Said by a korean with a Korean citizen living in Korea their entire life said this, worshipping their US citizenship and US.
Sorry for the weird title, but yea, I swear there’s more to this.
I have a hoobae who is an american-born korea with us-korean citizenship at birth and attended international high school in korean. Meanwhile, I’m a 1.5 gen korean american/gyopo who moved to the states when i was in elementary school, but was born in the states. for context, my korean is enough to be working as a receptionist who does some korean-english translating. I may not have had a lot of fluently korean speaking friends throughout my youth, but I always managed to have some sort of korean community. most of my family is back in korea, and i do not have a korean citizenship because my parents received a different citizenship the time of my birth.
Ans I get it, I’m not “Korean” — especially by law, if thats equal to by citizenship.
A little about me is that I am so proud to be korean. I LOVE korean history to the point that I wanna go back and go through the korean history classes that middle and high schoolers in korea learn. I’ve been keeping up with those history comics for years after I moved to the States. I even had the lineage of Joseon kings memorized at some point without any formal education. I’m extremely against the rule of imperial japan and their crimes during WWII especially within our country, and even now with so much cultural popularity, the only reason I’d be ever interested in visiting is for my friends who live there. Some of my sparetime on YouTube involves watching history specials regarding imperialism in Korea and its effects on modern society.
To go back to the main part, I met the hoobae in school, and because of our ambiguity in background, we got pretty close. but sooner than later, i realized he just loves talking and acting without thinking of the consequences. He also LOVES to joke and even joke too far for my sake, but I realized he may do this now to “trigger me.”
In the last few months, he taught some courses in English in Korea. Then I receive a text,
“I accidentally convinced a studwnt that America is the greatest country in the world and Korea exists only because of the steadfast mercy of America.“
I was so shocked. I may not have lived in Korea as an adult, but I’ve been on Korean social media enough to know that that’s an unacceptable statement.
He later also said that he doesn’t understand why I’m so proud of Korea and being Korean when know nothing about korean society, but the truth is, anyone who is slightly even interested in kpop and kdrama/movies know the reality of the lack of work-life balance, the controversy of racism and colorism, etc. and a lot of korean american women in the states and canada are interested in the history of women’s rights, etc. He and I argued so much over this because I was heated. We even went to Koreatown once as we were arguing and as I was ordering, he laughed at my Korean because I add ONE English word as I order. Recently, when he was introducing me to a friend of his, he also denied me being Korean when the friend asked him if I’m korean, saying I’m just American.
A few days ago, he was talking to our mutual friend (not Korean) and told the friend, “Your country would have been better off if it was still colonized by the United States.” And I know that even if he said it as a joke, our mutual friend wasn’t very fond of this.
A lot more self conscious and upset at the fact that a guy spreading such maegukno/매국노 statements can be a Korean citizen and be called a Korean while I can’t solely because “I never had the full youth and adult experience in Korea” and am not a KR citizen.
I’ll add more as I go on but I feel like I had to let it off my chest.
Will post in r/hanguk as there seems to be more Korean nationals there
submitted by /u/zxcvbn1509
[link] [comments]
