Expat Living: Proud of Being Korean

Proud of Being Korean

Written by Elina Park

Being 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

Uzbeks in English or Korean. However, as time went by, many people got to know about us and that there is a lot of aid from the Korean government to overseas Koreans. Next, I will go over a few such programs assisting overseas ethnic Koreans like me. First of all, for Uzbek-Koreans, there are generally three types of visas that we can receive by proving our Korean ancestry. C-3-1(8) Visa: This is a short-term general visa that can be received easily by all overseas Koreans, usually for travel and family visits with residency lasting up to 90 days. H-2 Visa: This is a work and travel visa for overseas Koreans who were Korean at the time of birth and have a Certificate of Family Registry. It comes with up to two years of residency, which can be extended. F-4 Visa: This visa is known as a visa for overseas Koreans that gives the right to live and work officially in South Korea and can be extended multiple times. However, for Uzbek-Koreans, this visa can be given to people with an education higher than high school or people who received special courses for obtaining professional skills in some specific areas like baking or hairstyling and also passing the related exam. It is also available to overseas Koreans who are 60 or older.

There is also the Overseas Korean Foundation (OKF), which is similar to the KGSP (Korean Government Scholarship Program) and was created to support overseas Korean studying in local universities for undergraduate and graduate programs. This scholarship includes airfare (roundtrip), a monthly allowance of 900,000 won, a settlement allowance, medical insurance, language training expenses, and tuition. Moreover, there is a program called the OKFriends Homecoming Teens and Youth Camp, which gives heritage Korean teens and youth from around the world a chance to meet each other in Korea and develop a sense of pride in their Korean heritage by experiencing the society, history, and culture of their homeland. Many of my friends also participated

▲ The Uzbekistan team at International Day at CNU.

in this program as participants and volunteers as well. All of them were really happy to have participated in this camp, which was fully supported. For some participants, it was their first chance to visit Korea. Amazing programs like these help overseas Koreans to visit the country of their ancestors and keep the culture and history in their hearts and minds.

I was always proud of being Korean, and I am also happy that I was born and grew up in such a warm and hospitable country as Uzbekistan. One summer, about two years ago, I met three university students who were doing interviews in one of the small villages in Uzbekistan where many Korean elders are still residing. They were working on school research and gathering information about how Koreans came to Uzbekistan. I keep in my heart and mind all the memories of our ancestors that my grandmother left me – memories I hope to pass on to the next generation. I really want people to learn more about us and keep us in the pages of our national history.

Photographs courtesy of Elina Park.

2017 OKFriends Home Coming Youth Camp photo was taken from http://www.youth.go.kr/. ▲

The Author

Elina Park is an ethnic Korean who was born and raised in Uzbekistan. Recently, she received her bachelor’s degree in business administration at Chonnam National University. Currently, she is a GIC intern at the CNU Language Education Center. Instagram: @elibuuuuu.

Drive-By Birthdays: Now I’ve Heard It All

Written by William Urbanski

Of all the frivolous, unnecessary nonsense going on in the world, this takes the cake.

When I recently read the North American headlines that mentioned “drive-bys” and “children” in the same sentence, I was bracing myself for yet another story about a community ensnarled by gang violence. The reality was much, much worse. Although thankfully there have been no reported cases of this phenomenon in Korea quite yet, it seems that an unfortunate by-product of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in North America has been the ludicrous, energy-profligate, and blatantly ridiculous practice of “drive-by birthdays.” While I have seen and heard a lot of things in my day that make me question the collective IQs of entire nations, this one breaks new ground. Any individual who has participated in a drive-by birthday should take a close and honest look at his or her decisionmaking process because this whole practice is seriously wack.

The drive-by birthday is a solution to the non-problem of children who otherwise would not get to have birthday parties because of the common-sense rules in place to contain the spread of COVID-19. Since inviting a bunch of germ-covered kids over to the birthday boy’s or girl’s house to run amok and sneeze on each other until it is time for them to shove chocolate cake in their faces with their bare hands is not an option, and since the parents of said birthday boy or girl cannot just, you know, cancel the party, they devised a “solution” whereby parents slowly drive by the house while their obnoxious kids scream happy birthday at the top of their lungs and hold up signs from the back seat. It seems that drive-by birthdays are some parents’ way of declaring to the world that they will not let a global pandemic that has killed thousands stop them from throwing a birthday party. Well, here is the problem with that line of reasoning: Anyone with a functioning brain between their ears should let the coronavirus stop them from doing all sorts of stuff. for someone generally going through a tough time, like a child with a terminal disease. But the kids in question are neither particularly special nor noteworthy, nor celebrating huge milestones – it is just another birthday. Obviously, the coronavirus is not stopping any family from acknowledging the day a kid was born. It is just the outward, showy party aspect that has to be indefinitely postponed – and that is what the bad parents just cannot seem to let go of. Birthdays have two parts: the recognition of the date of one’s birth and the cultural tradition of getting together with a bunch of people. The former lends itself to a quiet and dignified get-together of close family. The latter – the “birthday bash” – is superfluous. And, much like Christmas, which has its origins in some baby being born two millennia ago, birthdays have become obfuscated with virtually compulsory and excessive shopping, and as people get older, with regrettable nights in the club.

Fairness vs. Generosity

Purportedly, the motivation for going through with this emerging and foolish practice has its roots in a subconscious statistical comparison of costs and benefits: The inconvenience of organizing a drive-by party is less than the pain it would cause the parents to listen to their screamy, spoiled kid whine about missing a birthday. So this “grand bargain,” as it were, alludes to the great tragedy of this whole situation: that it is a missed teaching opportunity. Any child who must have a party cancelled will probably make the outlandish claim that “it’s not fair.”

Well, by definition, cancelling a non-mandatory gathering of a bunch of kids in an enclosed place, among a plethora of event cancellations around the globe in place to prevent the spread of a communicable disease, is extremely fair. So, the proper course of action would be to sit down with the birthday child and explain exactly what is going on and how not having a birthday is actually a good and compassionate precaution to take – end of story. It would also be a good opportunity to explain

that while people are under a social obligation to be fair (for better or worse), they are under no obligation to be generous, which is what birthday parties are all about: compulsive generosity. Suggesting that people must be generous (i.e., that kids must provide birthday gifts) is ridiculous. If there are two people and one sandwich, each person getting half is fair. If one person thinks that on his birthday, he is entitled to the whole sandwich, then that person was not raised properly.

Sweet 16

Back in the early 2000s, there was an amazing show on MTV called My Super Sweet 16, which profiled snotty rich girls as their parents bent over backwards and dropped serious coin trying to throw them the ultimate birthday bash. Every conceivable stereotype of a haughtytaughty, spoiled, ungrateful, all-around dumpster fire of a soon-to-be-sixteen-year-old brat played out on the screen. While amusing, some of the episodes were hard to watch, such as when these little princesses whined and literally cried because the musicians hired to perform at their parties were not famous enough. My personal theory about why this show enjoyed such enormous (albeit ephemeral) popularity, is that watching it acted as a kind of catharsis to the viewing masses who were able to say “well, at least my kid isn’t that spoiled.” So, in a sense, My Super Sweet 16 enjoyed success for the same reason that World Wrestling Entertainment has continued to sap the intellects of every city it has visited for nearly 40 years – it is an outlet for emotions that we are normally taught to suppress. Furthermore, part of the enjoyment of these shows is the juxtaposition they create between values and attitudes that are worthy of praise and those, such as greed and entitlement, that invite ridicule and scorn.

Plato and the Virtuous Society

Now, admittedly, I am paraphrasing a bit here, but Plato postulated that the ultimate goal of democracy, and the purpose of society in general, is not to let a bunch of kids play Pin the Tail on the Donkey and hit a piñata once a year. It is to cultivate virtuous citizens: those that understand virtues and adhere to them, thereby making society as a whole better. Entitlement is not a virtue, and by implicitly teaching kids that it is okay to bend basic safety rules to party down, we should really wonder what values we are instilling in them. Now, all this might be a little over the heads of little Johnny or Jenny who is crying the blues about a cancelled birthday, so let us leave it at this: No kid has a moral right to a birthday party. While it is easy (and fun) to point the finger at children, let’s not forget that 99.99 percent of kids are too busy playing in the mud and/or lack the executive function to orchestrate any sort of party, especially one requiring a procession of vehicles. This inconvenient truth points to the explicit involvement of the parents, which is the other thing

drive-by birthdays are about anyway. Parents organize these things so that they can record them, make a terrible video, upload it onto Facebook, count how many likes they get, then pat themselves on the back for what a good job they have been doing.

A Message Through Time

We have been talking a lot about the bad precedent driveby birthdays set for kids, but let us think for a moment about the ridiculous messages we are sending into the future because, make no mistake, anthropologists five hundred years from now will look back on this in bewildered amusement. They will, without question, and rightfully so, relentlessly and mercilessly mock any parent who caved in to their child’s temper tantrums and organized one of these shindigs. The archeologists and anthropologists of the year 2520 will be forced to conclude that what we, as a society, deemed to be supremely important in life was to bust our humps working jobs we do not like so that we can waste time, money, and gas putting on ridiculous parades for our spoiled kids.

It is understandable that children will get upset because they cannot have a birthday party, but given the current circumstances, I say, let them eat cake.

Graphics by William Urbanski.

The Author

William Urbanski, managing editor of the Gwangju News, has an MA in international relations and cultural diplomacy. He is married to a wonderful Korean woman, always pays cash, and keeps all his receipts. Instagram: @will_il_gatto.