Ed Park’s letter to the editor (in the July 2005 issue) raised the question of what it means to be Korean and why one should be proud to be Korean. He is bitter about feeling rejected because of his inability to speak the language, and suggests that Koreans need to be more inclusive. Does Ed Park know of any other ethnic group in the world that embraces you as one of their own simply based on looks? Why would Koreans be an exception? I’m sure some Koreans are still more accepting than others; overseas Koreans in particular would almost certainly accept him as Korean. Ed Park needs to make more of an effort, also. Possessing the Korean soul means being able to appreciate Korean culture, thought and language. Ed Park didn’t mention anything about his attempts to learn the language, and he seems to be rather dismissive of Korean culture, at least in the first paragraph of his letter.

His letter also contains a few inaccuracies. The commercially available “DNA test” is not some precise quantitative breakdown of your genetic makeup, your whole geneology tree compressed into a single sheet of paper. The test just screens for a small subset of markers that tend to occur more commonly in certain ethnic groups, and are thus useful for correlations. It’s a commercial product designed to make the customer feel like they’ve gotten their money’s worth. It turns out that as a group, Koreans are genetically the closest to the Japanese, and they happen to share a lot of markers. This is not a shocker given that the Japanese almost certainly descended from the Koreans who crossed the strait (although they are reluctant to admit it). Just because the nice report that Ed Park got from the company said his DNA was 20 percent Japanese doesn’t mean that a couple of generations ago, one of his ancestors was Japanese. More likely, some of the individuals from his ancient ancestors’ gene pool contributed to the Japanese gene pool.

Eyelid surgery is indeed popular in South Korea; even President Roh Moo Hyun and his wife got eyelid surgery. Somehow, I don’t think they were trying to look Caucasian. I’ve known quite a few Korean women who had eyelid surgery, but not a single one told me that they wanted to look Caucasian. There are plenty of Asian women who naturally have rounded and folded eyelids, particularly in Southeast Asia. Some Caucasian people suffering from a superiority complex might flatter themselves into thinking that Koreans are emulating their appearance — and Ed Park really should try to avoid thinking just like white people! This reminds me of how some blacks think everyone’s getting a suntan to look black. Are white people getting liposuctions and breast reductions to look Asian?

I also don’t think appreciating classical music or trying to succeed professionally amounts to worshipping white people. I have to listen to hip-hop and be a miserable failure to preserve my identity? I also don’t know where he heard that a white person is a trophy spouse. Ninety-nine-plus percent of Korean parents that I know prefer to have their children marry another Korean. If interracial marriage is inevitable, it’s true that a white spouse may be preferred over black or Hispanic, but I think this has more to do with the comfort level that parents have with the prospective spouse than with some racial pecking order. Is it realistic for Ed Park to expect Korean parents, who often don’t even feel that comfortable with mainstream white culture, to be at home with black and Latino culture and readily accept them as sons- and daughters-in-law?