(gentle music)
- I am a Korean-American, 25-year-old entrepreneur.
I'm a second generation, and my parents basically immigrated
when they were like 20, 20-ish.
My dad wasn't around that much
because he was like, part-time missionary,
so he would travel to Mexico back and forth.
He was around, he just wasn't around
as much as like, my mom, of course.
You know, as immigrants,
they weren't around a lot either in general.
I remember when I was like, five,
I was able to like, just go outside the house
whenever I want and run around,
and my mom would always like, come home like really late.
We had a grocery store, like a supermarket.
You know, things have changed here and there,
but pretty much they ran like, a food and grocery service,
like, their entire life.
Our family was just like very,
yeah, fluid to doing everything independently.
I think my entire life I've had this like,
open freedom to do like, whatever I wanted,
which led me to like, oh I wanna like, try basketball,
I wanna try video-making, I wanna try being a chef,
I wanna try all these things.
And one thing led to another.
Like, I figured out what I like, don't like,
what I like, you know, here and there.
Yeah, so I went to Cal State University of Long Beach.
And I studied film in the beginning.
Within two years, I dropped out.
Complicated story, just got injured, basically,
and missed a lot of classes.
And so at that point I was like,
oh, let's just do whatever I wanna do, what I normally do.
And 'til this day, my parents still think
that I'm gonna go back to school.
They thought I was gonna go back a lot earlier and finish,
but I had to figure out a way to convince them
that I don't need education anymore.
I told them give me one chance
to do freelancing with photography and videography.
And I basically got hired
at a wedding photography videography company.
And every weekend,
I was either going to two or three weddings,
like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
And yeah, I would work so much,
and then I proved to my parents like,
oh, I can make a living.
I would buy them gifts.
I did that for one year,
and then I got an internship working with ISA,
International Secret Agents.
It's basically, a long time ago,
they used to gather up all the Asian-American YouTubers
and then throw concerts and fun games,
and so I was like, that's what I wanna do.
So right after the one year mark, I had enough money,
I did an internship for another year,
and then I started working with specific like, YouTubers,
whether it's freelancing for one specific role,
which is editing or videography,
but moved my way around the whole like,
community of YouTubers in LA.
From being in the US and then coming to Korea,
It's weird because it's almost like in a negative sense,
you don't fit in either or.
In America, I feel like I do fit in,
but there are these moments when you're like,
oh, America is like, the worst place to be in as a minority.
But then you come to Korea, you struggle with the culture
and language barrier, and you're like, oh my gosh.
But that's just like,
the negative sense of everything, right?
There's so many great reasons to be in both,
because like, I think being a Korean-American in Korea,
you can be yourself more,
like, can be whatever you choose to be.
If I try to be Korean,
then I feel like they'll try to judge me,
but if I just be American, they kinda like,
they just know like, oh, they're not really like, a Korean.
When I'm in Korea, I feel like, I still feel Korean,
I just feel dumb, 'cause I don't speak the language.
'Cause at the end of the day,
a language is just like, a way of communicating.
I've had like, a grandpa yell at me.
Like, "Oh, how dare you not know Korean?
Like, you wear a Korean T-shirt,
yet you don't speak the language?"
But you get that too in LA,
like when there's only Korean-Americans
that only speak Korean, they're like,
"How are you not speaking Korean when you're Korean?"
And it's just like,
oh, so it's not just Korea that says that,
it's just like a older generation thing, right?
And you wouldn't know that until like,
you meet these type of people.
There's definitely a lot of pros and cons
being in both countries.
So I could see the struggle between both when I was younger,
but now it's just like, it's more funnier than in reality.
One of the hardest things being, like, Korean-American
is that when you're in America,
you have opportunities to do what you kind of wanna do.
For example, social media.
That wasn't a job until fairly recently.
I think convincing a lot of parents, adults,
when I tell them I work for like, a YouTuber,
they get so confused and they're like,
how does that even make sense?
And how do they make money?
Are you going to be rich?
Right?
Like, there's so many questions
that they just don't know the answers to,
and I think even us, like, as a Gen Z, millennial,
like, we don't have the answers,
we don't know if we're gonna make it,
but it's an opportunity and you see people making it.
I remember when I was like,
even, I think I was like, maybe 14, 13,
I used to watch YouTube all the time,
and I was like, I told my church,
like, all my friends and even my pastor,
like, someone I'm supposed to like look up to, right?
I told him like, I wanna do YouTube.
I don't know if like, I'm gonna be a YouTuber,
but I just wanna do like, this space in general.
And he just laughed at me,
and just said like, "Do something realistic."
And fast-forwarding 10 years, I'm still doing it,
I'm still in the social media space,
so I think that's what's crazy to me.
Usually immigrants, and being Korean-American,
like, Korean-American parents don't have the time
to understand this kinda stuff.
That was the most difficult to convince them
and make them realize, like,
this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna drop out of college,
and then I'm gonna be in this artistic space.
As a kid, most people are afraid and shy
to do whatever they wanna do.
I think it comes down to like, who you're around,
you know, your parents, your siblings,
you watch everything and you get self-conscious.
It's like, why?
Like, why does that really matter?
Like, you're a child, you can make mistakes,
you can break bones.
You get back up for sure.
And so yeah, just keep doing the most weirdest things,
and you never know what might change in the future
in 10 years, 20 years from now.
My name is Ducky Chang and this is my Korean-American story.
(gentle music)