48
Expat Living
Proud of Being Korean
COMMUNITY
Written by Elina Park
B
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
June 2020
eing a Korean from Uzbekistan who speaks Russian sounds complicated, does it not? Every time I meet new people, they get pretty surprised and cannot understand how this can be. Consequently, I have to explain the history of my family and other people like me who were born and raised in Uzbekistan. So, now I have become a master at telling, in just three minutes, the whole history of how my ancestors got to the Soviet Union and how my family moved to Uzbekistan. You can read about it below. I am a third-generation Korean born in Uzbekistan; the first generation came to Uzbek lands in 1937 due to forced deportation from the Russian Far East to Kazakh and Uzbek in the USSR. Since in the USSR there was only one commonly accepted language, Russian, all other languages were forbidden; my grandparents and parents had no choice except to learn Russian. As a result, my parents have already forgotten the Korean language. My generation and those born after me do not know Korean and so most of the time they speak Russian instead. In 1991, Uzbekistan gained independence, and Uzbek became an official language. However, Koreans found it hard enough to adapt to the Russian language, and many of us cannot speak Uzbek, myself included. According to my grandmother, our ancestors were sent to Soviet lands during the Korean-Japanese war and then, due to the new war between Russia and Japan, Koreans were sent to Central Asia. Since my childhood,
my grandmother told me to remember that I am Korean and that I should know our history and culture. Unfortunately, she never had an opportunity to visit our ancestors’ land, but I made her dream come true. After living in Tashkent for about 19 years, I came to Korea and obtained my bachelor’s degree as a scholarship student at Chonnam National University majoring in business administration, and currently I am living and working in Gwangju. However, this was not my first time to come to South Korea. My parents and I traveled to Seoul for a week when I was about 10 years old. My first reaction was “Wow, there are so many people that look like me! All of them seemed like my relatives!” We just traveled around Seoul, visiting Seoul Grand Park Zoo, Aqua World, and the 63 Building while eating great food and taking night walks. I kept that week deep in my heart because the place felt like a home for me, and I promised myself that I would come back again. As a kid, I really loved tteokbokki (떡볶이) and Korean chicken, which were the foods I later missed the most. Still, as a grown-up I am still in love with tteokbokki and enjoy crispy, fried chicken with garlic sauce. Approximately fifteen years ago, many people did not know that there were Koreans in Central Asia. Even when I came to study in 2016, a lot of people did not know about Koryeo-saram (고려사람). They considered me Uzbek and could not understand why I spoke to other
