The Idahos of Korea
Answering the question everyone asks: Why Korea?
There is only one Korean market in Boise, Idaho. It’s easy to overlook: just another small shop in a nondescript strip mall, recognizable only by the hangeul lettering on its window. Upon returning to Boise, my hometown, after spending four months studying abroad in Seoul, I entered this Korean market with anticipation, eager to be absorbed in the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of Korea again, if only for a few minutes. Walking in, I grabbed a plastic container of home-made kimchi and some seaweed. When I went to check out, the store’s stern owner brightened up when I greeted him in Korean. We spent a few minutes making polite small talk, he rung me up, and I was on my way. I exited the store and found myself, regrettably, not back on the streets of Seoul but in a parking lot in Boise.
Moments of cultural exchange can be hard to find in Idaho. Yet finding pockets of diversity in the place I grew up makes those experiences all the more satisfying. When I first met my college friend Bum Sun, he said he was from the Idaho of Korea: Gangwon-do, like Idaho, is a rural area famous for its potatoes. With such similar backgrounds, we like to joke, we were meant to be friends. We ended up being roommates my sophomore and junior year, and in that time Bum Sun gave me inadvertent glimpses into Korean culture. It all started with music. I would come home and find Bum Sun strumming on his guitar, singing in Korean. Some days he would sing ‘80s classics from the likes of Kim Hyun-Sik and Yoo Jae-Ha; other days it would be songs he had written about his girlfriend. My knowledge of Korean music, to this day, lacks a surprising amount of K-Pop and includes a just-as-surprising sampling of tunes from the ‘80s.
My dorm room introduction to Korean culture soon transposed itself into the classroom. My sophomore year, I enrolled in a Korean history class. As a History major, I found Korea to be a fascinating case study: how did such a small country not only survive but thrive amidst its three superpower neighbors, China, Russia, and Japan? That class changed the course of my academic career, inspiring me to study abroad not in London like previously planned but in Seoul. There, I engaged firsthand with the material from my Korean history class. I visited historical sites like Gyeongbok palace, and I saw history in the making at a free Psy concert before Seoul City Hall.
The more my world opened up to Korea, the more I wanted to share with Bum Sun my Idaho past. Our cultural exchange—Bum Sun teaching me about Korea, me teaching him about Idaho—culminated in us touring the American West via Amtrak over spring break this past year, taking the train from Seattle to Los Angeles. The train gave us miraculous views as it cut through the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the farmland of rural Oregon, and the sparkling coastline of California. Sitting on the train, looking outside my window, I realized I have often lost sight of the perspective that comes with not having grown up in a big city, and it is a perspective, too, that is missing in my knowledge of Korean culture.
After college, I hope to immerse myself in everything Korea has to offer outside of Seoul. Hike its mountains, visit its farmlands. But more than the scenery, I would like engage with the people outside the capital city through teaching. I want to inspire and be inspired by my students, in the same way that my past teachers inspired me to go from Idaho to Dartmouth and from Dartmouth to Korea in the first place. None of the Fulbright ETAs in Korea are stationed in Seoul. To me, that’s perfect: as a Fulbright ETA, I want to live and work in the Idahos of Korea.
Karl Schutz, the author, is off to South Korea next year on a Fulbright grant. This essay first appeared in his Fulbright application as his “Personal Statement.”
