New place

 Seonghae Kim

February 9, 2022

limited                  

           Ever since I moved to South Korea from North Korea, I have felt I am an alien. To the uninitiated people about Korea, the Korean peninsula has been divided for over a half-century and is similar to Germany in the past. South Korea is capitalist and North Korea is ruled by a dictatorship and closed to communists. Due to the economic crisis, and freedom, many people have been moving to South Korea from North Korea for decades. There are many undeniable factors that make me different from others in South Korea: I have a Northern accent, and I do not know many words that South Korean people generally use. Furthermore, I went to the South as a refugee, and have been living in the US. All these factors have affected my sense of who I am and how I fit into both South Korea and the United States.

I lost my comfort of speaking, while I was adjusting to the new environment in South Korea. I was often asked where I was from because I have a local accent. I convinced myself that it’s okay to be different. In the face of reality, however, it did not work out well because people often left such a strong impression on me because I was speaking differently. I worked at several places in South Korea while preparing to apply for college. I worked at a bar responsible for serving and placing orders. One day on a night shift, without knowing what I was saying, I unintentionally used my Northern accent, and for that I was laughed at by a few young boys. For a moment, I was frozen and chills started trickling down my back. They continuously asked me many disrespectful questions, but I had no idea how to deal with the uncomfortable situation. Although my life was not devoted to prayer, I sincerely whispered to God to get me out of that place since my boss was watching over me with eagle eyes. A few days later I was replaced as a result of my accent. The boss did not say anything, yet it seemed self-explanatory. After that, I have tried harder to adjust to the South Korean accent and tried to maintain my Northern dialect  too because it still holds emotional sentiment in my heart.

I also completely lost my sense of humor and self-esteem while living in South Korea. People in the South, unlike in the North, have used many words that originated from other countries that made me more nervous when I spoke. As might be expected, the nervousness just changed my talkative and humorous character. One morning, I took a bus to attend school, and soon I recognized it was the wrong bus. However, I had no guts to ask the driver where it was because the word “driver” was different from one that I used in the North. I waited until lunchtime at which the bus usually stopped riding. Finally, the driver asked me to leave, and I asked him nervously where I was. He told me indifferently to use my GPS. I just nodded instead of saying yes, but I had no idea what the GPS was. Funny enough, I didn’t know the word for driver. Neither did I know how to take public transportation or use a phone. As time has passed, I have overcome these difficulties little by little, but still, I am nervous to speak to a person in a bank or store. Eventually, it feels like I have become less talkative and less funny.

Last semester in Pop Culture class, the students were assigned a few times to present something that represents their culture. It was the first time I shared K-Pop music and famous celebrities in South Korea. Later I found myself guilty of pretending to be familiar with Southern culture. However, in lieu of dwelling on that kind of burden, I wanted to move on. Worst of all, the final project was to present my cultural identity which made me reconsider my identity. I confessed to the professor that I had no clue about my identity and she suggested that I present something about North Korea. Anyway, I did my final project on North Korean culture, but I have still been struggling to find my identity. Every time I introduce myself, I have no idea where to begin, or how to make the conclusion about my identity.

 I lost my sense of belonging from having a unique background and accent, and of which I was ashamed. Throughout these times I learned my lesson that as long as I am staying active in my life and ready to be a better person in the present, where I was born and from, and what kind of language I used to speak are less important. It is a universal fact that people are not able to choose their parents, and countries to be born, but they can choose how to live today and make things better than yesterday.