Encounters on the Subway/You've been punked!/my phenotype is not my genotype

I've heard it said more than once that the subway brings New Yorkers together, that the subway is the posterchild for New York's diversity. Whether it's anything more than a posterchild for New York's diversity(and I don't think it is), is up for debate, but being in Seoul has certainly made me appreciate growing up in a place where the people I saw everyday didn't all look exactly like me--even if I didn't always interact with them.

Sunday June 18, 2006

We're a curious sight when we leave the apartment together. The cutest old Korean woman you can imagine walking hand-in-hand with a white foreigner who towers a foot above her. The curious take no care to hide their shock when we hug goodbye in front of the subway station and she plants damp kisses on both of my cheeks.

Earlier that day, before the hugs and kisses, we're lost in the Euljiro 3 Station, and ask a man for directions; a man who can't hold it in, asking--in an awkwardly failed attempt to be casual--what everyone else is thinking: "So...who is that boy with you?"

"My grandson," she answers as if that should be obvious.

He decides to walk us to our platform, probably more out of curiosity than desire to help.
"So, why are you in Korea?" he

asks in pretty-decent English.

"I'm studying Korean language here," I answer back in Korean.

"Wow, you speak Korean SO well," he exclaims--in Korean this time.

I've gotten used to the high praises I get for being able to produce anything that sounds like Korean. Koreans don't expect mush from someone who looks white. But, I haven't--and won't--get used to the looks that tell me that people think there's something incredibly odd about me and my hal muh n(grandmother).

Thursday June 22, 2006
We're on the subway platform, looking at a poster for Superman Returns as we wait for our train when he comes up to us.

"Do you know when that movie comes out?" he asks in Korean.

We look a little confused(because we are). He switches to English, "Oh, I was just asking if..."

He keeps talking for a while. He works at Incheon International Airport and needs to know English for his job, he tell us. He's been studying on his own for the past seven years. In terms of grammar, word choice and use, his English is perfect. His pronunciation isn't too bad either(although I had to stifle laughs when he said "Engrish" and "Filum" instead of film)

Eventually, he decides he wants to know a little about us. "What are you doing in Seoul?" he asks us along with a few other questions. There's a brief silence before he continues, addressing only me, "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

I nod my assent.

"Can I ask why are you a studying Kor--"

"My mother's Korean. I'm half Korean," I answer before he finishes. It's not like I didn't know what he was going to ask.

"Oh," he replies, and it seems that our conversation has ended...until the train arrives thirty seconds later and we walk towards it beside him.

"So," he turns to me, "I'm not married yet," he says, continuing to add some more qualifiers in the typically roundabout Korean way of getting to the point: "What would you think if I married an American woman," he asks as if he expects me to be shocked.

It takes me a second to respond because, um I'm half-Korean, and I really have no idea why he's asking me this like I should be shocked. I don't know exactly what I answered back, but it was something like, "I'd have no problem with it," or "that's great."

He seems little embarassed and mumbles something like, "I guess that was a dumb question," and we exchange, "it was nice talking to you"'s before we're seperated as we enter the packed car.

Seoul nights

"Hey, remember that J Lo song 'Waiting for Tonight,'" he asked, as we stepped out of the taxi. Just as we had when he asked the same question about Ace of Base or Backstreet Boys, we all started singing the song as we walked back home at 4:30 in the morning.

Our second night out in Seoul began about eight hours before our sing-along with a late dinner in Hongdae, the neighborhood around Hongik University. Three of us shared a rich, spicy chicken stew and a bottle of soju. Soju, the rice-based traditional Korean liquor, tastes like vodka, but just a little sweeter, and about a third as strong. You drink shots of it with friends, drinking after toasting with the Korean cheers, "gun-beh!"

We met up with more friends after dinner and had drinks at Star Bar before making our way to S-Club where we spent the rest of the night. The fact that it was free tequila night became obvious as soon as we walked down the stairs and onto the dance floor where we were met by more than a few guys passed out at the tables on the edges of the room.

Also apparent, as soon as we walked onto the dance floor, was which side of the family my awful dancing come from. S-club was--give and take a few songs--playing the current Top 40 hits from the U.S. But, the way Koreans danced to the music was different from any American dance floor where these same songs blasted from speakers. There was no close body contact. There wasn't even quick or varied movement. Mainly, there was very awkward and slow bobbing. Surrounded by bobbing and swaying, it became obvious who the Americans in the club were.




We didn't really try to assimilate. Especially when the DJ played our request: J Lo's "Jenny From the Block"

Koreans weren't the only occupants of the dance floor. If you want to find Americans, or other white foreigners in Seoul, there are basically two places to go. As in any other country, stops at American chains(Starbucks, McDonald's, etc.) will always yield a couple sightings. But, if it's hordes of whites that you want, stop by one of Seoul's many nightlife districts like Hongdae, Sinchon(where I live), or Itaewon.

Seoul clubs, just like in America, seem to have their fair share of sketchy guys. One of the guys we encountered happened to be one of the Americans who enjoys the Seoul nightlife. The four of us who came from Yale stuck together on the dance floor, joined at times by Jane's friend from Sogang and his friends. One rather obese and creepy American decided he wanted to join the fun and snuck up behind Jane and started dancing. The fact she skipped the normally more subtle hints of disinterest and straight out scattered away didn't seem to phase him. Another Korean guy came over to our group a few times, and kind of stood about half a foot from us clapping his hands over his head.

All in all, a fun night that resulted in so many unflattering pictures:

White Man, Asian Woman

I mentioned before that I see, maybe, ten white people on an everage day. Of those, probably 2 or 3 are white males walking with their Korean girlfriends/wives. In the US, the white male/Asian woman coupling is hardly an eye-popping spectacle. But Koreans are not too keen on white foreigners dating their women.

I went to class this morning without an umbrella, but it was pouring when class let out this afternoon, so I squeezed under my friend Yan's tiny umbrella. Trying to cover as much of ourselves as possible, she grabbed onto my arm and we walked close together. It's about a fifteen minute walk from school to where we live, and just before we turn the corner from the main street into our little alleyway, we pass by one of the many Korean equivalents of Bath and Body Works. This one is a cutesy little shop called Etude House with a cottage-like facade painted white with pink trimmings. In Korea, these shops all have salesmen--usually female, but ocasionally male--standing in front of the door hawking their goods and motioning for passerbys to step inside. As we rushed past it, eager to escape the rain, I caught a quick glance at the twenty-something guy standing in front of the store today. The usual female salespeople always seem chipper and energetic; this guy just seemed bored out of his mind.

Our arms still linked, we turned the corner, followed a few seconds later by Kaila and Jane(also squeezed under one umbrella) who laughed and called out "Mark and Yan are a boo boo(couple)!" Right after we walked past the salesman at Etude House, they told us, he executed that whiplash headturn we've all used to get a second look at someone really hot or someone/something really shocking or odd.

In Korea, interacial couples fit under the latter category. I knew before that Koreans weren't too keen on white male/Asian female couples, but I found out a little more with some internet snooping tonight. In Korea today, men have used a classic technique to other the white male foreigner: the sexual threat. It's not all that different from the way white American men have historically justified their racism by othering black men as primitive, sexual beasts.

Here are some choice quotes that appeared in an article in the Naver News last summer around this time:

"Presently some foreign English teachers staying in Korea and working in private english schools around the country have been shockingly revealed to be having indiscriminate sex with Korean girls."

"Mr Kim Seung Hyun, a Korean-American, approached our head office and claimed that ‘Foreign teachers working in English academies regularly tempt staff members and students, and perform abnormal sex acts with them."

"Mr Kim made it clear that highschool girls are among that number of people having sex with the foreign English teachers, and that they often contracted venereal disease from them, then were abandoned to worry on their own and go to the hospital alone."

"a great many foriegners seeking work in Korea as english teachers think, ‘money is money, but if I go to Korea I can have sex to my hearts content."

The press wasn't the only place this xenophobia was manifested. Also, last summer, the blog Occidentalism, reported a "wave of sites set up by Koreans to ‘expose’ foreigners who dare to date Korean girls. These sites are not looking for illegal acts by foreigners - they criticise legal dating or foreigners meeting Korean girls." What could be found on these sites? Basically pictures of white men with Korean women with captions like "Foreigner dares to pick up!" and "Another wicked foreigner." Now, I will admit that the "sexual threat" of white male foreigners is far more based in reality than the fear of black men in America ever was. And, I will admit that maybe some of the men in these pictures were of sketchy white guys with raging Asian fetishes. But, this is a little extreme. I'm betting that most of these guys were on legitimate dates. Invasion of privacy much?

It doesn't take much to effort to find ugly, dark things about a person or place. In Korea, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance are the ugliest and darkest things to be found in this country in my opinion. Korean intolerance doesn't take form so much in external actions so much as internal attitudes. The Korean word for "black person," for example, is derived from the word for dirt. I'd like to think that the word-choice was soley based on perceived color-similarities, but that'd be pretty naive. Homophobia exists here too, but in a much different form than you find in the U.S., I think. I haven't observed intense hatred towards GLBT people as much as I've noticed an amusement with them. Koreans, it seems to me, don't expressly hate GLBT people; they just see them as kind of a joke, spectacles without any real legitimacy. I was at a Buddhist temple with my twenty-five year old cousin when he saw two men holding hands and exclaimed, "Whoa! Are those two guys gay?" in a tone that expressed both fascination and amusement at the site. In class, one of my teachers jokingly said she'd kiss whoever won a vocabulary game we were playing. Looking at the three guys in the class, she exclaimed cheerfully, "One of you guys better win! This isn't San Francisco, you know."

In pointing out what I've noticed, I'm not giving Koreans much credit, I know. But, there's far more good in this place than bad, and the intolerance I've pointed out can be found anywhere. Certainly, the United States isn't all that far head of Korea in this race if at all. Maybe we're more accepting of interacial dating, but that doesn't mean that we weren't once in the same place Koreans were. And at least Koreans aren't using these attitudes as an excuse to indiscriminately kill white foreigners.

White

I arrived in Seoul late Monday night, June 5. Everywhere I went my first three days in Seoul, I went with Korean family or friends who came from Yale with me. To class. To set up a bank account. To breakfast, lunch, and dinner. To search for better housing. To buy cell phones. To shop. To explore Sinchon. In the hustle and bustle of getting set up for three months in Seoul, I hadn't had a free moment to explore Sinchon(the university district where I live) on my own.

Not until Thursday night did I have plans that brought me out alone. I had called my hal muh ni(grandmother) earlier in the day, and working around her schedule more than mine(her's includes English, voice, and computer classes--how amazing is that at 82!), we planned to meet at 6 PM in front of the Hyundai Department Store just a few minutes walk from where I live. I had some time on my hands that afternoon, so I set out a little early to wander around Sinchon by myself.

After traveling in Europe last spring break, I'd grown accustomed to a certain level of anonymity in my travels. As long as I kept my camera tucked away and looked like I was going somewhere, anyone might mistake me for a native. That's not the case here where I see maybe ten white people each day(and that's a generous estimate). But, somehow, I didn't realize how much I stand out from the crowd until I ventured out alone for the first time. As soon as I stepped out of our building, I felt different. As I merged into the crowd, I felt like I was forcing myself into the flow of foot traffic rather than blending into it. Without any Koreans by my side, I felt so intensely white, like such a spectacle.

I may not consider myself to be white, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone else everywhere does after just one quick, passing glance. At home, I've accepted the fact that my racial identity is obvious to no one but myself. The looks of shock and disbelief I get when people find out I'm half-Korean have long ceased to bother me. But, here, I cannot go anywhere, do anything without being noticed. Though there weren't too many people staring me down or gawking, I can say without any conceit that I am always an object of attention. And, somehow, that makes the assumptions I know people are making("Oh, a white person") more personally offensive.

On that first walk out alone, my hyper-consciousness of my whiteness made me physically sick. I hadn't gone more than a block before I felt so uncomfortable that I just wanted to go back to my room and watch the One Tree Hill: Season 2 DVDs I'd brought with me. It was a little disconcerting, after all, to realize that I really don't fit in at all in this place I love so much. Standing out as I did, I really felt that I couldn't call this place my own like I wanted to. I kept wanting to scream, "I'M HALF KOREAN!," to stop random passerbys and inform them that I had a greater claim on this country than any other place. Being thrown into a homogenous population which only I know I belong to messed with my head a little bit, I guess.

I've grown comfortable in the days that have passed with walking around alone. A few more trips out alone and it was easy enough to become less sensitive about being an object of attention. All the rest of it--this identity crisis of sorts--I'm still grappling with. Maybe it's insecurty, but I just want these people to know what I know about myself: that I'm Korean and very proud of that part of my identity.

P.S. I'm having a lot of fun here