Fulbright Korea Infusion: Volume 8, Issue 1

INFUSION VOLUME 8, ISSUE 1

FULBRIGHT KOREA57

INFUSION VOLUME 8, ISSUE 1 MARCH 2015 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.

STAFF PUBLISHING ADVISOR Jai Ok Shim

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Josephine Reece

MANAGING EDITORS

A. Moriah Jones Dawn Angelicca Barcelona

DESIGN EDITOR Donald Bauer Jr.

PHOTO EDITORS Kelsey Hagenah Tiffany Monreal

WEB MANAGER Hillary Veitch

MONITORS

Phung Nguyen Teresa Baik

STAFF EDITORS

Gabrielle Nygaard Jina Choi Deborah Wood Emmy Mildenberg

Arria Washington Ivan Liang Kristen O’Brien Monica Heilman

Secret Garden. Donald Bauer Jr. Changdeokgung Palace, Seoul

CONTENTS 01 LETTERS

Jai Ok Shim & Ambassador Lippert

23 FINDING MY WAY HOME Carolyn Carpenter

Josephine Reece

27 PREVAILING STRUGGLE IN A LANDSCAPE OF THE PAST

05

33

03 FOREWORD

SNAPSHOTS

Gabrielle Nygaard

09 MANDARIN Sam Moser

Lindsay Burnette

KEEPING THE FAITH IN A FOREIGN LAND Leanndra Padgett

35 WEARY OF WARFARE Monica Heilman

15 HANA, DUL, SET Emmy Mildenberg

17 REALITY

Katelyn Hemmeke

42 EXPECTATIONS Nadia Ramirez

47 SPRING WILL COME

Diem-Tran (Bijou) Nguyen

LETTER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FROM THE

Dear Readers, I am honored to present Volume 8, Issue 1 of Infusion magazine. Every year I look forward to the newest issue of Infusion, which brings with it the opportunity to glimpse into the world of our grantees through literary pieces, photography and artwork. Infusion poignantly captures the diversity of the Fulbright experience and the lasting impact of the grantees’ times here in Korea. I applaud the contributors and the talented Infusion staff for their hard work producing this issue.

This year Infusion has grown to include a new online feature called Open Window which showcases the creativity of our English Teaching Assistants’ Korean students. Open Window provides students the opportunity to gain readership outside their schools and hometowns. This initiative is another example of our grantees’ efforts to utilize English as a means to empower their students. I encourage all readers to explore Infusion’s website, which in addition to Open Window, includes both the current and previous volumes of Infusion, restaurant reviews, and a monthly photography contest.

This fall also brought a change to the U.S. Embassy staff with the departure of Ambassador

Sung Kim and arrival of Mark Lippert in Korea.

Prior to arriving in Korea, Ambassador Lippert served as the Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, an important role that will aid him well in his current position. On behalf of the entire Fulbright Korea community, I would like to extend a warm welcome to Ambassador Lippert and his family.

As you flip through the pages of Infusion, I hope you will momentarily dip into the lives of our grantees and explore Korea through their eyes.

Whether you are a Fulbright alum, a parent, a friend, or simply interested in learning more about Korea, I sincerely hope you enjoy this intimate peek into the Fulbright Korea experience.

Warmest regards,

Jai Ok Shim Executive Director Korean-American Educational Commission

LETTER FROM THE AMBASSADOR Congratulations on the publication of the 8th issue of Infusion magazine! The creativity and thoughtful reflections in these pages highlight why the Fulbright program is so special in Korea.

I have seen the power of ordinary citizens make a difference in the lives of others through their willingness to represent the United States abroad.

The connections you make with your host families, your schools, and your communities in Korea will have far reaching effects. This is evident in the programs Fulbright English Teaching Assistants continue to create and expand each year, educating and encouraging less-privileged and under-represented communities in Korea.

It is an honor for me to serve my country as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, and I am proud to know that you share in this mission with me. Your willingness to live in a foreign country and your passion to teach and share the English language strengthens the close ties and friendship that makes the U.S.-Korea relationship so unique and wonderful.

Sincerely,

Mark W. Lippert

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FOREWORD JOSEPHINE REECE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Last year Infusion transitioned from being an annual to a biannual publication with a spring and a winter issue. Beyond the ability to publish more outstanding ETA, researcher and alumni work, the winter issue provides grantees the opportunity to record their experiences in Korea from a point of exploration, rather than conclusion. From December to June many ETAs and researchers find that their interests and priorities have changed. The winter issue allows us a glimpse into the struggles that make that change possible.

Struggle is a word that comes up often in this issue of Infusion. Our authors struggle for perfection, for a sense of home, for connections with students, for religious community and for racial equality and understanding. These struggles are often painful and confusing. As Monica Heilman notes in “Weary of Warfare” it is all too easy to shut problems out, especially when adjusting to a new environment.

More difficult is embracing that experience for what it is when we are feeling powerless.

One of my students once told me with a smile on her face, that “Korea is amazing nation of

endurance.” At first I thought it was a strange source of pride, especially coming from a middle school student, but the more I thought about this phrase, the more it resonated with me. Korea has certainly endured a lot. 2014 alone saw the nation draw together as they struggled nationally with the Sewol ferry tragedy. However, the national response to this event, which drew volunteers and donations from every corner of the country, illustrates the Korean commitment to persevere together.

As ETAs and researchers involved in their communities, our authors also draw attention to the daily struggles they witness in Korea. From farmers fighting to maintain their livelihood in the face of aggressive globalization to a young woman striving to build a home outside of North Korea, our authors celebrate the abilities of the Korean people to endure, adapt and grow.

I hope the stories and photos contained in these pages will challenge and inspire you to do the same.

Please enjoy Infusion, Volume 8 Issue 1.

Mud Experience. Erin Slocum. Mokpo

Safety First. Erin Slocum. Mokpo

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: SNAPSHOTS An Expanding Sense of Home GABRIELLE NYGAARD

Windows It’s already getting hot in Korea. Late April and it was pushing 80 degrees last week. Students beg me to turn on the fans, chanting “I love 선풍기”1 (“fan” is just one of those vocabulary words they can’t seem to lock down, as “달리다”2 is for me in Korean), and already I work up a sweat from the amount of flailing and pacing just one of my lessons involves.

In the morning I throw my classroom windows wide open as soon as I arrive. Like clockwork, a certain co-teacher waits until I’m busy teaching and then slides them shut one by one while I watch helplessly from my place at the front of the room.

We all suffer through the next 45 minutes of stuffy air and the body odor pubescent boys are so great at producing, then I open the windows again when my co-teacher leaves between periods. She of course repeats the process as soon as I start my next lesson, and we continue this dance for the next seven hours.

South Korea’s culture of indirectness isn’t a problem for me, being fluent in passive aggression.

Once it gets truly hot, my next move should probably be to lodge a broomstick in the windowsill to prevent it from being closed. Or maybe I could even borrow the piece of metal siding my cutesy, 애교3 co-teacher is fond of brandishing at the students; it looks like the perfect size for the job.

Talk about two birds with one stone. My classroom could be a place of air circulation and non-violence.

I can dream, anyway.

Seonpunggi, electric fan Tallida, to run 3 Aegyo, acting cute; affected sweetness 1 2

Naps A student cried in my class for the first time.

Some girls called me over and pointed at a boy, indicating that it was his doing. I looked back and forth between them trying to figure out what to do, but blanking except for the urge to hug the girl.

Thankfully, in one of his rare but dramatic moments of assistance, my co-teacher rose from his seat and stepped in, leading the two away to sort it out in a language they could all understand.

Ultimately, I am glad to have co-teachers.

They don’t always help me; sometimes they even complicate things, but if nothing else they can add an element of surprise. Last week I used a “talking ball” for an activity where only the person holding the ball could answer the question before passing it on. Unfortunately my co-teacher woke up from his nap in the back of the room just as a boy nearby caught the ball, and not knowing what was going on, angrily snatched it away from the student and hurled it into the garbage can before we could stop him. As he smirked at me triumphantly as if to say “you’re welcome,” I had to attempt to explain the situation and fish the ball out of the trash with everyone looking on in stunned silence. His smile broke as he realized that this time he was not the benevolent hero, swooping in to dry the tears and save the day, but the bad guy himself. Perhaps my “no sleeping” rule should apply to co-teachers as well.

Since then, my co-teacher hasn’t been napping in my class. But I do catch him sitting in the back laughing gleefully at something on his computer during my lessons. It’s a little rude. If he knows where the good cat videos are at, he could at least share them.

Ours “우리 갸비,” I overhear my host mother explain to a curious customer in her restaurant where I sit eating dinner, “our Gabi is a teacher at the middle school.” It’s amazing how anchoring two small syllables can be.

I came to this country with just a slippery grasp of the alphabet and a handful of phrases.

Carving out your place in a new community is challenging enough with the ability to understand and be understood. But as days, and then months, unfolded, I chipped away at the language barrier and in its place attempted to lay the foundations of a home. Though I can now hold a basic conversation in Korean, the endeavor is ongoing, both wielding the language and forging a life here. At the outset, I often found myself saying “here” when I meant America. This was not only 5000 miles off the mark, but a panging reminder of my failure to acclimate to my surroundings. But eventually, I noticed I called the place I live with my host family “home” without it feeling unnatural or untrue.

Still, this feeling of belonging is not unshakeable.

Some days, the only thing I want is to be lying in my bed, my real bed, or to smell the Oregon rain.

Others, I feel so comfortable and right where I am that I can’t begin to fathom living elsewhere. In even the smallest of successes; mailing a package, filling a prescription without help—or English; I can almost hear the scrape of cement as another brick is laid, my place secured a little more firmly. Some days bring backslides. It shakes your confidence and feels like a painfully obvious metaphor to sit in the rain, locked out of “your” house. But cracks can be repaired, the little moments can act as plaster.

Simply being called “uri”—ours—imparts a sense of belonging that redeems almost any slight.

Almost.

It’s a work in progress.

Brothers We were having a beer after a Saturday night Easter church service when my host mother enlisted her son to translate something for her. Through him, she told me a worker at the grocery store down the street asked if I was her daughter-in-law. “What?!”

I burst out laughing. My host brother, Hungyo, is 15, but I’m used to being mistaken for younger than my 22 years. Right before I left for Korea, when I was on a walk with my little brother Kadon, a boy he rides the bus with saw us and yelled “Hey! HEY! HEY! HI!” until he was acknowledged, the way middle school boys do. My brother reported back that the next day at school he was asked if the girl he was walking with was his girlfriend. So what struck me as weird this time was that someone thought that Hungyo and I actually looked old enough to be married. I certainly don’t feel old enough for it.

Though I guess I am, if the amount of last name changes on my Facebook feed or the deluge of baby pictures I suddenly have to scroll through on Instagram are any indication.

The next day when my host brother returned to his dorm, I found a wrapper from some cheese he had apparently eaten and left in the bathroom.

I’m pretty sure this exact thing has happened to me before in Oregon. It appears that teenage boys round the world will eat anything, anywhere, any time, not to mention hog the bathroom for hours doing mysterious things when all you want to do is get in there to brush your teeth. Sometimes Hungyo reminds me so much of Kadon that it’s eerie, like maybe I didn’t really leave home at all but was just transplanted into an alternate universe where socks with sandals are an acceptable fashion choice and sweet potato is both a cake flavor and a pizza topping.

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Friends A student tried to hold my hand while I was walking down the long school driveway. Had it been a girl, it wouldn’t have been a problem.

Skinship4 is a fascinating part of Korean culture.

But it was a 9th grade boy, something that would be easily misconstrued in the U.S., so I busied my hands with my phone to avoid wrestling with the question of appropriateness. I’m a decade older than my youngest students, but I feel like their peer. When my host mother talks about them, she doesn’t refer to them as my students (학생들) but my friends (친구들). And they themselves have told me that that’s what they are, which is such a relief. I’m glad to know the feeling is mutual. I see myself in my students all the time and their wisecracks have me laughing so hard it hurts. The other day when we were doing a “My Future Pet” worksheet, I pointed at the turtle a student was drawing and asked “what is it?”, trying to elicit the English word for the animal. But she was much too clever for my easy question. Without hesitation, she quipped with what is probably the exact line I would have used: “My boyfriend!”

When I came to Korea, I didn’t think my middle school placement would mesh. My 4

first reaction was “Why me?” I’m not loud or exuberant, I thought. I’m never going to keep up with these pre-teens. But I was wrong. Maybe the person behind the curtain who ignored my request to teach high school saw something in me that I didn’t, or maybe it was pure chance, but my students and I just get along. We listen to the same boy bands. If I had more free time, I’d spend it playing League of Legends. I can make an aside that Pokémon is superior to Digimon in class without anyone missing a beat. My girls are on a constant mission to steal my Hello Kitty silly band, and I would trade them backpacks in a heartbeat.

In Korea, friends can hold hands and teachers can show their love for their students. So I make hearts with my arms and tell them I love them, even if the words get a little caught in my American throat.

Gabrielle Nygaard is a 2013-2015 ETA currently at Gwangju Girl’s High School. She previously taught at Jeonggwang Middle School in Gwangju.

Expressions of friendship through platonic touch and physical intimacy

Untitled. Laura Ahn. Dalian, China

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MANDARIN a short story SAM MOSER Hotel management had their wings pinioned.

That’s to say someone surgically amputated their pinion joints with sharp scissors to render them flightless. A few months back, as part of a concerted business strategy to attract more young couples, the hotel had decided to obtain two mandarin ducks for the lobby pond. Mandarin ducks keep their mates for life, and as such, they have come to represent fidelity, peace, and plentiful offspring. The idea was that they would be the lobby’s spiritual pièce de résistance, a mascot of the resort’s overall romantic milieu. The intended illusion was short lived, however; the female died that winter from a bacterial infection in her wing, leaving her partner to a degenerate solitude.

Spring had just begun, and most suites at the Royal Hotel were booked for a month solid by tourists wishing to herald the birth of Jeju’s famous king cherry blossoms. The Royal Hotel, or simply “the Royal,” was the pearl of southern Jeju Island.

It was a massive building, an eight-tiered octagonal edifice of white that surged from the black basalt at its feet. The grounds surrounding the hotel formed a peninsular embankment that was lined by fields of rapeseed flowers, swelling with a signature aureolin yellow that ran down to the ocean like paint, and then, without much warning, poured off the obsidian cliffs and into the primordial entropy of salt, wave, and rock 70 feet below.

A hushed “geonbae,” barely audible from the now-

empty dining hall, floated through the crack in the kitchen door to the tune of clinking shot glasses. It was well past closing, and everyone had left the hotel restaurant for the night, all except two waiters, who sat drinking around a wide, stainless steel table in the corner of the kitchen. A single lamp hung over the table and bathed the walls in a hazy, incandescent glow. Earlier that day, a 75-year-old dishwasher had been fired, and though the old man had already left the hotel for the last time some hours before, the two waiters thought they should at least do something to commemorate him.

“He’ll be alright,” said the older waiter, a man in his early 40s. He was the closest thing to a friend that the old dishwasher had in the kitchen. “He can always make some money picking cardboard in the city.” After all, it was not that unusual to see the elderly collecting trash on the side of the road. He knocked back a glass of soju.

“But I heard he’s not well,” said Minjae. The younger waiter had been hired that same week, straight out of university. He had decided to move back from Seoul to his parents’ apartment in Seogwipo, hoping to save up some money while he studied to become an English teacher. He threw the soju to the back of his throat, politely covering the glass with his hands. Minjae refilled his elder’s glass, supporting his pouring arm with his left hand under his right elbow. “How will his wife take it?”

“She passed away a couple months ago.”

The older man pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

Minjae’s eyes drifted down to the cigarette in the man’s outstretched hand.

“Smoke?”

“No, thank you. I’m okay.”

The older man stood up and turned on the stove hood, mechanically placing the cigarette in the cradle of his lips. “He’s lived alone ever since his wife passed.”

“How did she—?”

“Alzheimer’s.” He turned on a stove burner and leaned over, lighting the cigarette in his mouth.

Sitting back down, he crossed his right leg over his left and blew a plume of smoke towards the kitchen vent. The man brought the glass to his lips, the cigarette still dangling between his index and middle finger, and winced at the liquor’s familiar causticity as he swallowed.

“Is it true what they say?” asked Minjae.

“That depends.”

“I heard he tried to kill himself.”

He nodded once. “He waited two days after her funeral. His neighbor found him.”

“Why did he do it?”

“Who can say?”

“Won’t he get his pension?”

“No. Hasn’t saved much, either. He put a lot of money into his kids’ education. That was his pension.”

“What will he do?”

“I know he gets something from the veterans group, and I’m sure he can get a welfare check from the government. That depends on if he can prove his children are unwilling or unable to support. Do you have any idea how shameful that must be to admit that your children have neglected you? I don’t think I could go through with it.”

Minjae understood perfectly well. Though his parents were not particularly well off, he knew they would do anything for him, spend any amount of won to help him succeed. After all, they had lived

separate lives as migrating “goose parents” until he had graduated from high school. When Minjae was 12, he moved to Jeju with his mother to enroll in a British-run private school, and his father stayed behind on the mainland, tied to work, all in order to give him an upper hand for when he would have to take the suneung. Their final sacrifice was to support his choice to become an English teacher, despite their wishes that he choose a better-paying career. He was their only child. Did he have it in him to abandon them in their old age? He didn’t like to think so.

“Nevertheless—” The older waiter took another drag from his cigarette. “It’s not enough. He’s in quite a bit of debt. His wife—” “But you said he has kids.”

“Three.”

“And?” “They all refuse to support him, financially. He said to me once that one of his sons refuses to return his calls.”

I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, thought Minjae. It seemed to him to be the worst kind of punishment imaginable, to be forgotten. He thought again of his parents.

The older man began. “You know—” “How about we talk about something else?”

“Let me speak.”

Minjae was silent.

“Now, if he had raised his kids properly, they’d be with him, supporting him. That’s my thinking. That’s how I’ve raised my children.

Once they stop respecting you as they should, the rest will soon follow.”

Minjae nodded.

“I’ve offered him money,” resumed the older waiter, “but he had too much pride to accept it.

He would go on about how he ‘didn’t want to be a burden,’ and how he didn’t want to harm his children’s chances of success. It’s out of our hands.”

Though he was young, Minjae could tell things were different than they had been before. Like reading the rings of an old tree, he could see a disruption in the grain of his country, an unraveling

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of the fabric that had wrapped it for centuries.

“What did he do before coming here?”

“Car plant. A decent-paying job, actually.

Well, decent enough to get his kids through all the private academies. Now look at him, a mouse in an earthen jar.”

They raised their glasses in agreement and took a drink. Minjae, ever sensitive to the emptiness of his senior’s cup, poured him another. Setting the empty bottle back on the table, Minjae put his hands in his pockets and directed his eyes to the tinplated face of the moon, visible through the kitchen window. “Aigo,” he breathed.

A cloud blocked the light of the moon, revealing Minjae’s reflection in the glass. It seemed as if the room was sagging in around him. Just then, Minjae felt the subtle shadow of a thought ripple over his slightly buzzed brain, almost unperceivable to his consciousness, like the brush of a feather over a forearm. Or perhaps Minjae was unwilling to perceive it, unwilling to accept his own embryonic thought. It was the void he sensed, a shade of the solitude in which the old man existed, and he shuddered at such nothingness. It was like imagining the bottom of the ocean, like being exiled to the moon. There were others, undoubtedly, forming a vast archipelago in the void. The cloud passed, and the room inhaled like a lung.

The older waiter blew out a trail of smoke, watching it dance in the amber light. He opened his mouth slightly as if to speak, then, thinking against it, closed it once more. He took another drink and reflected. After a minute the waiter began again: “I asked him what it was like to grow old once. This was before his wife had passed. You know what he said? He told me ‘it’s like getting in a hot shower that gradually grows cold.’” The older man

was staring over Minjae’s shoulder, as if talking to someone far away.

“Watch it,” said Minjae, gesturing to the ember between his fingers. Sitting up, the older waiter leaned over the table to crush his cigarette butt into an empty glass, yet missed it entirely, pushing the ashes into the table. “You know, Minjae. You should really find a girl.” With a wavering hand he offered another bottle of soju. Minjae politely took the bottle and filled both glasses, however he had no intention of finishing his own.

“Do you think they’ll let me work more shifts next week?”

“Ah, I see,” the older man said with a smirk.

“What’s that?”

“Does she have a name?”

Minjae sighed and glanced at his watch.

“Don’t let this whole business bother you,” the older waiter said, leaning back. “You’re young. You need to enjoy life a little. You know, the old man would tell me stories of the times—right after the war, way before you or I were born, when everyone you knew had nothing. The whole country was nothing. Look where we are now.” The waiter hiccupped and put both hands on the table, letting out a shallow laugh. “What I’m trying to say is don’t saddle yourself with the misfortunes of the world. If you’re lucky, you’ll find yourself someone to love—or at least something to love. Don’t let it go, you hear?”

“I understand, I think,” said Minjae. He stood up. “I’m sorry. I should be getting home. My folks are probably worried.”

“I’ll close tonight, then” “You sure?”

“Turn the light off on the way out, will you? I’ll be right behind you.”

He did and looked back towards the interior.

Moonlight was streaming in through the kitchen window, turning the naked metal of the table to ice.

“He’ll be alright,” said the waiter without looking up.

“Need help getting home?”

“I’m fine.”

“See you tomorrow, then,” he said, bowing his head.

“Yes, goodnight.”

Minjae walked through the lobby on his way to the parking lot. He noticed the solitary drake, drifting listlessly among the indifferent koi fish.

He wished he had brought something from the kitchen to feed it. ‘You’ve been abandoned too,’ he thought, another tired tradition slipping away into the obscurity of night. ‘Look where we are now,’ he thought.

On the car ride back, Minjae carried on the conversation in his head. The shower. The water’s hot and you’re young. Life’s enjoyable, maybe even great. Then gradually, almost unnoticeable, the water grows tepid. You blink and it’s cold, uncomfortably so. The laws of thermodynamics are working against you now. You’re 80, fastened to a body well past its twilight. A ragged coat on a hanger. The water’s unbearably cold and you consider stepping out of the shower.

When Minjae returned to his room he fell onto his bed, exhausted. Yet as he lay there he was not able to find the numbing embrace of sleep. It was so dark in his room that he couldn’t tell if his eyes were closed or not, yet the swirling movements in his mind were vivid and restless. He could see his mother and his father, and he could see them floating away, silently, into oblivion, beyond the reach of memory. He knew he loved them very much, and it disturbed him that he had the capacity, and yes,

sometimes even the unthinkable impulse, to leave his parents behind and live his own life. ‘Was it their fate as well,’ he thought, ‘to become living gwisin, ghosts unable to find peace, damned to drift over the dirt like a whisper in a noisy room? Can I be a good son and still desire to have my whole life?’ These thoughts carried him into the morning.

Golden daylight filtered through the curtains of his bedroom window. He gave up trying to sleep, slipped on a sweater over his nightclothes, and stumbled out into the kitchen to make some coffee.

He looked out the balcony window of the apartment and took in the fiery tranquility before him. There were thin, white clouds in the distance, casting their shadows onto the shimmering mosaic of the ocean’s surface. The same sun that set the night before was rising again, as it ever had, heralding the emerging day. Minjae fixed his eyes on the razor-sharp equilibrium of red and blue that split the morning in half, and he wondered if the old man would ever find such serenity.

A couple months later, the mandarin escaped from the hotel lobby by climbing up the rocks that lined the pond and waddling out the front door of the lobby while it was being propped open for a guest. The first thing the valet saw after the thump was a flurry of red-white feathers drifting down in the hot glare of the headlights, reminding him, oddly enough, of cherry blossoms.

Sam Moser is a 2014-2015 ETA at Jeonmin Middle School in Daejeon.

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Gwangali’s Night Light. Neal Singleton. Busan

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HANA, DUL, SET...

HANA, DUL, SET...

HANA, DUL, SET EMMY MILDENBERG “하나, 둘, 셋...하나, 둘, 셋...하나, 둘, 셋.”1 Across from me, Chung Haram is practicing making straight lines. She counts to three each time, lifting her brush slightly up and back as she says each number and then pushing it forward again, the brush never leaving the page, so that the line resembles a tree branch. However, at the age of six she doesn’t really care that the lines aren’t straight or that the tree branch approach is supposed to be subtle. In fact, the large strokes are painfully crooked and from my vantage point they hardly look like lines at all — more like squiggly worms. However, when she tells our 선생님2 that she is finished yelling “다 했어요!”3 she is told “ 잘 썼어요”4 and happily leaves her work to go play outside.

I love calligraphy because it is the calmest part of my day. The process of learning it has also proved rather entertaining. Today, however, the middle school boys in the back corner are really driving me crazy. There may only be three of them, but their voices are a constant buzz. Occasionally their ceaseless chatter will prompt the 선생님 to yell at them — telling them to either be quiet or go outside.

Although she never makes good on these threats, it is

soothing to me just to be reminded that I’m not their teacher, this is not my classroom, and I don’t have to deal with it.

I joined a calligraphy hagwon5 a few months ago because honestly I was bored. There aren’t a lot of gyms near me and certainly no Korean classes.

Faced with the choice of joining my host siblings in swinging swords at hapkido6 or wasting away in the apartment I opted to go outside my comfort zone and take calligraphy. I spent about a week walking by the hagwon, trying to peer in through the window and see if the people inside looked friendly. I finally dragged my host sister with me one afternoon, knowing that if I took her with me I might finally go inside and sign up for a class. The ice cream we ate afterwards was a reward for her as much as it was for me.

My middle school has 523 students whom I see once a week, if that, and there just isn’t enough time to get to know them like I want to. My hagwon has 10 kids, four of whom are my besties. I love the simple fact that I know all of their names (even if you always think I mess yours up, Byeon Ji Yeon!7) I love that I can share my candy with them and not break the bank or feel guilty for not sharing with everyone.

Hana, dul, set… “One, two, three... one, two, three....one, two, three.”

Sunsaengnim, teacher 3 ‘Da haesseoyo,’ “[I’m] all done!”

4 ‘Jal sseosseoyo,’ “[You] wrote well.”

5 Hagwon, private academy 6 Hapkido, Korean martial art 7 변지연, a 7 year old who asked that her name be included in the piece 1 2

I love that I get to see them everyday and just talk about their lives.

I won’t claim to have any particular talent at calligraphy, but the seven-year-olds think I’m pretty amazing. I don’t tell them that my more developed fine motor skills are the reason I have such ‘talent.’ I tend to think I am terrible at it, but I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy them ‘oohing’ and ‘awing’ at my work.

When the radio is off, and the middle school boys are quiet, the sound of my brush on the paper is the only thing you can hear. I am attempting to make the perfect “ㅈ” sheet and it’s not going so well. I practice on newspaper at least four times before I make the final copy, and this is after weeks in September of practicing each letter individually. I am currently working on kerning,8 but rest assured I will soon be on to real words.

Despite how wonderful the kids seem to think I am at this, I can see all my mistakes like they are written in red ink. The letters don’t quite line up.

My name in Chinese looks sloppy. That line is too thick. This line is crooked. My mind is always helpfully supplying these mistakes but my hand isn’t cooperating in fixing them. I am caught in between leaving it alone and living with the mistake as is or trying to fix it and potentially making it much worse.

I’ve taken both roads before and neither is kind. 선생님 has told me a hundred times “잘 썼어요” or the same sentiment of “well done” that Chung Haram got for her squiggly worms, which is why I usually don’t believe her. Today, however, she offers me some different advice. Smiling sweetly, she says “I’ve been doing this my whole life, and you have been doing it for two months, of course it won’t be perfect.” And just like that I’m freed.

I’m free from the expectation that my calligraphy will be perfect, but this also rings true for my life at school and helps me to feel free from the struggle to 8

be the perfect teacher.

These past few months teaching have made me face plenty of failures in the classroom. I’ve struggled with deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy coupled with a burning desire to do better and not really being able to figure out how. Sometimes I will re-write a lesson after every time I teach in order to get that much closer to this idea of perfection I have in my mind. But it is time to free myself from that perfection. Because once I am free from this fictitious standard I have set, I can be free of that agonizing feeling of disappointment that won’t leave me alone.

Free to make mistakes because I’m also free to keep trying. Maybe it won’t be ‘perfect,’ but at least I’ll know I tried my best.

When I finish making a final copy of the day’s work on the special calligraphy paper, I used to wrap it in newspaper and throw it in an evergrowing stack under my desk. Now when I look at my artwork I look for the little things that let me know the piece is mine. That line that is extra thick because I was trying to make it look more straight.

The way I write my name in Chinese because I can never remember the stroke order. These are just reminders that I made it — and I’m really proud of that. Maybe one day I will feel that way about more things in my life, but for now I’ve taken to hanging my artwork on the wall.

Emmy Mildenberg is a 2014-2015 ETA at Seogwipo Girl’s Middle School in Seogwipo, Jeju Island.

The process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a way that is proportional and visually pleasing

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REALITY KATELYN HEMMEKE After more than six months at my placement, I had never even seen him.

“Your new homestay father will be Mr. Park, the third grade math teacher,” my co-teacher told me at the beginning of my second semester. After my only host sister moved into the school dormitory and my host mother scheduled knee surgery in the spring, my co-teacher decided that I needed a new homestay.

But I had never met Mr. Park, the homeroom teacher for class 3-3 and apparently a longtime employee at my all-girls’ high school. I didn’t teach the third graders, so I had little occasion to go into the third grade teachers’ gyomushil 1 or the third grade classrooms on the second floor. I had never seen him in the hallways or the cafeteria or the main gyomushil on the first floor. A lunch outing arranged by my co-teacher was the first time we met.

Mr. Park was a solemn-faced man who spoke no English and had a slight saturi 2 lilt to his Korean.

He wore pastel-colored polo shirts and dark slacks every day. His wife owned a hagwon3 for elementary schoolers, and his two children — a boy who was about my age and a girl who was a few years younger — were both university students.

“Mr. Park says he will treat you like the first daughter,” my co-teacher said, beaming as he helped

Teachers’ office Regional dialect 3 Private academy 4 The Korean university entrance exam 5 ‘Jal ja,’ “Sleep well.”

1 2

me move into the Park family’s brand-new apartment at the end of March.

Because he was a homeroom teacher for third graders — students in their final year of high school and hard at work studying for the suneung 4 — my new host father rarely came home before 10:00pm.

On occasions when he returned home before the rest of us had gone to bed, we spent a bit of time eating fruit together in the living room. Usually, my host father would silently eat a few slices of yellow melon or pear and then, with a nod and a mumbled “잘 자,5” retreat to his room.

“My husband, very little talk,” my host mother said, shaking her head and laughing. “But with you, he try talk very much.”

And he did, usually in random bursts of conversation as we made the short drive to school every morning. He never listened to the radio, never turned on the TV in the dashboard, rarely used the GPS. There was only silence until he would suddenly ask something without prelude: How old do you want to be when you get married? Do you have a driver’s license? Is American university difficult? Our conversations never got very far, usually cut short by my lack of Korean vocabulary.

He could always tell when I didn’t understand. “You

don’t know what I’m saying, huh,” he would say before lapsing into silence with a little oh-well smirk.

I couldn’t imagine him at the front of a classroom, scrawling endless parades of math equations across the dusty chalkboard and holding the attention of 30 over-stressed, sleep-deprived high school girls with integrals and functions for 50 minutes at a time. But my students seemed to like him. “He is very cute, very kind,” they told me. “He is good teacher. Maybe you are lucky to have 충기쌤6 for homestay.”

But all of us were always so busy — my host parents with their long days at work, me with my own teaching obligations and extracurricular activities — that my host family’s beautiful new apartment was more often empty than it was occupied. And after just a couple of months with the Park family, I moved into my own apartment for my second grant year. After I moved out, we were rarely able to meet — my host mother was busy moving her hagwon to a new building, and my host father worked long hours at school, preparing the third graders for the suneung that fall.

The week before the suneung, the class captain of my host father’s homeroom, Ju Yeon, posted a screenshot from her phone on Facebook. While the students were at school studying late at night, Ju Yeon texted my host father: “배고파요 쌤” (“We’re hungry, Teacher”). My host father asked how many students were studying in the classroom. Ten minutes later, he texted Ju Yeon back and told her to meet him at the school entrance, where he brought food and drinks for all of the students in his homeroom. I smiled at Ju Yeon’s picture of her classmates, wrapped in bright fleece blankets and happily displaying their feast, beaming despite the bags under their eyes.

6

Several days later, the third grade hallway was silent and empty. After finishing the suneung, the third graders had no reason to attend school anymore. They no longer scurried across the second floor, brushing their teeth or fluffing their bangs or chasing after the teachers with squeals of “쌤!” and piles of textbooks in their arms. Most of them were free to savor full nights of sleep and movie outings with friends and part-time jobs, to look forward to attending university in a few months’ time. A handful of them whose scores “weren’t good enough” faced 365 more days of endless studying before they could take a second shot at the grueling nine-hour exam.

Subdued by the sudden absence of a third of my school’s student body, I practically tiptoed up the stairs to the third grade hallway in search of my host father. I had forgotten to return my apartment gym key after I moved out, and my host sister needed it to replace hers.

“Just give key to my father,” she texted me.

I peered into the third-grade gyomushil. Most of the teachers were there, organizing files and making records of where their students had been admitted to university, but my host father’s desk was unoccupied. I turned and headed down the dim hallway to see if he was in his classroom.

Before I reached class 3-3, I heard the hollow ppak - ppak - ppak of a ping-pong ball bouncing on tile.

Ppak - ppak - ppak. I frowned. My host father was a champion ping-pong player — his trophies adorned several cabinets and shelves in the apartment — but why would he be playing at school?

Peeking through the narrow window in the door, the first things I saw were the desks. The desks and chairs were still arranged in testing rows, wide spaces gaping between each empty seat. They had been scrubbed

Jung Gi Ssaem; Mr. Park’s full name is Jung Gi Park, and “ssaem” means “teacher.”

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Clams and Other Discoveries. Neal Singleton. Hongseong

Changseung in Cheongyang. Neal Singleton. Cheongyang

clean of the students’ scribbles declaring their chicken cravings and test loathings and undying love for K-pop stars. Many of the chairs were strewn askew from the desks, probably pushed there by students eager to rush out of the school and leave the suneung behind them.

And then I saw my host father. He was standing next to the podium at the front of the room, staring at the back wall with his face set in its usual solemn expression. He tossed a white ping-pong ball into the air and, flicking his wrist, hit it with a red paddle; the ball flew past the desks and hit the wall — ppak — bounced once on the floor — ppak — and came back to the front of the room, where my host father snatched the ball as it bounced back and sent it flying — ppak — again, again, again.

“Everything is finished and I can not realize the reality,” one of my students texted me right after completing the suneung. I had tried to imagine the reality of spending my entire K-12 education with the suneung — an exam that literally shuts down the country for a day — looming at the end of the tunnel. I had tried to imagine what it must feel like to have such high stakes riding on one day, one test, and what it must feel like to have that test finally

behind you, for better or for worse.

But in that moment, as I saw my host father in his empty classroom, I tried to fathom a different reality: the reality of more than twenty years of pouring long hours into a room full of young minds, of helping students through one of the most grueling education systems in the world, of seeing them off into the next stage of their lives — and the reality of an empty classroom after everything was finished, year after year, with nothing but vacant desks and the ppak - ppak - ppak of a ping-pong ball striking the wall again, again, again.

Katelyn Hemmeke was a 2012-2014 ETA at Wonkwang Girl’s High School in Ilsan, Jeollabuk-do. She is now a master’s candidate studying ethnic literature at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.

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Ping Pong Lunch Break. Karl Schutz. Uiseong

(Are You) Up There. Erin Hassanzadeh. Daegu

조심 (‘Josim’, Careful). Laura Ahn. Bukhansan, Seoul

Teaching the Way a Student Learns. Quan Quan Nguyen. Bono Middle School in Asan

22

FINDING MY WAY HOME CAROLYN CARPENTER AMY OH

IN COLLABORATION WITH

The following is written from the perspective of one of my students. The events are all real although some of the details have been altered. “七顚八起(칠전팔기): 七(칠) seven, 顚(전) to lie face down, 八(팔) eight, 起(기) to stand up.”

To fall down seven times but to rise up again eight, to relentlessly persevere despite facing numerous obstacles. At last after hours of copying ancient proverbs, I wrote my name, Oh Eun Soon, on my homework and drifted off to sleep.

The next morning is all a daze. At first, I did not recognize her but in my heart I knew she was my sister. We made small talk because the conversation we were really having was too dangerous to be spoken out loud. The truth is that I was living in China with a Chinese family, eating Chinese food, and going to a Chinese school. However, I am not Chinese. I was born in North Korea. Eight years ago my parents placed me under the care of a family in China. I pretended to be their child but it did not take long before the five of us were all part of the same family.

Now the time had come for me to go and reunite with my biological parents. They were beckoning for me and so I followed them.

That day I skipped school and vanished without a trace. Just like that I was gone, on my way to South Korea. After growing so close to my family in China, we were afraid they would try to prevent me from

leaving. This meant that I could not even say thank you or goodbye to the only family I had known for eight years. I want them to know that I love them, that I am doing well, and that none of this was my choice. However, I do not believe there will ever come a day when I can relay my message to them.

I am not the only one who could not say goodbye like this. My story is not an anomaly. Most people like me who migrate from North Korea to China, to a third country like Thailand and then finally to South Korea spend a long time doing so. With no passport, traveling through airport security becomes as dangerous as trekking through the jungle. The journey from North Korea to South Korea can take months or even years but for me I was simply whisked away, thrust back into the care of my long lost family. Before I knew it I was on a plane to South Korea.

Almost immediately after our plane landed, government officials were questioning me about my hometown. This is a common practice for the South Korean government in order to gather intelligence on North Korea. However in my case, this was a futile exercise. I honestly do not remember anything.

I can speak Korean but I left when I was too young to comprehend anything that was going on around me, much less anything useful nearly a decade later.

After relentlessly asking me questions and realizing that I did not have any valuable information, the

officers desperately wanted to end the interview. They proceeded to ask a question anyone would know the answer to. It happened to be everyone except for me.

“Do you look more like your mother or your father?” they inquired.

“I look more like my father,” I replied randomly guessing.

The next day my parents joined us. It was then the officers joked,“You look more like your mother, you don’t even know that!” I guess randomness was not on my side. Later that night I reexamined my face in the mirror and I realized they were right. I do look more like my mother. This incident reflected our reality. For the first time in nearly 10 years my family was all together, yet we felt more like strangers.

Over time we began to function more like a normal family. Everyday we spent time together as we shared our meals, our possessions, and our lives. However, we also shared the complicated experience of being a North Korean Defector living in the South. While we were beginning to assimilate into South Korean society, something always felt wrong. Instead of helping us be ourselves, the world around us constantly reminded us that we will always be different.

Then one day everything took a turn for the worse. My brother, who was working at a chicken restaurant as a delivery man, died when his motorcycle collided with a car. The witnesses say that it was not his fault but the police refused to let us see the CCTV footage. They made it clear that he was to blame, and by extension we were too, not because of any evidence but because of our background.

They asked us to compensate the driver of the car who hit him. We could not afford to do this. Before my brother’s accident my older sister had moved to England so when our problems with the insurance company became insurmountable we decided to join her. Then there were four of us. Once again I was not properly able to say goodbye.

In order to get a visa to go to England we had to file for asylum from North Korea. However, this was complicated because we came to South Korea first.

Nevertheless we arrived safely and were reunited with my sister, eager for a fresh start. I look back on my time spent in England fondly. My older sister got married and I became an aunt. I made many friends and the local church was hospitable to my family.

I started going by Amy. I learned English by going to high school. My parents on the other hand were not as successful at picking up English. They relied heavily upon me to help them communicate with the world around them. Blocked in by the language barrier that surrounded them and with me as the only gateway between themselves and the rest of the world, my parents were struggling but surviving.

Then one day our pasts once again caught up with us. Due to the complications with claiming asylum the government decided to deport us. The police came to our apartment, arrested us and sent us to prison.

At this time they strip searched us to the point where we were completely naked, vulnerable, and exposed.

This is the first time I had ever experienced shame and humiliation so fully. The police confiscated all of the money my family had worked hard to earn when we were in South Korea. They told us that if we had evidence that the money was ours and that we had earned it in South Korea they would return it to us.

Then without so much as a pound in our pockets we were shipped back to South Korea. Now there were only three of us. At least this time our goodbye did not have to be forever.

When we arrived in South Korea a second time we didn’t have a house, money or a support system.

We had nothing. The first thing we did was borrow money and go to the bank and get documents to send back to England. Even though we submitted all the evidence the British government requested, adequately proving we had earned the money in South Korea, they did not keep their promise.

Whatever we did was utterly useless and futile.

Perhaps the money was not objectively a huge amount, but for our family this was our lifeline, our last hope. Just like that it was gone, perpetually trapped in the English bureaucracy.

We survived off of hospitality. To an extent we

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still do. We were couch surfing, drifting from one part time job to another. No matter how many of us were cramped into a tiny apartment it was hard not to feel alone, even though we had each other. At least here my family can communicate with people on the surface, but whether they can really understand each other is something else entirely. I am the ultimate interloper. I am ceaselessly caught between all the places and people I once called home but can never return to, and the better future I dream of. I cannot focus enough to really enjoy the present.

Currently, I go to a boarding school for students like me, students with the intrinsically complicated history that being North Korean demands. While we are all different, each of my classmates and I have a story with commonalities that can comfort us. There are beautiful mountains and hills surrounding our small campus. When I gaze upon these vast landscapes I cannot help but feel suffocated because of the strict rules. It is a Christian school but even though I sometimes pray I do not consider myself religious. Recently, I got caught drinking beer. I am old enough to legally drink alcohol but now I must copy two chapters of the Bible every day for two weeks.

It is a fact that I am 23, but in moments like this it is hard to figure out what age I really am. If my life was a clock, its hands would be simultaneously trying to push me forward and pull me back. Sometimes I feel like I am aging at a glacially slow pace. Even though I have not graduated from high school, Facebook reminds me that my English friends and former classmates are enjoying their college lives, even getting married. It is like I am suspended in adolescence as those around me get to grow up. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like I am aging rapidly. In many ways, the manner in which I grew up never let me be a child. I was always forced to deal with things way beyond my maturity level. Even now my mother insists that I stay in school but in reality I am already the breadwinner of my family.

Although my family wishes to support me their health prevents them from doing so. I must support them. The last school vacation I went home and found that my dad was too injured to work. I would not have even known this unless I went home.

My parents did not tell me because they did not want me to worry. Over vacation I worked at an electronics factory for 10 hours a day. The work was tediously boring but my family needs the money and I have obligations. As I watched the shining scraps of metal methodically make their way down the assembly line, I had to prevent myself from day dreaming. For a while, my dream was to be a translator but I lack all the qualifications necessary to get a job, even though I can speak Chinese, Korean, and English naturally. These days I feel conflicted. I am conflicted because I do not know what kind of career I should pursue. Moreover, I am conflicted because I must work hard to support my family financially, but I also must study hard to become better equipped to support them in the future. Once again my past and my dreams for the future are fighting to monopolize my present.

I live in a world of paradoxes. My life is perpetually plagued by the home I cannot remember, but whose influence I can never forget. I am able to blend in everywhere I go but I am never fully able to fit in anywhere. My present perception of age and what my future holds are inseparable from my past. Recently, I realized I am nostalgic for all of the places I have spent time in. However because of the one place that I do not remember living, I have also spent my life searching for a place to stay. As soon as I get close to someone we are forced to separate.

Somehow it never gets easier either to disappear or to say goodbye. Somehow I inch closer and closer to building myself a new home and abandoning the home that never truly was one. Even if I fall down seven times I will always rise an eighth.

Carolyn Carpenter is a 2013-2015 ETA at Cheonan Cheongsu High School in Cheonan, Chungcheongnam-do.

Amy Oh is a student at Drim School in Cheonan, Chungcheongnam-do.

Goodbye at Yeongdeok County. Mimi Cagaitan. Yeongdeok

Granddaughters. Mimi Cagaitan. Yeongdeok

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PREVAILING STRUGGLE IN LANDSCAPE OF PAST THE A LINDSAY BURNETTE

Stretched across South Korea’s landscape, hidden between the widespread mountains and thriving urban centers, lies an intricate patchwork of organically formed shapes that make up Korea’s small-scale farmland. Although this more understated element of Korea’s landscape often goes unmentioned, it embodies a strong cultural narrative that speaks towards South Korea’s turbulent history, present notion of progress and globally oriented future.

I came to Seoul to study the urban landscape and South Korea’s modern developments in sustainable landscape design. However, after just one month of bustling Seoul life, I found myself yearning to experience Korea’s countryside — in particular the area where just 50 years ago, over 60% of the population resided — Korea’s rural farmland. I had been warned numerous times that South Korea is known for its rapidly growing metropolises, its ancient historical sites and its pervasive mountains, but never for its farms. Korean friends cautioned me not to expect to find the well-manicured, bucolic landscapes I had once experienced in Japan here in Korea. For many city dwellers in South Korea today, the rural landscape has become a thing of the past — a past they are proud to have left behind. Buried in the rural countryside are memories of Japanese

colonial rule, pre-democracy struggle and a time before South Korea’s economic boom when it was one of the poorest countries in the world.

Given these warnings, on my first visit to a farm in Korea, I expected to find a nostalgic, aging community struggling to preserve the history of their ancestors. However, what I found instead was an energetic, activist atmosphere battling against global economic policies through a strong, locally rooted sustainable-agriculture movement. I came to realize that the stories of the harsh setbacks embodied in this gracefully manipulated landscape are not just a thing of the past. Instead they are living on in the form of free trade agreements that allow competition from cheap foreign agricultural markets, economic policies that disregard agriculture as a high priority and large-scale farming technologies that threaten the deep-rooted structure of small scale farmland. Over the years, these major issues have sprouted reactionary movements, leading to a national web of locally grown food, farmer’s rights activists, and sustainably minded development. I quickly discovered that the presentday story of small-scale agriculture in South Korea is one of global involvement, boundless struggle and profound social transformation.

Uncompromising Policies My first eye-opening experience with Korean farms was at Seongook Eco Experience Village in Sangju. Nestled under the Sobaek Mountains, the village is a tight-knit community of generations of farmers growing food, raising livestock and teaching curious city dwellers how to live sustainably. All farmers in Seongook Village share a common mission: to spread food sovereignty throughout South Korea. Food sovereignty is the right of all citizens to have access to healthy, sustainably produced and culturally appropriate food. It also entitles the food producers to proper acknowledgement, support and respect. In principle, it creates and supports local, non-corporate, and environmentally considerate systems, which connect farmers and consumers.

As it is now, food sovereignty is not pervasive in South Korea, and due to recent political decisions, it is becoming an even steeper uphill battle. In March of 2012, South Korea and the United States entered into effect the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), one of nine bilateral agreements in South Korea. This agreement removes tariffs on 95 percent of goods between South Korea and the U.S. over a five-year period. Almost immediately, Korea phased out tariffs on a large range of agricultural products, making almost two-thirds of agricultural imports from the U.S. to South Korea duty free upon entry. The agreement has devastating effects on Korea’s farm sector, with a predicted $626 million loss in annual production value and a 45 percent displacement rate for Korean farmers.

Even before the KORUS FTA however, for several decades Korean farmers have faced massive setbacks in government support. Beginning in the early 1980s, discouraged by Korea’s small amount

of farmable land, the South Korean government implemented a neoliberal free trade agricultural policy. In 1994, South Korea joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and signed the Agreement on Agriculture. The WTO works to establish international rules of trade between nations, and under the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture quotas and tariffs are lifted on imported agricultural products besides rice. Although this agreement creates less dependence on domestic goods, few subsidies are provided for farmers. As a result, South Korea’s food self-sufficiency dropped from 70 percent in 1970 to 20 percent in 2011. In turn, and the average debt of a farmer has risen to $20,000, and the amount of farmers and farmland have dropped steadily. The impacts of these policies are all too visible across Korea’s countryside today.

Most farmers are quick to admit they are an incredibly vulnerable group and are sacrificing almost everything to be a small-scale farmer. One elderly farmer in her eighties spoke of her efforts to send her children away from the farm and to the city to get a stable, paying job. She said the debts from farming were too big of a burden to put on her children.

Despite her efforts, her son insisted on quitting his office job and coming back to run the family farm.

Unfortunately, future governmental support for South Korean farmers is not on the horizon. On September 30th, 2014, the Korean government submitted to the WTO an agreement to open the Korean rice market, a decision that many fear will result in the collapse of rice agriculture in South Korea. With this liberalization, the government has pledged to place a 513% tariff to keep the Korean rice market competitive, however many farmers doubt the government’s ability and willingness to follow through with this promise. Kyung San

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Hwang, the director of policy for the Korean Women’s Peasant Association (KWPA), says she suspects many rice farmers will be forced to just give up, losing their source of livelihood.

Fighting Back Though the farmers and activists I met spoke of each setback with frustration, disappointment and occasionally defeat, their words were interwoven with powerful messages of countermovements. As Kyung San Hwang listed the horrifying potential impacts of rice liberalization, she spoke of the plan for South Korean farmers to tour the country and speak to citizens about the importance of the issue and impact of the market opening. Jeong Won Yoon, administrator of Our Sisters’ Garden Plot, described the threat of genetically modified organisms on the preservation of native seed in South Korea, yet she focused on the subsequent task of educating children, consumers and society about local and indigenous food and agriculture.

Out of the devastating policy hurdles, national grassroots farming movements have evolved, creating localized systems of support and exchange for farmers and consumers. One pivotal group that was born out of opposition to South Korea’s neoliberal agricultural policies is the Korean Women’s Peasant Association (KWPA), founded in 1989. Today, the KWPA is a strong organization of women that fight for women’s rights, sustainable agriculture, small-scale farms and the preservation of native seeds. In 2012, the KWPA won the Food Sovereignty Prize from the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, signifying the immense impact of their work and gaining international support for their cause.

A System to Grow From Perhaps the most remarkable outcome of the KWPA is the intricate system they have created that simultaneously supports small-scale farmers, empowers women, educates citizens and gives power and sway to sustainable food producers and consumers. An integral piece of this system is Our Sisters’ Garden Plots, a network of small-scale community cooperatives that put these concepts into action. Kim Jeong Yoel, president of Our Sister’s Garden Plot describes the organization as small-scale farms that are close to home, have a diverse production and are “built with the love and help of mothers.” Our Sisters’ Garden Plot is free from the usual patriarchal structure found in agriculture. Women own the land, sell the food under their own names and make all the business decisions. Although men are welcome to help with the labor, they have no say in the planning and decision making process.

As Kim Jeong Yoel described her work and the system she has worked to recreate, I was struck by her sincerity, passion and dedication to food sovereignty and women’s rights. Kim introduced herself stating, “I am proud to be a woman, and I am very proud to be a female farmer.” She then went on to describe her journey as a student activist who chose to dedicate her life to the workers’ plight by becoming a farmer.

Twenty-four years ago when Kim began farming she was disheartened by the patriarchal farming system.

Typically, small farms are run by a married couple.

The men own the farms and are in charge of the planning and finances, while the women serve as their assistants. Kim and other female farmers sought to change this and eventually succeeded through

Our Sisters’ Garden Plot. Kim’s community garden in Sangju now consists of 16 very active women running the garden, and one man who, despite his hard work, still has no vote in the decisions.

In addition to making women legitimate players in the field of farming, Our Sister’s Garden places a strong emphasis on an honest and deep connection between farmers and consumers. Their motto exemplifies their desire for consumers to know the farmer who produced their food, stating: “Producers with a Face, Consumers with a Heart, Working Together to Build ‘Our Sisters’ Garden Plot.’” It is in this notion that the national system defending against neoliberal policies is grounded.

Our Sisters’ Garden Plot is a network of over 2400 farm plots. Over one hundred of these farms are CSAs – community supported agriculture – which means there is a direct exchange between the farmer and the person consuming the food. Most of these garden plots will provide a monthly box of food suited for one family, multiple families or single people in exchange for a monthly fee. This gives consumers an opportunity to learn about seasonal, local and small-scale food production and gives the farmers the support they wouldn’t otherwise receive due to large-scale agribusiness and harsh international policies. In addition, it helps to build a sharing-economy between farmers, through which the farmers gather multiple times each month to carefully plan and assemble each box together as a community.

It’s easy to romanticize South Korea’s agrarian landscape with its rolling hills, small scale farming practices and slow pace of life. After just a few hours in Sangju I was about ready to pack up my

apartment in Seoul and move into the cozy yurt at the center of the farming village. The air was fresh and crisp, the pears were juicy and the people were kind and welcoming. However, when the farmers began to speak about their economic and political realities, this picturesque landscape evolved into one of significant struggle.

Korean farmers are continually fighting against uncompromising trade agreements, large-scale farm competition, and growing debt. As I learn about the impact recent international agriculture agreements have had on South Korea, I begin to reimagine South Korea’s agricultural landscape with global and national binds around the countryside, isolating and suffocating the farmland. However, I also envision an independent system stretching across urban and rural Korea, providing citizens “real” food, connecting communities, empowering women and farmers and breaking down neoliberal binds. This is South Korea’s own specialized system, and at the heart lies a pure and genuine desire to nourish and educate society. As Kim Jeong Yoel eloquently put it, “our strength is knowing the livelihoods of our people. Our hope is the process of struggle itself, and awakening people along the way. This struggle is a beautiful thing.”

Lindsay Burnette is a 2014-2015 Junior Researcher affiliated with Seoul National University. Her research covers cultural landscape studies and urban agriculture throughout Seoul.

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Open Arms. Donald Bauer Jr. Samhwasa Temple near Donghae

To Songnisan, Spring. Neal Singleton. Ilju Gate, Songnisan National Park

Adventuring Ajummas. Neal Singleton. Dadaepo, Busan

Lotus Flowers in Summer. Lyz Glickman. Gyeongju

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THE FAITH KEEPING IN A FOREIGN LAND LEANNDRA PADGETT The ride home with my Korean host family on the first day of our year together was filled with clumsy introductions and tentative questions: “Do you speak Korean?” “Do you like Korean food?” “What is your religion?” Though unsure of where this last question might lead, I was glad that they had been the ones to initiate this important conversation. I answered honestly, “I’m a Christian,” a response that was met with excitement and the claim that “Halaboji (Grandfather) will be happy!” I soon learned that my host family (following Halaboji’s devout example) is Catholic.

Though Protestant, I quickly made the decision to attend Mass regularly thinking that joining my host family in worship was a natural step on both my quest for community involvement and my commitment to practicing my faith.

Concerned friends and family typically ask if I have found a church in Korea. “I go to church with my host family,” I respond, “but it’s a Catholic church—and it’s all in Korean.” The situation is not as foreign as it may at first seem because I have been to Mass before (though usually in English settings) and find the services to be worshipful and meaningful despite differences in theology. While here the language barrier is problematic, I can nonetheless participate in Korean Catholic services in many ways. I stand and sit at the appropriate times. I cross myself in acknowledgement of the Trinity. I pray and reflect during the long periods of speech that I am unable to understand. I process to the altar and present my offering. I receive a blessing during Communion.

Communion—that is the part of the service that I find most difficult to adjust to. Raised in a Protestant tradition with an open table, my home churches have always offered the Lord’s Supper to

“all who love [Christ], who earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another.”1 So, when I approach the priest with my arms crossed over my chest, I feel self-conscious and out of place, as if I am being grouped with the unconfirmed children. Is that how Halaboji and the other adults see me? What do my middle school students who serve as acolytes2 think? Do they consider me unsaved and heathen? Do they understand that I truly believe in the body and blood of Christ? Do they have any idea how desperately I want to join in the tasting of the bread and wine? Yet I go forward each week. Remembering the call to “humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord,” I walk down the aisle with my arms crossed like an overgrown child.3 This uncomfortable routine could be avoided, of course; I could commute to the closest English speaking service (an hour away) or regularly attend the Protestant church that I once visited with my coworker. But the desire to be part of this family keeps me coming back to Mass. My host family exerts no pressure upon me, but I want to share their experience. My motivation consists of more than familial attachment, though: I have the stubborn desire to thrive even within the challenges of this foreign worship setting. I want to be capable of genuine worship even when the Catholic doctrine and Korean language limit my usual forms of expression. So, I assume the role of a child, seemingly incomprehensive, gently barred from the Sacrament. I learn a childlike faith. This is my act of worship.4 Leanndra Padgett is a 2014-2015 ETA at Hwacheon Middle School in Hwacheon, Gangwon-do.

“A Service of Word and Table I & II,” United Methodist Hymnal One who assists a member of the clergy in a liturgical service by performing minor duties 3 James 4:10, King James Version 4 Matthew 18:4; Romans 12:1 1 2

Resilience. Emmy Mildenberg. Jeju 4.3 Museum, Jeju

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WEARY OF WARFARE MONICA HEILMAN

Tired eyes glued to my computer screen, a sinking feeling—some concoction of dread, shock and helplessness—stirs in my stomach. The feeling tries to manifest itself on my face, but my mouth only hangs open until the bell rings, other teachers trickle back into the office, and I deliberately relax my expression.

I don’t tell anyone what I am reading, and no one asks. A cheerful co-teacher announces, “You’re done for the day!”

During my 30-minute walk home I am torn between boiling over and breaking down.

Gimhae, South Korea is 10,849 miles away from Ferguson, Missouri.

On August 9th, 2014, the day Michael Brown died, I didn’t make much of it. Preoccupied by the hectic lifestyle of Fulbright orientation, having enough panty hose for our strict dress code, and wondering where I was even going to be living this year, I shrugged it off. “Officer Kills Unarmed Black Teenager.” Seriously, again? How sad. But I’d read the same headline enough times to feel numb.

To those who have studied (or experienced) race

and inequality, Michael’s death is not a surprise.

Black men in America are more likely to be stopped by police, more likely to be arrested and more likely to receive harsher sentencing, especially if their alleged victims are white. In contrast, perpetrators receive more lenient sentences when their victims are black. Or in the Brown, Garner and Rice cases, no sentence at all.

I formally studied all of this in college. But I already understood facts like this to be true from my own experiences as a person of color in America. My appearance is racially ambiguous, which means I am constantly asked “what are you?” by those lacking enough tact to realize the question is offensive. I am a human being, for one thing, what else do you want to know? So when I realized you could study race in school, I latched onto the topic, excited and relieved that someone thought my experience was worth studying.

However not everybody thought so. I encountered students and faculty alike who thought majors like African-American or Asian studies weren’t worth the time or tuition. They held firm to the belief that racism no longer exists, yet their ignorance only provoked me to take action. I discovered my

weapons and developed my war cry in my primarily white university, amongst cowboys-and-Indians frat parties, cheerful “ni hao”s directed at light-skinned women who appeared Asian, eyes rolled at the word “diversity” and slurs scrawled on dormitory mirrors.

It became necessary to fight back, or else remain complacent and by default, supportive.

Yet in preparation for my grant year in Korea, I tried to suppress this newly awakened activist.

“I can’t be as sensitive,” I told myself. “Korea is so homogenous. Some people won’t know any better.”

And so, weary of warfare anyway, I simultaneously gave in and built up defenses to keep myself numb.

It worked. In Korea, I simply brushed away remarks that I would have gotten fired up about just a few months earlier. Sadly, I also brushed off Michael’s death, not even bothering to look at the details.

However, as I watched Ferguson from the other side of the world, I saw my fellow Americans had not become complacent like me. I watched as Ferguson transformed from the location of a tragedy into the name of a national movement. Despite how intensely I wished I could be there, I grew proud, gazing through the far-reaching eyes of the Internet as college friends posted pictures from Brown’s memorial site, clamoring and hashtagging for change.

I woke up, and along with them, silently held my breath as the date of the verdict grew near.

The grand jury’s decision came on a lazy Monday afternoon, as I browsed articles alone in the English office, waiting for the bell to ring. This time I forgot about being in Korea; shock ripped through my defenses before I could even try feeling numb.

Instead, I was immobilized, at a loss for what to do. I settled for reposting the words of others in rapid and frenzied succession. I admired those who constructed coherent, meaningful status updates, as I could not. This time we as a nation had seemed so close to taking a step forward, only to be brutally

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shoved back. When people asked about what was going on in America, I could only tell them I was deeply disgusted and embarrassed by my country.

Disgusted, embarrassed and unable to do a thing from this 10,849 mile-distance, I envisioned this too, as part of the battle I fought in college. “Stop talking about Ferguson like there are two sides! It’s not a war!” one angry Facebook post screamed on my feed. This metaphor seemed so pertinent that I laughed. From where I stood, two sides had clearly been drawn. While I opted for a “BLACK LIVES MATTER” profile picture, a Facebook friend digitally donned an “I Support Darren Wilson” badge as his. We had clearly opposing profile pictures and slogans; sharp words and skewed editorials had been fired. Does this mean war yet?

But there’s only so much I can do over social media. My Korean battlefront is in the classroom with my students, chipping away at ignorance that only seems to grow stronger if left to its own. The battles that arise include homophobic comments, fixations on race and a fear of foreigners. Every time my students shout that the black woman in that picture is Rachel (the former ETA at my school), I cringe on the inside, but on the surface, try to convey how ridiculous the idea is by laughing or feigning shock.

However, as with any fight, there are inevitably high points to soothe the bruises formed by the low.

In a textbook lesson about role models, I brought up Martin Luther King as an example. The words left on my board after classes included race, injustice and human rights. I couldn’t have been prouder of these students. Another day we talked about privilege.

Referencing their reading on Oscar Pistorius1, I told them, “You have all of your arms and legs. You can walk. You can go to school—that’s privilege. We all have some kind of privilege.” To my delight, there were nods and murmurs of agreement.

Pistorius is a South African Olympic runner who uses prosthetic legs. He is known as “The Blade Runner.”

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Bark Blossom. Erin Hassanzadeh. Changdeokgung Palace, Seoul

Out to Dry. Neal Singleton. Yeonpo Beach, Taean

Unfortunately, I’ve also fired in the wrong direction. One day, I showed Black Friday video clips to fill extra time. My students were fascinated, and so I decided to show the next class too. The first time was fine. The second time—great. Students said that the people looked like zombies. Happy to hear their unsolicited English, I laughed and admitted they were right. But the third time, a student honed in on race: “Look at that black person! Wow, scary.

They’re really scary.” I couldn’t tell if he meant all black people are scary, or just the people in the video. It was only a passing remark in Korean that I didn’t address. However, in showing them this video—media that reaffirmed the stereotypes I was constantly trying to repel—it felt like all of my careful groundwork had been destroyed. After all the depressing exposés of racist holiday origins and meticulous PowerPoint picture choices, intended to give greater representation to women, POCs2 and simply unconventional-looking people, did I just bring us back to square one?

Of course, there is no measurable “square one” nor is there a step-by-step guide to becoming a socially-conscious world citizen. This is something my students must discover on their own. I give myself too much credit if I believe I can completely 2

rid my students of racist stereotypes. But sometimes when I try to guide them in what I hope is the right direction, we instead end up so turned around that even attempting to explain feels like a maddening pursuit. Then I am reminded that it isn’t any easier in the U.S. It is even more maddening to watch Americans deny racism when the bodies of black men grow cold on city pavement, black fathers are denied their pleas for air and black children cannot play outside without risking their lives.

I don’t want my students to become the Korean counterparts of this oppression, lulled into a false sense of colorblindness. So I put on a smile and try to speak honestly, even when I have no answers.

Monica Heilman is a 2014-2015 ETA at Gimhae Jeil High School in Gimhae, Gyeongsangnam-do.

People of color

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Ferry Friends. Neal Singleton. Geoje Island

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Ulsanbawi, Clearing. Neal Singleton. Seoraksan National Park, Sokcho

EXPECTATIONS NADIA RAMIREZ

“Teacher, how to say sugohasyeotsseumnida in English?” Asks Minjin, as she comes up to me right after class. We’ve just had our dialogue tests, and I’m not surprised that she is the last girl in line, hoping to have a word with me. However, unlike all of her other classmates, Minjin didn’t come to ask about her test score.

At the time, I was unsure of what to do. My limited Korean, and her inability to enunciate her words, only made this more difficult. I tried to think of a way to get out of this predicament and as a last act of desperation I opened up Naver dictionary, a Korean-English translator, and handed her my smartphone. Her eyes immediately lit up and she showed me a beaming smile. “Ah! Teacher, thank you for your epports,” and just like that I felt my heart begin to glow, despite the biting and unforgiving winter cold.

The weather was just as cold the day I found out I’d been recommended for a Fulbright grant. After all, it would seem that the human mind is capable of remembering the exact time, place, and what we were doing shortly before we receive word of a life changing event. I was watching Pokémon in my room the day my grandfather passed in ’99. I remember how Mrs. Encarnacion’s photosynthesis lesson was replaced with emergency protocols during September 11th. I also remember being in Bogota and shivering under my ruana, a traditional Andean poncho, and cursing under my breath because it was “stupid

cold” one January afternoon. I checked my email as a desperate attempt to distract myself from the weather, and it worked: I’d been recommended for a Fulbright grant.

After receiving this news, I stopped caring about the whimsical weather of the Bogota Savannah, and started thinking about cherry blossoms, gayageums, and ancient dynasties. Suddenly, all that mattered was that I had a high chance of becoming a Fulbrighter, a teacher in South Korea, and I had to prepare. The next day I desperately contacted the only person I knew could help: Pacho, a remarkable human being who dragged his family out of poverty by becoming an educator. He has been a teacher for as long as I can remember, and even tutored me as a child. Pacho is now a school administrator, but regardless, he was the only person I could think of at the time. My thoughts were proven to be correct when he knew exactly what to do, but like most people my age, I could not believe how simple the answer to my plight was. “Teaching is a labor of love,” he started. But it wasn’t until I met Minjin that I realized that out of all the people who supported me in this crazy adventure, Pacho had given me the single most important piece of advice.

I met Minjin on my first day at Gyeongnam Girls High School. She was the first student to approach me, the first student to visit my office, and she was also the first student to ask me about my future dreams. When I informed my students they could

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eat lunch with me on Wednesdays, Minjin was the first one to scratch her name on my calendar. Minjin could never leave class without having a conversation with me, and she could never pass by my classroom without peeking her head in, or uttering a hurried “hello” before running along. She has a small voice and a big smile, but she refuses to leave my classroom until she is finished with the day’s work, even if it means giving up that coveted ten minute break in between classes. Minjin has a will of iron, and a steadfast determination when it comes to learning English, even though it is very difficult for her. Needless to say, those first few weeks I thought Minjin was the typical, well-disciplined, yet low-level student. I came to the conclusion that she just wasn’t a language person, but I was charmed by how hard she tried.

During the fourth week of school I asked my students about their dreams. I set them off to write a few sentences, and had them create an accompanying drawing. While most of the girls spent the majority of their time creating vibrant pictures of nurses or

lawyers, Minjin just stared at her paper, trying to find a way to put her dream into words. She was stuck. She needed one word and I could tell that it was right on the tip of her tongue. She was circling her hands around her ears over and over while saying “family… uhhh,” repeating the same motion over and over again.

The bell rang, and like usual, Minjin refused to leave until she finished the assignment. Body language failed us, so we decided to look up the word together. The word Minjin was so desperately in need of was ‘deaf.’ I felt a knot form in the back of my throat as I came to the shocking realization that she is deaf. Minjin is deaf, or at least nearly so, and it had taken me this long to realize it. Did this make me a horrible teacher? I had never scaffolded a lesson in order to meet her needs, and had never entertained the thought that there could be a reason behind her pronunciation issues. A million questions took over my mind as I found myself needing to sit down, in order to process this information and think about the way I had judged her. I felt so guilty I cried.

That day, I learned the reason behind Minjin’s infinite drive. Her dream, as Minjin puts it, is to learn English and American Sign Language so she can teach English to deaf people all over the world.

Her biggest motivation is her parents, both of whom are completely deaf. Minjin has a hearing aid, but she hides it behind her tousled black hair and thick glasses. But more than her dreams, Minjin taught me to appreciate her for doing her best, even though she wasn’t the best. I understood why her pronunciation was so erratic, so full of mistakes, and I realized that the slight slur she uses when she speaks English is not for “intonation,” but something she simply cannot help. How could she? She can hardly hear what I or any other foreigner says, and so she lacks important pronunciation models. She has very few ways of checking her mistakes.

Yet, she understands me. She knows exactly what I say even though she cannot always reply. She sits in front of the class and when we talk, she is always staring at me with determination. After a few days, I noticed the way she furrows her brow as she focuses on the shapes of my lips as I pronounce each letter and vowel. I remembered how she never hesitated to ask me to slow down when speaking, and so I realized that this little girl can read my lips while speaking English, and that she can do it ridiculously well. I quickly became conscious of the fact that Minjin might be more advanced than her peers, yet she is unable to express herself due to her difficulties.

This frustrates her to no end.

However, despite her frustrations, Minjin

never complains about lessons, never refuses to do her work, and most importantly, insists on taking speaking tests like all the other students. Minjin outright refuses anything that would differentiate her from her classmates. She is also well aware that when it comes to English, she isn’t the best, but she chooses not to care because she knows she is doing her best and that’s all that matters. When I told her it was okay to write a six sentence monologue for her test instead of a ten sentence monologue, she shook her head with determination and said “teacher no, you said ten.”

We wrote together, most of her questions being about spelling and grammar. When she could not read my lips, tracing letters on her wooden table was more than enough. The way her eyes lit up once she grasped something will never cease to amaze me. After she left my class that day, I found myself crying again. And how could I not? I thought about all the times I’ve had petty complaints, or even the times I refused to do things because they were a little difficult. I am someone who has complete use of my physical capabilities, yet sometimes I refuse to do even the simplest of things. These days I find myself trying to be a better person, because every Tuesday I see a girl who is conscious of her disability, yet refuses to be treated differently. And she fights for this so earnestly that I do not give her any type of ‘special’ work, because first of all, I know it would offend her, but most importantly, because I believe in her.

Without knowing it, Minjin has set the bar for every single student I have, and will ever have,

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because she has done the only thing I ask them to do: try her best. Coincidentally, this was Pacho’s advice.

On a cold January day, Pacho didn’t tell me to just love my students. He also told me to expect each one of them to do their best and nothing more but I didn’t realize how dangerous expectations could be.

During my first few weeks at school, I made the mistake of placing expectations on Minjin.

Eventually, I realized that in fact, I had been expecting nothing of her at all. And I was wrong, so wrong, and her classmates would agree. As Minjin delivered her ten sentence monologue in front of the class, every other girl in the room held her breath with anticipation. Once her test was finished, everyone clapped and cheered, never mind her mistakes. I felt a weight being lifted off my chest because I knew then that Minjin is not alone; that she never has been.

Next semester, Minjin will be moving on to third year and I will miss her. I will miss her very much, but I will never forget what she has taught me, not only about teaching, but also about about life.

Despite all of the mistakes I felt I had made, she was still there, thanking me for all of my efforts.

“I should be thanking you for your efforts,” I told Minjin, after her dialogue test. She noticed my mouth was doing something different from hers when I said the word “effort,” and I showed her that

the right way to pronounce an ‘f ’ is by putting her teeth over her lips, and letting the air pass through.

Minjin was pleased, and she tried again, looking to me for approval.

“Teacher, thank you for your efforts.” Perfect pronunciation. And suddenly, my life was complete because knowing I had made a difference in hers is probably one of the most beautiful, indescribable feelings I have ever had. Once again, I found myself crying like a little girl, because Minjin, the girl who works harder than I ever have or ever will, was the first one of my students to treat me like a friend, and one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever met. That day she added another thing to her long list of firsts: she became the first student to come up to me and thank me for doing something simple— for just doing my job.

Nadia Ramirez is a 2014-2015 ETA at Gyeongnam Girl’s High School in Busan.

Favorite Coffee Shops. Laura Ahn. Bukhansan, Seoul

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SPRING WILL COME DIEM-TRAN (BIJOU) NGUYEN

There’s purple stippled dark underneath your swollen eyes as you shuffle into the classroom, chin tucked to your small chest, knuckles white and fingers grasped tight around the thick straps of your backpack. Your black sweatshirt screams LET’S DANCE but your movements are sluggish, your slippers scrape against the floor. Your cheeks are blotchy and your ponytail, which swayed so jauntily yesterday, today hangs limp like the wet rag I use to wipe down the desks. Somehow you’ve aged overnight, and your shoulders are bowed under a crippling weight that has brought you to your knees.

Your friends around you are oblivious as they cut colorful strips of iClay with razor blades, jabber excitedly about the doughnuts we’ll have for lunch and flick mini marshmallows of snow out of their hair. Jae Woo walks backwards into you, adjusting his beanie. He whirls around, and his mouth flops open to utter a protest, but when he sees it’s you, something in his face shifts. He ducks his head, and carefully edges away from you as though your burden is contagious.

The news has spread like the snow, which dapples the playground and the bushes lining the perimeter of the school. There are hushed whispers from the teachers, secretive, knowing looks between the students. My co-teacher, Yeon Ja, who is usually stern and aggressive with all the students during English class, is now subdued, and handles you like you’re made of glass. At lunch, between bites of kimchi, your homeroom teacher somberly mentions something about needing to go to Daejeon after school to find a black dress. They treat you like a casualty.

Amidst all of this, you walk, shrouded in a daze, as if you can’t hear or see or feel. You act as though you don’t realize the sudden carefulness, the way your friends avoid meeting your eyes, the way that teachers linger closer to you, for longer.

You walk as though if you convince yourself enough that it doesn’t hurt, you can will yourself to stop feeling pain.

I don’t know what it’s like to lose your father at the age of thirteen. Because thirteen is when you’re

just learning to look at the swell of a bicep and when your cell phone is becoming an extension of your fingers. Thirteen is when most of your friends are busy giggling about doe-eyed Luhan of EXO and self-consciously covering their cheeks as they snap selfies.

Thirteen is when insecurity creeps in, and you need your father to be there and tell you that you are beautiful, even when—no, especially when— you don’t want to hear it, when you don’t believe it yourself.

I don’t know what it’s like to be thirteen and lose your father. If I could, I would cup my hands and come to you and collect your hurt and say, “Give me your pain, I’ll take good care of it.” I’d be happy to have it, to relieve you of it.

I don’t know what it’s like to be thirteen and to be pulled out of school early for your frantic mother to drive you to the hospital because your father has been in a car accident and now, he’s gone. I don’t know.

But I do know what it’s like to feel alone, even when you’re surrounded by people. I know what it’s like to go back to an empty home and sit on your bed and have no company other than your thoughts.

You’re thirteen and you’ve started to mark your life into before and after, and you’re utterly terrified of what might come next. You are only thirteen and life, which has given you happiness and trust and love and faith, somehow simultaneously harbors loss, doubt, pain, pain, pain, and you don’t know how to make sense of it.

I don’t know how you feel and I don’t know how to make you stop hurting. I can place a hand on your shoulder and give you a smile and talk in a language of gestures to show that I care, but I can’t lift the hurt from your heart. You’re thirteen and you’re alone, but we both know that time will pass and time will strip down the bleak winter, clear out the snow and

paint the grey sky lighter hues. Spring is coming, and summer will follow. And with time, your pain will dissipate and then resurface, reemerging just when you think you’ve finally managed to escape. Part of you might always hurt.

I don’t know how you feel, but I can promise you that spring will come. I know that most likely, you’ll be tougher, and sometimes you won’t feel like yourself, but you’ll keep fighting. Because the thing about pain is that it makes you appreciate happiness that much more. There is nothing that makes you appreciate breathing more than drowning, nothing that makes you love laughing more than when you’ve been incapable of anything but crying, nothing that makes you clutch harder onto one parent than losing the other.

I want you to know I believe in you.

Eight days after you received the news that turned your world upside down, I watch as you and your friend mold a snowman outside. Your head is bowed and your ponytail still hangs limp, but the side of your mouth quirks up in a semblance of a smile. And maybe you’ll never go back to who you used to be, but it’s a start.

Diem-Tran (Bijou) Nguyen is a 2014-2015 ETA at Janggi Elementary School and Uirang Elementary School in Sejong City.

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This photo: Yudalsan. Erin Slocum. Mokpo Cover photo: Morning Fog. David Moore. Deogin Middle School, Mokpo Artwork: Mountain Series. Donald Bauer Jr. The Fulbright Korea Infusion EMAIL fulbright.infusion@gmail.com WEBSITE infusion.fulbright.or.kr FACEBOOK facebook.com/fulbrightkoreainfusion INSTAGRAM fulbrightkoreainfusion If you wish to contact Fulbright Korea, please email executive.assistant@fulbright.or.kr or call 82-2-3275-4000.

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Published by Asia Korea Printing, Inc.

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