Comforting conformity meets uncomfortable truths for one Korean adoptee traveling incognito in Seoul | By Suni Miller Zmich (Summer 2024)
While in Seoul, I purposely woke up early one morning to people-watch. I walked to the business district and sat down. Holding my cup of Korean-strength coffee, called an Americano (ha) – black, no ice – the skyscraper sentries surrounded me, seemingly protecting the workers from interlopers like me. The last of the morning city work crews power-washed the sidewalks to commence another clean-slate day. I noticed the lack of excrement and grime that proliferates in many American cities.
Sipping my coffee, I sat on a polished stone half-wall next to a shiny building entrance. Men and women arrived en masse via buses and trains. A uniform sea of smartly-dressed serious men and seriously-thin women flowed by.
The office workers wore outfits put together from an understated color palette of respectful hues – cream, gray, beige, and black. They looked like they coordinated their outfits the night before, like American middle schoolers. Women wore conservative pencil skirts and fashionable flats or medium-height pumps. Although they must have worked in a variety of jobs, they all looked like bankers, lawyers, or engineers – the hardworking money-making aggregate.
The occasional appearance of navy felt slightly naughty. Maybe that brand of naughty reminded me of decades ago – my early corporate accounting days (in which men dominated the industry in blue suit solidarity). I began my accounting career right around the time women arrived in large numbers on the American corporate scene. My female classmates and I entered the corporate world after interviewing in our navy-blue suits, white blouses, and practical heels, unaware of the misogyny awaiting us down the numbers-road.
As I continued to sip my Americano, the appearance of an occasional flippy floral dress delighted me. At one point, a red billowing blouse jolted me into the present, disrupting the homogeneity of it all. I wondered if those flippy nonconformists felt as free as I do in unrestrictive fabric. Or perhaps the crowd reminded them that they were fools in their textile rebellion. I quite enjoyed the flippers, as I keep several brightly-colored pieces in my wardrobe, having abandoned my business suits years ago.
* * *
As the flippers stood out from the crowd, I thought about how I always stood out from my adoptive family. My darker skin made it unavoidable. One of my cousins once told me that I looked like the “N” word (after spending time in the hot Florida summer sun – my skin was bronzed dark) and made it clear that I wasn’t a real Miller. I wonder if the Korean flippers felt like they weren’t real business people.
Embracing my adoption feels analogous to wearing the free-flowing fabric. I suppose I am flipping off familial expectations to conform. I have (finally) realized that it is impossible for me to forget my biology. I cannot abandon my ethnicity in order to gratefully assimilate into my family’s genetic majority without leaving a piece of me unfulfilled.
I have chosen to let go of certain adoptive family members who do not accept my Korean-ness – and instead choose to embrace the relatives who see me for my uniqueness, not for the conservative suit of conformity I used to wear.
* * *
I did not see one homeless person that morning in the business district.
My Korean-Korean friend Claire told me that after the last train departs each day, homeless people are allowed to sleep in the lowest underground level at one of Seoul’s largest train stations. They are required to leave before the first train of the morning arrives. Throughout the night, the bathrooms are left open to all. City workers clean the station after the homeless leave every day so that the paying customers can have a pleasant transit experience and remain oblivious to the plight of the less fortunate from the previous night.
Being an adoptee is not unlike the experience of the unseen homeless in Korea. Historically, Korean society relegated adoptees to invisibility. Socially, we were placed in a position several stations below ground (through the benevolence of the government). If we were raised in orphanages, we were minimally cared for and allowed as little visibility as possible. Whispers of our existence were to be tidied up and cast into anonymity when daylight appeared. If we were internationally adopted, we were officially erased when we left the country, as the government nullified our citizenship status.
We are an ugly stain (as if stains could be pretty) on Korea’s report card and a reminder of generational shame.
In addition to teaching me about the homeless in Korea, Claire also taught me about Korean societal norms. She lived in Texas when she was four years old. Her family moved back to Korea when she was eight. During the four American years of her young life, she learned the freedom of original thought long before she had to make the adult decision as to whether or not to join the group-think of Korean society. Claire told me that she relates more to Korean adoptees than to her Korean-Korean friends. When she said that to me, something about it endeared her to me.
Maybe I was waiting to hear someone say they prefer Korean adoptees over the real thing.
For most of my life (on some subconscious level) I have felt like the second, third, or fourth choice – taking whatever validation I could get from would-be friends. Claire and I click. She doesn’t get offended by my brutally honest assessments and proclamations, and nor do I find offense with hers. I love her outspokenness – I trust her way more than people who beat around the American bush.
True to Korean conformist culture, Claire’s friends have bluntly (but not unkindly) told her that she is different. They often give her a hall pass for her Americanized behaviors, for which she feels compelled to be grateful.
Claire smokes. My adoptive father used to smoke. My husband used to smoke. I used to smoke. (We’re talking about cigarettes, here…) Over the decades, I’ve always loved the naughty smell of cigarette smoke (and still do), and at times I wish it weren’t unhealthy so that I could resume the habit. In Korea, you often see groups of men outside, harmoniously smoking together like musicians in an orchestra. Once in a while, you will see a woman furtively smoking solo.
When Claire was younger, it was considered bad form for women to smoke in public. Of course, Claire being Claire, she smoked whenever and wherever she pleased in Korea. On one occasion, an older Korean man yelled at her to stop. When she refused, he smacked the cigarette out of her hand. The frustration she described when relating certain interactions in Korea made sense when I observed the orderly fishbowl of humanity that is Seoul’s business district.
As a displaced Korean, I yearned to be part of the Korean business society gliding before me that morning. And admittedly, I could absolutely be tempted to conform (and give up the hope of resuming a relationship with cigarettes forever) if it were possible to seamlessly rejoin my biological collective. I might actually love spreadsheets again.
As a misplaced (or maybe misfit) American, I also yearn to be part of the red-white-and-blue hive. Even though some do not view me as one of them, my life was shaped by American values, habits and social rules. Many of my Pentecostal, military, redneck, and Jewish childhood experiences were the same as those of my white friends.
I love it (not at all) when people speak loudly and slowly to me, assuming I don’t speak English – or when others pretend that my perfect American accent is hard for them to understand. And without intentional thought, some assume my citizenship status is not the same as theirs simply because of my race.
Sitting in the Korean business district, I felt like a trespasser. In America, no matter where I am, I often feel the same.
* * *
On another day in Seoul, I navigated one of the shopping districts. My Asian face was as standard as every other pedestrian in Seoul, and I felt solace in the uniformity of it all. Packed in with myriads of other shoppers, my anonymity was a surprising gift; without a second look from anyone, I was walking in the street, passing small well-lit grocery stores, smelling grilled meat infused with garlic, and peering into fashionable clothing stores. I relished the sense of anonymous belonging as I navigated through the crowds, enjoying the freedom of being ignored.
That calm unfortunately evaporated as soon as I stepped into any of the shops. I was again a foreigner when interacting with the shopkeepers. I struggled to remember my Korean language lessons, and it wasn’t because I had truly forgotten. Instead, I think my ability to communicate was hampered by the mix of emotions I experienced while visiting my original culture, blocking me from speaking the most basic of phrases. The salespeople usually switched easily to English, greeting me from behind their state-of-the-art cash registers with mild smiles, hellos, thank yous, and goodbyes.
In contrast to the awkwardness of shopping in Seoul, I always felt breezy when popping about in New York City with its racially diverse population and lack of language barriers, as most people speak some English. Seoul has more residents than New York City, yet Seoul’s square-mile footprint is half that of The Big Apple, making its population density both weighty in comfort and melancholy.
* * *
Moving within the different districts of Seoul was easy. The Korean train and bus system should be the world’s civil engineering gold standard.
While visiting Korea, my husband, Kurt, a civil engineer, geeked out on the city’s infrastructure. He said the transit system blew American standards out of the water. The sanitized trains reach every corner of Seoul. The buses are filled with people from every district. Even the platforms lack the chaotic aggressive energy of the train stations in American cities. The system is so orderly and clean that no one would ever guess some Korean stations become benevolent shelters for the homeless at night.
In many stations, the tracks are behind a wall of sliding glass doors. When the trains arrive, the platform doors open in tandem with the train doors. Passengers quietly line up on either side of the sliding doors prior to each train’s arrival. The onboarding riders wait on the platform while the outgoing passengers exit. The process made me think of a conveyor belt in a manufacturing plant of uniform widgets. Pausing, moving, connecting, pausing, moving, connecting with the cadence of engineering precision, smelling of engine lubricant and steel.
The train rides were also infused with order. Most trains have seats with their backs to the windows, so that seated passengers face one another across the train. The space in between is for standing passengers, who hold overhead bars or straps, standing perfectly in line with each other like soldiers in a parade. There is an unspoken rule to never speak loudly or make eye contact. No one seemed to think it was weird that the seated passengers benignly stared at the standing passengers’ stomachs and crotches when they weren’t staring at their phones.
In the hothouse weather of August, we were sweaty Americans amid millions of sweatless Koreans. My husband’s gray t-shirt was 75 percent drenched with sweat, and 25 percent damp with the incessant humidity. On one train ride, he obediently faced the window, holding on to the suspended overhead rail with his armpits out like an Old Spice antiperspirant commercial. The young man in front of him couldn’t take it and moved to another seat, making us crack up (quietly) to ourselves.
Much like the engineered order of Korean train stations, I achieve orderliness in my home by making our bed on most days. The act itself is a welcome vestige of my military upbringing, a two-minute activity that provides me with a semblance of control. I can’t think clearly in a messy environment. Making my bed sets my mind up to be ready for the unforeseen surges of creative melancholy release. Glimpses of past losses and future ideals often come to me in the morning before I board my day’s activities with the comfort of premade predictability.
Kurt finds my bed-making cadence perplexing. He thinks it is easier to not make one’s bed.
While using the Korean transit system, I noticed art was incorporated into the orderliness. Poetry graced the glass doors of the station platforms. I took an initial stab at translating the poetry by myself, a sad attempt. My toddler-like Korean language skills and trying translation through the Papago language app were insufficient.
My friend Bomi Yoon Newman helped to right my translation wrongs. The correct translation was even better than what I originally thought. I love the Seoul-fulness of the words. They speak directly to my heart’s version of Seoul. Two of my favorite poems follow (if there are still translation errors, they are entirely mine):
Prunus Persica (Peach Blossom)
~ by Bang Inja
You’re a book of 10,000 pages.
Unfinished reading in my previous life.
A full 10,000 petals of flowers that came all the way to this life.
Waiting for me in the unreachable mountains.
I can’t move on to my next life without reading you.
Page after page, I turn you, deep into the spring night.
But you once again become 10,000 pages ready to rebloom into 10,000 petals.
I Want to Comfort Myself
~ by Young (2021 Citizen Contest)
The daily act of keeping a diary can weigh so heavily.
A journal untouched as months go by.
Within it, a bygone-self breathes.
An abandoned soul fighting a lonely tide.
In solitude, I battle tomorrow’s ache.
The dark shadows of yesterday weighed heavily.
Faded trifles.
Why could my heart only whisper into the pages?
Keeping sounds from lending ears.
I whisper solace to myself.
I long to reach back to the years of pain.
And gently cradle my sorrow with a comforting embrace.
The movement within the train stations mirrored how I often feel – a disciplined regularity that somehow guides my internal poetry of angst, sorrow, beauty, and joy. And what ties those disparate emotions together is an externally-facing tidiness.
While the complexity of the Korean spirit is fused into my personality, the American spirit is in there too. Trying to remove either culture from my world would be futile – no different than trying to remove a basic element from a compound and expecting the atomic equation to remain stable. Prejudiced people in America do not want me on their continent. Go back to where you came from. Conforming Koreans cannot relate to my Americanness.
I am Korean. I am American. I am both. I am neither.
Like many other transracial adoptees, I have been relegated to the in-between, if such a place exists.
For now, my community belongs with the displaced – both Korean and non-Korean as well as adoptees and non-adoptees. I love and appreciate my non-conforming friends. We often commune over the dinner table, a place where all are welcome and food sings universally. Our chosen family – an unlikely mix of colorful personalities – clicks together like an assortment of Christmas lights because of (not in spite of) our differences.
Recipe – Gimbap or Kimbap (Sounds somewhere between G and K – if you like mnemonic devices, think Gutsy Korean)
Serves: 10
Prep time: 45 minutes
Cooking time: Zero minutes
- 15 sheets gim (seaweed paper, commercially known as nori) – Get the large squares used for sushi rolls with orderly perforations that look like train tracks.
- 3 C uncooked rice (sticky rice, aka sushi rice) – It’s probably too much, but to come up short is a travesty. Excess rice can be shaped and made into kimchi balls.
- 1.5 C bulgogi (Korean-style marinated and barbequed beef) or 1 can of Spam if you wax Americana nostalgic. If you are from Minnesota, definitely use Spam to support the state’s economy. That special ham was born two hours south of Minneapolis. If you’ve run out of places to tour in the world, visit the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota. I love that place. If you are a vegetarian, scratch the bulgogi and Spam. Use tofu instead. Another option – I’ve heard certain meat substitutes like Impossible Foods are good, too. I have yet to try them, but my non-beef eater friends have enthusiastically endorsed those products.
- 4 steamed eggs
- 1 oversized or two average-sized carrots – All carrots must be at least nine inches long. Size definitely matters in this situation. You need the carrots (sliced lengthwise) to be firm and uniform in width for the entire length of the seaweed roll for a pleasing appearance when the gimbap disks are cut.
- 1 bag fresh spinach or 10 oz. frozen – thawed and squeezed as dry as a homeless person in Korea
- 1 yellow pickled daikon radish
- ¼ C sesame oil
- ¼ C toasted sesame seeds as brown as Korean skin
Rinse rice and sassy mouth four times. Five if you over achieve. Cloudy baptismal bath. Emerge renewed. Fire ready. Sticky kernels cling to memories. Starchy aromas awash in foggy strobe lit loss. Swamp surrenders to brackish ocean’s edge. Rock tissue paper scissors. Gim conquers all to embrace. Find the key somewhere between G and K. Glossy side down. Hide the light. The rice spread thin just shy of the edge. Sheets wrinkle and crave attention the second they rip in half. Sandwich the white. Protect the proteins and organics from the sticky. Lay the carrots stiff. Along the dotted lines without dinner. Unprotected transit platforms. Spinach tossed like pins. Sesame oil and toasted seeds. Yellow radish carved into uniformity. Pressed and rolled into mummified shrouds. Sealed sticky line. Newbie mats. Oldie free forms. Forced compression. Conform. Brushed with a sesame oil kiss of bliss and betrayal. A drop too much sends Freitag over the edge. Henckels blades. J.A. not J.C. Sin cheapens no more. The uneducated mistake disks for sushi. Cry you are Korean. Blow the whistle. Reminders of boarding angst. Trains churn to the cadence of past and present uniformity. Alpha. Chug. Bravo. Chug. Crush it. Crush it. Roll over no more.
Editor’s note: This essay by Suni (pronounced Sunny) Miller Zmich is an excerpt from her memoir-in-progress consisting of stories, life-recipes, and poetry. Suni is a retired accounting manager and lives in Minneapolis with her husband Kurt.
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