Fulbright Korea Infusion: Volume 14

INFUSION

VOL.14

인 퓨 션

S T A F F

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF// Chloe Sferra MANAGING LITERARY EDITOR// Lydia O’Donnell MANAGING LIFESTYLE EDITOR// Elizabeth Stewart SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR// Mary Austin Willis DESIGN EDITORS// Andrianna Boykin,

Allie Easterbrook WEB EDITOR// Christina Prinssen STAFF EDITORS// Fallon Bock, Isabella Chen,

Sophie Friedman, William Landers, Chloe Nelson, Martha Rabura, Julia Zorc MONITORS// Joy Cariño, Selby Garner, Elizabeth Huhn PODCAST// Jeffrey Clark Jr., Molly Clark, Elizabeth Smith

PUBLICATION COORDINATOR// Heidi Little

Infusion aims to capture the diversity of the Fulbright Korea experience by publishing work from Fulbright Korea Senior Scholars, Junior Researchers, English Teaching Assistants and program alumni. We support artists in the creation of work which honestly engages with their grant year and their craft. The Fulbright Program aims to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through cultural and educational exchanges.

Cover photo by Lulu Johnson, Seollal in Seoul

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1. Carolyn Acosta Sanchez- Jeonju-si, Jeollabuk-do 2. Johanna Alexander- Gumi-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do 3. Sarah Berg- Seoul 4. Andrianna Boykin- Damyang-eup, Jeollanam-do 5. Joy Cariño- Jeong-eup-si, Jeollabuk-do 6. Claire Ehr- Mokpo-si, Jeollanam-do 7. William Landers- Cheonan-si, Chungcheongnam-do 8. Kiki Marlam- Gumi-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do 9. Miles Yungsahm Miller 김영삼 金永森- Seoul 10. Chloe Nelson- Pohang-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do 11. Tricia Park- Seoul 12. Katherine Seibert- Gwangyang-si, Jeollanam-do 13. Jame See Yang- Naju-si, Jeollanam-do 14. Julia Zorc- Naju-si, Jeollanam-do

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Table of Contents Letters the acquisition of my senses The Dragon Head Re-Member the Future Speaker’s Block Conferences & In-Between Naju: 11:46 pm Overheard in 영어 Student Competition The Smudged Mirror Hungry Ghost Lunch Box The Pinoy Grill Trading Fall Favorites Cures For the Outside Looking In From a Great Distance: Notes on Identity and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings Monsoon Season Credits

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Executive Director, KAEC Chair, Editor-in-Chief Kiki Marlam, 1st Year ETA Julia Zorc, 1st Year ETA Miles Yungsahm Miller 김영삼 金永森, Open Study Researcher

William Landers, 1st Year ETA Carolyn Acosta Sanchez, 1st Year ETA Claire Ehr, 1st Year ETA Jame See Yang, 1st Year ETA Student Submissions Andrianna Boykin, 1st Year ETA Chloe Nelson, 1st Year ETA Tricia Park, Open Study Researcher Joy Cariño, 1st Year ETA Johanna Alexander, 1st Year ETA Katherine Seibert, 1st Year ETA Sarah Berg, Fulbright Alumna Jame See Yang, 1st Year ETA Additional Acknowledgements

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Letter From the Executive Director Dear Reader, I am excited to introduce you to Volume 14 of Fulbright Korea’s literary magazine, Infusion. The Worldwide Fulbright Program is celebrating its 75th Anniversary this year. We have much to celebrate as we reflect on the success and growth of the Fulbright Program both globally and in Korea.

After a brief hiatus we are eager to share the reflections, stories, and photos that encompass the experience of our Fulbright Korea community. Like the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our staff and programs. Some of these changes are temporary and some are permanent.

From 2020 on, our English Teaching Assistant (ETA) grantees will enter the school year at the same time as their students. ETAs will learn how to best meet their students’ needs while their students learn to adapt to their new classrooms and teachers. In these pages, you will get your first look at what it is like to teach alongside the same groups of students for one school year.

And while the most significant change to our programming occurred with the ETA Program, our other U.S. Program participants have also pivoted and adjusted to COVID in ways that no one would have imagined before. Conducting research, lecturing in Korea, and navigating the university as a student, while ensuring national public health

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guidelines and regulations are followed has been a challenge that our grantees have risen to meet and overcome.

Important to the history of this program, the dedicated Infusion staff has worked to chronicle these stories and the perspectives of what it is like to live in Korea during a global pandemic as a part of Fulbright Korea’s history. To them, and to the authors and artists who contributed their time and talents to this issue, I extend my most sincere thanks and congratulations. As we read this issue of Infusion, may we find new appreciation and inspiration for what it means to be innovators, trailblazers, and Fulbrighters.

Kind regards,

Dr. Byungok Kwon Executive Director Korean-American Educational Commission

Letter From the Embassy This year marks the Fulbright Program’s platinum jubilee, when we celebrate 75 years of making new friends around the world in pursuit of peace.

We at U.S. Embassy Seoul are immensely proud of the immeasurable impact the Fulbright Program has on the deep relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea. The program continues to expand our friendship, cooperation, and mutual understanding based on our many shared values.

Approximately 6,700 Fulbright alumni – roughly 3,600 Koreans and 3,100 Americans – have built bridges between the United States and Korea thanks to Fulbright. Korean Fulbrighters actively promote a more accurate understanding of Korea and its culture within their respective fields in the United States, serving as ambassadors for the benefit of educational exchange. American grantees in Korea have profoundly impacted underserved groups such as North Korean defectors, furthered research and U.S.-ROK collaboration to solve complex challenges in public health and climate change, pushed technology to new frontiers, and expanded access for young Koreans to higher education in the United States. It gives me great comfort and pride to know that Fulbrighters past, present, and future will continue to be stewards of the relationship between the United States and Korea.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a momentary pause for both Fulbright Korea and Infusion, but both have persevered. One thing the pandemic has made clear is that we need to collaborate on global issues now more than ever. In the years to come, I believe that the rich experience of Fulbright Korea and the cooperative relationship between our two nations will go well beyond our borders, benefitting the IndoPacific region and beyond. Seeing the important topics captured in the pages of this volume makes me even more optimistic about the next 75 years of the Fulbright Program, with participants enriching their educations, advancing their careers, and making meaningful contributions to society and the global community.

Dr. Anneliese Reinemeyer Minister-Counselor for Public Diplomacy Embassy of the United States of America Chair, Korean-American Educational Commission

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Letter From the Editor The ending of our Fulbright grant year appears quite similar to how it started. We came into the grant year hopeful for a new adventure, but were soon met with obstacles. Many of this year’s grantees have felt loneliness in their year brought on by mask mandates, online classes, travel restrictions and social distancing rules. As we prepare for the end of the grant, it may feel like we leave with unfinished business and goals unachieved. It may feel like things haven’t really changed at all.

Perhaps everything is exactly the same as how it started.

Or perhaps there was change- small, mundane, daily- but change nonetheless. The kind of growth that occurs only through constant perseverance in the face of constant challenge. Our cohort was unable to do many things this year- we don’t even have a group photo together!

However, instead of passively accepting that there were things we could not do, we got creative with the things we could. Our classes were engaging both online and off; volunteer opportunities took form in new shapes and sizes; and we discovered more about our placements than perhaps any grantees before us. Although times were stagnant, we refused to remain still.

This change is evident in the pieces shared in Volume 14 of Fulbright Korea’s Infusion. As you read through the magazine, I encourage you to read through it as if it were a 2021 diary composed by

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the cohort. We start with Kiki Marlam’s piece “the acquisition of my senses” that will place you in a singular moment in a small city in Korea. Then we will take you through the discovery of Korea in pieces like Julia Zorc’s “The Dragon Head” and the discovery of identity such as in William Lander’s “Speaker’s Block.” Some pieces will take you through both, like Miles Yungsahm Miller’s (김 영삼 金永森) reflection on his family history and Hanoks, Korean traditional homes, in his piece titled “Re-Member the Future.”

Our writers share personal testimonies about who they were before the grant year and who they have become. Read about the struggles grantees faced in pieces like Chloe Nelson’s “Hungry Ghost” and Carolyn Acosta Sanchez’s “Conferences & In-Between.” Those that feel they are obvious outsiders open up about their experiences, such as in Andrianna Boykin’s “The Smudged Mirror” and Katherine Seibert’s “Cures for the Outside Looking In.” Meanwhile “Lunch Box” by Tricia Park and “From a Great Distance: Notes on Identity and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings” by Sarah Berg call attention to the Asian-American experience and the often ignored traumas of that experience.

While the hurdles of the year cannot be ignored, there are stories of community that show just how persistent this year’s cohort is in the face of adversity. Joy Cariño’s “The Pinoy Grill” offers you a seat in a restaurant turned home-away-from-home, while Johanna Alexander’s “Trading Fall Favor-

ites” is a humorous look at life in a homestay. Jame See Yang’s “Overheard in 영어” is a window into teaching in Korea, followed by the artworks of our talented students. Claire Ehr’s piece “Naju: 11:46 pm” reminds us that sometimes art is just our way of expression, nothing more and nothing less. Finally, we return to Jame See Yang in “Monsoon Season,” which will take you to one last moment in Korea.

We share not only through our words but through our photography as well. From captures of Korean landscapes, to people, to architecture, to culture, the pictures will take you through a year of changes. Unlike past issues, there will be no photos from countries other than Korea and the U.S.A., taken by grantees enjoying their winter vacation abroad.

Because unlike past issues, we never left the country. Everything in this issue was concieved of through this experience in Korea.

Which leads me to our theme for the year. Volume 14 will give you a sense of limbo. Many of the written and photographed works will deal with the old and new. They are looking to the past in order to see what’s coming next. We modeled our magazine off of Korean films from the 1980s, a time when South Korea itself was facing a movement of change. Inspired by this country and its history, our cohort will continue to grow after we’ve gone our separate ways. No matter where we started, it wasn’t easy to get here. It won’t be easy to leave either.

I want to thank my amazing staff for all of their hard work, including Managing Editors Elizabeth Stewart and Lydia O’Donnell, and our talented Design Editors, Allie Easterbrook and Andrianna Boykin. I want to thank every writer and photographer who submitted and everyone who worked through the long process of getting published, as well as each student who participated in our art competition. Thank you to the Korean-American Educational Commission (KAEC) Chair Dr. Anneliese Reinemeyer as well as Executive Director Byungok Kwon and Senior Program Officer Mrs. Young-Sook Lee. Lastly, my gratitude for Heidi Little, the Fulbright liaison for Infusion, and Isabel Moua, ETA program officer.

Please enjoy Volume 14 of Fulbright Korea’s Infusion. I encourage you to sip on an ah-ah (iced americano) as you read.

Chloe Elizabeth Sferra Editor-in-Chief 1st Year ETA, Gumi-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do

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A Send-off for Senior Program Profile by Chloe Sferra In a large auditorium filled at half-capacity, a woman gave her humble advice to an eager audience of new grantees. “Don’t compare your experience with others,” she said.

It’s good advice. Many people hide their advice through big metaphors or flowery language. But Mrs. Lee was direct in her words for this year’s cohort before she sent everyone on to their teaching placements and new lives in South Korea. Mrs. Lee shares this advice because she cares about the experience of every ETA grantee. She hopes that each one will thrive in their new setting, achieving more happiness than disappointment. It’s not a role specifically in her job description, but it’s one she gladly takes on.

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Remembering her first day of work with KAEC, Mrs. Lee said, “I was so excited to work with other people at KAEC.” A common theme throughout her career has been her focus on creating strong relationships with anyone she meets.

In 2003, Mrs. Lee switched positions at KAEC in order to become an Education Advisor in KAEC’s U.S. Education Center, where she helped students navigate their journey to studying abroad in the United States; it seems only natural that Mrs. Lee would end up helping Americans in Korea navigate living abroad in a similar way.

Young-Sook Lee, the Senior Program Officer for the Fulbright Korea English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Program, was born in 1957 in the town of Jinhae City. Living in Gyeongsangnam-do, she also spent much of her childhood in Busan.

Through her hard work and study, Mrs. Lee eventually moved to Seoul to earn a degree in Spanish from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Mrs. Lee changed positions at KAEC again in 2004. She originally provided administrative support to several programs, assisting both Korean and American Fulbrighters. It was not long, though, before she became the official ETA Program Assistant, providing exclusive attention to the ETAs and schools under her care. Mrs. Lee worked for the next two years while also earning a Master’s in Business Administration from Korea National Open University, famous for being the first Korean Distance Learning University.

She still remembers the exact day she started her work with KAEC: August 1, 2000. The Korean-American Educational Commission (KAEC) had recently opened a computer-based Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) testing center and recruited employees working at the center through the Fulbright Alumni Network. Mrs. Lee was one of those recruits.

Her official duty as Senior Program Officer has been to take care of ETAs so that they adjust well in Korea, and every year her goal is to get as many people to successfully complete the program as she can. Mrs. Lee is very invested in the livelihood of the ETAs as well as in maintaining the good relationship Fulbright has with educational institutions in Korea.

Officer, Mrs. Young-Sook Lee “My favorite memories are when all ETAs completed the program 100% successfully without early termination and early departure, and when I hear from schools and communities that our ETAs are doing a great job in school,” Mrs. Lee said. It’s no easy feat either, as moving to a new country can be difficult for many ETAs and there are many obstacles for them to overcome. Mrs. Lee often works on these issues with the ETAs and helps them to reach solutions.

“When I resolve serious issues related to ETAs and get good results for them,” Mrs. Lee said, “I am proud of doing my job.”

There have been obstacles for Mrs. Lee as well, such as when there have not been enough schools to place renewing teachers. It’s hard to send ETAs interested in continuing their cultural exchanges home, so Mrs. Lee always tries to find more schools to place them in.

We honor Mrs. Lee in this year’s Infusion publication because when our grant year ends, so will her time with Fulbright and KAEC. After over 21 years with KAEC, Mrs. Lee will retire and start

her next adventure, which includes traveling all across Korea and other countries, as well as spending more time with her family. In each place she goes, Mrs. Lee is sure to meet a variety of people that she will continue to learn from and share her experiences with. After all, the most exciting part of her job has been meeting new, young Americans year after year.

Mrs. Lee, on behalf of this year’s cohort and the alumni of the Fulbright Program, thank you for your dedication to the program and to us. Your work is admirable, and we appreciate all that you have done. And for the grantees that will come in the future, Mrs. Lee offers her advice to you one last time, “I hope they remember the traditional Fulbright Korea motto for the ETA Program, ‘Don’t compare with others because all unhappiness starts from comparison.’ Also, accomplish the Fulbright mission with confidence as honorable Fulbrighters, wherever you are. All of you are special and unique.”

Mrs. Young-Sook Lee Senior Program Officer KAEC Fulbright Program

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Away From It All by William Landers Yeosu-si, Jeollanam-do

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German Village Gardens by William Landers, Namhae-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do

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the acquisition of my senses

By Kiki Marlam Over the hills’ shoulders, the honey orb dips in the Geumosan reservoir, melting to brew an ambrosia tea.

Inhale. Pedal.

Breathing in the crisp breeze, biking through the crunchy flecked soil.

Exhale; time and reason doze to oblivion But, the moment stumbles and wanes... tripped up by the toasty scent of bungeoppangs1 wafting in the air, awakening my appetite.

A coyly industrious ajumma2 aproned in red stokes the piscean breads in the corner stall ahead.

She understands the commercial topography well.

Nestled near the bus stop, here a takeover of my moment is afoot.

The hungry scent charges forth and my golden serene now forfeits.

Time stirs, and with my reason reformed, I descend off the bike path, submitting to the acquisition of my senses.

1 A fish-shaped Korean street pastry 2 Term for middle-aged Korean women

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Photo by Martha Rabura, Andong-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do

TH E D R AG O N H E AD

By Julia Zorc

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Along the Mugunghwa train line between Mokpo and Busan is a station with no name.

When I have dinner with the Lim family, it is Tae Hee, my closest confidant among them, who tells me about it. I ask her for a more exact location on the line, but she doesn’t know. Her smile crinkles her face and she seems somewhere between a mother and a mischievous child. “It’s like a little legend. Maybe not true. But friends say they saw it.”

She refills my glass and then calls out to her daughter, asking her to go to the corner store for some ice cream. There’s something I find romantic about this train station, but I attribute the mystery to a sort of clerical error that happens frequently here, like when a new address is put on a collapsed house.

Tae Hee doesn’t have to mention it again. She knows the seed has already been planted. She knows that I like these kinds of out-of-the-way places, where few other foreigners have bothered to go. Places of quiet adventure and solitude.

I watch the landscape outside the train window. Mountains, high-rises and rice fields drift by. This season’s rice crop—not yet planted when I arrived in this country—is now ready for the harvest. Two hours of vigilance has made me drowsy, but I finally see my destination. The train stops at a small, square building; the yellow sideboards are faded and peeling. A discolored rectangle on the wall acts as the ghost of a signboard.

I stand suddenly, afraid to lose my chance, and throw myself off the train as the door shuts. I am the only one on the platform, and when I look back at the train as it pulls away, I see concerned and confused faces looking back at me. I imagine that some of them think I accidentally wandered onto a plane, ended up in Korea and have been lost ever since. I walk purposefully into the station building to fool us all.

The ticket window is shuttered, and the room is empty save for some benches and a banner reading “COVID-19 regulations: please stand two meters apart” in Korean. On the walls are old photos of railway workers, blurred

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by years of sunlight. I wonder if there is anyone left who remembers them.

Outside of the station is a village that is nothing more than a handful of traditional homes in various states of decay. Beside them are rusty motorbikes and the occasional truck with a bed full of odds and ends. I see an elderly woman bent nearly in half, feebly pulling a wheelbarrow of vegetables behind her.

I am suddenly self-conscious in the knowledge that I don’t belong here. But I have to see this through.

I want to explore this place after taking all the trouble to get here. So I pass by the houses, their closed gates shuttering me in. A cat runs past, mewling, with sores all over its body. Blankets on clotheslines flutter in the breeze.

On the edge of the village lie the remains of a small theme park. Childsized rides sit buried in tall grass, more rust than paint. There is a merrygo-round of tiny rabbits instead of horses and a ferris wheel with seats that dangle from brittle chains. The most imposing one looks like a pirate ship ride—universal at any fair or carnival worth its salt—but the head of this ship is a great dragon. The red paint is peeled back, exposing the rotting wood beneath. I take a picture of it, and am taken aback. This beast is not dead. In fact, I can see it breathing and hear its ribbed body creaking. Its grimacing face seems to twitch. I hold my breath and close my eyes. When I open them, the movement has stopped, and I’m able to pretend that I imagined it.

A voice calls out to me from a pavilion a little ways away, where two women are sitting and eating lunch. One woman is small, elderly, dark and wrinkled. The other is like a doll: tall, elegant and made-up to perfection.

“Aigoo, a foreigner,” the old woman says in Korean. “Where are you from?”

“America.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m just…walking.” I do not know the right English words to describe what I’m doing, let alone the Korean ones.

“Walking? Cham! Take a rest. Please eat with us.”

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A Step Into The Unknown

by Melissa Duong Halla-san, Jeju-do

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무 궁 화 호 Her dialect is difficult to understand, but the kimbap2 in her outstretched hand says enough. I take it with a bow, remove my shoes and sit beside them.

I want to ask about the dragon ride, but the younger woman is quick to speak. “You are bored here?” she says in English.

“Not at all.”

“Foreigners not come in here. Seoul is more interesting place. I live there.”

1 Pronounced “mugunghwa-ho,” refers to a slow moving, frequent stop train that travels throughout the Korean countryside 2 Korean dish made with rice, meat and vegetables rolled up in seaweed

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“Stop using English,” the older woman interjects in Korean. “I can’t understand you!”

“This is grandmother,” the young woman says, stubbornly sticking to English. “She live here.”

“We can speak Korean,” I say with my faltering, pitiful accent.

The grandmother doesn’t seem to understand me and her granddaughter continues on in English, undeterred. “I want to see L.A. and Vegas. You know? You go there?”

I tell her that I’ve been to Vegas and wasn’t that impressed.

“Really?” she says, her hand shooting up to hover over the little “o” of her mouth. It’s a perfectly choreographed gesture of surprise.

Her grandmother is muttering beside us. I cannot understand what she is

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saying, but feel like I must address her.

“Halmeoni3,” I say, “how long have you lived here?” I notice that her granddaughter takes out her phone, and begins taking selcas4 with the serene, mountain landscape behind her. The old woman understands me this time and brightens considerably. She launches into her family history, snatches of which I am able to understand. I gather that she had ancestors who were of great importance in this town and that they had lived here for hundreds of years. She gestures vigorously to her granddaughter, whose photogenic smile fades and is replaced by a bored expression.

“Do you understand her saying?” she asks me.

“Some of it. Your family has lived here a long time.”

“Yes. Grandmother is mad that we leave. But there is nothing here.”

3 A term for elderly Korean women, meaning “grandmother” 4 “Selfie"

Photo by Nina Horabik, Suncheon-si, Jeollanam-do

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I find myself agreeing—there really is nothing here, but an ominous groan interrupts my train of thought. It is the dragon head, which has turned to look at us.

The dragon’s gaze is like a vise on my body, and I can’t seem to think or breathe. I’m sweating and feeling ill, but the two women are not bothered at all. I tap the old woman gently on the shoulder and point at it, whispering, “the dragon” in English. For the moment, all Korean has left my brain.

She tells me something, but I don’t understand. Her voice is full of sentiment and tenderness. I force myself to break the dragon’s gaze and look to the granddaughter for help, but she shakes her head.

“Grandmother saying is fairy story about village spirit.”

“I’d like to hear it, if that’s okay.”

“Hard to say in English. Maybe…it is ghost? Family ghost? Very proud of village. Not liking outsiders. But it is just story.”

Neither of them seem concerned when the dragon breaks from its foundation. It creaks and groans, its legs angling with mechanical snaps. It is approaching us and its great, boat-shaped belly is tearing up the ground beneath it. The voice seems to come on the wind, but I know it is the dragon speaking to me. He tells me to leave this village—his village—and I am chilled to my core. The girl and her grandmother hear it too. I know they understand as they straighten and begin to clean up their meal. The dragon backs away, settling back into the hollow where I imagine he has rested, in some form or other, since time immemorial.

It is not until I am on a bus in another town that I realize I cannot remember the name of the place where I just was. I cannot remember the train stations around it or how long I was on the train. I search through my phone’s photo reel, certain that I took pictures, but there is nothing. At the next dinner with Tae Hee Lim, I will not be able to share anything that her friends have not told her already. Well, maybe I could, but I’d sound like a lunatic.

Between Mokpo and Busan lies a station with no name. It is not a place meant for you or me.

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Photo by Allie Easterbrook Gunsan-si, Jeollabuk-do

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Re-member the Future

By Miles Yungsahm Miller 김영삼 金永森 “Why would you want to learn that old stuff?”

As the words leave her mouth, realization dawns upon her face like the sun on a frigid winter day.

Her cheeks flush as she looks straight ahead and rephrases, “Well it seems that most people, not me, but other REAL Korean people, just…well, we view 한옥 (Hanok— traditional Korean homes), and all that as old stuff of the past. But I understand why elders or 교포 (gyopo— Korean diaspora) would care about—” Before I can finish sharing this past conversation, the Hanok architect interjects.

“People say things without knowing anything…”

He grasps his wrist briefly, considering the weight of his words before continuing, “Well, it just seems that if a person learned the basics, or visited a beautifully crafted modern Hanok, they wouldn’t form such an opinion. Many Koreans are still obsessed with the notion that everything ‘Western’ is modern and more valuable, and anything from Korea is old. Our work is needed now more than ever.”

Months later, I am perched upon a second-floor scaffold drinking instant coffee from a paper cup as these echoes of conversation drift by in parallel to the clouds. Heavy rains rhythmically drum upon the blue tarps overhead. They shield the carefully sculpted timbers of a partially-built modern Hanok.

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Looking out from our team’s vantage point, I see young Seoul-lite couples bedecked in the latest Western fashion waiting in line for a busy cafe.

Some peek curiously through the sheet of rain separating us, while others point excitedly at the structure unfolded before them. Today I am working at the Eunpyeong Hanok Village, an entire neighborhood of modern Hanok in northwestern Seoul.

When I am not on-site for field research, I am at the National University of Cultural Heritage (NUCH) conducting academic research to better understand traditional Korean architectural design and craft.

Each day has been a blur of activity and overload of information. At the university, I am either absorbed in learning about the foundational wooden joints for traditional architectural fittings, a craft called 소목 (Somok), or poring over seminal texts in the library.

“Natives Praying to Wooden Devils, Chosen (Korea),” proclaims the caption of a photo taken by an American Christian missionary and sold by the Keystone View Company. I look at the photo of indigenous Joseon (Korean) people showing respect to traditional guardian totems called 장승 (Jangseung) outside a village. Careful to avoid the piercing glare of the librarian, I stifle a burst of laughter at the absurdity of the Western gaze. As I flick through the photos showing a unified Korean peninsula—known more accurately as Joseon—a bittersweet taste enters my mouth.

Our class crowds together tightly, straining to hear

“Remember us when you return to our land and use the name I gave you.”

Photo by Miles Yungsahm Miller 김영삼 金永森 Buk Ji Jang Temple, Daegu

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our professor—an Intangible Cultural Heritage Expert of Somok—as he speaks in a low, serious tone. “The difference between the crafts today is that we had to work to survive in the past generation.” He takes a long sip of tea and continues, “We worked under the cruelty of the Japanese colonizers, the American military reign, the war and those years after… so we worked to feed ourselves and them. I’m happy that this generation can still learn our craft and design, but we need to support students to train as professionals, not just as a hobby or for tourists. Train with this in mind.”

The landscape sprints backwards from our comfortable train seats as the Professor of Traditional Architecture at the NUCH speaks. “We are doing a great job educating many students, but will there be enough properly paid jobs for them?” He lets out a deep sigh and continues, “So many people choose to buy a home out of a catalogue. Then they fill it with expensive, yet ordinary, imported Western furnishings. Instead we could build a wonderful, custom Hanok that will last for generations.”

The furrows across my brow deepen as our 할머 니 (halmeoni—grandmother) speaks through the phone. It is still five months before my departure flight, and just three months before her final departure and graduation from life. She states bluntly, as usual, “I’ve lived longer than I want.” I share a bit about the research work I am preparing for in Korea and she perks up. “I’m glad you will return to 우리나라 (woorinara—our land)... and I’m happy you remember your name. When we came to America, it wasn’t good to use them. Remember us when you return to our land and use the name I gave you.” I feel the deep furrows of my brow straighten.

“Mr. Yung Sahm!” A wave of gratitude washes over me as I hear the name my mother and grand-

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parents gave me as a child. 김영삼 (金永森 Yung Sahm Kim): a golden eternal forest. I turn away from the sheet of rain and the onlooking crowd outside the café. “Come and look here,” the 대 목님 (Daemoknim—Traditional Timberframe Carpenter) holds up a thick stack of architectural plans. He flips through the pages and points through the maze of pencil markings detailing the wooden joints over the computer rendered floor plans. Pointing to a corner he says, “This is where the 평방 (Pyuhng Bahng) will be. The structural brace for the second floor. You still remember Mr. Yung-Sahm?”

The ripples of past conversations drift away as I shift my attention back to the task at hand.

“Yes, I understand it!”

A smile is on my lips.

“I will re-member it.”

Photo by Martha Rabura Gamcheon Culture Village, Busan

(left) Photo by Miles Yungsahm Miller 김영삼 金永森 Yeongju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do

Title by Author 27

Speaker’s Block

By William Landers

Photo by Julia Wargo Ulleung-do, Gyeongsangbuk-do

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There is one question that everyone asks me, if not with their lips, then with their eyes: “You’re Korean. Why don’t you speak it?” I’ve known how to say hello and thank you in Korean for as long as I can remember, but that barely counts. Many of my peers quickly gain confidence in their Korean, at least enough to survive. Yet I often feel lost in the noise.

Back home, the force that Toni Morrison called “the white gaze” obfuscated me as a foreigner, an infiltrator. That gaze, the way that white identity depends on othering to survive, drowned my own voice beneath a wail. It screeched that I don’t belong. Just ask the classmate who was curious if I could translate Gangnam Style, the teacher who asked me what country my parents were from or the university orientation staff who offered to guide me to the check-in desk for Chinese foreign students. It matters not to the white gaze that I took only French and Spanish classes in school. It matters not that my parents are whiter than Swiss cheese. It matters not that I am a native English speaker and could navigate to the correct check-in desk unattended. It matters only that I look like a foreigner in a white space. I used to think that I could blend in by silencing my Korean half, softening the hard stares by appeasing them. But my labored performance played to a deaf audience.

If history does not repeat, then it certainly rhymes.

I expected a new status quo in South Korea, but life here often rhymes with my past. While the white gaze casts me as a foreigner back home, I am seen as a native here. While many Americans view me with suspicion, most Koreans simply don’t regard me with interest. I am invisible. At least, until I am spoken to. The interaction often follows a predictable beat: a question posed in Korean, a louder second attempt and a disbelieving third crash through the air. Sometimes, it sounds

like apologetic confusion. Other times, the intonation reveals frustration or dismissal . But it always grates against my ears. The crescendo peaks as each waiter, shop owner or random pedestrian’s eyes ignite with expectation and then darken with disappointment. My face speaks first, but it lies.

I blend in as long as no one talks to me, but I can always hear the strange music produced between those predictable beats and rhymes.

Languages can bridge cultures. I want that bridge between my American and Korean halves. Yet, my history’s rhymes give me pause. I hear them in each confused and frustrated Korean voice. I hear them in each frivolous complaint lodged by an offended white foreigner, as if being stared at were the highest form of discrimination. I hear them in the confident intonation of my peers, who employ their growing lexicons with light joy instead of heavy baggage. I hear these rhymes blend in a melody, together saying I belong neither here nor there. That I will never be good enough, so I shouldn’t bother. Maybe I need some earplugs.

Maybe then, I could learn decent Korean. Maybe then, I could build some bridge to my alienated heritage. It’s too bad the melody is in my mind, and the ringing in my ears would only get louder.

“I can always hear the strange music produced between that predictable tempo and rhyme.”

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CONFERENCES & IN-BETWEEN

BY CAROLYN ACOSTA SANCHEZ

SPRING CONFERENCE When they opened my fridge and saw the stacked boxes, each filled with different foods at various stages of decay, it was as if my world had stopped.

One held the remains of a pasta bowl, the creamy sauce turned thick and rancid with spots of white circling its surface. Another held proof that yes, indeed, McDonald’s is real meat because if not the nuggets wouldn’t have turned a sickly green.

There was one at the bottom of the fridge, a pesto pasta only half-eaten. I had made it myself but it had given me a stomachache. Others, just like them, filled the fridge at every corner. Confronted with the evidence of my depression I turned to my friends, although really maybe they were acquaintances. I mean, how long had I even known them?

A month or two max. Certainly, they didn’t know me well enough to know that I was a good liar. An expert at acting just fine.

Photo by Nina Horabik Gwangyang-si, Jeollanam-do

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“Look at you guys Marie Kondo-ing my life,” I laughed as they helped me sort through the remains of my shame and pool them all in the food waste bin outside of my apartment. It was Spring Conference and we didn’t have time to finish making dinner, let alone psychoanalyze every way I was falling apart. We had arrived at our teaching placements in mid-February, around two months prior.

Now in May, the Spring Conference has arrived.

The conference - the first of two - was intended to be a sort of check-in to see how we were all doing

Photo by Nina Horabik, Gwangyang-si, Jeollanam-do

so far. Typically, it was held in-person in culturally significant places around Korea, like Jeju Island or Gyeongju. However, like everything else for our cohort, it was ruined by the ever-present COVID-19. So instead, we were expected to learn more about the art of teaching and Korean culture through various Zoom presentations… exciting.

In an effort to fight the boredom we knew would ensue, all of the English Teaching Assistants that lived in the Jeollabuk Province decided to meet at my apartment.

The night progressed through cups of mojitos, a vodka soda and the droning voices of the various presenters. Once the last presenter had finished their spiel, I closed my eyes and then opened them early Saturday morning to the sound of shuffling and whispered voices. Slowly they all filed out of my apartment to their own respective homes, temporary as they may be.

Day two of the Spring Conference saw me sitting

alone in my creaking apartment. It was in between the quiet humming noise of that damned fridge and the monotonous presenters that I came to a resolution. I would never let that happen again. No more delivery and takeout food every night. I was going to cook for the rest of my year in Korea. Empowered by my promise, I ran out of my room during the hour-long lunch break to gather the ingredients needed for the Fulbright-sponsored online cooking class I would take after the break. This was supposed to replace the real-life activities we would have done in Jeju Island or Gyeongju. I had mistakenly chosen to learn how to make mandu and japchae and I hadn’t had time to get the ingredients.

I set a 40-minute timer on my phone and made my way to Homeplus. It was only a two-minute walk and I was confident I would make it back in time for the class. Entering the supermarket, I pulled out the list of ingredients. The recipe was in English and therefore this should have been relatively

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simple. I grabbed a basket and headed to scour the aisles. The first problem arose when I couldn’t find the glass noodles. Obviously, they had them at the store but everywhere I looked left me disappointed. I moved on to the next ingredient, corn starch for the mandu. My brain buzzed as I tried and failed to find it. Frustrated, I opened my savior Papago, the best translation application, and watched it work its magic. Slowly, the words turned from English to Korean as I tried to match the words to the products in front of me.

the clock hit six pm. The conference was over and my computer screen was dark once again. The fridge started its humming once again. My smile slipped off my face as I took in my solitude once again. At the end of the day, I was alone in my oneroom apartment. No number of conferences and fake smiles were going to change that fact. I got up from my desk, threw myself under my comforter, turned off the lights and closed my eyes.

Yet, as I stared at the wall of noodles, all different shapes and sizes, labeled various things in Korean, I felt my chest start to pound. Each new ingredient clawed at my heart and constricted its movements until tears started welling in my eyes. Suddenly, I remembered my mom-- a Dominican immigrant in New York City asking her daughter to find the ingredients to her recipe. The recipe was in Spanish but she was surrounded by walls of English products. With every question she asked, her daughter grew more frustrated. Not a day went by that she didn’t ask her children to translate something to Spanish. Every eye roll and sigh that her children gave her brought tears to her eyes. Why couldn’t she just learn English? And here I was, in Korea, ever the foreigner and ever regretful. I was my mom.

A week after the conference, there were maggots in my laundry room. I had entered the room to clean up a bit before the Jeollabuk-do Squad came over to hang out. And there were maggots in my laundry room. They surrounded the garbage bag I had left there since it took up too much space in my apartment. I slid the door shut and sat on my bed, trying to count how many days it had been since I had taken out the garbage. As I sorted through my days (wake up at six am, work at eight am, home at five pm, Baemin1 at six pm, asleep by seven pm), I realized it must have been weeks. My bones hurt.

They felt as if someone had rubbed them raw. Each bone stinging until I wrapped myself in blankets. I laid with my eyes open in the dark vacuum of my room.

T H E I N -B E T W E E N

I looked down and my alarm rang. Time to go.

Sulking in the failure of my journey, I sat in my room and watched as the other ETAs prepared the meal through Zoom. Obviously, they had succeeded in finding the ingredients, so why hadn’t I? They smiled at their computers holding up their finished works and I smiled back. I smiled until

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The wall next to my bed was yellowed from the years of previous ETAs. Tiny squares patterned the wallpaper, each making shapes in the darkness.

I felt nothing as I closed my eyes.

1 Korean food delivery service

The next day, I stumbled into my room after work and flung myself on my bed where I belonged. The mattress was starting to grow a groove where my body often landed. All I wanted was to close my eyes and go to sleep. I could have sworn there was a giant elephant sitting on my back squishing my chest in. I opened my phone and scrolled through Twitter. Someone had retweeted BTS’ “Fix You” cover onto my timeline. My thumb shook as I pressed on the video. Listening to the music, I didn’t realize I was crying until suddenly the sobs had made it hard to breathe. It was as if BTS’ Jin singing, “tears stream down your face” had suddenly given me permission to cry. Their voices came together at the end as they sang the chorus and poked at my heart. Each time they repeated the line, my gut wrenched.

It wasn’t until June, almost a full month after the conference when I finally admitted to myself I was depressed. It took one impulsive message to a friend I made during Korean language classes to set the record straight. It was as if everything just suddenly made sense. Of course, why else would I be so tired and sleeping for hours on end? As they say, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Maybe this was my way out. Like most moments in life, music guided me to an answer.

The soundtrack in my head turned to “Words Fail” from Dear Evan Hansen.

The last lines of the song whispered, “all I ever do is run so how do I step into the sun?” I grabbed my phone and ran right back to my friend from Korean class. I sent question after question asking her how she dealt with her depression. A few minutes later, I had a list of resources. Most importantly, I had realized I was not alone. I had the support of a friend who, just like me, was also in Korea and depressed. This was my moment. This was how I stepped into the sun.

Photo by Nina Horabik Pohang-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do

FALL CONFERENCE I triple-checked I took out the garbage before I left my apartment toward Joy’s home. This time we were going to go to her place, instead of mine, for the Fall Conference. The ETAs who lived in the Jeollabuk Province, Sophie, Joy, Juan, Allie and I, had become close friends over the course of the year. Jeongeup, Joy’s city, was only a 40 to 50-minute bus ride away so I wasn’t too worried about being late.

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Bed made? Check. Fridge clean? Check. Laundry in the basket? Check. Smells clean? Nope, but I couldn’t do anything about that. I had decided to make chili the week before and my place had not yet let me forget about it. I lugged my bag and headed towards the bus station ready for another weekend of Zoom and good food.

When all of us arrived, we got to work setting up our Zoom conference stations. Allie was on the bed, ready to sleep. Juan sat nestled in the corner between Joy’s bed and the TV. Joy and I took shop at the dining table. It was a small space, but we liked the company. Like last time, the lectures droned on, but we joked and commented all the same. We jumped and danced and cooked. Every time a new presenter began to speak, we chose a new song to play. One second we were playing emo rock and the next it was bubblegum pop. To my surprise, Allie chose to play “What is Love?”

by TWICE and suddenly we were on our feet learning the choreography. Later in the night, Joy pulled out her guitar and started strumming “Lucky” by Jason Mraz. Juan and Joy began singing and Allie joined in on the harmonies. In this manner, the first day of the conference came to an end.

The second day found us taking quizzes for each other. We took them all, from “Which Brooklyn 99 Character are You?” to “Which Hogwarts House Would You Be In?” It was fun, psychoanalyzing each other and trying to guess what the other would answer. It was honest and kind and heartwarming. Just a group of friends, figuring out just how much they knew each other.

“I feel like we grinded friendship points this weekend” giggled Joy, her hair spanning all around her on the bed.

Lying there, on the floor of Joy’s apartment, I

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agreed. It’s impossible not to reflect when your life is so obviously book-ended by Fulbright conferences. Looking back at the person I was during the Spring Conference from the point of view of the Fall Conference, I was surprised to see how much I had changed. The year had forced me to let go of my expectations and live in the moment. Often plans, like emotions, swooped in and out like a wave. I had to make the most of where I was and who I was with. There was no need to alienate potential friends. I couldn’t afford to do so. I had to focus on making a community right where I was. I had to dare to be vulnerable. The power of vulnerability was something that years of education classes had tried to cement on me but never succeeded. It took a trip to Korea and a fridge full of rotting food for me to finally learn that lesson.

Here I was, surrounded by friends, true friends, and I was happy. I wasn’t forcing a smile or acting just fine. I was just me. Full of music, lectures, french toast, tears, heart-to-hearts, terrible piano tinkling, off-key carols and just two spoonfuls of chueo-tang2. I was me. ...

Depression isn’t a one-stop-shop. A happy day does not a happy person beget. For some, it’s a rollercoaster with jerks and stops and inclines and declines. Except there is no gradual build-up for me. Sure, some people may find themselves slowly trodding up to happiness. But for me, it’s here and then it’s not. There is no in-between. But it’s the good days, like those during the Fall Conference, that help me fight the bad days. As long as the good days outnumbered the bad days, I would be okay.

2 A freshwater fish soup

Photo by Nina Horabik, Yangyang-gun, Gangwon-do

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Naju: 11:46 pm

By Claire Ehr

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Thoughts on Naju: 11:46 pm 4th September, 2021. Kpop, jjajangmyeon and jjampong1 smells and photobooth pictures adorn the small apartment in Naju. We sing along to the parts we know, hum along to others, harmonize occasionally and interject every now and again with tangents of thoughts from our day. On the side of the fridge, I find a moment of chaos and a moment of calm. A circus of words, cartwheeling over each other, tumble for my attention. As I focus, the Kpop fades, smells dissipate and room decorations become irrelevant. I spend the next 20 minutes playing with the words, meaning metal detector and museum curator rolled into one.

And out comes this poem. It’s reaching at something, some expression of our experience in Korea, of working for the government and of being “in-between.”

But it’s also inherently pretty silly. 20 minutes at 11:46 will not produce the world’s next great poem. But poetry doesn’t have to be a competition; art doesn’t have to be “the best” to mean something to those who experience it.

It can just be a moment by a fridge in a satellite city, surrounded by music, food and friends.

With that said, I’ve left the other unused words to the side, and invite you to join in with this play: see what you come up with! If the whim beckons, take a moment to engage in poetry and expression; it doesn’t need to be too grand or cerebral. But if you end up writing the world’s next great poem from a set on a fridge, please let me know! I’d love to see what you create and share this kind of creative process with you.

1 Types of Korean noodle dishes

Photo by Christa Hoskins Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do

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*Playing two truths and a lie*

“Drake is FREAKIN’ awesome”.

Student 1: One, I’m handsome. Two, I-...

Student 2: Teacher! First one is lie! My turn!

“We are team Handsome Guy”.

Student: Cardi B is my wife.

Me: But you said IU is your wife.

Student: Teacher, IU is my wife in Korea. Cardi B is my wife in America.

“Teacher! He has seven girlfriends!”

BewhY is my dad.

2

Student 1: Teacher, this 노 잼

Me: Where is *insert student’s name*?

Student 2, to Student 1: You’re 노 잼!

Student: He die.

“I am rapper. I go on Show Me The Money.”

“RIP Ironman...Real RIP Black Panther.”

“We are genius class.”

“I like high school girls...”

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Photo by Allie Easterbrook Iksan-si, Jeollanam-do

1

Overheard in 영어 Compiled by Jame See Yang *Makes a dramatic entrance* “HELLO JAME SEE TEACHER!!!”

Me: What are you going to do during summer vacation?

Student: I’m going to make girlfriend. *Points to my tattoo* “Teacher… Gang?”

“I play game every day. No sleeping. No eating.”

Student: *requests an explicit song* IU is my wife.

Me: No, too many bad words.

Student: Ah~ It’s okay teacher. Other students don’t know meaning.

“He is my girlfriend today.”

Student, in the deepest frat boy voice: SUP Jame See!

He is bad guy. He is bad guy. Everybody bad guy. Only me good guy.”

“Teacher! That’s me!” *points at world famous actor Ma Dong Seok on the screen*

““Bye bye wonderful teacher~” … “Next time candy please.”

1 Pronounced “yeong-eo,” meaning “English” 2 Pronounced “no jam,” Korean slang for “not fun”

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Student Art Competition 2021 How does it feel to be a kid in 2021?

This year, we invited students to showcase their talents through a nation-wide art competition. Students of all grades responded to the above prompt with an English-titled piece of art they created. The submissions revealed a wide variety of emotions and vulnerability. Certain students remain optimistic, despite the challenges they faced this year. Others expressed the common anxieties of students today, such as exhaustion, loneliness, and a fear of the future. Infusion selected three winners for each school level (elementary, middle, and high school) who received a cash prize for their work. On the following pages you will find the winning submissions, and all other submissions are available for viewing on the Infusion website. Long hours studying, video games, COVID-19 tests, endless YouTube scrolls and Squid Game- these artists capture what it means to be a Korean student today.

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Elementary School

Imagining 2022 by Yoo Jaemin Kyungpook National University Elementary School, 4th Grade 1st Place

Memories of 2021 by Choi Julia Kyungpook National University Elementary School, 4th Grade 3rd Place We Can Still Have Fun by Park Na-Hyun Dobong Elementary School, 5th Grade 2nd Place

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Middle School

Kid’s Hope by Guk Jiseong Damyang Middle School, 3rd Grade 1st Place

Trial and Error by Shin Hye-su Dunpo Middle School, 3rd Grade 2nd Place

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Endless Greed by Kim Sihyun Gakri Middle School, 1st Grade 3rd Place

High School

The Confused Time by Park Yurin Gyeongnam Jayeoung High School, 2nd Grade 1st Place

From The Brilliance by Go Woori Wonkwang Girls’ High School, 2nd Grade 2nd Place

Things I Lost Due to Covid by Cho A Yeong Wonkwang Girls’ High School, 2nd Grade, 3rd Place

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Photo by Nathalie Peña Gomez Cheongju-si, Chungcheongbuk-do

The Smudged Mirror

By Andrianna Boykin

The mirror reflects, You, me, locking eyes as one.

Why question your own?

Our fingerprints blind.

Heaven accepts, still we check, Those who reflect us.

Between interest and intrusion, we reach out, grasping at slick glass.

Quick scan of my eye, Enough of an alibi?

Black skin, check twice.

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Photo by Allie Easterbrook Sejong-si, Chungcheongnam-do

“Under my jaws, the peach pit crunches like a snapped neck.”

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Hungry Ghost

By Chloe Nelson

Rather than face the mildly awkward experience of navigating a Korean grocery store, I decide to starve to death in my apartment.

It’s not a bad place to die. Impulse purchases from Daiso litter my meagre living space—a nest of scrunchies, a tangle of fairy lights, clusters of succulents already browning at the edges. It would be easy to curl myself into the heated floor, withering away into a pile of bones and social anxiety.

I have never lived alone before. I have especially never lived alone before in a country where my language abilities are roughly equivalent to a toddler’s. My every word comes out slow and stilted, and for the first time, I am aware that I have an accent. I feel its midwestern taste on my tongue—like boiled corn and cheap PBR. It punctuates every word with its hard American edges, making me indecipherable to every cashier, clerk and street vendor. More often than not I am simply rendered mute, my simple vocabulary of annyeonghaseyo, kamsahamnida and hwajangshil?1 never quite enough to get me through even the simplest of transactions.

And so, I hunker down onto my heated floor and prepare for a long and hungry year. My solid padding of quarantine doshiraks2 begins to melt away, yet I still can’t seem to shake my starving, Pavlovian-animal response to knocks at my door. When I open it this time, it is only my co-teacher. He jumps when he sees my face, ravenous and foaming at the mouth.

1 In order, “Hello,” “Thank you,” and “Bathroom” 2 “Lunchbox”

“Are you settling in okay?” he asks me. His face is sweet and perfectly round, like a souffle pancake.

I tell him yes. Very well, kamsahamnida.

He leaves and does not come back after that, because I am adjusting so well. ...

By April, my quarantine weight is long gone, and I’m growing restless in my little one-room. My calm resignation towards my death has started to wane—a primal survival instinct slowly taking its place.

I pace back and forth across the tiny space. Thirteen steps from my bed to the wall. Thirteen steps from the wall to my bed. Back and forth I go, until night falls and the market ajummas3 outside my window begin packing up their goods. Mountains of plump, round cabbages. Long stalks of fresh green onions. Korean pears as big as a baby’s head, tucked snugly into foam wrappers.

I watch as one haggard-looking ajumma loads her cart with peaches. The peaches seem to glow softly, pale pink under the moonlight. I imagine holding a peach in my hand, caressing its soft fuzz under my fingertips. Rolling it in my hand before bringing it to my lips and biting down hard. Feeling the juice run down my chin as I tear into the sweet pink flesh. Under my jaws, the peach pit crunches like a snapped neck. ...

Time passes, and I can feel myself hollowing out.

My skin takes on a sallow, pinched appearance.

Swathes of hair fall out in the shower, like an animal shedding its winter coat. The hunger in my belly grows from a dull ache to a hot knife, whit3 Term for middle-aged Korean women

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tling me down piece by piece.

And yet, I can’t seem to leave my apartment for anything other than work. I go as far as opening my door and gazing down the long hallway. It’s dinnertime, and the air smells like sweet and sour pork. The couple in 301 is arguing again. The baby in 303 is wailing—its muffled cries surrounding me like a dense fog. I close the door and retreat into my shelter before I suffocate. ...

I must look particularly wan this week, because when I come to work, there’s a cup of sliced tomatoes sitting on my desk. I sniff the air. My eyes shift side to side, illogically suspicious that these tomatoes are mine for the taking.

I wear the red spots on my chin for the rest of the day—evidence of my feast.

The next day, there’s another cup of tomatoes on my desk.

My deskmate is standing by the table, chopping away at a pile of them.

“Ssaem!” He cries when he sees me. “To-mah-to!”

He says something else in Korean that I don’t understand, but the message is clear enough.

I bow my head towards him, reverent, and when I finish my cup, he refills it. My midwestern roots tell me to protest, but when I do, he just shakes his head and tells me to eat well. ...

4

“Ssaem!” My deskmate storms into the office, tomato bag in tow. “To-mah-to,” he says, gesturing to the cup at my desk.

“Ne5, tomato,” I repeat dumbly. The words come out so utterly American. To-may-to.

He brings a wrinkled hand to his face and mimes eating. “Mashisoyo6,” he says, gesturing again towards my cup.

I spear a fat cherry tomato with a toothpick, tentatively bringing it to my mouth and taking a bite.

Perfectly ripe, the skin breaks under my teeth. I chew; taste the salt, tang and sweetness all at once.

Euphoric.

I don’t know the Korean word to express this sentiment, so I merely repeat “Ne, mashisoyo,” as I cover my mouth with my hand. My deskmate nods, satisfied. When he leaves, I inhale my cup hungrily, greedily. Drops of tomato juice dribble down my chin and onto my mask.

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4 An endearing way to say “teacher” 5 “Yes” 6 “Delicious”

Each day when I come to work there’s something on my desk. My other deskmates must have joined in, because it’s no longer just tomatoes; now, I find wedges of fruit, fizzy drinks, squat jugs of banana milk or fluffy rolls bursting with red bean paste.

My coworkers eye each other, looking satisfied.

Just like in quarantine, someone has come to feed me.

The gifts accumulate, and I continue to eat ravenously. The sharp lines of my ribs and knobbly joints begin to smooth, my skeleton retreating from the surface of my skin. My belt buckle loosens a notch. The dense fog in my brain melts away into gentle wisps of smoke. My personhood is returning.

“I am the worst kind of guest.”

Photo by Allie Easterbrook Sejong-si, Chungcheongnam-do

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With this new clarity of mind, I begin to notice something gnawing away at me. The pangs of hunger, sharp and needful, have been replaced with pangs of guilt. At first a minor twinge, it now roils low in my gut and flares up with every sweet treat and savory snack left at my desk—an IBS-response to generosity. It occurs to me that in a gift-giving culture, I am the worst kind of guest.

Needing, wanting, yet never contributing. Slowly, the thought begins to eat me alive. ...

I come into work and find, wrapped neatly in ornate packaging, my most decadent snack yet. I undo the ribbon and peel open the parcel to reveal rows of sticky rice cakes—red bean, black sesame, dried fruits and assorted nuts. My mouth waters at the sight. I look up, and my deskmates are smiling happily at me.

“Do you like rice cakes?” the economics teacher asks me in English. Her voice is tentative, hesitant to speak in a way that I’ve become all too familiar with. My heart twinges. They’re trying so hard to make me feel at home here, and I’ve given them nothing but my ceaseless appetite.

I nod insistently, racking my brain for an adequate response. Forgetting the word for rice cake, the best I can do is say “I like rice,” which I suppose is true enough.

She smiles. “Ddeok7,” she says, gesturing towards the box.

“Ddeok,” I repeat, rolling the word in my mouth. It feels round and solid, not unlike a rice cake itself.

I repeat it back to myself, Ddeok. Ddeok. Ddeok.

Repeated enough times, it sounds almost natural.

When I walk home from school, the ajummas are back and bustling along the street outside my 7 Sticky rice cake

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apartment. The makeshift market is crowded with tiny vegetable stalls and dried fish basking in the sun. Cardboard signs with names and prices litter the streets. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her. The same stooped ajumma from outside my window, pushing her cart of peaches. They look so soft and easily bruised. Tender as flesh, you’d expect your knife to cut clean through were it not for the dense pit within.

I’m consciously aware of my wallet in my jacket pocket, weighty with crumpled won8. Cautiously, I meander over to the ajumma’s stall. I’m walking home, I tell myself. It’s on the way back to my apartment.

Sidling up to the fruit stall, I get a closer look at the peach cart. I’ve never encountered fruit as expensive as I have in Korea, but according to the cardboard sign, this ajumma’s peaches are surprisingly reasonable. I bite my lip and finger my wallet in my pocket.

If the ajumma notices my lingering presence, she is entirely unperturbed by it. Instead, she continues bustling about. Squat, sturdy and completely bedecked in bright floral patterns, she radiates a “noBS” energy. I’m intimidated, but also strangely emboldened by it. I know almost instinctively that she would never be the type to patiently wait, fingers crossed that some generous soul would stumble upon her and take pity. She had to be approaching her 80s—more halmeoni9 than ajumma, really.

Withered, leathery and postured nearly horizontal, yet here she was.

My mouth opens, and I begin to speak. ...

In the morning, my coworkers trickle into the office one by one. On each desk rests a luminous, perfect peach.

8 Korean money 9 A term for elderly Korean women, meaning “grandmother”

What has surprised you the most this year?

“One lonely day in May I ran into two foreigners at my small-town bus terminal. I’m usually the one to say hello and break the awkward foreigner-to-foreigner tension. We exchanged numbers and met up for pizza soon after. To my delightful surprise, six months later, these once strangers at the bus terminal are now my security blanket in small-town Korea.”

-Madison Weisend, 1st Year ETA Gyeongnam Jayeoung Highschool

“My student buying me a gift with a notebook, bookmark, pen, chopsticks, and a letter. The letter is all in English explaining why they gave me each gift.”

-Brittany Parker, 1st Year ETA Gumi Munseong Elementary and Songjeong Elementary

“How much I have truly grown personally and professionally. I can truly say that I have grown the most this year compared to any other year of my life. I could literally write an essay on how much this year and experience has meant to me, especially personally and my perspective on many things.”

- Melissa Duong , 1st Year ETA Jinju Dongmyeong Middle School

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Lunch Box

By Tricia Park

Photo by Nina Horabik Gwangyang-si, Jeollanam-do

When I was in fourth grade, Tally McMasters came up to me and asked: “Are you Chinese?”

I was waiting for my turn at double dutch. “No,” I said, eyeing the line.

“Are you Japanese?” she asked, peering at me intently.

“No,” I said, again. The line was getting shorter. I glanced at her face and saw confusion. She’d run out of options.

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“Well, then.” Tally jammed her hands against her hips. “Are you Norwegian?”

I was one of two Asian kids at Sacred Heart Elementary School. Sally Wu was Chinese. Everyone knew what that was. Everyone liked chop suey and

sweet and sour pork. And everyone liked that joke: “my mother is Chinese, my father is Japanese and I’m in-between.” Pulling the corners of their round blue eyes up, then down, then one of each, making a diagonal slant across their faces.

My mother made me beautiful lunches then, packed in a Hello Kitty doshirak1 box. A puffy heap of white rice, surrounded by tiny mounds of side dishes that glistened like jewels. Glossy anchovies, candied in soy sauce and sugar, freckled with toasted sesame seeds; crisp bean sprouts with vibrant, yellow heads; grassy watercress, steamed bright green; a perfect stack of roasted seaweed, shiny with sesame oil and sprinkled with salt; a juicy Asian pear, cut into precise quarters.

“What’s that?” Suzy Lawson stood, pointing.

“It’s my lunch,” I said, covering it with my right 1 “Lunchbox”

arm, like I’d covered my math test earlier.

“It looks weird,” she said. Suzy was mean and popular and never talked to me. Everyone was either afraid of her or envied her or some combination of both. Lacy Stevens and Jennifer Lewis dressed just like her in Guess jeans with zippered ankles and wore glittery, jelly bracelets but they weren’t as pretty. You always knew that Suzy was the best one.

“Hey, guys.” Suzy’s voice got loud and the din of the lunchroom stopped to listen. “Look at the new girl’s weird lunch.”

The scraping of chairs against linoleum and the squeaking of sneakers as a crowd gathered around my table in the corner.

“Ew, look, you can see their eyes! Disgusting! What are those things, worms? Look, they have yellow heads! Seaweed? Oh, ew, seaweed feels like alien slime on your legs! Oh my god, the smell. C’mere, smell this!”

Fingers poked and prodded at my lunch, over my protecting arms. The tiny, perfect compartments were extracted as they crowded in, spilling and grabbing at my lunch. I tried to get away but the table was surrounded, the laughing and jeering continuing until nothing was left. The rice was smashed onto the table, anchovies dumped on the floor, seaweed scattered like a deck of cards.

Through a blur of tears, I packed up the doshirak, the small, geometric containers empty now. One of my Twin Stars chopsticks was missing.

Over the weekend, I asked my mother to pack me SpaghettiOs and Oreo cookies for my school lunch. Puzzled, she asked, “don’t you like your bap2? I saw your doshirak was empty.” I pulled away from her stroking hand on my hair.

2 Can refer to “rice” specifically, or a “meal” in general

“No,” I said, a new note of irritation in my voice.

“I hate it. I want a normal lunch.”

I’d never spoken to my mother that way.

On Monday morning, I opened my book bag at the bottom of the stairs. My SpaghettiOs were in a plaid Thermos and a stack of six Oreos was nestled in Saran Wrap. There was also, hidden under a napkin, a small container of anchovies. I crumpled the plain brown bag, zipped up my backpack, and walked to the bus stop. ...

When I was a kid, there was this show called Stand-Up Spotlight on VH-1. Rosie O’Donnell was the host, before she had her own show. Back then, she wore dresses and her hair was permed and feathered. The nineties were early and still recovering from an eighties hangover.

I wasn’t actually allowed to watch VH-1 though it would have been worse had I been watching MTV. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV at all on weekdays and certainly not in the afternoon when I was alone, sent home early from school to practice my violin. To this day, I’m not sure what my parents had to do to make it okay for me to skip school. It probably didn’t hurt that I was a good student; quiet, Asian. I was getting straight A’s, so what could they say, really.

That particular afternoon, Rosie O’Donnell stood on the small stage, the black curtain behind her strung up with white holiday lights, even though it wasn’t Christmas. It was a cheap set but the logo on the corner of the screen shone like a spotlight.

‘Welcome now to the stage, a very funny woman. You’ll be hearing more from her after this, I’m sure. Put your hands together for Margaret….

Cho!’ I was only half watching - my hand aloft between my mouth and the bowl of rice I was having for

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lunch, my chopsticks holding some of the myeolchi3 that my mother had made - until I heard Rosie say, Cho. A Korean name. The last name of the first boy I ever had a crush on.

Now, Rosie had my full attention.

I watched as she left the stage, handing the mic over to a Korean woman wearing a dark blue dress. She was ordinary looking, almost plain. But to me, she could have been a unicorn standing in our living room. That was how startling it was to see an Asian woman on TV. Not just Asian, but Korean. Like me.

And she sounded like me, too. Back then, I was always a little surprised to hear an Asian adult speak unaccented English, since all the adults around me spoke English with a heavy coating of some Asian flavor. Whether it was my Japanese violin teacher’s swallowed consonants, the hard staccato of the Chinatown kids in AP Calculus or the guttural lilt of Konglish spoken at home, I rarely heard an Asian adult who sounded like me.

For the next seven minutes, I was enthralled. The high I felt from watching her was one of recognition. I wasn’t alone. There were others out there.

Like me.

She told this story about growing up in San Francisco and sneaking out to a club and getting caught. I watched her eyes widen in horror as she transformed into her mother, exclaiming loudly that “you cannot go to da clubs! That is where, you know, you get da, you know, da drugs! And da pots! and da COCAINES!” I felt a mix of guilt and glee as I identified with her.

Not with the details - I was maybe fourteen then and wouldn’t have known where to find a “club” even if I’d had any desire in my goody-goody heart - but the pluralization of nouns was something my

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3 Korean anchovy dish

parents did, too. The endless errors in my parents’ English put my teeth on edge even as I wanted to protect them from the world.

As immigrants, my parents experienced mini-humiliations almost on a daily basis. The A&P grocery clerk that pretended not to understand my mom’s request for a price check on the family-sized Fruit Loops; the United Airlines gate agent who sneered and over-enunciated when she told my dad we couldn’t sit together, raising her voice like he was deaf; the Lincoln Center ushers who rolled their eyes and cackled at each other, saying “I can’t even deal” as they yanked the YoYo Ma tickets out of our hands, taking for granted that we wouldn’t understand. But I understood and it cut me, even as I silently also wished my parents were different. Wished them better.

...

The experience of racial discrimination in America differs from race to race. And being Asian in America is a peculiar experience. The underlying drive of racism is to oust, shame and eliminate that which is different. The motivation is to erase the quirks and particularities of different cultures and races in the interest of creating a dull, smooth homogeneity.

In my experiences of racism, the cuts are small and insidious.

Asians in America are the prototypical “model minority.” We are smart and studious. We are good at math. We are quiet and docile. Louis C.K. jokes about his relief when an Asian doctor enters the examination room and we laugh. We are obedient.

We are bad at sports. We are blind followers of authority. We lack creativity.

The racism occurs in tiny, daily abrasions.

“You wear a sunhat? Oh, how cute. That’s how you Oriental women keep your skin so perfect and

Photo by Nina Horabik Suncheon-si, Jeollanam-do

And yet.

Again.

porcelain. That’s why you never age.” It’s a humid, August afternoon in Vermont and we’re sitting on the porch, sipping gin and tonics. He’s a friend and he uses the term “Oriental” with some irony, smearing the t, to rhyme with “kennel.” But I can feel the jeer underneath the “just kidding” snicker, even as I laugh weakly and adjust the brim of my hat. I watch the lime float in my drink and I boil a little hotter underneath the afternoon sun.

In silence.

In one misguided Dear Abby-esque swoop, this woman insults my intelligence, gender and race, in less than thirty seconds. And, of course, the question I long to spit back at her is, why are these things mutually exclusive? Why does my demeanor - perhaps understated, perhaps subdued - negate the possibility of intelligence? I like being quiet.

I like my softness. I like my gentleness. I like my girliness.

I like my Asian-ness.

“You know what? You’re actually really smart. I had no idea. You do this quiet, sweet Asian girl thing and hide who you truly are.” This time the friend is white, an artist, the mother of a bi-racial child. In the plush candlelit confines of this downtown social club, the insult here is, once again, framed by what seems like a compliment - you are smart. But if ever there was a backhanded compliment, here it is. It feels like getting slapped, knuckle-side up.

Why does she present this seeming contradiction as a problem on my part? This paradox is a product of her own narrow-minded perceptions and yet she drapes it over me, dressing me in robes of deception and cunning. To her, I am the wily geisha, the shrewd dragon lady.

And yet.

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I keep these thoughts to myself and clink martini glasses with her, even as I file away this abrasion in my mind, throwing another log on the proverbial fire of my feelings of injustice.

My rage.

equal because we are a threat in an unspoken, ongoing competition. A wrestle for the top prize with a very real, worthy opponent. But, we have to be perfect. And when we’re perfect, we’re too perfect. We are conformist and boring, just a bunch of automatons. All look same.

And yet.

Why stay silent, you may ask.

I ask that, too.

Injustices can happen on a microscopic level. One hesitates to point them out because, by doing so, one risks pulling the skin open, creating a gaping wound where before there was only a paper cut.

Because what if I’m wrong? What if I’m just being crazy?

But then again, there is death by a thousand cuts.

Because if I were to, say, jump up in indignation at either of these people, it draws into the light the complicated peculiarities of racism toward Asians.

The slippery quality of insults sandwiched between compliments.

Both would likely consider what they said to me as praise, approval. Compliments. What’s your problem? Because, let’s face it, many Asians are perceived as successful. Socially and economically prosperous. We work hard. We are perceived as well-educated, well-employed, middle to upper class. We marry interracially, make beautiful Amerasian babies, live in white neighborhoods.

So what more could these Orientals - gooks, chinks, slant-eyes - possibly want?

There is a disdain, a looking down upon Asians.

We achieve and over-achieve and yet we are not

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In my toolbox, there are at least two Asian jokes that I tell to counter my social anxiety. I tell them well--both about Asian businessmen with a penchant for flipping their l’s and r’s--and they’re funny. They succeed in getting a roaring response, without fail. I’ve had more than one first date tell me that I’m not like “normal Asian girls.” This is said to me admiringly, as he wipes away tears of laughter.

These jokes are my way in. A way towards social acceptance.

And yet. Again.

I worry about contributing to the Asian stereotype.

Just as I worried, felt guilty even, as I laughed at Margaret Cho’s imitation of her mother. Because it was funny and it was true and I felt finally, finally, seen as the child of Korean immigrants, living in the in-between space of old country and new.

But how to also convey the tenderness and affection I felt for Margaret Cho and her mother upon hearing that joke? Doing that accent was a way of acknowledging a difference. Acknowledging the struggle contained within that accent that holds our real love for our mothers.

When my mother speaks English, she adds articles and pluralizes her nouns and confuses idioms and blurs her subjects and verbs. But she is also a doc-

Photo by Nina Horabik, Changdeokgung Palace, Seoul

tor and a mother and a wife and a daughter. She is a great cook. She has such an incredible mind that she’s never kept a calendar in all the years I’ve known her because she remembers everything her family has to do every day; dates, phone numbers, addresses. She is fiercely loyal and she loves me every day like I am the only thing that matters.

And when she was twenty-five, she came to this country alone, with five hundred dollars hidden in the handle of a vanity mirror. She learned to speak English by leaving her television on all day and night, listening to advertising jingles for Tide detergent and Wrigley’s chewing gum. And she cried every night for six months, wondering if she would ever see her family again, even though she was the one who ran away.

Her accented English has a flavor all its own. And hearing Margaret Cho imitate her own mother made me feel less alone in loving my mother in the full glory of her incorrectness.

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The Pinoy Grill

By Joy Cariño

The Pinoy Grill is like a restaurant in many ways. To the right of the entrance, there’s a counter with a cash register. There are two refrigerators full of drinks and a multitude of shelves selling Filipino spices and snacks like Silver Swan soy sauce, Boy Bawang and mani. At any time, people might be eating or drinking at the four tables in the center of the room. Upon entering the restaurant, especially in the height of summer, the humidity is stifling. You can smell the flavors wafting from the back kitchen—pork marinating in soy sauce, grilled chicken, and the sour tang of sinigang.

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Waiting for the Rain by Katherine Seibert Gamcheon Culture Village, Busan

At the same time, walking into the Pinoy Grill is like walking into a large family’s living room. To the left of the entrance is a tall shelf of succulents (with a sign saying DO NOT TOUCH), couches, some chairs, and a large billiards table. Behind the chairs, there’s a carpeted mini-stage with a TV showing a Netflix drama or a YouTube playlist of romantic ballads. There’s a children’s playroom in the back right corner and two smaller rooms built into the right-side wall, which serve as tiny bedrooms for napping babies, or as a storage space for children’s items.

The Pinoy Grill isn’t a sit-down restaurant. If you want to order food from the menu, you have to call or text the owner at least 24 hours in advance so she can prepare. The menu has several dishes, each of which is 7,000 won1. There are meat dishes, pork or beef calderetta, corned beef, hamonado, dinuguan, humba, dinakdakan, smoked pork, or adobo pata. There are noodle dishes, like sweet banana ketchup spaghetti and bihon. There are siomai and lumpia, fried rice and bananacue. My favorite soups—sinigang na bangus, sinigang na baboy, and tinola manok are there as well.

When someone in the Filipino community has a birthday, a baby dedication, or any other community event, friends and visitors need only pay for the drinks. All food is on the house, and someone always brings a Paris Baguette cake to share. After eating and gossiping at the tables, visitors gather around the royal blue billiards table for a drawnout game. These games are always interrupted by a child holding a toy car and attempting to get involved. Others retreat to a side room to drink San Miguel and take their turn on the karaoke machine.

Sometimes there are two karaoke sessions running at the same time—a slow Korean ballad playing in tandem with “Country Roads.” Children run throughout the restaurant playing tag, giggling and 1 Korean money, about $7 USD

chattering in Korean. The room fills with noise and unapologetic laughter. When I’m invited to such events, I’m reminded of the Filipino parties my family took me to in the US, where my parents would chat and gossip around the table in Filipino or Tagalog and I would hang out in the living room with the other kids—chattering in English.

Now, I’m a somewhat adult, somewhat Filipino living in Korea temporarily. I’m an outsider here, but when I come to the Pinoy Grill I can feel a semblance of home. I’m always a bit shy and apprehensive before I walk through the restaurant doors. Yet, coming here is better than staying alone in my one-room on a Sunday evening, nervously anticipating the next school day.

Even though I can understand when people speak to me in Tagalog (and I welcome this change of environment where I can understand all the words being said around me), I know I’m still an outsider in this community of Filipino immigrants to Korea.

I’m still more American than I am Filipino. Still, there have been many moments that will make me miss this tight-knit, unexpected community. ...

One chilly October evening, I stopped by the restaurant for some dinner and the owner told me she was hosting a Halloween event on a Saturday.

The Friday before the party, she texted me asking if I was free to help decorate, so I showed up.

Someone else was allegedly going to come, but it ended up just being me, her partner, her children, and Netflix Pororo.

When I arrived, the owner was assembling ethernet cords, another one of her many part-time jobs.

She put down her work and asked what she always asked when I came in: “Kumain ka na? Kain muna

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Photo by Nina Horabik, Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do

tayo!” (Have you eaten? Let’s eat first!) I responded that I hadn’t eaten yet, but she was already heading to the back room to pull out her stash of last year’s Halloween decorations. She spread them across the billiards table—crumpled up cotton spider webs and tissue paper ghosts tied onto the ends of burlap rope. A “Spooky Tree” and white curtain would act as a photo station backdrop. I helped her untangle some pumpkin and skull string lights.

After several iterations of “Kain muna tayo!” and contemplative discussions of potential Halloween decorations, she and her partner wrangled their two children—a two-year-old boy and a sevenyear-old girl—into chairs at the dinner table. I sat between the kids while large portions of rice and sabau were spooned onto their plates. I followed suit and ate at what felt like a dinner table with family. I live alone in my one-room, so this was only the third time I’d eaten a home-cooked meal in Korea.The seven-year-old refused to turn off

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YouTube on her tablet, and her father kept telling her to eat while she ignored him. The two-year-old screamed and rattled around in his high chair while the owner joked about how stubborn and angry he was. Her partner talked with me about his family in the United States. I listened and nodded, while eating the best fish stew I’d ever had. Again, I felt a semblance of home. Was it my home in Mississippi, at a table with my parents and two siblings?

Was it the home my family left behind in the Philippines, with rice meals and salty sinigang stew? I couldn’t, and still can’t, put a finger on it. Regardless, I knew that I was warm. I was accepted. But it has hit me now that I will have to leave it.

Nevertheless, I’m happy to have had this nook in Jeongeup, Jeollabuk-do. In a cozy restaurant in South Korea—a shorter plane ride from the Philippines than from my home in the United States—I found bits and pieces of all the homes I’d left behind.

On what gets you excited about South Korea: “The ability to keep trying new things... There’s a layer of anticipation that comes from feeling the newness of a place, even as you simultaneously grow more comfortable and at-home in it.”

-Melissa Duong, 1st Year ETA Jinju Dongmyeong Middle School

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Photo by Elizabeth Stewart, Seoul

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Trading Fall Favorites

By Johanna Alexander Content warning: this is a recipe PLOG (print log) and as such it will read like one. Don’t like? Don’t read. #livelaughlove #cookingmama #suburbanMom-sona As you all might already know, Korean Starbucks BARELY carries The Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL).

It’s there for a mere two weeks and gone before Halloween. To some this may be devastating, but to me, this crime is overshadowed by one much more heinous, almost sinister in nature: there is no apple cider!

I was working on a farm last year so I was blessed with free cider every week during apple season. Blessed and also cursed, for as soon as we ripped August off this year’s paper calendar, a certain withdrawal-like feeling crept into my body...

What do you mean it’s September? The leaves are changing colors? Who gave them permission??

The queen has not yet sat upon her throne with spiced cider in her golden chalice!!!!!!

Just as I was about to succumb to the cognitive dissonance of an autumn with no liquid indicator of the change of seasons, my host mom sat a glass of something oranger than orange juice down at the breakfast table.

The second I took my first sip I felt in the primordial recesses of my soul the season’s first amber leaf hit the ground. It was full of pumpkin flavor, a little sweet. Refreshing. A little tangy. 단호박 식 혜1. Sweet pumpkin rice drink. A beverage that, though lacking caffeine, could rival the reigning champ PSL for pumpkin drink of the season.

I decided that I MUST learn how to make this pumpkin sikhye; in return, I would show my host mom how to make apple cider.

First, I learned the ways of sikhye. My host mom, watchful eyes aflame with the embodied spirit of Gordon Ramsay himself, guided my hand in the measuring, chopping, pouring, stirring and straining of our nightly sikhye sessions. I was Hercules and she Chiron, meticulously preparing me to make a sikhye fit for the gods—lest her honored name be shamed by a mistake in my recreation of her sacred recipe.

Halfway through our sikye olympic training (we made a total of four batches), I discovered the magic of slushie-cold sikhye (freezing it in the kimchi fridge is the secret!). A refreshing ending to the hot days of summer and a foreshadow to the 1 Pronounced “dan-ho-bak shik-hye”

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chilly fall days ahead.

Next, was the apple cider.

I didn’t realize how much weight rested on my seasonal consumption of a 16 oz glass of muddled apples until I came to Korea this year and was unable to drink it at my leisure. As Joni Mitchell once said, “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”

If you have ever lived away from home, you will understand how tiny, seemingly insignificant details of your daily life --things that you’d never think twice about --suddenly become so remarkably consequential that you think you ought to repent for lack of proper exaltation of their name until now.

Oh great Apple Cider, Goddess of Fall, your humble servant shall now proselytize in your blessed name.

“Chilsung cider?”

“Apple juice?”

“Apple cider vinegar?”

It proved to be quite the elusive beverage. We bought 15 apples for 5,000 won2 from the old man selling fruit by our house. What a steal! I then went about finding spices.

“Spices?” my host mom asked. “We have red pepper powder here. Won’t that work?”

My brain short circuited for a second before I realized the confusion about the word spice.

This spice combination was new to my host family.

A lot of cinnamon and funny shaped cloves, all2 Korean money, about $5 USD

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spice, and nutmeg that they said smelled just like black pepper. Perhaps more impressive than my family’s reaction upon tasting the finished product was their reaction to the smell of all the spices boiling in the pot.

When the apple cider was all finished and bottled, they each tried a glass and agreed that it would be great when the weather got chillier or when they had a cold. I shared extra cider (and fall memories) with my Gumi friends, who in turn shared it with their friends, co-workers, and families.

Though I was wary at first that no one would kneel with me in praise of the fall goddess, I heard through the whispers of Hermes’s messengers that the kids and office teachers were thoroughly convinced; “Now this is a drink we can get behind!”

It seems we have reached a happy ending to the story of a girl and her mission to trade fall favorites. I have not only fulfilled my duty as a scribe to the ways of pumpkin sikhye and a helping hand to its creator, but also successfully welcomed fall with my family and friends in Gumi through the warmth and flavors of spiced apple cider.

However, a prophet’s work is never done.

For you, my dear readers, for you I shall now share both recipes. So, when fall is in full swing all my fellow Fulbrighters will be juiced up with the powers of both American apple cider and Korean pumpkin sikhye.

Then, we will collectively be unstoppable. We’ll welcome the wind and the rain and the darkness of the fall season with mouthfuls of apple, pumpkin, and spice; with heartfuls of warmth, memories, and everything nice!

Part 1 : Korean Pumpkin Sikhye Makes about 8 liters which is a helluva lot of sikhye so either give it to friends, throw a party, drink it all yourself—pumpkin is good for digestion—or reduce the recipe.

Total time: 6 hours

Ingredients: ◊ 500 grams malted barley flour (엿질금3 - In Korea it’s kind of chunky but in the USA you might only be able to find finely ground malted barley flour...good luck to us) ◊ 8 liters of water ◊ 2 bowls of cooked rice ◊ 1.5 steamed sweet pumpkins, skin removed ◊ 5 palm-sized pouches of dried ginger root ◊ About 600 grams of sugar

Tools: ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Big mesh bag (like a cheese cloth) Big pot for the stove to steam and mix (찜통4) Large bowl Immersion blender, food processor, or blender Strainer, funnel Rice cooker or substitute (see recipe)

3 Pronounced “yeot-jil-geum” 4 Prounounced “jjim-tong”

Photo by Johanna Alexander Gumi-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do

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Directions: 1. Put barley flour into the bag and close it. Put it in a big bowl with 4 liters of water. Give it some massages and squeeze out that flavor. You’ll see the water turn milky white. Let it sit for a little and come back. Massage for a few more minutes. Repeat three times.

2. Put the cloudy barley water in the rice cooker with your 1-2 bowls of cooked rice (leave the bag in the bowl). Cook for 5 hours on the keep-warm (보온5) setting. If you don’t have a rice cooker you could use an instapot, crock pot, or leave it on your stove/in the oven on the LOWEST setting.

You’ll know it’s done when some rice floats to the top.

3. In the meantime, pour 4 more liters of water on your bag—if the quality of the barley flour is good, there should still be milky whiteness coming out. If it gets to the point where you can’t massage more cloudy liquid out, don’t add any more water. Let it rest until the rice from step 2 is done.

4. Steam the pumpkins and then remove the skin. Chop into chunks. When the rice from step 2 is all done, add some water from the uncooked barley bag bowl and blend with the pumpkins.

5. Pour your warmed barley and rice mix into the giant pot for the stove (if you don’t want much rice, use a strainer to separate the rice. Make sure to squeeze out the juice from the separated rice).

6. Add your pumpkin puree and all the extra uncooked barley water. Mix well.

7. Add dried ginger.

8. Bring the pot to a boil. Once boiling, add some sugar. The sugar is all to taste, but for 8 liters of water we used more than 500 grams. Add as much as you like. You can also add more after it’s completely boiled.

9. Boil for about 10 minutes. Let it cool to room temperature. Remove ginger pouches. Then funnel the sikhye into any storage bottle you want. Refrigerate and drink when it’s nice and cold. Make sure to give it a shake before pouring a glass.

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5 Pronounced “bo-ohn”

Part 2 : Spiced Apple Cider This recipe makes about 2 liters of hot spiced cider. If you want the classic version, just omit the four spices (they’re hard to get in Korea anyways).

Total time: 4 hours

Ingredients: ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

10-12 apples: any kind, preferably a sweeter kind.

1 whole unpeeled orange cut in half or half a cup of orange juice Water 4 cinnamon sticks 1 tsp whole cloves 1 tsp whole allspice 1 whole nutmeg (unground) ½ cup packed brown sugar

Directions: 1. Wash and quarter apples. Remove seeds (apple seeds have arsenic).

2. Add apples, spices, sugar, and orange to a pot and cover with at least two inches of water.

3. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer with a cover for 2 hours 4. Remove orange halves and mash up all the chunks.

5. Simmer uncovered for up to 1 more hour. Check on it every so often to taste the flavor and make sure you still have water left.

6. Cool completely.

7. Squeeze through a cheesecloth and a strainer and I mean REALLY work at it. Waste not want not my friends.

8. Enjoy hot (or cold, but hot is better).

Note: The cider we drink in the USA is slightly fermented, but this recipe is not. If you would like to ferment yours, I will leave that to you and your own google search bar, as I am no brewing master. You can tell the difference in taste, but it’s not so different that I wouldn’t call it apple cider.

Photo by Allie Easterbrook, Danyang-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do

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Photo by Christa Hoskins, Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do

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Cures For the Outside Looking In

By Katherine Seibert Much like any afternoon, my office mates and I took a stroll around our school after lunch. And, much like any afternoon, I was mostly quiet. At lunch, I had missed yet another conversation between my co-teacher and the woman sitting opposite to her. From the words I recognized, I guessed they were swapping plans about their summers.

When I lost the thread of what the conversation was about, I had resigned myself to listening for words or phrases in Korean I did know.

could be heard across the school. I, however, was more lost than ever.

It wasn’t until the woman from administration leaned to place a hand on my co-teacher’s stomach that I remembered I had just learned that my Fulbright co-teacher was pregnant. And, I realized, with her baby bump showing in her sundress, so was the woman we spoke to. Putting this together, I tried to tune back into the conversation. I did my best to keep up - yet there’s been no chapter in a beginner’s Korean textbook on “making office small talk about being pregnant” so my vocabulary was limited to catching due dates and hearing basic words like “아프다1”- hurt.

Being continually on the outskirts of a conversation I barely understand can be isolating, and this isolation can feel all-consuming. I cannot expect my co-teacher to stop and translate every conversation of which I stand on the edge. But still, it’s better to be in the conversation as op- What’s wonderful is that body language is univerposed to missing the chance to be present at all. sal, and women’s stories of children and motherhood are not that different from country to country.

This day was no different. Despite the summer Most of the Korean language evaded me in this heat descending upon Korea, everyone at school conversation, but the context and the body lanseemed determined to make loops around the worn guage - women swapping the questions of - how’s track until we were all sweaty. We walked in rel- your stomach? Are you eating okay? Does your ative silence, with my coworkers acknowledging back hurt? How far along are you? Six months? my occasional attempts to describe the weather or What date are you due? Oh, only one day before the school garden with patient smiles. We took a me! - and, the friendly teasing of - you’re not showfinal loop around the school and stopped to chat ing at all! Look at how skinny you are! - were all with a woman who worked in administration. The the same. Their hand gestures, waving in the air, conversation was the most animated of the after- mimicking a slim waist, were universal. noon - my co-teacher, who had mentioned how tired she was earlier that morning, suddenly be- Very soon there was a cluster of other teachers, came chatty. Hands resting protectively on their some older and younger women, chuckling and stomachs, they laughed so loudly I’m sure they 1 Pronounced “ah-peu-da”

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Photo by Andrianna Boykin, Gwangju

“What’s wonderful is that body language is universal...”

talking about how much they showed during their own pregnancies, how much their backs hurt, whether their first pregnancy was worse than the second. Older women shook their heads, smiling, as the younger expectant mothers supported their own aching backs. We were surrounded by communal joy, spurred by shared experiences.

How lovely community is in any language, and how grateful I was to stand on the outside looking in and see the joy. Afterwards, I asked my co-teacher to give me a rundown of the conversation. I was pleasantly surprised that most of my assumptions were correct, and she helped to fill in the gaps of what I missed mainly morning sickness remedies from the older women passed on from generation to generation. After sharing my own version of the conversation, my co-teacher seemed surprised at first that I understood, and then shrugged.

These conversations happen every day, all over the world, she said. Not just here.

It was a brief and welcome chance for me to feel connected to the people around me. On that after-lunch walk, the gap between my life and theirs didn’t seem that large.

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When did you try something new?

“When going with my host family to the beach, and to a river, I ended up trying several types of seafood.

My host father went diving and caught sea urchin and abalone himself, so I ended up tasting them both.

By the river, we tried catching river snails together, and it was my first time catching food, feet in the sand, walking upstream, with a beautiful setting sun and mountains as a backdrop.”

-Julia Wargo, 1st Year ETA Dosong Middle School

“One night around 11 pm as I was about to go to sleep my host mom called me into the kitchen. Her boyfriend and her had ordered raw beef for us to eat together as a late night snack. Why they thought that was the right time for me to try raw beef for the first time I have no idea.

Luckily it ended up being delicious even if a little slimy!”

-Martha Rubara, 1st Year ETA Kyunpook National University Elementary School

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From a Great Distance: Notes on Identity and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings

By Sarah Berg Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020) is a collection of personal essays that interrogate the contradictions inherent in the very idea of Asian American identity.

Simultaneously acerbic and thoughtful, the essays in Minor Feelings revisit periods of Hong’s life upon which a multiplicity of theses about Asian American existence are scaffolded with a stability that might be surprising if Hong didn’t take such care in illustrating each supporting point with bold, honest prose. For this Asian American, these essays are a revelation.

Hong and I have our differences (while we are both Korean American, I am 20 years younger and half white), but the way her topics resonated with me was uncanny—somehow, she directly referenced things that I knew. Reading the essays, I learned that, like me, Hong studied writing and art at a university in Ohio, navigated the deterioration of friendship through mental illness, and is drawn to the writers and artists Hito Steryl, Ocean Vuong, Emily Jungmin Yoon, Jos Charles, and most im-

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portantly to both of us, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Obviously, these interests are not exclusively mine, but to read a book that builds itself around a base of knowledge that I already had was wholly new.

Minor Feelings’ speculative underpinning revealed itself to me thusly, humming with what-ifs—what if the literary canon was not solely composed by and about white men, what if our art bore the merit it deserves, what if people’s experiences are not in fact universal, but inextricable from the racial identities we inhabit? It made me feel like an intelligent and credible reader, banishing the wariness that can accompany reading an identity text when you are of the identity in question—that anxious second self peering over your shoulder, asking nervously, “How will this deny your own ideas of yourself? Will you be okay with it?”

It is instinctual to fear these questions, but with “an unreliable narrator, hypervigilant to the point of being paranoid” like Hong, Minor Feelings allows readers to resist the idea that a book must be an echo chamber of affirmation or its author an

infallible source, a pressure that often falls upon writers of color (I would run out of fingers counting the times all heads turned expectantly toward me when a question nebulously about Korea would arise in my college classes). Some of my opinions differ from those expressed by Hong in the text. I, for example, bristled at her generalizing statements about Korean women being “so self-conscious about the size of their faces that they will go under the knife to shave their jawlines down,” but found that her commitment to feelings—as minor or as major as we find them to be—was a fitting driving force for such a reckoning. Direct, uncertain, messy, and purposeful, Hong’s words grant complexity to readers like me who have been led to believe that they must define themselves by a certain singular “we.”

Because it’s more than a chat about race. It’s ontological. It’s like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality.” Reading Minor Feelings, I found myself preemptively stifling my urge to recommend it to my white friends, knowing that somehow, I would end up having to explain such personal truths to them over and over again.

Something my white friends love is “representation,” an all-too-well-known literary buzzword that once may have oh-so-innocently referred to the deliberate media portrayal of certain groups or experiences but has since become disappointingly derivative. It’s something that my younger self wrung out books, movies, and music in an attempt to find before realizing that it exists only at the intersection of the white gaze and capitalist marketability.

Hong quotes poet Jos Charles in saying, “It is horrible to be tangible inside capital,” which succinctly describes the sickly disappointment I realized young me was experiencing. Even in the hands of the most well-intentioned creators, I found Asian American stories, in all their scarcity, to be devastatingly whitewashed. Why would I want to view myself as white people view me? It’s difficult to describe the dissonance that rings within my head when I see, for example, Vietnamese Lana Condor play half-white, half-Korean Lara Jean in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before1. It’s an adorable, well-acted movie adapted from a book by a Kore-

“Why would I want to view myself as white people view me?”

But what about readers not like me? As I turned the pages of Minor Feelings, I found myself repeatedly wishing that it had been taught in all my college classes, been made required reading for white classmates who took Asian/Asian American studies courses only to gain so-called “Global Initiatives” credits or learn how to do business with China. I thought not only about these classmates, but about my white friends, too. As genuinely well-intentioned as they are, it has always been the white people I love whose genuine innocence (ignorance) has done the most harm. In the essay titled “White Innocence,” Hong writes, “Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion.

1 Important to note that I have not read the book nor seen the second or third movies.

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“...questions of identity remain, hiding around every corner...”

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Photo by Nina Horabik, Suncheon-si, Jeollanam-do

an American writer, but when white friends gush about how it will make me feel seen, not even its plethora of strategically placed yogurt drinks can keep me from feeling that I’m really just being looked at, briefly and perhaps from a great distance. Are an “Asian”2 face and scattering of palatable cultural symbols all that are needed to conjure my image? If we want to free representation from its neoliberal bounds, we must commit to complexity, which Minor Feelings does. Hong thwarts the smug self-awareness that grants representation its invisible, performative capital R, resisting the commodification of the “Asian American experience” as purposefully and fearlessly as she lays bare her observations of it.

Dissonance is a steady presence in my life, but I encountered a new kind when I moved to Korea in 2019. Six months before the start of the pandemic, my face assumed a label I’d never really known: white. This is not to say that whiteness was not familiar with me; it had known me all my life, granting me privilege in ways I denied as only the privileged can. But here, it became frank and open. Where I had once been Asian American, I was now solely American, a concept associated with whiteness in Korea. In the essay “The Indebted,” Hong covers the essential history of the term “Asian American,” which was invented in 1968 by students at UC Berkeley “to inaugurate a new political identity . . . radicalized by the black power movement and the anti-colonial movement.” As I came of age in the states, I fully embraced “Asian American” as me and mine, and when I read Minor Feelings in the early months of 2020, I found myself comforted by the way I was transported back into all of the identity’s bright anger, pain, and solidarity—feelings that are precious belongings to me. But I soon realized that I was so used to defining my Asian American identity in terms of its resistance to whiteness that the dissonance I was experiencing was rooted in the fact that the only whiteness around to push against was my own.

Despite this realization, questions of identity remain, hiding around every corner and waiting to tear their victims into categorizable pieces. Hong writes on page 28, “What is us? Is there even such a concept as an Asian American consciousness?” An almost-answer comes on page 183, where she writes, “And so, like a snail’s antenna that’s been touched, I retracted the first person plural,” framing a collection that synthesizes a careful and deliberate analysis with the singularity of personal insight, rage, grief, and confusion. Reading this book gave me the push to realize that I can define myself, and over the past year, I’ve learned to seize all the questions and pluck the punctuation from their tails, relieving them (and me) of that uncomfortable interrogative lilt. In this way, Minor Feelings is not just a reckoning, but an essential tool, mirror, and companion that has irrevocably influenced this period of my life.

2 Scare quotes are necessary here as “Asian” is not a definitive physical descriptor.

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Monsoon Season

By Jame See Yang

Photo by Lulu Johnson, Busan

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“Despite last night’s heavy rainfall, the meadow glimmers under the sunlight.”

The remnants of last night’s horror still linger. Large pools of water fill the uneven, cracked cement. The weather is hazy—the old willow tree barely visible. My All-Stars are stained with the earth as I trudge through the trenches. A streak of light peeks through the clouds as they shift, the sky still painted grey. The ground squelches with each step as I raise my lens to scan the war-torn area.

Shutter.

The field of tall grass has been trampled; the survivors pinned by heavy droplets. An array of petals color the stone path as I set forth towards my destination. The daisies have been shaken up by the wind—their hair plucked away. The roses are nothing but their core. The less fortunate ones lie in the grass among their petals, while the others crouch over to protect their buds.

The dull grey filter washes their life away.

Shutter.

I continue onward over the hill and take a left at the fork. The sun’s warmth touches my back, and I turn to be greeted by a sliver of light. As the clouds pass by, I catch a glimpse of the blue behind them. Despite last night’s heavy rainfall, the meadow glimmers under the sunlight. My tracks come to a halt; I close my eyes and take in my surroundings. The fresh air fills my lungs, and the hint of sweetness fills my mind with ease. Unlike most neatly planted fields of tulips, hues of red, yellow and magenta scatter across the field. Some have their bulbs stretched open, whereas some hold their petals near and dear. The tulips stand proud, resisting the dewdrops that cling to them. Nevertheless, they are still saturated and lively. Their vibrancy shines through the grey filter and through the monsoon terror.

Shutter.

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Photo by Miles Yungsahm Miller 김영삼 金永森 Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

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Additional Photo Credits: Page 49 From Top Left: Photo by Christa Hoskins, Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do Photo by Allie Easterbrook, Iksan-si, Jeollanam-do Authentic Joy by Melissa Duong, Sacheon-si, Gyeongsangnam-do Page 59 From Top Left: Gimhae Bike Club by Rebecca Pankratz, Gimhae-si, Gyeongsangnam-do Self-Portrait by Miles Yungsahm Miller 김영삼 金永森, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. Gayageum Love by Brittany Parker, Gumi-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do Traditional Performance Group by Amari Brown, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon-do Page 69 From Top Left: Buddha by Katherine Seibert, Busan Sandwich and Fries by Mary Austin Willis, Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do Sunshsine and Rainbows by Madison Weisend, Masan-si, Gyeongsangnam-do

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