The Life of a Korean-American

          I want to talk about something that doesn't require me to do any research because I have sufficient knowledge on it: the life of a Korean-American. To be more specific, I'm talking about those with Korean parents but were born in America.

          First off, over the years of my life, I've noticed that Koreans in Korea and Koreans in America look different. I've only lived in America but I've seen plenty of native-born Koreans both on TV and real life to know the difference. So if you put two Koreans in front of me, one native-born and the other American-born, I could probably tell you which is which. How? First off the clothes are different - Korean fashion always sets the trend for American fashion so there's going to be a difference there. Plus the skin color, for the most part, is going to be different: Korean-Americans are tanner. Actually that just goes for all Asian Americans. The last key difference is that the eyes are different, many of you are probably shocked, because you move your eyes more and put more stress to your eyes when you speak English so that shapes your eyes differently. I'm not kidding, this is a fact.

         So all of the main differences above tell you this: Korean-Americans are bi-cultural and it's not easy being bi-cultural; they are different from "Korean-Koreans" and from "American-Americans". Their Korean-American parents tell them one thing while their American friends at school tell them another. They're not quite 100% alike with their people in South Korea but they're far from being alike with American-Americans.

          I've seen some Korean-Americans who think they're completely American, and I've coined a term for this condition called "white-washed" (no stealing, I'm the one who made it up). Now in the previous paragraph, I'm not saying Korean-Americans are these aliens who don't belong anywhere. Oh no, that's not it at all. But what I'm trying to get across is that as a Korean-American myself, sometimes I face a kind of identity-crisis, and get a sense of loneliness. Based on my experience, you wouldn't know what I mean unless you're also bi-cultural (or perhaps even multi-cultural). 

          So my whole point of this excessively long blog post is that beyond all the splendor of being Korean-American, there's this sense of loneliness. Unless you're one of those lucky ones who live in a big city overflowing with Koreans. I personally know who I am and Who I belong to, but when enclosed in this world in my life, I look around and wonder how my life would be like if my parents had never come to America. Would I sit around wishing for an exciting life in a place like America or would my life be less complicated with only one culture surrounding my life? So there you have it, the more exclusive details of a life of a Korean-American, or any American-born ethnic minority.

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