Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
I was embarrassed, and I wanted to tell her that I have spent almost all of my life in the United States, and that I have been fighting an uphill battle to retain my Korean language skills. That I was encouraged by my parents and teachers to speak only English, so that I could assimilate better. But that once I became fluent in English, my Korean all but disappeared.
Let me start this post by saying that I’m pleased that non Koreans like K-pop. When I was growing up in Chicago, few people knew that Korea even existed as a country. None of my American friends were interested in Korean music and they certainly didn’t idolize any Korean stars.
A while ago, I used to do segments on a local radio station. It was a popular show with a host who was vaguely shock jockish. We got along fine, and it was a good forum to promote the newspaper I worked for. One day, they called me at work and put me on the air live to tell them about some of the music acts coming to town that weekend. They kept me on the line as they began another segment, in which they called a bunch of establishments that were operated by Asian Americans — dry cleaners, Chinese restaurants etc. I would soon find out that the sole purpose of these calls was to make fun of the people speaking accented English.