Korea had its second impeachment AND removal from office a few months ago and now we have our presidential election. As Koreans residing overseas we can vote at the consulate general this week a few days before the Koreans living in Korea. You know, I’m not much of a Korean spirit kind of a guy, having been influenced by American culture and all but today I felt some sort of a Korean pride at the voting booth as I cast my ballot.
Los Angeles has the biggest Koreatown in the world and the consulate general is located there. So today we decided to do some typical Koreatown things we do every time we’re there. We like to have some Korean food, desserts, and shopping for K-Pop goods. Voting was very quick today thanks to the streamlined process and as we got out of the building we checked if our usual K-Pop store was open but it was temporarily closed!
We found a different K-Pop store and decided to check it out. And boy, was it a very different experience. The K-Pop store we usually go to just sells albums and a little bit of other things but the new store was basically like a department store for all-things-K-Pop. There were albums, there were photo cards, there were fandom goods like special light wands and headbands. There were also stationery with a variety of characters and looking at all of this I suddenly found myself a bit nostalgic.
Nostalgic because this kind of a store was exactly what was around schools when I was growing up. Each school would have like this mini student-department-store with an assortment of goods like this and all the kids would congregate there before and after class. The only new thing was, instead of Korean elementary school kids now the store was filled with American people with a taste for Korean music.
Which is still a jarring experience for me since I grew up in a generation where people didn’t even know what Korea was. Nowadays even when I go to jiujitsu or judo other people strike up a conversation with me in Korean and want to talk about Korean culture (and I can’t entertain them because I don’t consume a lot of Korean dramas).
Korea the country is going through some tough times and it’s speculated that the end of the country is already fated due to the extremely low population growth. As a Korean Buddhist I do what I can to make my country happy again, but based on what I see in the United States I think Korea has done a fine job for itself despite all the current shitshow.
This isn’t something I formally announced but I recently became a full vegetarian instead of leaning towards vegetarianism. There are two reflections I’ve had about this. One is that of gratitude. Since I visited India I started praying before my meal and the prayer contains words of gratitude. But I kept on forgetting to pray because it didn’t stick as a habit yet.
This would eat me up a bit inside, because I conceptually understand why I need to be thankful but when I’m devouring my food I’m clearly taking it for granted. I was thinking I need a complete fasting experience in order to appreciate food, and planned on doing it over the summer.
Strangely turning fully vegetarian has granted me a lot of gratitude. The reason is related to the second point, which is that prior to a meal I find myself a bit stressed because it seems like I have such few options while my wife gets to eat an unlimited option of dishes. The crazy thing that the mind does is, once I eat I kinda forget how stressful it was to pick what to eat.
So that means, despite my stress and seemingly limited options I AM FINE. Even if all meat and animal food products disappeared from the face of this earth I would still be fine. I wouldn’t be compromising my food for second best options; I would legitimately be fine because turns out vegetables are fucking delicious!
We ate BCD Tofu which is a K-Town staple and as I was having the bibimbap and vegetable soon tofu I was just again in awe of how crazy developed Korean cuisine is when it comes to vegetarianism. Koreans over history have developed a recipe for pretty much any plant that isn’t poisonous and studied how to eat it best according to the season, temperature, and flavor profile.
For the longest time I had planned on becoming an American citizen the moment I can. As that time approaches soon I’m sitting here contemplating, do I need to? Turns out being Korean is pretty nice and happiness can be found anywhere in the world. On this very Korean Friday I’ve rediscovered a lot about what it means to be Korean for Billy.