For Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the senior African-American Literature class at South was asked to respond to a prompt related to the themes of the class. Because February is Black History Month, Denebola is posting one of these essays a day until the end of the month so as to start a conversation about race outside the classroom. The prompt is as follows:
“In about 500 words, tell the story of a personal experience that relates in some way to the ideas and themes of this class. You should spend the majority of the piece telling the story, and the end should explain clearly what the story shows about a theme or idea from the class.”
Jenny Kim
May 12, 2009 is when I first stepped into the US. Its environment and culture were so different from mine that I didn’t know how to behave when I first came off of the plane. I had heard of the New World from my hometown before, though.
South Koreans have an inferiority complex about the US. Whenever a foreign person comes to Korea, for some reason, he or she is able to control everyone. For example, when any Koreans go to a restaurant, employees there often act as if they are annoyed by the customers. However, when any foreigners go to the same restaurant, the employees will run up to them with bare feet, trying to smile and communicate as much as possible.
I felt very disrespected at those moments. As a person who believes human beings are the same throughout the world regardless of their races, I highly disliked the fact that Koreans unconsciously admit people of other races are superior. At the same time,however, I wondered what has brainwashed Koreans in such a way.
“Just be yourself” is what I told myself every moment before I started my new life in the US. Entering my middle school, everything was different — the structure of its schools, classrooms, education system and people. I met a teacher there who was going to be my counselor and ELL teacher, and we walked around the school. She kept talking in a language that I couldn’t understand any of, and I had to keep smiling while glancing at my father for help. That moment, I somehow felt intimidated. Every morning, I smiled and said “Good morning,” and the only thing I did for the following weeks was smiling and saying “Yes” without knowing any of the meaning behind what others were saying. I realized how similar I was with the employees at the Korean restaurant to whom I could never relate to before.
One day, I was assigned to do a project on relationships between my home country and the US for my history class, which gave me an opportunity to find out what caused Koreans to have the inferiority complex. Back in the old days when Korea wasn’t as developed and sophisticated as today, the US was the rich and leading country of the world. Thus, Korea looked up to the US in order to develop itself in similar ways and hopefully become one of the leading countries in the world.
Although Korea is now labeled as “leading” or “developed” in many areas, the superiority of the US still remain in almost every Korean’s mind. Some may say this may be related to the power of race or racism, but it seems more like having a role model and getting motivated to be better in a way rather than being discriminated or looked down upon as inferior by the US. In my opinion, the problem that Koreans still face is not having respect for one another.
