Personal Narrative: Koreantown
336 Words2 Pages
I know what it is like to be a stranger in a strange land. Literally. At the age of eight, my parents moved my brother and me from Seoul, South Korea, to Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. It wasn’t even like relocating to a place like Los Angeles, where there are enough Koreans for a neighborhood to be called Koreatown. Instead, he and I were not just the only Korean faces at St. Charles Garnier elementary school, we were the only Asian faces. There was a dominant culture. We were not part of it. It made us easy targets for ridicule.
A person has two choices in that situation. One can retreat inward. That would have been easy. The cultural gulf was vast. It is as difficult for a westerner to imagine the group-oriented, restraint, duty-based