Tag: Korea

Tragedy is not a contest.

peace Paris Red Hong Yi


To those who are saying, “France is a big deal but it’s getting more coverage than other tragedies” — I would humbly and kindly ask to look up the Fallacy of Relative Privation.

It’s possible that we can care about one tragedy without pitting it against another (which is just crazy, when you think about it). Saying “Well what about __” doesn’t address the original problem and ultimately dishonors the real human lives we lost in all of them.

It’s possible to educate others and bring awareness of what’s neglected without condescending or competing by numbers.

It’s possible to both pray and donate; there’s enough time in the day for both.

It’s possible just to grieve and be angry and weep right now instead of using tragedy as a platform for politics or a spiritual lesson or a moral epiphany (and I realize I’m in danger of doing the same — yet I’m truly grieving, too).

Neglecting to say something on social media is not equivalent to apathy, and mentioning something on social media is not equivalent to empathy. It’s also unfair to be guilt-tripped by either. It’s okay if you don’t accordingly change your profile picture. It’s also unfair to accuse someone of being shallow if they change their profile picture.

It’s impossible to boycott everything and protest everything and raise awareness on everything, as much as we’d like to. By the time we figure out one problem, another comes along. It’s a fruitless exercise and only spreads us thin: and much better to use our limited resources and individual gifting and unique voices to deeply care about a few things as best as we possibly can. It’s possible to fully invest in one or two, and that’s how movements start.

There are many, many ways to care. We need all of them. There’s not enough time to care about everything, but there’s too much time wasted on nothing, and if each of us could care deeply about some things, we could find each other and cover almost everything.

— J.S.



Art used with permission by Red Hong Yi

My Father, Survivor of the Vietnam War


My father Jung Hwan Park in the Vietnam War, c. 1964.

He was a 2nd Lieutenant in the R.O.K. Army.  He taught hand-to-hand combat to both Korean and American soldiers, including the U.S. Navy Seals.

In 1968, he was captured during the Tet Offensive and forced to walk barefoot, blindfolded, and hands tied to a prison, where he was a POW.  My dad was forced to eat rats and fight other prisoners to survive, and he went blind several times due to poor nutrition.  After a failed escape attempt, he was tortured with bamboo shoots underneath his fingernails and a few of his fingers were broken.  Before execution, he escaped alone (by killing a few guards with his bare hands) and was the only known soldier who escaped his encampment.  He was then captured in Cambodia and declared a Korean spy, and for two years the Korean Embassy worked for his release.  He’s authored an autobiography in Korea, translated Through the Jungle of Death.  A few Korean history textbooks talk about his successful escape.  He’s established a martial arts franchise in America called J. Park Martial Arts, and at 70 he still teaches.

— J.S.

Not Quite Asian, Not Quite American; Fully Human

My mom and dad came to this country separately over thirty years ago and met in New York City, where they were married; my dad came to the U.S. with sixty dollars in his single pair of pants, and my mom couldn’t speak a word of English.  My dad was a Vietnam War Veteran, 2nd Lieutenant in the R.O.K. Army on the side of the U.S., and the only escaped prisoner of war from the Tet Offensive in 1969.  He’s also a licensed veterinarian and a Grand Master of Tae Kwon Do, a ninth degree black belt, the 54th 9th degree in the world.

Before my parents divorced when I was fourteen, my mom owned a laundromat and a grocery store next door to each other and would run back and forth between them to serve customers; sometimes she took old clothes that people left behind because we were too poor to afford any. My dad owned a martial arts dojo and mopped the entire floor every morning, then taught four classes in the evenings almost all in Korean.  Between the two of them, they worked almost 200 hours per week and slept maybe three hours per night.

One summer, someone spraypainted a swastika on the front wall of the dojo. My dad painted over it, but on those hot humid days, we could still see that Nazi symbol like an angry pulsing scar.

We got a message on our answering machine — maybe the same Nazi artists — who spent a good ten minutes making fun of my dad’s accent. I remember seeing my dad listen to it several times, staring quietly out a window. When he noticed me, he turned it off and said, “Just boys playing a joke.” The voices were from grown men.

When we visited with friends, we felt the invisible walls of cliques and class between us.  We were aliens from another world, just a foreign prop in the hero-story of the Westerner.  I was the token Asian.  When I visit churches, I still am.  Christians feel proud to know me because I meet their diversity quota; my other friends are proud to know me because they can make Asian jokes and explain, “Don’t worry, I have an Asian friend.”

In elementary school, when I first made friends and came over, I would immediately take off my shoes and bow to their parents.  I remember freaking out the first time I saw a fork.  I asked for two sticks to eat my food, and they said, “No, you can stab your food now.”  I still slightly bow to people as a reflex, and I still don’t get forks.

When I meet native Koreans from my own country, they call me kyopo, which is a slang term for misplaced native.  They make fun of my heavy American accent when I try to speak Korean.  They’re surprised I’m taller than them and say, “It must be hormones in the McDonald’s.”  They think I’m arrogant because I watch American TV shows and I have a blog written entirely in English.

I live in two worlds. I do not fully embody either, yet belong to both.

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