reflection on korea

as you may be able to tell from my last name (유), i am half-korean. however, despite this fact, i have never had many ties to my culture. whenever meeting other korean-canadians, i was never able to connect with them on the same level that they connected with each other. so when i was given the chance to move to korea through the cansbridge fellowship, i took the opportunity without a second thought.

early struggles

small things reminded me how much i didn't actually know going in. ordering food for the first time here, i had no idea a lot of restaurants are built around serving at least two people, and the portions that came out were far bigger than i expected for one person. it's still been a bit hard, going forward, to find places that reliably serve just one.

transit was its own adjustment. toronto's system is bad enough that i never really had to learn how to use transit properly in the first place, so seoul's subway would have been a struggle on its own even in english. layering a different language on top of that made it even harder to get comfortable with.

last and worst of all, my first apartment came with its own problem: bed bugs. i ended up having to move out entirely because of it, on top of everything else i was still trying to figure out.

heritage complicating things, not simplifying them

when people approach me here, especially early on before i'd picked up any language, the default is always korean. this made things extremely difficult at first, and it was genuinely surprising to people that i didn't speak at all, since i "look korean." on the flip side, i've found myself helping foreigners navigate when i see them struggling, and they always compliment my english. it's a funny contrast: the difference in how multiculturalism is read in western countries versus asian countries. back home, being half-anything doesn't raise an eyebrow. here, looking the part is assumed to mean you are the part, and not being able to back that up in language surprises people every time.

learning to be alone

in the first month of my stay, i was extremely lonely. it was hard to build a social life when i wasn't sure if the people i was approaching even spoke the same language as me. moreover, going out on my own has never been, and still really isn't, something i'm comfortable doing.

on the early occasions where i pushed through that discomfort anyway, i met some amazing people, and those connections have compounded since. my network has expanded both within and outside of korea, in a way i wouldn't have predicted from how that first month felt. i now know people from places including japan, france, cambodia, switzerland, china, and many more. will these relationships do much now? maybe not. but might they change my life in the future? i have no doubt.

moving home in less than a month

i'm not coming back the same person who left. i'm a lot more comfortable being uncomfortable now, in a way that i don't think would have happened without being dropped somewhere i didn't know the rules. my relationship to being half-korean hasn't resolved into anything clean either. i didn't leave "more korean" than i arrived, but i understand the gap now instead of just feeling it.

some of what's changed is smaller but still real. korean respect culture is something i've come to genuinely admire, and it's something i intend to actually carry back with me rather than leave here. even my sense of style has evolved, somewhat unexpectedly, to the point where i got my last haircut here from bts's stylist.

what i'll miss is more straightforward: the specific people, obviously, knowing that distance changes things no matter how much anyone means to stay in touch. but also just the way of living here, being independent in a city where nobody has any preexisting idea of who i am. i don't know yet what it's going to feel like to trade that back for being known.