My life as a Minority in the United States 1

I've been living as a Korean-American in the USA for a long time. I think it was when it was in my mid-twenties that I began to call myself a Korean-American.

These days, I just say that I am from Nashua, NH. I've become acclimated to the local culture, and I'm sick of being asked if I'm from North or South Korea. Besides, these conversations lead nowhere. I find myself having the same conversations over and over again:

-Where you from?

-Korea.

-North or South?

-South.

I sometimes think I should respond, "North." The simple fact is that most people don't know a thing about either North or South Korea. These conversations have become repetitive and meaningless. When I respond, "Nashua," the conversation either ends or questions get asked about what Nashua is like. I like this much better.

For a long while, I thought I was American. I was ashamed of being Korean. I thought being Korean meant being ugly, eating kim-chi, and studying all the time. I wanted to be exactly opposite of what being Korean meant.

Now I just see myself as human. I don't even consider myself Korean-American, but I am often reminded that I am Korean, but not quite American.

About a year ago, I was at a standstill in terms of my business. I was not quite sure what to do so I did nothing. I just want to the YMCA for a while, trying to figure out what I could do to improve the business. At some point, someone asked me, "Do you work?" 

No, I wasn't really working, but it occurred to me that I should work really hard as a Korean-American, that I needed to work all the time, and that I should wear a serious expression on my face like other Korean-Americans or Koreans and take vacations in the dark so no one would suspect that we took vacations.

In other words, Korean-Americans were model minorities because we worked hard. In the early 1900's, Korean laborers had picked the pineapples 16 hours a day. Germany had asked South Korea for laborers who could work the coal-mines and South Korea had complied. It was tough, back-breaking work but we did it. There are countless, other examples of how hard South Koreans worked even in the most difficult circumstances. But I wonder, why does this matter to Americans? What if I went around visiting shopping mall, going on vacations, and spending money all the time? Wouldn't this benefit the economy too? 

Anyway, in time, I found some solutions to bettering my business.