As a first-generation South Korean immigrant to the United States, I was constantly made aware of my heritage. My family was originally from the South Gyeongsang Province of South Korea, born and raised in farming communities near the cities of Gimhae and Busan. My family, consisting of me, my mom, my dad, and my little brother, initially arrived in Athens, Georgia, where my dad had gotten a position to work as a chemist for the University of Georgia.
My family had to leave most of our beloved relatives when we left, as we had little to no connections within the United States. My dad, a chemist, received his masters from the prominent Seoul University, the highest ranking college in South Korea. According to my mom, after graduation, my dad had been offered high positions in many Korean pharmacies, but had turned them all down when he was accepted to work in the United States. Whether it was the allure of working in one of the most economically prosperous countries in the world or just wanting to experience life in a new country, in the year 2004, when I was just five years old, my family packed our bags and left the land of my birth into unfamiliar territory.
When we arrived at our apartment in Athens, Georgia, like many minority groups immigrating to the United States, my parents deemed it a priority to keep me and my little brother tethered to South Korean culture. My mom, a former math tutor, used her teaching skills to teach me and my little brother not only multiplication tables using handwritten worksheets but also Korean using paperback workbooks she requested my aunt to send us at the start of every month. We also exclusively spoke Korean at home which provided extra practice and kept us fluent.
Additionally, instead of going to an American church on Sundays, we went to a Korean one, which brought with it a sizable South Korean community that helped show us the ropes of being a Korean family in America. Therefore, it was not too long before we knew where the best Korean restaurants to eat at were and the locations of Korean grocery stores that provided goods imported straight from our homeland, from boxes of napa cabbage to Korean snacks such as tteok (rice cakes). Due to this, my mom, who brought my grandmother’s recipes with her, made sure that our family had a Korean-style meal at least once per day, and preferred that we eat at home than eat out. To this day, I deeply associate my childhood with my mother’s cooking, from hearty fermented soybean paste soup (doenjang jjigae) to pan-fried yellow croaker. A majority of the meals I had involved vegetables, such as beans sprouts and spinach, with seafood also being common in dishes such as boiled clam soup. This preference for vegetables stems from my mom growing up on a farm, helping my grandparents tend to the fields with my uncle and two aunts. The preference for fish is due to Busan, the city close to where my grandparents’ farm was located, is the largest port city in South Korea. My mom used to tell me of her visits to Jagalchi market, one of the most famous fish markets in Busan, where my grandmother often demonstrated her skill of haggling to get lower prices for mackerel and hairtail fish.
However, the most memorable dish my mom made was a noodle dish called janchi guksu. Translating to “festivity noodles” in Korean, these noodles were originally eaten in during weddings and 60th birthday parties. In line with tradition we usually had them on birthdays, as the long noodles symbolized long life. Consisting of long, thin wheat flour-based noodles in a pale-yellow anchovy-kelp soup base, topped with carrots, Korean zucchini (hobak), strips of egg, and a little bit of soy sauce, these noodles were and still is my mother’s favorite dish to make. On days my mom decided to make janchi guksu, the air of our small apartment would become humid and fill up with a salty, fishy smell. My mom made sure to boil enough noodles so everyone had at least a second helping, which was almost always the case. The distinctive umami flavor that came from the anchovy-kelp broth as well as the salty kick from the soy sauce complemented the plain noodles well, leaving me with a warm, cozy feeling and wanting more until I was, as Koreans say, “ready to roll around.”
Today, South Korea is well-known for being a prominent distributor of electronics with companies such as Samsung and LG, as well as car brands such as KIA and Hyundai. Also, thanks to the surge in popularity of Kpop (Korean pop) music worldwide, South Korean culture has reached new levels of global awareness. Although modern Korea is widely known for electronics and popular culture, when I think of South Korea and my relatives, I cannot help but think about green mountaintops too many to count, my grandpa toiling away in the fields, and my grandma haggling for a decent price on mackerel in the local seafood markets.
As of now, it is thanks to my parents who kept me tied to my culture that shaped who I am. Through associating with Korean communities early on, my parents were able to preserve south Korean culture in a country over 7,000 miles away. I am the first in my family to attain citizenship to the United States, and also the first to attend college outside of Korea. However, even though my nationality has changed, deep inside my roots are still embedded in the mountainous rolling hills of Korea. After all, I do have the blood of two proud South Koreans running through my veins.
My goal now is to lead a life that embraces both my identity as an American and as a South Korean. I believe that living in a nation called the “melting pot” of cultures requires those with dual identities, especially immigrants, to pass on important aspects of their culture to future generations. As an American born in South Korea, I hope to one day teach my children and even grandchildren how to speak Korean, eat Korean foods, and most of all, come to love to identify as Korean-Americans, just as my parents have made me.
Analysis
The piece I chose to imitate was Dr. Christine Ristaino’s “Immigrant Story.” Given that I recently became a citizen of the United States this past May, this story particularly inspired me to look back into my early days in America to see how Korean culture has become an integral part of me for all these years. While my story is centered on my life with my two parents and my little brother, as we were the first in our family line to have settled down in a foreign country, Dr. Ristaino’s story of the struggles and hard work her great-grandparents had to go through as immigrants remined me of how hard my parents, especially my mother, worked to preserve Korean culture for me and my brother.
Through Dr. Ristaino’s piece, I learned that economic conditions were a major cultural influence on the people of Campania. The second and third paragraphs of the piece describe how Dr. Ristaino’s family had a “marquis story,” a story passed down the family line that claimed that Dr. Ristaino’s family was originally “direct descendants” of an Italian marquis, or nobility, that gave away every dollar they had to eventually become poor. She states that every Italian immigrant family supposedly had a story of this nature. This legend allows the family to be prideful of their lineage while at the same time justify the poor conditions in Campania. As shown in class discussions and the group projects, southern regions of Italy like Campania and Calabria were poorer compared to the rest of the peninsula, and as a result, many immigrants left the region, such as Dr. Ristaino’s ancestors. Their cuisine also reflected this, as people in the poor regions of Calabria had noodles that were simple and usually had barely any sauce. Similarly, one example Dr. Ristaino gives indicating her ancestor’s poor status was her great-grandfather Carlo Ristaino working as a stone and cement mason building the Hoover Dam for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s WPA program, which was aimed at giving poor Americans a means to work.
Through writing my version of the “Immigrant Story,” I learned that my culture was influenced by geographical location. For instance, I realized that my mother’s insistence on using mostly vegetables and seafood stemmed from her familiarity with crops as the daughter of two farmers, and the preference of seafood most likely stems from the fact that Busan is the largest port city in South Korea, with Jagalchi market in downtown Busan being a prominent seafood market in Korea. In writing about janchi guksu noodles specifically, I learned that Korean culture shares values with other cultures as well, namely China. The noodles of janchi guksu representing long life and being eaten on 60th birthdays are strikingly similar to that of the long-life noodles of China, as they also represent long life (specifically through length) and was shown to be served at the narrator’s grandfather’s 60th birthday in Terry Durack’s short story, “Long-Life Noodles” in his book, Noodles. This shows that cultural values can be exchanged and incorporated into different cultures. Given the close proximity of China and Korea, it is likely that this idea stemmed from one country and, through cross-cultural exchanges such as trade, made its way into the other.
Both Dr. Ristaino’s piece and my piece are embedded with cultural DNA. In Dr. Ristaino’s piece, she constantly refers to the poor conditions of Campania, the region of Italy her family came from, a condition which shaped her ancestor’s cultural values. The poor conditions of the immigrants from Campania can be seen through her great-grandfather Carlo Ristaino working in the WPA program that was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The New Deal was specifically aimed at poor Americans and give them a way to gain prosperity during the Great Depression. Also, while great-grandfather Carlo was off working in the WPA, Dr. Ristaino’s great-grandmother Carolina Peppucci raised fifteen children to help work on the farm, an indication of poverty as children are seen as an extra pair of hands rather than needed to be educated. Another indication of the poverty seen in Italian immigrants can be seen in the low literacy rate in the Italian immigrant community of Milford where Dr. Ristaino’s great-grandfather Bernardino Lombardi served as a letter composer and reader. A low literacy rate is often indicative of a poor economy. As described in Juliana Della Croce’s Classic Italian Cookbook, and based on class discussions, there was an “exodus of emigrants” from Campania and other parts of poor southern Italy, as Italians left the peninsula to find better prospects overseas. However, as Dr. Ristaino describes in her story, “most Italians left poverty for more poverty,” referring to the Great Depression (1929-1939) in the United States that occurred shortly after the mass Italian diaspora during the late 1800s. Therefore, this illiteracy as well as a need for children for farmhands can be attributed to being part of a culture that prioritizes work over education for children to maximize income for the family.
In my piece, cultural DNA manifests through my mom’s efforts in education and her cooking. As a former math tutor, my mom busied herself with teaching us multiplication tables and Korean as soon as we moved to America. This represents South Korean culture placing a high value on education, as unlike the United States, where extracurriculars are just as important, grades make or break one’s acceptance into a good college. This led to an intensive education system, where students are required to take extra tutoring classes late into the night, with even elementary school students returning home from studying past 11 PM. Additionally, the food my mom prepared for the family consisted of included mostly vegetables and fish. The use of vegetables reflected her coming from a farming culture and constantly helping my grandfather and grandmother out in the field with her siblings, which led to a familiarity with certain crops, as well as how to cook and pair them with other ingredients. My mom acquiring recipes from my grandmother also reflects South Korea’s patriarchal society, where women usually tend to housework such as laundry and cooking, while the men are the breadwinners. The symbolic significance of janchi guksu, being served at one’s 60th birthday and the noodles representing long life also highlight the traditional cultural value of respect for the elderly, a value also reflected in China’s long-life noodles.