“Where Are You From?” Beginning to Reflect Upon My Identity

 

I began to wonder, “Who am I?” because of a question a Korean international student asked me during my college years.

 

“Where are you from? Not in China, but in Korea.”

 

Never before in my life, from my birth in China until that moment as a 20-year-old college student, had I been asked a question like this. Only then did I call my mother and ask. I learned that my great-grandfather on my father’s side was from North Pyongan Province in North Korea, and my great-grandmother on my mother’s side was from a place near Jeonju in South Korea. I think it was from that point that I began to think about my ethnic identity linked to the Korean peninsula.

 

This reflection was sparked by the new, previously unencountered question that a ‘fellow Korean’ born in Korea and studying abroad in China asked me, a 4th-generation Joseonjok (Korean Chinese) whose great-grandparents had settled in China over 100 years ago.

 

▲ I am a foreigner, a member of the Korean diaspora and part of a “half-multicultural” family; I am a woman and a citizen of Seoul. ©Lee Hae-eung

After I graduated from college in China and came to Korea to study, I began to receive new questions. “Are you a foreigner, a Korean from abroad, or part of a multicultural family?”[1] And I, too, started to ask new questions about Korea. Why is the number of female members in the National Assembly so low? Why is the concept of ethnicity conflated with the concept of nationality?

 

[1] According to the Support for Multicultural Families Act, the following are defined as “multicultural families”:

a. A family comprised of a married immigrant and a person who acquired the nationality of the Republic of Korea by birth.

b. A family comprised of a person who obtained permission for naturalization and a person who acquired the nationality of the Republic of Korea by birth.

 

Joseonjok, an unwelcome identity in Korea

 

Foreigners are unfamiliar. Because they are unfamiliar, they can be at once frightening and fascinating. We have strong feelings about people who are the same ‘ethnicity’ as we are, but in the case of Korean people and Joseonjok, we were also ‘unfamiliar foreigners’ to each other, meeting for the first time.  But it seems clear that this ‘unfamiliarity’ brings new questions and dilemmas. The new questions motivate us to take time to think, provide opportunities for growth, and bring closer the possibility for collaboration.

 

When I first came to Korea, it was 2001, the second year since the Act on the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans had been enacted. I was in Korea as an exchange researcher, and able to do my research with the stability afforded by a research grant and stipend, so I was very lucky.

 

However, I learned that my Joseonjok identity was not welcomed or something to be proud of in Korea. Partners in ‘fake marriages’, restaurant servers, housekeepers, and construction workers who came to Korea to make money—these were the stereotypes of Joseonjok identity. There was even the word “Yeonbyeonjok”[2];  a warped image of Joseonjok was widespread.

 

[2] Yeonbyeon (Yanbian) is the region in China designated as Korean Autonomous Prefecture, with a large Korean ethnic population living in the region. “Yeonbyeonjok” is a combination of Yeonbyeon and족(族, jok), which means “ethnicity”, and is sometimes used disparagingly to describe all Korean Chinese.

 

In response to these prejudices, I learned to prepare defensive answers, such as “I’m here to study”, “I’m from China”, and “My hometown is not Yeonbyeon (Yanbian), it’s Jiban (Ji’an) City”. But regardless of the responses I prepared, Joseonjok was simply a homogenous group identity to most Koreans; it even took my advisor a long time to be able to distinguish between Joseonjok from the Yeonbyeon Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Joseonjok from other areas.

 

Through these experiences, I learned that an individual’s sense of being is always constructed in relationship to another person. And I discovered that I was trying very hard to adjust myself according to the gaze of my interlocutor, with the passive hopes of settling in this country with a slightly better image.

 

I needed to center myself. I needed to have agency as the person living this experience. A person’s existence always requires that of another, but in the relationship between a majority group and a minority group, the minority group is always placed under the gaze of the majority. Due to this social position, the minority group must always respond to the majority group’s questions, but in reverse the majority group does not know the perspective of or receive questions from the minority group very well.

 

Because of this, a minority position allows for deeper contemplation of the social structure of the center and periphery. This is the most valuable gift that that I have earned through my studies in Korea: a change in my framework of perception. Majoring in women’s studies made questions like these possible. Such questions soon became my research topic, then my dissertation, and led me to become an activist in a citizens’ organization.

 

When I asked students about nationality and citizenship…

 

For me, changing from ‘someone who receives questions’ to ‘someone who asks questions’ was a very important turning point. To ask questions, I needed to know Korean society better and meet many more Korean people. In addition, I had to meet and talk to people in Korea who had diverse experiences of emigration.

 

Why are Joseonjok and Goryoin (Koreans from the former Soviet Union countries) excluded from the Overseas Koreans Act? Why is the act not fully implemented even today? Why does the definition of the multicultural family center on nationality? How many civil rights should I and others like me have? My questions did not end.

 

When I give lectures in universities, I always ask Korean college students this question: “Am I, a Chinese national who has lived for 15 years in Seoul, a citizen of Seoul?” In response, 90% of students say, “No.” Their reasons are nationality and taxes.

 

When I had the opportunity to give a lecture in China, I posed the same question. “Is a Korean who has lived for 15 years in this city but has Korean nationality a citizen of Beijing?” The answers of the Chinese students were “no”. Their reasons were also nationality and taxes. There are distinct differences in the historical background and experiences of Korean and Chinese people, but their ideas about the citizenship of immigrants are surprisingly similar.

 

▲ Lee Hae-eung (Honorary Vice-Mayor of Seoul, Ph.D. in Women’s Studies) giving a lecture at the 2015 Seoul Women’s University Women’s Studies Institute Workshop

Last July, I was appointed as one of several Honorary Vice-Mayors of Seoul, and given the opportunity to participate in the city’s governance. Some policies especially made my heart beat faster. According to Article 2, Paragraph 2 of the Seoul Metropolitan Government Framework Ordinance on Human Rights, established in 2012, “A citizen [of Seoul] is an individual who has an address or place of residence in Seoul, is staying in Seoul, or laboring in a workplace located in Seoul.” I was one of the people “staying in Seoul”! There are similar human rights ordinances that have been established by the local governments of other regions in Korea, but I think the one in Seoul is the most inclusive.

 

People who were not born in Korea, immigrants who are not Korean nationals, and immigrants who are Korean nationals but lack full Korean citizenship all belong and all have responsibilities and rights as a citizen, according to this article. Not many Koreans are aware of this fact. Nor are many immigrants. This ordinance led me to develop a definite attachment to Seoul and a strong sense of responsibility, and to volunteer as an ‘honorary ambassador’ by informing people of this fact at every opportunity.

 

I believe that the ability to ask questions comes with the responsibility to share those questions. Foreigners are not of Korean nationality, but when they buy consumer goods, they pay taxes by the same standard as Korean nationals. When they work, they also pay income taxes by the same standard. In addition, they pay a fee at the immigration office for staying in Korea. If they are discovered to have committed tax evasion or other crimes, they can be immediately deported, so they take extra care compared to Korean nationals. When I share such facts, more and more students, who previously answered that I am not a Seoul citizen due to my nationality and the taxation system, begin to nod. 

 

Migrants’ experiences provide society with wisdom and the ability to imagine

 

I have also come to feel that the ability to communicate is necessary, beginning with sharing questions. There should then be contents and formats that are more broad-minded than a question. Last year, I co-organized and taught the Multicultural Citizen Lecturer Training Program at the Thought Tree BB Center, where I am the co-director. In the lecture proposal, there were questions and answers aimed at shattering commonly held ideas or prejudice against immigrants, but over the course of 10 workshops, we decided to change our strategy.

 

Our ultimate goal was to interact with the participants, so instead of posing direct questions about and giving analyses of stereotypes and commonly held ideas about immigrants, we decided on a format that allows participants to ask questions themselves. We proceeded in a way that acknowledged the admirable aspects of Korea, the origin country of the immigrant—which might be unfamiliar to Koreans—and the intersecting experiences immigrants have in Korea; we sought to provide space for each person to share their knowledge and wisdom. The results of this special lecture were quite successful.

 

The status of women in an immigrant’s origin country and her experience as a member of a minority ethnic group lead to multicultural understandings that can provide wisdom and inspiration to us all. Nevertheless, just as President Obama of the U.S. asks, both about the source of Black anger and the reason why minority whites say there is reverse racism, representing the voices of both sides, we must also ask comprehensive questions that take into account the societal position and emotions of immigrants, as well as non-diasporic Koreans’ discourse of reverse discrimination.

 

This year, I am continuing the aforementioned lecture with the title “All Kinds of Citizens’ Stories”, proceeding with contents and a format in which we can ask each other and ourselves questions about the concept of ‘citizen’.

 

The identities that adhere to my body are “complicated but must all be cared for”

 

About 200 million people—3.2% of the world’s population—have left the place where they were born and lived in another area for more than one year, and this number will continue to grow. We are all contemporaries in an age where the likelihood of leaving the place where we were born to live somewhere else is very high. Wherever we stay, the local time and place can become where we belong, and a framework of perception and practice that enables us to ask questions about our responsibility and rights is necessary. This is not ‘benevolence’ that Korea extends to foreigners who come from abroad. It is the grounds upon which Koreans can make their own claims when they go to a different country or region.

 

For seven years of my life in Korea, I lived with an Alien Registration Card. Now, in my eighth year, I am living with a Foreign National Korean Registration Card. I have submitted an application for naturalization to Korea, so I hope that in the future I will be able to live as a citizen of Korean nationality.

 

I am a foreigner, a fellow Korean, part of a “half-multicultural” family, a woman, and a citizen of Seoul. Many more identities also attach to my body, fusing and also separating, but what is clear is that I cannot not take interest in all parts of my identities.

 

I am reminded of the words of a third-generation Chinese Korean:

 

“Running a travel company, I need to tend to China, to Taiwan, and to Korea, where I was born and raised. It’s complicated, but you need to take care of them all.”

 

Because I must take care of each of the many identities that are integrated in my body, I think that there is a lot of potential for me to develop these identities into energy to achieve peace. My hometown is Jiban City, but my husband is from Yeonbyeon, and we live with a Korea-born Chinese-national child. How can I direct these complex identities into an integrated, positive energy? This is my current question. [Translated by Hoyoung Moon]

 

-Published November 30, 2015 *Original article: http://ildaro.com/7301

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

기사 내용과 관련이 없는 글, 욕설을 사용하는 등 타인의 명예를 훼손하는 글은 관리자에 의해 예고없이 임의 삭제될 수 있으므로 주의하시기 바랍니다. 댓글 작성 시 상대방에 대한 배려와 책임을 담아주세요.

• 닉네임
• 비밀번호
• 
• 도배방지 입력