Sounding Korean; Looking Other

By Dorry Guerra

Iden* Image source: author’s own.

In my interviews, I include questions that get at my biracial interviewees’ perceptions and experiences of how they are racially appraised. In simple and direct terms, I ask the question “In Korea, do people see you as Korean?” To this question, Iden* immediately responds “No,” but then makes an amendment to his answer. He says, “When there is no image involved, they [Koreans] think I’m Korean. When they see my face, their reaction automatically changes.” So, when Iden is talking on the phone; texting; or, for whatever reason, when only his voice can be heard, most Koreans do not question his “Koreanness.” (This report hopefully gives the reader a fairly good idea of just how proficient Iden’s command of the Korean language—in terms of accent, vocabulary, idioms, nuance, and the like—is.) However, because Iden does not necessarily look Korean (or at least not “fully” Korean) phenotypically, most of the time, he is not viewed as Korean.

Interestingly, though, Iden’s language ability is so “convincing” that there are Koreans who say to him “Oh, you must have lived abroad for a long time,” as if to provide an explanation for why, although Iden may not look Korean, he speaks Korean so fluently. It seems that the underlying implication is that non-Koreans could not possibly speak Korean so fluently, and indeed, this is how Iden interprets it. He says, “It’s so ingrained within [Koreans] that Korean is too difficult to learn that if you’re that good at Korean, there’s no way you could not be Korean.”

So, while some biracial Koreans (as well as, certainly, Korean-Americans and other Koreans born and raised outside of Korea, as well as Koreans who have been adopted abroad) deal with the question “Why can’t you speak Korean?”, Iden deals with the obverse, “Why (or how) can you speak Korean so well?” Given that Iden only learned to speak the language during his year abroad in Korea as an undergraduate student, his fluency is quite surprising and quite impressive. But, what is surprising and impressive, in my opinion, is his individual learning capacity, not his “overcoming” the bounds of his racial makeup and accomplishing the “impossible” (mastering a language that is seemingly not his own).**

Engaging this sort of essentialist*** reasoning for just another moment, Iden’s adept language skills can possibly be explained by the fact that he is partially racially Korean; he is half-Korean! Indeed, when people learn that Iden is half-Korean, the situation (the fact that he sounds Korean, but does not look it) becomes much more clear and understandable. There seems to be a satisfactory answer to the “Why are you so good at Korean?” question: “It’s because you are half Korean; that’s why!” Iden calls it the “easy answer.” He says, “I’ll just tell them I’m half Korean so they’ll get off my back about why I’m so good at Korean.”

Well, the truth is that we don’t really know what people are thinking when they ask these questions and make these remarks. Perhaps they think that Iden’s Korean parent taught him Korean, rather than think that there is a racially essentialist reason for his language ability (that is, that he speaks Korean well because of his race). But, at least in Iden’s case, as aforementioned, he only learned to speak Korean as an undergraduate student on a study abroad program. Moreover, the reason why he wanted to learn Korean was because he was frustrated by the fact that he could not, despite being part Korean, speak Korean. He was particularly frustrated because he could not communicate with his Korean grandmother: he explains, “I wanted to tell my grandmother exactly how I was feeling, instead of relying on others to translate for me.” Thus, he spent a year at a Korean university; he spent another summer taking language courses; he pursued a Fulbright research project in Korea; and he stayed to eventually work at one of Korea’s leading conglomerates.

Iden’s mastering of the Korean language has opened many doors, in terms of his career, his social and familial relationship, and the like. I think it has also enabled him to become a master of cultural frame switching (see Benet-Martinez et al., 2002; (Geertz, 1973; Hong, Chiu, & Kung, 1997; Kashima, 2000; Mendoza-Denton, Shoda, Ayduk, & Mischel, 1999). That is, given the cultural context (Korean vs. American, for example), Iden can flexibly shift or moderate his cultural orientation and even his identity (e.g., how he conceptualizes his relative position to others, or his relationship with others). This is particularly important in the context of Korean corporate culture, which is, as compared to that of America, hierarchical and stresses age, rank, and showing signs of deference. So, without skipping a beat, Iden can conduct himself in company meetings or at company dinners (회식), where the drinking culture is intricate and nuanced; and, these are all things that he has explicitly learned.

Admittedly though, Iden’s understanding and grasp of Korean culture, just as his language skills, are not perfect. He has not sat the Korean college entrance exam (수능), nor has he served in the Korean military (군대). He explains that these are some of the defining features of “Koreanness,” and it is because of these and other experiences he has “missed” (not attending Korean schools or learning about Korean history, etc.) that he is not (fully) Korean…

Nevertheless, it is clear that Iden’s identity is always engaged; he is constantly learning and discriminating, taking in certain ideals, values, practices, yet not others. His is an active, pulsating identity—an identity in motion that navigates the Korean and American (as well as other) environments fluidly.

*Name has been changed to protect interviewee’s identity.
**Please detect sarcasm here.
***”Essentialism is the view that, for any specific entity (such as an animal, a group of people, a physical object, a concept), there is a set of attributes which are necessary to its identity and function.” Cartwright, R. L. (1968). “Some remarks on essentialism”. The Journal of Philosophy 65 (20): 615–626.

Afterword: At the end of the day, I can understand how I may sound hypocritical. I say that a person’s race does not preclude nor predict the language(s) he can speak (i.e., that there is no necessary relation between language and race), yet I’m also saying that language should be used as a marker of identity (the reasoning is something along the lines of “If he speaks Korean like “a Korean,” can’t he be considered Korean?”). While language is certainly not the only predictor of identity, and while it may not even be the best one, I do think that it is better than race (or using solely race to determine another’s identity). A person’s race may be one thing; how he looks may be an entirely different thing; and then, of course, there is the language(/are the languages) he speaks. If it does not have to be about choosing between the three, I think it is wise to make room for all three, or make more room for language, as well as other cultural features that interact with identity.