(gentle music)
- My name is Namjun Cho.
And I was born in Korea,
and I lived here until I was eight years old.
That's when my parents decided to move to America
for a better education for their children.
They were planning on only staying for like a couple years,
just for us to see more of the world and learn English.
But they saw that we really liked it there,
so they did everything they could to stay there
until we graduated.
I was living in Ohio at first, when we moved to the States,
until college.
My mother was a housewife and my Dad,
he did international business, so he moved around a lot.
One of those big things that he wanted to pass down to us
was to show us more of the world.
Back when I was living in Korea,
everybody is a Korean.
Moving to the States, I see White people,
Black people, Chinese, Japanese.
At first I was a little uncomfortable with that,
and also the language barrier.
Like I had trouble making friends,
connecting to people more
and that part about it was really rough.
Some teachers were just not very nice to me.
Most of them were nice, but especially like the principal,
he was a bit unfair to me, I remember.
A couple times there was conflict, like a little conflict,
where the other kid would incite some sort of a fight.
And it would eventually grow into this big mess
and then the supervisors would come
and since I couldn't speak for myself,
I could not give my side of the story.
And it was just the other kid telling the whole thing.
The most difficult thing about adjusting
was culture and language, probably.
For my siblings, it was much harder.
Like my sister, she moved when she was in middle school,
so she had the most trouble adjusting.
Military started late July of 2020.
Preparing for the military was just taking a physical exam.
Basic training is four weeks of just training.
Like we did shooting, we did real life combat situation,
and gas chambers, a lot of just physical training.
During that four weeks, you were in the barracks,
and you had a squad of like 10 to 16 people.
Basic training, for me, was pretty rough.
My Korean back then was not as good as it was now.
And just communicating with people,
like I could understand people like 70, 80% of the time,
but that 20, 30%,
I feel like it was defining it in
really connecting to people.
I told everybody that I was basically American.
I identified as American and they,
like some of them were just not very accepting of that.
It was just hard for them to comprehend
what I have been through.
So it was hard for them to understand
where I was coming from.
Well, sometimes they would be very direct.
They'd be like, "Hey American, like you're American,
so you don't know this like obscure Korean thing."
There was this one particular guy who was just,
he was honestly kind of a bully.
And nobody would stand up for me.
When it comes to conflict,
it's hard for me to do something about it in the moment,
especially when it's in a different language.
Like, maybe in English, I could react, or say something,
like, "Please stop," or something like that.
But in Korean it's, like I don't even,
I don't think I would've even have known what to say,
so I couldn't react or even talk to him about it.
During this time, my Korean pride,
it definitely went up a little bit,
because basic training,
like part of it is designed for the soldiers
to become more patriotic.
Like when I got out of service, I was like,
"Wow, they really over blew
a lot of the little facts they gave us."
I did feel a little more Korean after I left.
Even before coming into service,
I was trying to convince myself that I'm a Korean,
I'm a Korean, so like it's my duty.
I owed to my ancestors, like my parents,
like I have to do this.
It was the actual service itself, the social service itself,
when I felt more American.
I started out feeling Korean
and as my service went on, it died off.
Social service is different for everybody.
Where you're assigned to is a big part of what you do.
For me, it was Prosecution Office.
So all I did was deliver papers
and help with setting up furniture.
Those two were just my big duties,
two big duties and that was it.
So it was a lot of downtime.
Being stuck in an office with 10 other people like me,
or just 10 other Koreans.
It made me realize even all the small things
that's more Korean in which, which is more American.
And I would just feel a lot of differences,
big and small.
The people in my social service definitely accepted me more
than people in my basic training.
Maybe it's 'cause it was for a longer time I was serving,
in the office for a longer time, than basic training.
So they had to, we had to get along.
At first, I didn't really care about being more American,
but as people said it more and more,
I felt more distant from Koreans.
And I guess that's a part of the reason why
I was feeling more American throughout my service.
Well, for people like me who lived in America
for a long time and came here to do military service,
I would tell them, "Don't let anyone tell you who you are."
Just know where you're from, know who you are,
be very strong in your identity.
My name is Namjun Cho,
and this is my Korean-American story.
(gentle music)