Photo by Alexiaa sim on Unsplash. I’m adding a fun, quirky image of some Korean metropolitan area to this blog because it’ll make me more relatable!

Reconnecting with my (?) culture.

Daniel Marshall
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

I studied Latin for a while, and one of my favorite literary devices that I learned from the language is in medias res. Through this, an author begins her narrative in the middle of her story’s action. Well, my storytelling skills need some work, and my writing background aligns much more with policy than entertainment. Regardless, my story too begins in the middle of things:

After three years of twiddling my thumbs, I enrolled in a Korean class at my university. In the grand scheme of things, this means very little. Lives will likely not be saved from my future basic capacities in Korean, nor will I likely woo anyone over through my incredibly sexy Korean proficiency.Still, it matters to me — why else would I learn it?

I am a third-generation Korean-American, whose grandparents came here immediately after Koreans were legally allowed to enter the United States with the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. My grandparents only spoke Korean, and my mother had to translate for them as soon as she learned English in preschool. My parents, however, did not pass Korean down to me. Going back to the idea of the “grand scheme,” this is not horrible. I speak English well, and in the United States, there is not the largest need for high Korean ability. Outside of D.C.’s Koreatown — also known as “Annandale, Virginia” — I rarely interact with the Korean language on the street. My grandparents were always happy to speak in English to me, even if it cut our conversations down to about two or three minutes apiece. So, why would I want to finally study Korean, 21 years too late?

My most honest, yet shameful answer is that I never cared to learn Korean until now. I knew I could get away with not knowing the language for as long as I wanted: unlike English for my mother and grandparents, learning Korean has never been a necessity for my survival in this country. Thus, I guess, goes the diaspora experience in the United States — equipped with English as my first language, I will never need to know another. Recently, I’ve experienced a nagging sense of guilt: guilt for never having studied Korean when I could, guilt for never trying to engage my grandparents in Korean when I was more able to retain the language at a younger age, and guilt for never considering how inconsiderate it was to inadvertently force them to speak English with me.

I have been talking to more and more members of the Korean-American community (and “hyphen-American” communities, in general) since I entered college, and there seems to be a similar feeling of this diasporic guilt that I hold. We, the first- and second-generation immigrants, never had to learn our parents’ and grandparents’ mother tongues. Instead, we only learned to be patient with our family’s translation, accents, and misunderstanding.

Photo via Twitter and Medium User Bo Ren.

Though I recognize that the road to learning my own heritage language will not be paved in gold, at least it will be paved with strong personal convictions and a desire to see my grandparents be a bit prouder. So, I am writing this entry to document my process of language proficiency. Of course, I hope to gain something more meaningful than higher scores on the TOPIK*; I hope to reclaim a bit of what’s left of my Korean identity as an American. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

*Test of Proficiency in Korean

I would like to thank M.G. for help with editing this post.

Just a college student on a writing platform; what could go wrong?

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