Yoshi’s Monologue: “Home?”

Finally, after many years of living on the outside, I find myself back in the US. However, this country I once called “home” feels ever so distant. Furthermore, I soon realized that there isn’t any country I can safely call “home” without having the feeling of uncertainty. Interestingly enough, every country I go to, the citizens always view me as a foreigner, in Korea they view me as the German American, in Germany they view me as the American Korea and in America they call me the German Korean. Never once have I felt truly accepted by one culture. Now I am well aware that this topic seems extremely clique, it is actually a problem I realized in the past few days. Although having multiple cultural backgrounds may seem great, it actually can backfire immensely.

For those of you who don’t know, I was born in Orlando, Florida and lived the American life till I was 7, well as “American” a 7 year old can get. After that, my family decided to move to Berlin, Germany due to a promotion in my father’s occupation (business man). Although my family was known to travel a lot, this was the first permanent relocation of my “home” and now, a young Korean-American child finds himself in Germany and has absolutely no idea of what is to come of him. Slowly but surely, I began to adapt the German lifestyle and psychology, however, even after 10 years, wasn’t fully accepted as or felt fully German. I mean, I have many German friends and was well accepted into the German culture, however I was accepted as one of them. I have many Korean friends who were born in Germany and were viewed as German, but for some reason, I wasn’t accepted, in which they claimed was too American or too Korean to be viewed as German. This wasn’t just the case in Germany, the same happened in Korea. Koreans strangely like me and view interest in me, however, they don’t view me as one of them instead they view me as the German American. This goes the same for my family; my father lived in Paraguay for most of his childhood and moved to New York City right after high school. He, too, found himself in my situation and understood my confusion and uncertainty, thankfully.

For those who do not struggle through the problem of being a “Third Culture Kid” (TCK) may underestimate this problem and will just brush it off, however I believe this is a problem that will become worse the more if progresses. Each country should have a unique culture behind it and should follow their traditions, no doubt. But now, many countries are struggling in holding their culture and traditions in place. I’d call the greatest threat to culture is urbanization or modernization. Recently, there was an outbreak in Istanbul, Turkey where the Government tore down a natural city park and tried to replace it with a brand new shopping center. The Turkish citizens were in outrage, and rebelled against their, what they considered, corrupt government. How does this relate to TCK? It is people like me who create this sense of urbanization, I mean I’m not saying I enforce it, but the reason why countries wish to urbanize is so that the city can provide a standard living environment for foreigners. I have no cultural background, I have no culture I follow, and I have country I call home, therefore they wish to create a neutral living space for people like me. I’m not saying that urbanization is bad or anything, in a matter of fact, I enjoy it, but there must be a limit to how urban a city will become without losing its originality, which is a problem in everything in this world now a days. When modernizing, suddenly people begin to lack a sense of originality. Now I’m not stating no one is original, by no means, but it begins to die out slowly for some reason. I guess when it comes to money, people wish to be more logical rather than creative with their approaches to certain issues. There is a trend to follow, there is a song that is always played, and such issues begin to come to hand. I’m not saying that this never happened before urbanization, but it is urbanization that enforces these concepts on us. They want trends everyone follow, they want that song to be played over and over, because in the end, there will always be money there. It makes a profit, so why complain? I feel like I’m blabbering on and going off on a tangent, however this is an issue that should be addressed.

Anyways, to sum up this random monologue, I have no home, thus I enforce modernization on countries and therefore countries lose originality. The slippery slope is strong in this monologue, but in a way it makes sense. Anyways, all I’m trying to say is, there is no culture I follow, nor any culture I abide by.