Arriving in Korea over Winter Break, I was greeted by warm hugs and happy tears. Traveling down vaguely familiar roads and buildings, I realized I had nearly forgotten what my neighborhood was like. And, sipping my mother’s piping hot 된장찌개 (Korean miso soup) at the dinner table surrounded by family, I was home.
“So, you got a girlfriend?” my twin brother Andrew asked.
Splitting my kimchi in half, I silently nodded.
“Is she Korean?” my other brother Collin chimed in.
“No,” I simply responded, and a part of me knew what was coming. She’s white, and I’m Korean — something that wasn’t out of the ordinary for my American life, but a subject of mystique for my family back home.
“오, 진짜?” (Oh, really?) my dad asked, “어떻게 생겼어? 보여줘봐.” (What does she look like? Show me.)
I took out my phone and gradually watched a game of hot potato unfold, my brothers each taking noticeably extra time before tossing my phone back to me.
“착하게 생겼네,” (She looks nice) my dad commented.
“Damn bro,” Andrew teased. “How did you even talk to her?”
Ten times out of 10, friend or family, I was always asked how I managed to even talk to her — a white girl — in the first place. The awfully vague comments that neither approved or disapproved our relationship worried me, but I knew where it was coming from. Spoken or unspoken, the narrative has been that you’re not supposed to date someone who’s not Korean — you’re not supposed to date the white girl.
Korea is a very ethnically-homogeneous country. All of my friends and family knew Korean faces at every turn and corner, a Korean culture and solely-Korean love interests. As a result, xenophobia tacitly runs rampant: Some businesses refuse to accept foreign customers, leaving empty seats next to them in the bus or subway. Interracial couples always drew judgmental eyes from passersby. Even a conversation in English with my brothers attracted disapproving eyes. So, naturally, the course of my conversations with other Koreans ranged from smooth and simple, “Aw, that’s cute. How did you guys meet?” to the bumpy and jarring, “Bro got reverse Oxford studied” or, “Me, personally, I could never do that” and, “What’s it like dating a white girl?” (what is that even supposed to mean?). But given the rather consistent negative reviews, I presumed that everyone expected I’d encounter some kind of immovable cultural barrier, undermining our relationship — I wouldn’t be able to wrap my head around her “white quirks and interests” or I was some kind of victim to Asian fetishization from a “Koreaboo.” But that has been far from the case. So bringing it up with my family was rather difficult.
“어떻게 만났어?” (How did you guys meet?) my mom asked. She crossed her arms, leaning back into her chair.
“We were in the same writing class over the semester,” I answered. I couldn’t help but notice three different teams slowly forming at the table: My brothers were giddy and nosy, my dad was indifferent and my mom looked serious. A little too serious. I grabbed another piece of kimchi.
I wouldn’t have known about Isla without crossing the fabled lecture friend “line” and a pinch of wingwomanship. It all began in Honors Core Writing in Social Science, after the classic sequence of an awkward “hi” and “hello” the first day of class. After that, nothing happened. Isla and I never talked to each other outside of class for months. Only after a group essay (literally the final assignment for the class) did we ever meet outside of class, organizing a time and place all to ironically write about how to improve the richness of campus friendships. So perhaps this casual classmate origin story helped out with avoiding this alleged barrier. Because from then on, we had Markley Dining Hall dinners with a friend ritualistically after discussion sections, gradually tearing down this barrier I hardly noticed in the first place.
“So, what is she majoring in?” my dad then asked.
“BCN, or, I mean, biopsychology, cognition and neuroscience,” I replied. My brothers nodded their heads, impressed, while my mom’s stern expression hadn’t faltered one bit.
“Ooh, medical school,” my dad shuddered.
I knew what my family didn’t know about Isla: She can recite all of “Hamilton” and a good portion of Harry Potter (go Hufflepuff!); she will laugh at literally anything far from remotely funny (a literal picture of a hamburger would work wonders); she’s cracked at any kind of word game (Wordle and Connections especially); she’s also cracked at jump rope, performing at the classic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and representing Team USA (I did not know jump rope was such a competitive event, and Korea is ranked near the top — very unsurprising). And equally, she knows that I have an unnecessary knack for useless history facts, will also laugh at the unfunniest meme ever, will always get the Wordle in four and will never remember all the different kinds of jump roping events. I assume that nothing about what I’ve learned about Isla screams “white,” or nothing about what she knows about me screams “Asian,” (the jump rope might give it away, though) so neither of us seem to be “too white” or “too Asian” for each other. I know that Korea holds a strong national identity, built and reinforced by thousands of years of purely Korean bloodlines, traditions and customs that have been especially pronounced following Japanese occupation. And with an aging population, vestiges of these conservative values remain intact — it’s difficult to see anything else not plastered with a Korean label. So, I can’t necessarily blame my own country’s history for hardwiring inherently xenophobic or racist points of view, but at the same time, I knew my dad and brothers were curious and interested and had no malice in their eyes, while my mom only thought no one will ever be good enough for me because I’m her son and no one can apparently match that. And I knew that’s what she thought: My mom has always been protective, ambitious and openly judgmental for as long as I remember. I had to be the perfect youngest child; she had me plagiarize books off my shelves to practice writing English neatly as a 4 year old, do all kinds of Kumon, lectured me about what productive and life changing work my peers were up to while I was a professional couch potato, sent me to cram schools and, of course, unleashed her strong opinions on every relationship I’ve ever been in, only after they ended. But she’s always been the type to eventually loosen her grip and join the happy bandwagon of guys in the family. So, I expected her expression to wipe off her face by tomorrow morning and ask me how things were going with Isla the week after.
And of course, she’s gladly asked me how things were going ever since I left home for my second semester. Because sure, my one semester at Ann Arbor may have “Americanized” me in some ways, bringing home stories of my time at the University of Michigan and stories from having a white girlfriend, but I know that regardless of the many American experiences my mom can’t wrap her head around, she’ll always be the first to ask.
My friends and family never expected to meet Isla, and I honestly never expected to meet Isla either. And to some Koreans, I shouldn’t have at all. But who cares? I clearly don’t — it might just be a coincidence that we’re not both Asian or white (or any other ethnicity for that matter). But among all the craziest coincidences Isla and I share, I know that having met her in the first place is the craziest coincidence of all.
Statement Columnist Philip (Sooyoung) Ham can be reached at philham@umich.edu.