I never knew how painstakingly difficult it would be to come up with my Instagram username. Korean foodie? Too basic. Korean girl blogger? But I’m not fully Korean. Korean halfie foodie? Too long. I cared too much about how far I was allowed to identify as Korean, being only honyol (mixed blooded).
I am half-Korean, half-English, and use my social media platform to promote Korean culture in the UK. It started as a pastime during the pandemic, somewhere to post pictures of the Korean food I ate at home with a caption of the history behind the dish. I never imagined it would evolve into what it is today. My content reflects my personal journal into learning more about the Korean side of my mixed heritage, from food to entertainment, traditional attire, history and so much more.
As a child I knew of Korean culture but only through my mother’s viewpoint and her stories of how poor she remembers Korea was after the civil war. Like much of the diaspora, memories of homeland can become a source of comfort when moving to another country. Watching Past Lives by first-time director Celine Song was a stark reminder of the turmoil my mother’s generation of Koreans who emigrated to the UK experienced.
Past Lives is about Nora and Hae Sung, two childhood friends, who are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea to North America. Decades later, they are reunited, triggering feelings of disconnection in Nora from her homeland. The pair confront destiny, love and the choices that make a life.
My mother and others dealt with language and cultural barriers while assimilating into a Britain that, in the early 1980s, barely seemed to know that Korea existed. It was these struggles that bound that first generation of Koreans closer together, and they formed a tight-knit community that eventually settled and opened up businesses in New Malden – the Koreatown of south-west London.
As a young child I remember my mother wondering what life might have been like if she had never come to the UK, or if I’d been raised in Korea. She fell into these thoughts when I stubbornly refused to learn Korean as a child, insisting to her: “I’m English, not Korean!”
The more I refused, the less my mother tried until she grew tired of me rejecting her culture and language. I pushed my Korean heritage away as much as I could as a child because, in my naivety, I couldn’t understand why when I went out with my white English father, people would question whether we were related. I couldn’t understand why my features became a talking point at school and why, if I said I was half-Korean, nobody had heard of the country. All I wanted was to fit in and be accepted for who I was rather than marked out for my differences.
The notion of “the immigrant experience” that Song depicts in Past Lives is a feeling I could relate to, despite being British-Korean. As I appear more “Korean-looking” than English, British society has always treated me as British-Asian rather than mixed or just British.
These experiences of feeling “othered” or like you don’t belong in a place you supposedly are meant to feel is home can make you feel like an outsider. This is depicted in Past Lives when Nora explains she doesn’t cry any more since moving to Canada because “nobody cared”. When Nora meets up with Hae Sung for the first time, you sense a feeling of loss within Nora – of the person she used to be, of her Korean identity, and even her level of Korean proficiency. Hae Sung is like a window on to her Korean heritage that Nora so deeply craves, despite having a seemingly happy, fulfilling and successful life in New York.
As a mixed-race British-Korean, I also feel this state of not quite knowing where I feel most at home. Living in the UK, I fall into the British-Asian category, so I’m merely seen as “other”, with much ambiguity around “where I’m really from” and “where I learned English”. Yet when I visit Korea, although I can blend in much more, I am not proficient in either Korean or the culture, so I also feel an “outsider” or “alien”.
Growing up, I loved hearing my mother’s stories of Korea, but all my knowledge and knowledge and understanding of the country was through her lens. I wanted to create my own stories from my own perception of Korea. I wanted to make my own Korean identity outside of the secondary experience told to me through my mother’s memories.
After feeling guilty for the first 16 years of my life as to whether I affiliated more with my English side or Korean side, I slowly began to realise that I don’t have to “choose” – it’s not an identity crisis. I am English but I am also Korean, so I am happy west and east.
For these reasons, I decided my social media handle should be @hangukhapa. Hanguk, meaning Korean, and Hapa, meaning of mixed ancestry. I chose hapa after researching different words for mixed heritage. Hapa has its historical roots in Hawaii and I was relieved it didn’t have negative connotations to describing someone with a mixed upbringing.
Growing up half-Korean, half-English in the UK has shaped my worldview and experiences and ultimately who I am as Hanguk Hapa. I take the best of both cultures to make my own identity.
