Half In, Half Out
Unedited thoughts from my time in Seoul
It’s impossible to know how much you’ve eaten around a Korean dinner table. Dishes of banchan are endlessly refilled as if by magic. Turn around for a moment and your bowl has been replenished with soup or rice, plates piled high with kimchi, an elder pointing at the fish urging you to eat, eat, eat.
A basket of glossy seafood is presented to me at my youngest uncle’s house. “Sea cucumber,” my mum tells me, “my favourite.” I am compelled to try it, although it’s challenging to keep it from slipping off my chopsticks. I imagine it will be soft like an oyster, but I am wrong. It’s tough and sinewy and as I put it in my mouth, I’m unsure what to do with it. My mum and immo laugh at me. “Bite!”
It’s strange to be in a place where everyone considers you an outsider, yet part of that place is etched into your DNA. It is foreign to me, though. The language that dances on their tongue yet chokes in my mouth, incomprehensible, clumsy, bemusing. Sat on the table next to my cousin who speaks English, she asks me, how do you find being here as a foreigner? I don’t know how to answer. My second cousin who has just turned 18 and is preparing for his time in the army (there is still mandatory military service enforced for men when they turn 18) is shyly practising his English with me. He comments on how well I use chopsticks, a little shocked. I tell him I’ve used them almost every day of life since I learnt how to hold them, as if to prove my connection to my Koreanness in the smallest of ways.
When I get back, people ask me how my trip was, and I find myself talking to them about how it felt to practise silence: to be both an observer and to be observed. Most of my extended family don’t speak much English, and I do not speak Korean –something I’m regret not learning or being more interested in when I was younger; back then I was more interested in fitting in, in occupying my whiteness, in shunning my otherness – so communicating with one another becomes non-verbal.
It was strangely confronting not to be able to wield my words and use language to validate who I am. I found myself desperate to tell them about my life in London, to explain what I did for money, to show off a little about an old project or to impress them with my way of interpreting the world. This, of course, is how I operate on a daily basis. In my job, through this newsletter, with friends and strangers. How unusual it felt not to justify who I was; and how strange it was to be accepted regardless. Aunts and uncles would smile at me and say my name to my mum, and they’d pinch my arms and place plates of food in front of me, refill my cup and sometimes even hold my hand as we walked along the seafront, talking to me in a language I didn’t understand yet making so much sense along the way.
“You dream in a language that I can’t understand. It’s like there’s this whole place inside of you where I can’t go.” – Past Lives
When my mum speaks in Korean I feel a certain sadness that I might not truly ever know her. Your mother tongue speaks so directly to who you are. Language is so essential to how we feel – or at least how we communicate how we feel, that my guilt of not knowing the language that runs right through her grows with every meal. I am often silent sat around the table, nodding and smiling and reaching for dishes, trying to discern what my family are saying through subtle intonations or the odd English word that sneaks its way into their lexicon. It makes me wonder how much of our innate characteristics are shaped by language – our humour, our shyness or our confidence. If you’ve had the pleasure of meeting my mum, you’ll know she’s quick-witted, brutally honest to the point of hilarity and in general very funny. But observing her with my aunts, I witnessed her humour come alive on a different level.
It’s so interesting to see her with her in a familial context; her brothers and sisters offer up a different lens to see her through. There are four sisters and two brothers and they all have different personalities according to their sibling rank.
My eldest wesamchun, who is just shy of 90, is the true patriarch of the family. They call him oppa and he is strong and silent – I once heard my mum refer to him as ‘The Kremlin’ – although sometimes I see his lips curl into a smile when his younger sisters are teasing him. He needs a stick to walk and he always wears a flat cap. He has smoked for almost his entire life and one day he just stopped cold turkey. He loves whiskey more than anyone else I know, but when his health required it, he stopped that too. Resilience is a quality that unites the Cho siblings.
By contrast, my mum’s younger brother – the baby of the family – has the most expressive, smiling face. He lights up when he sees my mum, the sister who took care of him when everyone else had gotten married, the sibling who had received the least amount of time with his mother – and he exudes this youthful playfulness that’s infectious. My mum’s second eldest sister is the one she is closest to. When I woke up at 4am the night we were staying with family in Ulsan, they were both sat on the floor on their mattresses, gossiping and laughing like two teenagers at a sleepover.
Her eldest sister is impossibly chic, small with curly hair and a tight grip when she grabs my hand at random and walks with me silently. My mum tells me she’s had the hardest life: she lost her husband young, raised not only her two children but her grandson – my second cousin – whilst his parents worked in high-powered jobs between Korea and the States. She doesn’t say much, but when she does, I can tell she is the voice of reason – the matriarch who quietly demands respect.
Everyone looks about 15 years younger than they actually are and I’m convinced it’s the bone broth they drink every morning, the flash-fried fish, the kimchi deep and rich in ferments and spice, and the endless small bowls of rice.
Politics of respect are nuanced. You must know the rules and follow them. No one is referred to by their name unless you are speaking to someone younger than you. I barely know the names of any of my aunts, cousins, uncles or second-cousins. I have grown to like this formality.
After breakfast one morning in Ulsan, the sun shining through the open doors, six of us sat on the floor, I had zoned out for a moment, enjoying the sun soaking into my skin, when I heard my immo cry out. I thought it might have been a laugh but when I turned towards them, both her and my mum were wiping tears from their faces. It’s strange to be in the presence of sadness, to watch it with your own eyes, and not know what has caused it. I later discerned that they were talking about their mother, my grandmother who I had never met because she sadly died when my mum was just 7 years old. Those layers of grief never leave you. My mum doesn’t talk about this with us at home, and I often shy away from asking too much for fear of upsetting her. How can I know her so well, but know nothing of the woman who made her?
On our first day in Masan, the city where my mum grew up, we drove to the mountains to visit the grave of her best friend who had died two years before. We went with her brother, a smiling priest whose voice boomed with religious importance. It was a strange way to interact with my mother: to stand in a vast cemetery, literally steeped in graves, the spirit of the dead lingering above us. I took pictures of the two of them around Seong Ok’s headstone, and as we were leaving I heard the guttural cry of two people poisoned by grief. “I am happy and sad and angry all at once,” my mum says to me as we drive away. I put my hand on her shoulder because that’s all I can think to do. The language I speak cannot soothe her.
This is what I’m learning: you do not need to wield your words in order to be heard. Every time I see an aunt (there are many of them), they squeeze my arms and say my name, speaking in Korean to me and then my mum, and elementally I can understand what they are saying. They are saying: we love you, we are happy to see you, we hope you are healthy and safe and content in your life. They say it through the strokes of my arm, the squeeze of my hands; the many envelopes they surreptitiously hand over as ‘pocket money’; the way they peel Korean apples; the feasts that they prepare and the way they look deep into my eyes, unafraid to peer in.
“I didn't realise it would sometimes be more than whole, that the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. Because it's the halves that halve you in half.” – Like Crazy
I’ve always thought of myself as half in, half out. I’m still figuring out what that means in the context of seeking wholeness. That luxurious idea that is eternal and endless, intimidating and intangible.
God this was a delicious essay to read Cat. Absolutely beautiful and the idea that "you do not need to wield your words in order to be heard" will stay with me for a long time.
😭😭😭 this was so so beautiful to read