i don’t look (south) korean. after breezing through customs with only a couple bows and not a single word exchanged, i get my train ticket and takeoff to seoul. there are five people on the train with me, and every one of them has porcelain skin. add some cherry-blossomed undertones to a blank sheet of paper for a color match. i look in the faces of women, since it is easier for me to appreciate nuances in women’s features than men, and do not see my own. their skin is whiter than the white people. soft chins and low cheekbones. the train stops and my car quickly fills. many people stare and when i meet their gaze they avert it embarrassed. i am still the darkest one by far, although i can look at some people’s arms in the newly filled car without sunglasses. i am wearing the brightest colors, my gorgeous orange sundress and my last clean pair of underwear. 

i look more like the koreans at home in america. maybe because their are so many black and latino people around annandale that the rampant colorism throughout asia relaxed in the redefined american hierarchy, so aunties let their children outside without 10lbs of sun protection. maybe the koreans in annandale are too poor to care about getting tanned while working outside. maybe they moved to america because they were from the north and couldn’t stay. 

i look more like my dad, but i see my mom’s face in me too. i have my dad’s big teeth and bone structure and my mom’s small mouth and eye/nose/mouth triangulation. i know daddy’s family hovered above the dmz before the war. grandma told me exactly once about her escape from the north and i never forgot it. it’s one my clearest memories and its not even mine. i think mommy’s family hovered just below, and they moved to the dmv as apart of a wave of koreans that left post-ceasefire. i can’t say post-war, since it never ended.

some koreans in annandale look like me with strong jaws and high cheek-bones and tanned skinned like the portraits of north korean defectors i googled after some girl wearing an ODPC shirt said i wasn’t korean like her. (Open Door Presbyterian Church (ODPC) is the Korean mega church in the area. Sometime in middle school, the pastor’s son told all the kids in the congregation I was a lesbian so I kissed his girlfriend in the church parking lot.)

i am tired of watching the women so i face the men. they look so old hunched over their phones. many look to old to be working. many look too miserable to enjoy anything but the dopamine cycle of samsara flashing across their screens. i almost stumble as the train stops, but years of taking the subway honed my reflexes enough to catch myself.  i watch one man reach for his lighter and pack as soon as he steps off. more people hop on and off and i am still 11 stops away. more people stare. more people look away, preferring to fixate on their phones. but i still catch their repeated glances and always try to meet it, just to see if i can find my face in theirs.

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i am staying for free in a boujee 마포구 (mapo-gu) hotel. i don’t know how i got there with no cell service, no wifi, no korean, but the tourist map i swiped from the airport and my memory of the hangul that made up its address were somehow enough. the person who got the room for me likes to pretend they aren’t rich, but one look at the lobby my intuition swells sad with righteous confirmation. their dad owns the hotel and their mom doesn’t work. and boy, is this a nice hotel. 

i’m so hungry. i drop my bag, my phone, and wander around with 10,000 won in my pocket. it’s dark but i am not afraid. i navigated southside chicago blind (literally), secretly couch surfed harlem in my late teens, and can hit the deck when gunshots fire over business that isn’t mine. the american cities i walked are a war zone compared to this uppity part of seoul. and cctv is everywhere, there is no where to hide.

there is more english here than i could imagine. conversations are in korean, but more than the occasional menu or store sign has an english translation, if it is not entirely in english. is this a tourist district, a symptom of american’s hand in korea’s modernization, or both? 

i sound out 삼겹살 and 냉면 from a storefront sign and step inside. the only korean i know is bowing, basic greetings and goodbyes, relational names (auntie, teacher, etc), food, and numbers. i learned numbers on the plane so i don’t get scammed. if mainland koreans are anything like the ones in the diaspora, we’re all scammers and hustlers. i bow and greet the owners. i’m happy their is a kiosk to pay, so i don’t have to talk and smile and nod at the jargonned syllables that sound like new years day. the food tastes like home. perfect for a hot summer’s night. 

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the next day, i wake up at 7 with 3 hours to kill before meeting my friend. i still don’t have my checked bag, so i turn my underwear inside out and don the same sundress as before. it’s monday morning and my body craves coffee. i walk past closed stores trying to sound out everything without knowing what it means. i’m hungry and the few vendors open are 아줌마’s slaving over fire. it smells so good, but i am too scared to buy anything since i do not know korean and am sure i will get scammed. maybe tomorrow…

elementary schooled kids walk with hanging backpacks the same size as them. their backpack and feet scrape the ground. i sit on a bench and and meditate. the air is already sticky and saturated and i love this wet heat. this must be what the inside of my skin feels like. an 아저씨 exercises on the machine next to me.

i grab coffee and 김밥 from 7/11, more from curiosity than desire. i know i should get 김밥 from the store where they make it in front of you, but i need to save the exhaustion of questioning the validity of my korean-ness for meeting my friend.