Korean: my new identity

I bumped into my classmate from L3 Korean at the New Haven farmer's market. It was the last T-shirt day of September, and the air buzzed with tales of summer as the students stocked up on America's best homemade chocolate milk. I spotted my classmate, the oriental Tinkerbelle who sat across from me yesterday, and my voice automatically lit up: Annyong! Mwo hago isso? (hey! what's up?)

Instinctively, she hid her cheeks and started to giggle as if I had just dared her to tell her dirtiest secret. She answered in English: You're not gonna do this to me now, are you? She meant to ask, you're not gonna make me speak Korean in front of all the Americans, are you? I had embarrassed her. And I felt prude.


That's when it hit me that Korea was gone. I had truly left behind my summer in Seoul. When my classmate refused to respond in Korean, it suddenly became shy, discomforting, and foreign. But three months after studying and zealously immersing myself in it, this was the first time in a long time that speaking it had embarrassed me. I had learned to love conversing as naturally as smiling. And now I can’t believe how badly I miss speaking Korean. Where did all my Korean go?

I can still hear the spit fly from the Ajusshi's mouth on the streets as I walk to school. I can taste the succulent tang of hot chili and juicy pickled cabbage served with every bowl of rice. I can feel the sleep deprivation weighing down my head as I stay up past 2am to cram for the Korean midterm. I can smell the sour puke and urine of cats as I walk past the red and black dokkboki carts, spouting steam from their bubbling pot of fish cakes, blood sausages, and dok. I can see the hasukjib ajumma rock her knees to Taylor Swift as she cooks Olympic portions of kimbap and rainbow omelets.

I miss speaking in Korean with my classmates from New Zealand, Japan, Columbia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I miss eating infinite appetizers for lunch that cost less than 4 American dollars. I miss spooning sweet red bean over ice cream. I miss getting drunk off K-pop music and dancing in Hongdae’s clubs. I miss climbing to the seventh story of the hostel and singing the Beatles as I looked down upon Shinchon’s nightscape.

I miss inhaling the air in the Jeunju mountains and hiking to the top of the terraced green tea plantations of Boson. I miss street shopping in Busan beach where the women chopped live squid on the streets. I miss buying walnut bread at every rest stop on the high way. I miss the reckless driving of bus drivers in the city. I miss the horrifying shock when my friend’s mother received plastic surgery. I miss watching Korean comedy and not understanding a single joke. I miss pulling all nighters in Tom and Toms Café. I miss flirting with my language partner, knowing that he had a girlfriend.


Here in the States with my college course schedule and a two dollar Americano to accompany my homework in this remarkably dusty, over-conditioned library, I feel like Harry Potter who just came home to the Dursley's after his first year at Hogwarts. It's like I left a huge, phenomenal, pulsing dream world behind. It's shocking that it's gone now and I'm feeling a powerful withdrawal.

But more than anything, I'm shocked that one summer away from the States can make me forget how abnormal it is to greet people in Korean every time I see a friendly face. I recall that as a child how much I used to hate my mother for embarrassing me when she spoke to me in Japanese in front of my American friends and teachers. Now, I only feel strange that my classmate won't respond to me in Korean when I offer it.


I'm grateful that my shyness to speak in beginner's Korean was left far behind in my first days of Seoul. I learned to love having conversations in Korean, whoever my audience and however unsure of my pronunciation. I yearn to go back every day, because I cannot find a friend to speak Korean with me. I write letters to my old classmates in Hangul, hoping to release this heart-aching pressure. And I am dying to apply my newly grown Korean skills beyond the classroom.

To any student who wishes to learn a foreign language, I recommend above all to study abroad. It teaches you to love the language so much that you crave it like a drug. The language becomes your ticket to travel the world. And by the end of the trip, the language becomes your identity.
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