(gentle music)
- My name is Kwon Teimchaiyapoom, I'm from Houston, Texas.
My mom is Korean and my dad's Thai.
They met in San Antonio in the late '70s.
And they moved to Houston to help my grandma
on my dad's side open her first restaurant.
I went to Thailand in 2018 for the first time,
and that was the first time going out of the US.
And it was really eye-opening, but I didn't,
I felt like I didn't connect with the culture as much.
I'm a lot closer to my mom than my dad,
so I definitely feel more Korean than Thai.
And that was always something that I struggled with
growing up because I'm supposed to be half and half.
I'm supposed to be 50% Thai, 50% Korean,
but I never felt that way.
But as I've gotten closer with my mom over the years,
and as she's reconnected with her culture,
I felt more in touch with my Korean side.
My mom left Korea when she was 16.
She went and moved to Germany for four years,
and then she came to the US.
My grandfather was a military doctor.
And her grandfather, my mom's grandfather,
was one of the first doctors in Korea
who studied western medicine.
So it was really big for my grandpa to be a doctor,
and for anyone else in that generation,
or the following generations to be a doctor.
My grandfather saved this American soldier twice,
and they grew to be close.
And so he became my mom's godfather.
And that's how she came to America,
and got her green card, and was able to travel.
My parents being Thai and Korean,
they never really fully grasped
either of those cultures and shared it with us.
Growing up, we didn't celebrate any Korean or Thai holidays.
I don't know about many traditions.
I grew up to be very American.
I have a friend who's Korean, and he's a first generation,
and he thought that I was Hawaiian for three years.
One of my friends made a joke that I was Queen Hawaii,
just because I have a really long name,
and she had a really long name.
And so he's like Queen Hawaii.
And so he was convinced that I was Hawaiian.
And so it was really heartbreaking
that this Korean boy that I thought I could relate to
didn't see me as Korean,
and literally thought I was Hawaiian for three years.
But, we're friends now. (laughing)
People perceive me as being Asian.
And they don't wanna, whenever they ask me where I'm from,
they're not asking if I'm from Houston,
or if I'm from America.
They're asking me where my parents are from.
And so it's kind of infuriating
because they're so ignorant that I can't be from here.
So in March, 2021, my parents got a divorce.
And so, since my mom was away from my dad,
she started hanging out with my aunt more.
And my mom actually got baptized two weeks ago,
so she's now part of the Korean church community in Houston,
and she loves it.
She makes kimchi now.
She makes it at least once or twice a week,
and she makes it for all her friends and stuff.
Before their divorce was finalized,
my mom just was watching more Korean news than American news
and she cared more about what was going on in her hometown.
And whenever I see her watching something
it's always documentaries about home
'cause it's been about 30 years since she's gone back.
I think that since my mom has reimmersed herself
in Korean culture, I felt the need
to kind of explore that part of myself.
But I think it's really difficult
because I don't speak the language.
A lot of people, Korean people,
they don't really pay much attention to me
because they can't communicate with me.
I've thought about learning Korean, but it,
there's so many things that I wanna do right now,
and that's not my main focus.
But I think that hopefully in the future
that is something that I do find myself pursuing.
The most I know from their cultures is food.
In the early '80s, my parents opened up
their first restaurant,
it's called Sawatdee Thai restaurant.
Even though it's primarily Thai food,
since my mom was there,
she inserted some Korean fusion in there.
So we had a dish called spicy honey pork.
And of course we had seafood pancake.
And everyone loved those.
I have two jobs right now, but,
during the pandemic I was working in a restaurant.
It was very interesting
because people don't realize
that service workers don't get anything.
We really just provide so much and we devote so much.
It may not seem like that to other people,
but we do a lot, and it's very unfortunate
that we don't get recognized for that.
I think that we definitely get looked on
as being less than who we actually are.
It was fun.
A lot of diversity growing up in Houston for sure.
I love that Houston is so big, and diverse, and inclusive.
I went to school in Montgomery, Alabama for a year,
and there was no diversity, there was no good food.
And I just, I love the way that Houston works.
I think it's a really progressive city.
And I think that as the world grows,
and develops, and as people continue to move around,
there are gonna be more cities like Houston.
I'm a student at the University of Houston.
I'm a liberal studies major.
It's the three minor majors.
So I'm study sociology, history, and art history.
I also have a minor in world cities.
Short term goal, I really want to be a curator.
I love art.
I see myself more as an appreciator than a creator.
But I do photograph in my free time.
I've actually gotten two of my pieces
in at the Houston Center for Photography.
So that was an accomplishment for me.
I titled my piece Perfect Union.
And it was two hands.
And for one hand I used Korean fabric,
and then for the other hand I used Thai fabric.
And it was just how I came to be.
'Cause in my art I try to find myself.
But it was really hard because, I don't know, I'm mixed.
It's kind of hard to show that.
I feel like a lot of people who show themselves
in their art with their culture,
it's very specific to one culture.
But for me it's like I have to merge two.
I love studying cities.
After I get my undergrad degree, I want to go
to grad school for urban design or architecture,
because I really wanna be a city planner.
For my minor, it's required
that we take this class called World Cities.
We had to focus on one city for that class,
and see what its faults were, and how it ran.
And I focused on Seoul because we couldn't pick a city
in the US, and I wanted to learn more about Korea.
So I decided to do that.
And I thought it was really interesting.
I learned more about where my mom was from.
She grew up like 45 minutes south of Seoul in Suwon.
But I mean, it's one of the largest cities,
it's the capital of Korea.
So I decided to focus on that.
And I learned a lot about Korea.
And then I learned about why
she's so proud of where she comes from.
But I really wanna learn how to plan a city
and make it efficient.
I mean, yes, it does feel lonely
trying to figure out who I am,
but at the same time, it just, it's a lot of reflecting.
And I think in order to truly find out who I am,
and find out what my thoughts are,
I have to spend a lot of time with myself.
And I have to think about who I am
without anyone else influencing that.
My name is Kwon Teimchaiyapoom,
and this is my Korean American story.
(gentle music)