In June 1986, my husband, our four-year-old son and I were strolling through the Sinchon market in Seoul. In my arms, I carried our seven-month-old daughter, whom we'd met for the first time four days before. An ajumoni grinned up at us from where she squatted beside her bins of fresh vegetables and called out in Korean, "She looks just like her mother!"

As the brand-new white American mother of a Korean baby, I couldn't have been more thrilled. The experience was the fulfillment of a dream born in the heart of a nine-year-old girl who spent after-school hours playing with the babies in the orphans' wing of the Korean hospital where my missionary doctor father worked. Twenty-five years later, I finally got to bring a Korean baby home.

Adopting Yunhee was one journey; raising her was another. My own passion for Korea, which became my second homeland and the source of my second culture and second language, made me determined to give Yunhee a sense of her birth legacy. But how does a white American, even one who grew up in Korea, raise a Korean American - on an island in Maine?

By Pearl J. Park

No matter how conspicuously present, mental illness in Korean American families is nearly always held in secrecy, often under a cloud of denial and shame.

“It would have been so much easier for my sister if we were able to speak openly about her schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” said John Lee, not his real name, who occasionally helps his sister Jane, not her real name, who had her first episode of serious mental illness 25 years ago. His family and Jane, a medical doctor, chose not to reveal her schizophrenia to her husband before marriage, John said, citing taboo around schizophrenia as a reason. Jane’s husband did know that she had bipolar disorder because he saw her taking lithium on a regular basis. Even among Korean Americans who are educated to view health medically, mental illness is not discussed with the same level of candor one might speak about cancer, heart disease or diabetes.

Only about 12% of Asian Americans compared to 25% of Euro-Americans would disclose their mental illness to a friend or family member, according to studies cited in the 2001 Mental Health Supplement of the Surgeon General’s Report. Not surprisingly, Asian Americans are less likely than other ethnic groups to seek professional help for mental health issues and frequently confront cultural and linguistic barriers in finding professional help.

H.O.T. - Candy - white/pink hats and gloves, long multi-colored hair (1996)
2NE1 - 내가 제일 잘 나가 (I Am the Best) (2011)
Psy - Gangnam Style (2012)

As 2NE1 took the stage, I found myself immediately evaluating their wardrobe - combinations of red-black-gold fabric and jewelry. The outfits seemed rather toned down compared to the more multi-colored and funky ensembles I had seen them wear at other performances throughout Asia. When I saw that the setting for the performance was intimate, with audience members close to the stage, I screamed in my head, “No! The stage is too small. They need a bigger stage that shows how they perform at concerts and other awards shows outside the US!” The performance was probably just fine, as was 2NE1’s wardrobe, but I felt the way a parent might feel, worrying about every detail of their child’s presentation. I wanted them to wow the audience, but the voting result spoke for itself. The girls performed their singles, Fire, Can’t Nobody, Lonely, and 내가 제일 잘 나가 (I Am The Best). On November 10, 2011, 2NE1 was voted MTV Iggy’s “The Best New Band in the World” by means of an online vote. A month later the group performed in NYC and MTV’s first Asian American VJ, SuChin Pak, co-hosted the show.

During 2NE1’s performance the commercial breaks had the word 음악 (music) displayed on the screen. I thought to myself, “Wow” - not the English “wow” but the Korean “우와!” I didn’t see too much  “음악” featured on television as a kid growing up in northern New Jersey. Instead I saw words like “música” on Telemundo while channel surfing, or Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello on PBS. There was Korean news on channel 63 or 64 after a Chinese news program around 9:30pm EST that may have mentioned 음악, but this was the first time I was seeing the word in my face up front and center on MTV in the US. The only other times I would watch K-pop were recordings of shows like Show Music Tank and Inkigayo on VHS rented from the local Korean markets. K-pop was reserved for home viewing and discussions among my Korean friends - definitely not for “the (American) public”.