Perhaps it is time to speak a little more about myself. Obviously, I can talk endlessly about the Korean culture, family history, food, etc., but ultimately and eventually some presence of myself has to be left on these pages. Many labels can be made to a person like me: a Korean transplant living in America, an immigrant, a Korean American, a first generation Korean living in America…whatever label happens to fit at any given moment, there is always one persistent feeling inside me.
That is…the sense of un-belonging.
I have no place I really call home. I am a Korean who has lost the country she knew as that country is forever etched in the imprint of history. The Korea I know, learned, and admired no longer exists. That Korea only exists in my memory. The Korea I visit often to see my parents is not a place I belong anymore. I am a Korean who is a foreigner in her own land. Yet in America, I am an immigrant. No one who sees me will ever consider me just an American. I am first and foremost, a Korean in everyone’s eyes and that is confirmed with my accent, which is not even really a Korean accent.
So where do immigrants like me belong? Not the country I am from certainly as they do not consider me part of that society any longer. Yet not this country either as I don’t really belong here as I come from somewhere else. Hence, I become like many other immigrants. I live here and I am successful here. Yet where I belong is perhaps in those past etchings of the Korea of the past.
Korean Snippets 