AsianWeek	June 18-24	Volume 19 No. 43	http://www.asianweek.com 

Opinion – Letters (Pg 4)

Address Racism in Korea

After leaving the San Francisco Bay Area many years ago, it is with great pleasure and a certain bit of “nostalgia” that I read AsianWeek (as well as other newspapers) forwarded to me here in South Korea by friends.

As a native born Korean, it was with great interest that I read about the incident (“News Briefs,” June 4) in which the assistant principal of a Flushing, N.Y., high school was chastised by community groups and others for his insensitive remarks in relation to apparent dress code violations (possession of and “illegal” beeper and a bare midriff T-shirt) be a female Korean American student. Apparently, the student accused him of “picking on Asians”, and his response was to tell her to “go back to your own country.”

This incident brought to immediate mind an experience that my 8-year-old daughter, who was born and raised in Korea, 9her mother is Greek American) and has never herself even left Seoul metropolitan area, had in elementary school last month her in Korea. Her teacher told her to “go back to your own country” and accused her of being “Western scum”, after she was (with some “pure” Korean girlfriends) caught whispering in class.

May daughter knows no other country but Korea, and she is a loyal Korean citizen. She sings the Korean national anthem every morning in class with all the other students, and who is passionately loyal and patriotic to Korea. She is culturally and in every other way emotionally Korean. She (regrettably) knows no English nor speaks any other language but Korean.

So her teacher’s comments were incredibly bigoted, racist and ignorant, especially in view of the fact that the other girls who committed the same infraction were not even reprimanded. I know from first-hand knowledge that my daughter’s experience is by a small fraction of the institutional racism and bigotry that mixed-blood, native-born children (and adults) such as herself experience her in Korea.

No “community groups” came to my daughter’s (or others’) aid, even as all the “visiting Korean Americans activists” on vacation here spend all their time re-enforcing Korean stereotypes about “others” and other groups (in this case “bad mouthing” other nationalities and other ethnic groups in the United States)(as if Korea was free of racism and bigotry itself, and as if Koreans don’t need to change ignorant, outdated mindsets.

So, I would like to put a call out to “community leader” Joyce Choe and other Korean community organizations for some help in addressing the ignorance, racism, and bigotry here in the homeland as well, since it exists here rampantly, too. Just witness the deplorable treatment that this and other Asian societies give their mixed-blood or mixed-race children. And yes, even the ones who are from “respectable families” with and Asian (Korean) father, as my daughter is, are victimized(simply because of their mixed blood and features.

So Joyce Choe and Elizabeth Ou Yang, where are you? We need you here too! As deplorable as the incident (and others) in flushing is, the saying “physician, heal thyself first” is appropriate.

Min Chul Choi
Pyongchon, Anyang, South Korea