(mellow piano music)
- My name is Ken Hong.
That is actually my real name, not a nickname.
It's on my passport as Kenneth Hong.
I was born in 1967.
I immigrated to the US when I was six years old,
came back to Korea when I was 28.
And over the last 30 years,
I've been in and out of Korea as a resident.
For about two thirds of that time,
a little bit of time spent in China,
Thailand, Hong Kong, but always came back to Korea
because it was calling me back.
So, I've been here now straight for about 12 years.
And who knows how many more that will turn into?
I was born in Seoul.
Actually, to get that, you know, the gyopo visa,
I had to go dig up my family register,
and found out then I was born in the Mapo area.
My father was born in that same area.
So we're very Seoul,
but my mother comes from the north side, North Korea,
and came, you know, her family came down
from the north before I was born.
But yeah, we have long history here in the city.
Well, my father was a government employee,
and anyone who knows Korea's history
back in the 60s, it was a military dictatorship.
And, you know, he was working for a government
that he was not very supportive of.
Back then, if you had the means,
you try to get out, and you know,
if you're a government employee,
you have connections.
People at the time,
if you came from Seoul National University,
you had a really strong network around the world.
You get the visa, you know, you go overseas to study,
you stake out your, you know,
the state that you want to go to.
And then, you know, you bring the family over.
That's exactly how it happened.
He had friends who helped him relocate.
I was in the countryside for about two years
before I left from the age of four to six,
with a grandmother living out in the sticks with my sister.
And then when they were settled, they called us over.
And we went over with friends of the family.
So, it was definitely not refugee status,
but definitely trying to escape Korea at the time.
If you're a government employee and, you know,
you're not very supportive of the regime,
you don't wanna stick around more than you have to.
I have memories of living out by the sea
with my grandmother, but I don't have any memories
of my parents before I went to the states.
The memory of things I saw are very fuzzy,
but the smells are very intense.
For those who are not familiar with eating insects,
there's a snack here that little kids like called beondegi
and it has a very distinct popcornish smell.
And I didn't see it, you know, for all that time
I was in the US for almost 30 years,
you know, I totally forgot about it.
But when I came back and went to Seoul land,
and at the entrance of amusement parks,
because kids liked this stuff, I could just smell,
I knew exactly what it was after 30 years.
I said, "Isn't that that worm that kids like to eat?"
It's like silk worm larva or something.
I knew that smell right away.
What is it, dalgona, that candy?
I knew that smell.
Even though I didn't know the name,
I knew exactly what it tasted like.
It was amazing.
The sense of smell stays with you a really long time,
and it doesn't matter what other smells come
between your recollection and the time you smelled it,
it's still incredibly strong.
That's one of the things I still remember
when I first arrived, it's the smells.
They wanted us to assimilate into America.
They were of the mind that, "Hey, you're here.
You wanna fit in, forget about, you know, the home culture."
And my father still was, even until the day he passed away,
his philosophy was, you know,
we are in America, we should Americanize.
And you know, he ate pizza.
He ate Korean food only twice a week.
Most of the time, he was eating American, non-Korean food.
Back then, that was his philosophy,
you know, speak English at home.
We're not gonna try to get you to remember Korean.
We didn't do any of the holidays.
The Jesa, you know,
we didn't do any of those ceremonies,
but yeah, we were 100% immersed in Americana.
And that is part of the reason I had to relearn Korean,
because my parents never pushed me to remember it.
When they left, they really
kind of left their hearts behind as well.
I don't think they ever wanted to remain connected.
And I've heard other people who,
when they told their parents, "I'm going back to Korea,"
they were like, "No, you know, don't do that."
But my parents weren't like that.
They're like, they knew I would want to come back more
if they said, "Don't go."
They never said go or not go.
I said, "I'm gonna do this."
They're like, "Okay, just be careful."
But for them, for themselves,
they weren't all that interested in following me.
Well, my father didn't wanna come back
because he didn't wanna have to watch
like, football games at 3:00 a.m.
You know, he even said,
"Oh, I can't get NFL there."
You know, might have been a joke.
I'm not sure.
But yeah, he definitely loves American sports
and he would have to watch a taped delay or what have you.
But my mother, I just think she feels
much more comfortable there
without all the connections to family.
I was studying for my MBA,
part-time at nights at the time,
and got to know a Korean professor.
I think he was my marketing professor, MBA.
And I talked to my, you know,
he was, you know, a Korean.
He was a Korean who had done his PhD in the states.
And so we got to know each other and he said, you know,
"You sound like you need to get over there
and check it out.
You know, you seem ripe.
They need people like you.
You go over there, see what you can find."
So, I found this teaching job on Jeju Island.
Don't ask me how, I don't even know
how I found a teaching job on Jeju Island.
There was no Internet at the time.
So I don't know how I did it, but I did get a job offer
from this hakwon, institute, in Jeju City.
And I still don't know how that happened.
I think the professor gave me some brochure.
And I wrote to them and they said,
"Yeah, come on over, we'll buy you a ticket."
I sold my car for $2,000.
And with $2,000, I flew over.
I mean, two bags, $2,000 and a free plane ticket.
And that's how I restarted my life.
I think about it now, I'm like, I was nuts.
Everyone thought I was nuts.
In fact, a friend of mine gave me a book
on finding your way, like, she thought I was lost.
(laughs) I'm like, wait, I just found something,
you know, why am I lost?
But yeah, people thought I was crazy.
Nobody did that back in the mid-90s,
you know, pick up and go to another country
without, you know, much knowledge.
And so, yeah, a few people I think thought,
"He's lost his marbles, but he'll come back."
Coming to Korea was a huge eye-opener for me.
Prior to that, I had no Korean friends.
I had never dated a Korean,
and I wasn't even looking.
I wasn't even interested.
It wasn't even an objective or a target.
But once I came to Korea, my friends were Korean.
People I was dating were Korean.
I mean, I just did a 180 overnight.
And so it can't but change the way you see things.
I still think that kind of immersive cultural experience
is something that I would never trade for anything.
It is just something that I'm glad I did.
I would never want to do things
any differently at that age.
The time when I was trying to make this change,
if I came back too early,
I didn't want people to think I had failed.
Okay?
And I didn't wanna stick around here
just to prove something.
So, I would say, if you're gonna make
a big change in your life,
you either have to be ready
for whatever fallout occurs.
You lose a lot of money.
You lose a lot of time.
You lose face.
You come here and say,
"I'm gonna start over another hemisphere."
And then you come back six months later,
people are gonna be like, "What happened?"
You know, that was kind of a thought
that occurred a lot to me,
but I also didn't wanna just stick it out here
and waste a lot of time.
Six months is how long I lasted in Jeju Island.
And so that was kind of the thing I said,
"If I can't break away from this
and really find what I need to do,
then I'm in trouble."
So yeah, that kind of was the impetus
for getting out of that situation,
and making another change.
And that was probably a very hectic
and uncertain part of my journey.
You know, when I had a daughter,
it was kind of a no brainer
that she needed to spend some time there.
And so, when she was, I don't know,
I guess, first grade, we came back
and I started working for LG.
So, when you have children
and they're in a culture that is not their own,
you start to think like, "Boy, I wonder
if she's gonna end up like me, (chuckles)
in between cultures."
You know, I'd like her to have one, you know, foundation.
And then she can build off of that.
My foundation being mostly US,
but I wanted her foundation to be Korea.
And she has that, you know, her Korean is perfect,
and she knows Korean better than, you know, I ever will,
even in her first 15 years before she went to high school.
Some may think it's important to be bi-cultural.
And I do think it is.
But I do think when we get to a certain age,
when we are naturally curious, we will learn it.
I know adoptees who have learned
the Korean culture on their own.
Nobody forced them to do this.
I know many people who were born
in small towns in America
who eventually became curious enough.
If you are curious enough,
you will learn it without anyone having to push you.
If you push, then they're gonna be turned away.
That's my philosophy.
My name is Ken Hong.
This is my Korean American story.
(mellow piano music)