the world, becoming a world's citizen.

[New Paradigm]