I AM KOREAN AMERICAN

Own Words

1. My cousin helped me pick my “American” name from a bilingual dictionary. We picked “Edward.” I was ten and did not speak English.

2. I am intensely conscious of an automatic piety that fills the air when I say, “When I first came to America…”

3. When I am asked, “Are you Korean-American?” it does not feel like a simple question. It feels like a goading. It feels less like being asked, “Are you right-handed?” and more like being asked, “Are you finally satisfied?”

4. When I was in seventh grade, a kid called me “Ed.” He had big ears, big brown eyes and a sweet smile. Girls liked him. I was “Ed” after that.

5. I have lived in the United States, off and on, for 19 years. The “off and on” is a recent phenomenon—a shiny transnational feather on my identity cap. Much of my Americanness was consolidated during the continuous years, when escape or rupture seemed neither possible nor palatable.

6. To this day, when I am saying “Edward,” I have to psych myself up a little, or I can’t clear the syllabic gutter between the “d” and the “w.” I try to picture Mrs. Washington, from Anne Frank Elementary, hollering my name across the classroom. “Edward!”

7. I feel fairly terrified of whether these gray words are really my “own.”

8. “Edward Chung” did not exist outside the Philadelphia School District. I was never anything but “Jae Won Chung” according to my social security card, INS and, later, Department of Homeland Security.

9. Korean is my first language. One of my best moments in Korean was when I told a friend’s father, in tenth grade, to “turn left” in Korean, when he was driving me home. (This somehow convinced the man I was still fluent.) One of my worst moments was when my friends and I went to a pojangmacha and I ordered ssal when we needed more rice.

10. For all my gut-instinct skepticism about the logic of this site, it feels pretty damn good to type pojangmacha and ssal unassisted by an explanatory parenthesis or a footnote.

11. I have never been entirely happy with the way “Seoul” is pronounced in English. I felt betrayed when Korea’s tourist bureau punned it with “soul” in their new slogan, “Hi Seoul, Soul of Asia.”

12. I started going by “Jae Won” in college. The space between “Jae” and “Won” confused some, and they would ask for clarification. Is “Won” a middle name?

13. For awhile during college, when I was interested in philosophy—e.g. A.J. Ayer, J.L. Austin—I experimented with initials: “J.W. Chung” and later, after reading W.V.O. Quine’s Word and Object, “J.W.E. Chung.”

14. My friend—the friend whose father praised my “turn left”—has married a cousin of mine, and now they have two boys. They are my almost nephews. Their names are Taeyeon and Jaeyeon. No spaces. My friend says the American bureaucracy doesn’t tolerate spaces between first names. This only fills that unaccountable blank between “Jae” and “Won” with a lot of angst.

15. When I became a citizen, I declared as my full name, “Jae Won Edward Chung.” “Edward” became formal, but demoted to a middle-name status, permanently retired from everyday use. It still looks somewhat unnatural to me, like something my name swallowed. The “Jae” and “Won” and “Chung” feel fleshy, like my cheeks. “Edward” feels mineral, glinty (if a little scuffed up) but also somehow reassuring, like a piece of metal rod holding the rest of my name together.

I contribute to subjectobjectverb.com, a blog on literature, film, culture and its transmission from Korea and Asian America.

I also write fiction, some of which you can read at whereimpostingfrom.wordpress.com.