Rem-Iseul Kim

This feels like I’m taking advantage of my mixed heritage. My biracial identity. I know feeling like an imposter is common for us. And so, in my insecurities, I find that I am not alone. And so, in my pride, I cannot be alone.

Open journal of my reaction to Korean words

Unedited in the hopes of vulnerability and complexity shining

만을 (garlic)

Not something to eat, before a day at the opera

Italians also love garlic

But it makes me more of you 할먼이 (grandma)

It makes you proud, to see me raw and unabashed

What is the right amount?

What makes the abashed modest?

The garlic, raw and strong like 구각 (traditional Korean singing)

The songs I love, that make me more like you, you have a distaste for

Why?

You love the voices of Queen, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Michael Bublé

You love the movies of Steven Spielberg

Less than proud of the Oscar won recently by a Korean director

It was brutal, raw

I am aware not to make you, 할먼이, the sum of our culture’s creations

I don’t want to make the same mistake of so many

Of so many from 미국 (U.S.A. literally translating to “beautiful country”)

I see what makes it beautiful to you, its opportunity

But 할머니, I am aware of the lies

It feels selfish to tell them out loud

A Gen Z exposing

Of the patriotism

The love between 미국 and 한국 (Korea)

Is built on blood

Wheat

Fear of the North

쌍꺼풀 (double eyelid) surgery

Imports and technology and western standards of civilization

God knows what else, I dare to look

The unpublished bit. The more direct bit.

The history of the of Korea that I had been taught was far from the truth.

The love my grandmother holds for this country was carefully manufactured.

The pride I felt wearing the South Korean flag on my handkerchief was founded on nothing but blood. And even then, really, my family is North Korean.

The history I have just started to learn is fucked to say the least.

And I am proud to say I know myself less.

The South Korean flag stands for a state only erected for U.S. geo-political gain. A puppet military dictatorship that imprisoned dissenters and bombed innocent civilians.

How am I supposed to love that?