About: miyon
-
Name:miyon
- Profile
- I am a Korean by passport who currently resides in Illinois. I have lived in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, and the United States.
2008-04-02 15:15:05
http://www.xanga.com/babymiyon
Posts by miyon:
제3문화 아이들 Third Culture Kid book in Korean translation
제목: 제3문화 아이들 Third Culture Kids 세계에서 성장하는 경험
지은이: 데이비드 폴락, 루스 반 레켄
옮긴이: 박주영
Publication Date: 2008년 7월 16일
Page: 391쪽
Size: 220*150mm
Price: 17,000원
ISBN 978-89-92607-17-9 (03180)
다문화 사회와 가정,
제3문화 아이(TCK)를 위한 지침서
사람에 대한 따뜻한 시선을 가진 책.
부모의 문화권에도 온전히 속하지 못하고
체류했던 체류국의 문화권에도 온전히 속하지 못한
제3문화 아이들(TCK)과 그 부모들
그리고 그런 아이들을 가르치는 교사들을 위해 쓰여진 책.
You can purchase here
Other sites you can purchase the book:
http://www.libro.co.kr/Product/BookDetail.libro?goods_id=0100007808965
http://mania.isbnshop.com/books/book.php?isbn=9788992607179
http://book.daum.net/detail/book.do?bookid=KOR9788992607179
How to maintain lasting friendships
I’ve caught myself fearing that any intimate relationships will come to an end and will not last. I had this fear that any factors could take away someone who becomes intimate with me. Accidents, death, separation, or whatever the factor may be… I feared that I could not put faith in lasting relationships.
This is what I am used to. A highly mobile lifestyle has constructed in my belief system that no friendship can last long enough. I once was happy and thankful that I had been forced to stay in the same university in the past three years despite itchy feet. I felt hurt because friends from before college seemed to not care enough about me to make friendships last. I was disappointed with many of my friends because of their lack of interest and care for me. I even told myself that I might as well cut off these friendships.
Then, two nights ago I listened to a sermon by the senior pastor of my church. I came to repentance because I learned that I was being selfish. It stood out “Are you going to stop loving the person because of their sins?” (Am I going to stop being friends because of what they’ve done wrong and said?) I know in my heart I wanted to cut off friendships because I was disappointed in these friends. But how can I show my love to somebody without loving somebody? This is what the pastor made me think.
“If you were another person would you like to be a friend of yours?” Asked the pastor.
“When we can stand in line together and have a commonality we can be friends with one another.”
When he said this statement he showed us a movie clip of Freedom Writers where classmates are divided in cliques but after playing a line game, learn that they are just like any other students who have lost friends through gang violence. And this illustration rocked me inside because I am no better than any other person.
Being a TCK does not make me special. I am just another human being. Why judge others thinking that I am better and deserve better?
I have also learned from the sermon that friendship is to encourage, to put conscious effort to strengthen, and to empower in finding strength in God. I have made a commitment that in the morning when I wake up I will think of at least one person I will encourage that day.
Shame-Based vs. Guilt-Based Society: Which makes repatriation easier?
While listening to my home church pastor’s sermon, I was inspired to think more about how my own values are shaped due to my Korean heritage and having lived in Japan for five and a half years. Repatriation is an issue for many TCKs due to becoming hidden immigrants in their parent(s)’s country where they look alike but think different.
Before discussing which of the shame- and guilt-based societies is easier to repatriate, I would like to borrow the definiotions of shame and guilt from the Cambridge dictonary.
The dictionary defines
shame: loss of honour and respect
guilt: the fact of having done something wrong or committed a crime
From these definitions and the inspiration by the pastor, I can discuss that shame is defined by “who you are” while guilt is “what you do.” Shame-based cultures define you by the image of who you are but guilt-based cultures define you by individuality, right and worng based on the law.
The pastor said that when he learned the Viriginia Tech shooter (Cho Seung Hui) was Korean, he apologized to his caucasian friends as a Korean. He thought of the reason why he apologized. It felt right to him and it was because he believed what he did reflected on himself and others.
Many Asian, Middle Eastern, and African countries are shame-based countries. Of the many, Japan could be an extreme case. Not only their uniformity of style, clothes, manners, speech, and formality, Japan even has a saying that”Nail sticking out of a piece of wood, it will be hammered in.”
If the society is shame-oriented, then would it mean being different (a prevalent issue among TCKs) is hard to cope with than in a guilt-based society? I would like to hear more views on the the guilt-based society.
Poem: Home is where my hat is
This is a poem shared by Cattt in one of her comments, so I moved it here. (Her comment can be found at : http://www.tckid.com/group/rant-ramble/#comment-9140 )
Home is where my hat is.
She has no home,
No home she calls her own.
She has only a hat,
A perfect Black Top hat.
This hat she places,
Where ever she may be,
As if to say, that today,
This will be her home.
But what of tomorrow
Nobody knows, not you nor I
Where this Top hat will sit,
This hat, so worn, but so young?
Where am I from,
They may ask.
Never can I answer,
I, the nomad.
Where is my home, you ask?
Look for a Black Top hat,
Look for a Black Top hat worn and old,
Where it sits, is my home, for now.
Black will this top hat be,
worn at the edges,
Young with old experience,
Symbolic of what I never had.
Much has this hat seen,
Much has this hat yet to see,
Many places has it been,
Many places has it yet to be.
I take you with me,
For I have no home,
For I was born a Nomad,
And you are my coat of arms.
Black are you, my top hat.
No picket fence shall you have,
For you are a nomad,
Both doomed and blessed by wanderlust.
I have no home
No one country I call my own
Just my Black Top hat,
The centerpiece of my home.
Studying Abroad in Jan 2009 (Japan)
When I entered college, I knew I wanted to study abroad during college years. By the time it was a second semester in sophomore year, I felt very restless. Circumstances did not allow the possibility to study abroad until two months ago when I decided to change my major. It is required of me to complete at least 12 Credit Hours of my major studies abroad. This realization was freedom to me. It took away the feelings of restlessness instantly and I never felt it since then. Can anyone relate to this?
I will be studying abroad at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan in January 2009. Does anyone have tips for studying abroad? (they don’t have to be applicable to Japan necessarily. I want to know your thoughts.)
I have mixed feelings about this opportunity to live in Japan again. What would Japan be like? How would I feel once I am there? This time it is outside of my parents’ decision but my own to move to another country. I will have to use my own personal finances and the figure of cost is BIG!! I am stressed out about finding financial resources to support myself because of the high living expenses there. I would love to hear your thoughts and advices.
Introducing TCK/MK Seminars/Conferences in Korean
Continuing with the thread of “Introducing the TCK Concepts in Korean,” this thread is dedicated to events Korean TCKs/MKs can attend. There are numerous events for Korean MKs but we are in dire need for events tailored towards non-MK TCKs. Please help us reach out to those TCKs who are not MKs.
Introducing the TCK concepts in Korean
I am still in the process of finding the best way to explain the TCK issue to my parents. It seems like a few minutes of conversation won’t do so I am searching for websites that can explain the concept in Korean. There isn’t readily available resource out there (or maybe I just don’t have access to it). I want to dedicate this post specifically for this reason. Please feel free to share any thoughts, new information, etc. =)
Shall We be the Pioneers of the TCK Video Conference?
Brice’s post “TCKs no longer have problems because of Facebook and emails?”
made me think I need to ask for your help. I think in the near future, we will become more accessible to holding live video conferences that connect us among people in all nations. Even those who have never been abroad can speak with a group of people in other class and work settings and discuss directly with them. I know NGO is already doing this. As you can watch the video conferences here.
My greatest hope is that we can start live conferences tailored to TCK issues. Does anyone have ideas how we can start conferences like this? I currently attend university in Illinois and I wish to make my campus accessible to discussions (and hopefully healing in the process and more openness to the community) pertaining to TCK struggles. I have no idea where to start (who to meet, how to find sponsors, how to manage technology, how to make it legitimate by the international laws, etc.). Does anyone want to start the live conferences with me and become connected regardless of where we are in the world?
For private matters, please email to tckvideo@gmail.com.
Doris Lessing is a TCK who won 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature
Profile: Doris Lessing
Lessing was born in Persia and grew up on a farm in southern Africa |
Doris Lessing, who has won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature has been one of Britain’s most prominent writers for more than 50 years. Her novels, most notably The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, weave political and sexual themes into a complex narrative thread.
Lessing’s themes are big ones: racism, communism, terrorism and environmental destruction.
Her output ranges from romances through to science fiction and take in the most intimate internal dialogues and sweeping historical set-pieces.
Doris May Taylor is a child of the British Empire. Born in Persia - now Iran - in 1919, she was brought up in Southern Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - where her father owned a farm.
Her African childhood, amid the vastness of the bush and her time at convent schools, brought her a wealth of inspiration.
In 1949 after two failed marriages, the second to a hard-line communist, Gottfried Lessing, she left Africa, and most of her family, and moved to London to try her hand at writing.
Multi-layered tales
Lessing’s first novel, The Grass is Singing, published the following year, was an instant bestseller.
The story of the wife of a white farmer and her affair with an African servant, the book broke new ground, both in terms of its outlining of an interracial relationship and in the sheer detail Lessing gave to her characters’ internal lives.
Perhaps Lessing’s most controversial novel was The Golden Notebook, published in 1962.
A multi-layered story about the different areas of one woman’s personality, her passions and hatreds, it is by far the most complex, and longest, work Lessing has ever produced.
Lessing has written more than 30 novels |
She has also produced startling works, such as the semi-autobiographical Children of Violence series and Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), a frightening and surreal examination of mental illness.
By the late 1970s, Lessing left the African-themed novel behind and moved into science fiction.
In the Canopus in Argos series, she outlines a dystopic vision of the future, with natural catastrophes and tyranny becoming the norm.
The critic, Paul Schlueter, noted that Lessing’s “high seriousness in describing Earth’s own decline and ultimate demise is as profoundly apocalyptic as ever”.
More recently, Lessing has produced novels like The Good Terrorist (1985), a satire on romantic politics, and The Fifth Child (1988), about the havoc wreaked on a family by an antisocial and violent child.
Her latest work, The Cleft, is a sci-fi novel which imagines what happens to a mythical all-female world when men are introduced.
Speaking at the Hay literary festival in June, Lessing said the book had been partly inspired by her own experience of giving birth at 19 and the woman in the next bed, already a mother of two girls, harshly rejecting the son she had just had.
The writer also addressed her critics - saying she had been surprised by the “horrible” early reviews of The Golden Notebook.
“There’s something abrasive in me because I have often made people very cross,” she mused.
But she said as a writer it was important not to care what other people think and that the profession must honour that.
“We are free… I can say what I think. We are lucky, privileged, so why not make use of it?”
(source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7039539.stm)
—————————————————————————————–
I wonder if her TCK experience has contributed a big portion to her literature.
Haunting Deja Vu
The Reentry Team: Caring for Your Returning Missionaries by Neal Pirolo –MKs, Third World Kids: “Haunting Deja Vu” pp.163-167
“It was as if I had never left. Things were different yet still the same. As I stepped out of the airplane door my lungs drank in the winter Ecuadorian air, a mixture of smog, jet fuel and more smog. Above, bulbous gray clouds fled from the brilliance of a freshly formed rainbow. All around me stood the mountains I grew up with, their pure white caps shining through the blanket of exhaust that coiled itself around me like a constricting boa, cutting off my breath.
Directly before me loomed a loud building, an airport fashioned out of glass and foreign investments. My mind played back memories of an airport floor constructed entirely of tiny squares of ceramic. My eyes shifted their view off to the left. There in the shadow, like an old discarded box, lay the airport I remembered. Ten years, one month and a few days before, my good-bye tears had formed a stream in the cracks between its little ceramic tiles. For a moment I thought I knew something there. I thought I heard laughter. I glanced at my wife beside me. She seemed oblivious to the laughter, to the taunt that echoed off the glass and shattered my soul.
My heart began pounding as we boarded a bus that would take us to the terminal building. A few minutes later, as our car sped under the rainbow and into the city, I realized that this trip was going to be one of haunting deja vu. From the first instant at the airport, that spooky feeling persisted. Like a race, like a game, someone or something was following me. Its heart bled fear and its mouth dripped mocking. This confused me and somewhat angered me. Returning to one’s homeland, I assumed, was supposed to be pleasant. This was not pleasant.
My mission in coming back was twofold: to fulfill my school requirements for a cross-cultural internship was one; to just remember fulfilled the second. I never expected the remembering part to be so grueling. The first day the host missionaries took us to the house where I grew up. Te car pulled into the familiar cul-de-sac and I slowly got out. Rooted to the pavement, I just stared at that house. The walls of winter ivy like emerald waves crashed over me, drenching me in emotional claustrophobia. My entire being was gripped in a concoction of amazement and terror. The amazement came because before me lay an exact replica of my childhood home, a treasure chest filled with golden memories. The terror tied me in a helpless, hopeless rope of confusion and sorrow.
The few minutes we stayed there were too many. We left and visited place after place with the same result. Sometimes the laughter was a silent snicker. At other times, my pursuer’s anger caused me to weep like a baby.
I visited the church I grew up in. One Sunday night they asked me to preach. So, confidently, I strutted to the wooden pulpit and turned to face my waiting audience. My eyes surveyed the faces of old friends and new strangers alike. In that crowd were my spiritual fathers. I couldn’t hold it in. My body shook with convulsive sobs so strong that all I could do was cling to the podium and stare. Tears came frequently all throughout the sermon making my now sparse Spanish even choppier.
A train passed behind the church that evening just like it had every night ten years before. Even its fierce click-clacks and whistles added to the mocking I received hat night of embarrassment.
All summer long I tried to visualize this ghost. That is what it was, a shadowy specter that haunted me. But why? As I thought and pondered, the picture my mind painted was of a boy. A boy who was forgotten and discarded like a toy sold at a yard sale into the eager hands of strangers. The boy was faceless like the ghost that warned Scrooge of his gloomy future. Why me? I wondered. But then I begn to see a pattern.
Once we took a trip to visit friends in the South. We visited villages serenely placed by lakes under the shadows of snowcapped volcanoes. He followed me there. We visited old friends, now grown men and women and he followed me there. When I walked along familiar streets downtown or through favorite parks, I could hear his obnoxious giggles and accusations. But when I explored new parts of the city I couldn’t hear him. At the movie theater, he was nowhere to be found. Why did I feel and hear him only when i remembered my past?
My wife and I were invited to a dinner in the home of my parents’ friends. Upon our arrival we found a surprise party thrown in our honor. Around the table we shared the best of Ecuadorian food, laugher and memories. I sat next to the owner of the house. Juan was one of my spiritual fathers.
My heart broke that night as he poured his out and shared with me the events that transformed him from a dynamic church leader he once was to the embittered husk of a man he was now. I looked at this man and fought back the stinging n my eyes and throat. Juan’s eyes remained free of expression; his tear ducts dried out long ago.
Before I left his home, I found an old black and white picture they had of our family. I took the photo with me. Somehow I knew it was the key to my struggle. That night the laughter was fierce. I decided then that I would confront my enemy in a battle to the end. I made up my mind to return to where I had felt his presence the strongest. To where I had the most memories. I went back to my childhood home.
With permission from the current resident, I entered the house. With video camera in hand, I bolstered myself as I walked into a place so jammed with memories my senses were spinning out of control. The smells of the waxed floor, the lemon tree and the kitchen cabinets mixed with the sight of the Smurf wallpaper in the office, the blond-finished closet in my bedroom, and the same balding brown carpet I prayed on with my brothers. I continued my tour de force through the rest of the house somewhat surprised that I hadn’t been assaulted or laughed at.
After I shut off my camera I thanked the owner for his kindness. Motionless, I stood in the alley staring at the small, one-story, German-style home. And then I saw it. I saw the rock, nestled beside the gnarled plum tree I used to abuse. In front of the wobbly black metal gate, the rock stood firm. I crouched down slowly for the ground, independent and razor sharp. Memories of matchbox cars and little green soldiers falling from its steep precipice to a “toyish” death flooded me as I reached my hand out toward its rusty orange surface. The feel of the rough, chill stone against my trembling fingers soothed me.
It was then that everything made sense. I could now see the boy. He was next to me. His face, onc shrouded by a mask of fear now became crystal clear. I almost expected what I saw. His face was identical to the face of the twelve-year-old boy in that black and white hoto I took from Juan’s house. It was the face of a scared, confused and heartbroken little boy.
The entire world stood still while the jigsaw puzzle pieces of my life were snapped together. The picture now complete, I stepped back and saw my life as a whole. I was haunting myself. I had been terrified at the prospect of seeing myself.
When I boarded the black and white plane in the background of the picture, I left behind twelve years of childhood memories; memories tied to this house and to this city. I left a part of me behind that could not grow up. Ten years of absence had let a gulf that separated me into two beings.
The rock that stood before me was the only bridge stone to close the gap between the two images. That sunny winter day, I reached for the boy and held him in a timid embrace. As I held him, the warmth from my arms melted his icy heart and he no longer hated me.
At the end of the summer, my wife and I boarded the airplane that would take us home. I leaned back in my seat and exhaled deeply. A few moments later, our plane passed over the majestic Andes peaks and headed north. I said farewell to a alnad tha I loved, knowing this time that I hadn’t left anything behind. My life let go her death grip on my hand and tried to pop her ears. A smile crept across my lips as she mentioned something about a feeling of deja vu.”
TCK Reentry in Audio-Visual Form
The video does not reflect what it was like for me during several reentries, but I wanted to make a video that will at least give a sense of what it feels like to be multi-cultured by living in different countries in different period of times throughout life. So the focus here is the “music.”
little mints about miyon
miyon [pronounced Mee-Yon]
I figured it is time I should introduce myself. If you have been regularly checking this website, you would have noticed in the past week I have been covering this website with full of comments.
I also felt bad to have commented on others without having a proper introduction. If I threw you off in anyway, it is my apologies.
Here is a little pointer to what shapes me who I am:
When my mom was married to dad and lived with grandpa and uncles, I was born in a local hospital in South Korea. When my dad was delegated to Hong Kong for work, my parents started their new journey as a nuclear family. My brother and I moved with them to HK and stayed there for 3 years. After that we moved to Korea and Japan (several re-entries in between) and by the time I was 13 my brother and I were in New Zealand where we stayed for half a year. Our move was followed by 10 months in Korea and then we entered high school in the US. I currently attend University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and it has been a blessing to be with my half African American and half Korean roommate and their friends.
It was the feelings of disconnectedness and others’ misunderstandings that have driven me to search for meaning on the web. Through the TCK Facebook Group I was taken to this web forum. Reading the discussions of other TCKs and their personal stories ring to my heart and at times I wish I could run to them and hug them. I am grateful that we have an online TCK group like this, which will give further help to other TCKs that are yet to come in the ever-more globalized world.
How were you named? Any reasons you were named so?
In the Korean custom, each household has a genealogy book called “jok-bo”that records the ancestors’ names and their lines. The book includes the order of “syllable” each generation should follow to include in their first names. (The typical Korean first name has two syllables)
Let’s say the order is (usually it’s more than 4)
1) Seung
2) Gyu
3) Myung
4) Bong
The first generation sons will be named such as “Seung-Pil” “Seung-Gang” “Seung-Hyuk.” Their paternal cousins (the same generation) will also follow the rule and thus are to be named such as “Seung-Gil” “Seung-Jae.”
The second generation sons will be named using “Gyu.” “Gyu” usually sounds better when used as the 2nd syllable of the name: ex) “Il-Gyu” “Yul-Gyu”
The third generation will include “Myung.” ex) “Myung-Sung” “Myung-Shik”
When you hit the fourth generation and are complete with the list, you go back to the 1st generation to repeat the cycle all over again.
A Japanese American Woman Lives in Japan
Dedicated to Ayako:
Following are the excerpts drawn from “The Eye/I” of her book Crafting Selves by Dorinne Kondo, a Japanese American who as a researcher lived with a host family in Japan.
Dr. Kondo is a J.I. Staley Prize 1999 winner for Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (University of Chicago Press, 1990).
“As a Japanese American, I created a conceptual dilemma for the Japanese I encountered. For them, I was a living oxymoron, someone who was both Japanese and not Japanese. This puzzlement was all the greater since most Japanese people I knew seemed to adhere to an eminently biological definition of Japaneseness. Race, language, and culture are intertwined, so much so that any challenge to this firmly entrenched conceptual schemia–a white person who speaks flawlessly idiomatic and unaccented Japanese, or a person of Japanese ancestory who cannot–meets with what generously could be described as unpleasant reactions.”
“I found that the desire for comprehensible order in the form of “fitting in,” even if it meant suppression of and violence against a self I had known in another context, was preferable to meaninglessness. Anthropological imperatives to immerse oneself in another culture intensified this desire, so that acquiring the accoutrements of Japanese selfhood meant simultaneously constructing a more thoroughly professional anthropological persona…For my informants, it was clear that coping with this anomalous creature was difficult, for here was someone who looked like a real human being, but who simply failed to perform according to expectation.”
“My informants and I consequently had every reason to conspire to recreate my identity as Japanese.”
“What occurred in the field was as kind of fragmenting of identity into what I then labeled Japanese and American pieces, so that the different elements, instead of fitting together to form at least the illusion of a seamless and coherent whole–it is the contention of this book that selves which are coherent, seamless, bounded, and whole are indeed illusions–strained against one another. The war was not really–or only–between Japanese and American elements, however. Perhaps it had been more to do with the position of researcher versus one of daughter and guest. In one position, my goal had to be the pursuit of knowledge, where decisive action, independence, and mastery were held in high esteem. In another, independence and mastery of one’s fate were out of the question; rather, being a daughter meant duties, responsibilities, and interdependence.”
———————————————————————-
Dr. Kondo is currently a professor and
director of Asian American Studies
at the University of Southern California
TCK Youtube video
It has taken 5 hours to edit everything plus at least two weeks of research on the TCK and I have finally finished making one video which I hope will present an accurate definition and awareness of the TCK. Hope you enjoy! =)
I will update the movie for improvements later. My eyes are bulging from staring at the monitor too long XD
>>edit>> I am back! I have taken down the address I had of the original video. Here is now the edited version!
or
Click on TCK Awareness Movie.
-
Top Commentators
- Ayako (781)
- Cynthia (554)
- miyon (505)
- Uncle Dan (500)
- mairabay (368)
- kristine (363)
- MsMerising (279)
- mmmmmm (249)
- marie (229)
- Isa (223)
Polls
Loading ...