Move Over, Korean Blood Myth

Gasp... choke... could Korea be on the move to a multicultural society? May it start having to redefine its notion of Korean culture, the Korean one-blood myth, its nationalism? There is an interesting demographic shift on the way: one in ten South Korean men and women get married to a foreigner, most of whom are made up of brides from China and Vietnam. My question: when will the "waygooks" who have made Korea their home, indeed who have "mixed-race" children, no longer be known as foreigners, nor be treated in an inferior way to Aryan "pure-blood" Koreans?

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Why? I write to remind myself.

So why would I start blogging about Korea when we are still here in Canada and our plans to move to South Korea are more than seven months away?

One reason is because traveling, nay, relocating to the other ends of the earth, is (insert appropriate adjective plus exclamatory punctuation here) enough when done alone or as a couple, but it is a different game entirely when preparing to move as a familial unit: dad, mom, son (age 7 at departure time), and daughter (three and a half at DT). There are all the regular preparations to be done when moving overseas (immunizations, passports, visas, insurance, other assorted important documents, etc., not to mention the luggage), but it is now X4. Blogging on this topic is a good way keep a record of our family's preparations for our big adventure.

This leads to another question: why are we going to Korea, anyway? South Korea's a crazy place, with even crazier neighbours. The air is bad. Sometimes, people's habits and behaviours or beliefs range from bewildering to absolutely infuriating and unjust. Our family and friends are all here in town with us, for the most part. We live in a good neighborhood, generally safe, close to conveniences. I have a pretty decent job that I quite like; I never dread going to work, I like the people I work with, I like my actual work (teaching English for Academic Prep at a university), with a good pension and benefits plan. The air is clean. We don't have a lot of money, but we're able to afford not having to pay for daycare so that Matthew can stay at home with the kids, namely just Roo, since Bo is in school all day. (The benefits of being able to afford having a stay at home parent with kids when they're young is invaluable... a topic I'll cover at a later date). We have a Subaru station wagon (white, not too flashy, especially in this neighborhood!), and we live in a cul-de-sac with little traffic. We rent in a neighborhood where we could never even begin to imagine being able to afford to buy a home, a quieter area with winding, unnecessary roads.

Yet, as the years pass, we realize we're settling, albeit uncomfortably so, into a life that neither one of us had dreamed was for us. We're realizing that our grand dreams of travel, of exploration and adventure, of education for our children, are going to pass if we continue to just settle for our present life. We continue to feel itchy and restless because we've seemed to have done exactly that, settled into the suburbs, and into a life that neither of us dreamed for ourselves.

Life seems good. It is good! But perhaps the biggest reason we want to leave this life is because we live among people from a culture with values and beliefs, in many cases, in opposition to our own. The vast majority of the upper-middle class who surround us, and, it seems, our entire culture, value money or the evidence of that money by way of a variety of possessions, instead of time with their children. Actual time spent with their children, as opposed to the time spent working in order to provide iPods, or other devices for distracting their kids' attention from the real world. Time spent teaching their children how to be disciplined and hard-working, positive and well-behaved people who know how to interact with others in the world. To impart upon their children an appreciation for the things they appreciate by spending time doing these things with them... cooking, music, art, sports, gardening, etc.

I am referring to the people who work so desperately hard to fit an image in order to garner the respect and admiration of others around them (by flaunting an existence of wealth by owning a certain amount of property, owning more than one car, outfitting their kids with the proper accountrements of a "Jersey Shore"-obsessed youth - just watch South Park's "It's a Jersey Thing" for their own unmistakable commentary - and so on and on and on...), instead of the respect and admiration of their husband/wife and children.

It would be naive, if not downright stupid, to think that "moving up the ladder" is not present in Korea. In fact, "keeping up with the Kims" is fiercer than the North American "Joneses." So why move us all to Korea? Because the fact remains that we are not Korean, and we will never fit there. We have no desire nor expectation of fitting into Korean society and keeping up with it. We do, on the other hand, feel intense pressure to fit in and keep up with the society and larger culture to which we belong now. And it really doesn't sit well with us.

If we don't prepare now, we will probably never go. We might stay in the suburbs where life is good enough, and we'll settle into becoming the type of people we swore we never would when we first decided upon spending the rest of our lives together.

There are other reasons why we've chosen Korea, such as being able to get quite a good job, and being able to save money, and being able to live overseas with our children, but the biggest is to live our dreams and make them come true. The first step is Korea, and then who knows where?! Possibly living in Israel, or learning how to do organic farming, or studying French in Montreal. And, or course, settling, when we are ready (in maybe 4-5 years, when Bo would be about eleven and Roo eight), into a house in a place (likely in Canada) that we can afford, where we can work at something we love, and where we are surrounded by a community with whom we feel a sense of belonging and solidarity. We might very well have chickens. We would need to have a large garden.

So to answer the original question - why blog? - I write in order to remind myself of keeping to our dreams and not settling, and to maintain an account of the process.

I'm not such a grinch...most of the time...

Though I don't subscribe to the theology touted in Handel's masterpiece, this video still made my heart grow three sizes today! Stunning! You can find out more about Random Acts of Culture here.



Then my cynical side notes the irony of the fact that this great piece of music is being performed in what may be our own culture's hall of worship.

Drunken Tiger

When I was in Korea in 2005, I was fortunate enough to stumble across some pretty decent Korean hip hop. Drunken Tiger was a group I listened to quite a bit, although the vast majority of the lyrics were unintelligible to me. I read up a bit on the group, found out that it was largely fronted by Tiger JK, a Korean-American artist who strives for mutual understanding between Koreans and blacks in the US, and who recently (and secretly) wed a Korean-(black) American artist Tasha Reid (Yoon Mi Rae). All of the above is pretty much a preamble for the real purpose of this post... the tres cool Drunken Tiger video below, which features Reid aka Yoon aka Gemini. Check it out!