#oh i just felt limits of my english vocabulary like it was 2013 again

[goldenpinof]

Hi. original alienation anon here. I'm happy to report that my fears (so far) are unfounded :)

I'm going to try to explain why I found dd to be alienating as succinctly as possible.

I get that he was basically trying to make the YT version of the Eric André show, but it didn't work for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, YT is not a good platform for that kind of content. The Eric André show is on a network that is known for bizarre, offensive shows. YT is not that. It's a personality-driven platform that runs on the parasocial relationships between creators and their audiences. Dan was also not the best person to pull that concept off. Eric André is and always has been known for his chaotic, rude, unlikable persona. Dan is not. He built an audience by being likable and relatable. So for him to suddenly do a total 180 and become this rude, mean, cold person was alienating to me and other viewers who had built a parasocial relationship with the person he presented himself as in his videos.

Secondly, and this is gonna sound harsh, Dan is not as deep as he thinks he is. DD isn't good satire. He basically just made the content he was supposed to be satirizing and dressed it up in this pretentious concept of a dystopian variety show. He clearly was pressured into making those videos to promote WAD and it shows. His commentary on the concepts he talked about was surface level. he didn't say anything that countless video essayists who are smarter and more educated than him haven't already said. I also agree with the person who said it felt overproduced and cheap at the same time.

My third and main problem with DD though, is how mean-spirited it often felt. I watch dnp for light-hearted entertainment. I don't want to watch someone I usually like being a dickhead to their friends and family for 20 minutes, whether it's joking or not. There were times when you could tell that the guest was uncomfortable, but Dan just didn't seem to care? The worst was Louise. I felt so much second-hand embarrassment watching that video. She clearly felt uncomfortable but Dan just kept pushing it. The cringiest part was when he said that thing about the 2012-2014 YT era being nostalgic and Louise said "it wasn't a good time for me. I had a 2 yr old and was going through a divorce." Yikes! That just made Dan come off like a self-absorbed, inconsiderate asshole to me. Obviously we don't know how Louise really felt or what went on behind the scenes but that video left a bad taste in my mouth and completely changed how I viewed Dan.

Here's my conclusion. I think Dan needs to play to his strengths. social commentary and irreverent comedy are not two of them. People like him mainly for 3 reasons; his ability to relate to others through his own personal struggles, his chemistry with Phil, and his aspirational relationship with Phil (whatever the nature of that relationship is). DD pretty much destroyed all of that in one fell swoop. Even though I think that was entirely intentional, it was a very, very bad move. He can't just toss his entire image in the fire and expect it to work out for him. Not without doing the work to win over a new audience, like say, Joji did when he went from being Filthy Frank to a serious, sad-boy musician. I'm glad he got the chance to try new things, even if they didn't work out, but I think he's smart for going back to doing what he's good at and I hope for our sake and his that he sticks to it.

I said succint and then this turned into a whole essay lol. Sorry. I know some people are not going to like what I said, but that's how I feel.

hi! so sorry it took me so long to get to this!

i agree with some things and disagree with others. just so people won't argue with me because of your perception of dd, i'll list disagreements (and the hardest agreements, i guess). but it's totally cool to feel what you feel, and youtube content is made for people to have different opinions and obviously, we have different reactions to intentional harshness and rudeness. also, i'm so so glad you gave dnpgames a chance! we're back and stronger than ever!!

putting under the cut to not disturb the dnpgames euphoria <3

i agree that youtube , and specifically Dan's main channel, wasn't the best place to put this type of content on. maybe his 2nd channel would have been better, but it would have given even less views. so like, the point? because now his main channel looks all over the place. the usual content flow was interrupted by a video trashing youtube and the whole conceptual series of dd. and even dd was interrupted by the 2nd wad trailer and the memes video. right now it looks, dare i say, ugly. if he ever returns to actual youtube content and not promo videos, he will have to swallow this hard pill.

your 2nd reason - agree. but i don't think it's a bad thing, considering the circumstances (dd being made under pressure to somehow promote wad. with limited time and budget). lots of people comment on the same things and happen to give the same remarks. it's fine, it's still interesting to hear. (ironically, that's youtube and its algorithm for you)

hard agree on Dan (almost) destroying his image, especially in relation to dnp™. but we're still here, he can't push us away no matter how hard he tries.

disagreements :))

i think the video with Louise was good. that comment about 2012-2014 (the prime Brit crew times specifically) being nostalgic - i mean, it IS. for some people more, for some people less. it can be nostalgic and not a good time equally. i have personal examples when it's both. and i rewatched that moment. Louise said, "I loved those years for the most part." Dan went on to question WHAT exactly she loved, and only then she had to specify that it wasn't actually that simple. Dan likes to say how simple life was "back then". "back then" being any time in the past lol. "simpler, better times" is a phrase i still quote, and it was said years ago (i don't even remember where). he was rude in the video, but not ruder than with others. motherhood is a more sensitive topic for Louise than for Dan and, may i say, the majority of us. but they are friends, and at the end of the day, she could literally say "shut the fuck up and stop" and that would be accepted.

i also think that Dan would be amazing at social commentary if you give him more time to prepare scripts and find the right tone. his liveshows are a good indicator of that. he wasn't trying to punch anyone with his words while delivering his thoughts. he was giving his opinions and explaining them. 2017 has so many amazing quotes from his liveshows. and none of them felt like dd, despite touching on politics, sexuality, mental health, youtube as a platform, our community, the internet as a job, etc. he can do that, he can comment and criticise without trying to prove something. dd had a concept though. he was that obnoxious character playing by "youtube rules". "youtube likes this, this and this. so i'm gonna do all of it, and you're gonna see how bizarre it looks thrown in your face at once and deal with it." social platforms' algorithms are dystopian, he's got a point. his version of satire isn't ideal and you can clearly see that dd was rushed. and that's unfortunate!

anyway, thank you so much for explaining your dd experience. i'm sure there are people who relate to it. i'm sorry, if i sound rude, or like, pushy. i'm not trying to be. actually, dd is probably the easiest topic to discuss because of how ambiguous it is (in a good way).

[therenlover]

Would The Danny Bunch Survive A Holiday With My Family?

A/n: In the wake of recent life garbage, I have neglected to write a whole fic, and I’m sorry. In the interim, please enjoy this writing exercise I have put together in the hopes of nailing some characters I haven’t written for in the past in time for a larger project I’m working on! Cheers!

Characters: Laszlo Kreizler, Alex Kerner, Niki Lauda, Andrea Marowski, Ernst Schmidt, and Helmut Zemo

Rating: T

Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of Mild Misogyny, Mentions of Alcohol/Alcoholism, Mentions of Mental Illness, Non-Graphic Mentions of Death, Minor Spoilers for The Alienist Season One, Minor Spoilers for Goodbye, Lenin!, Spoilers for Rush (2013), Minor Spoilers for The Cloverfield Paradox maybe??? I haven’t actually seen the whole movie, blame Wikipedia if things are wrong. 

Laszlo Kreizler

NO

As the first of all of the Dannys to be put through the ringer, Laszlo Kreizler unfortunately would not survive a holiday with my family.

First of all, this man does not like massive huggy kissy crowds, so he’d already be off his game the second he walked into the packed house. That’s not why he’d die though, surprisingly.  

His downfall would be his status as an Alienist. 

There is simply so much mental illness and childhood trauma present at my family holidays that he would combust within 15 minutes of sitting in a room with all of my relatives.

Even if he were to somehow make it past the introductory phase, my family is nosey as hell, so they’d be grilling him about his arm and his own childhood trauma within the first hour. 

Laszlo, for all of his strength, simply wouldn’t be able to withstand it.

His death wouldn’t come from the initial combustion though. No, it’s not that simple. 

Knowing Laszlo, once he had combusted and entirely lost his composure the first time, he would become extremely intrigued about the interconnected nature of everyones issues with each other and he would start asking questions. 

That’s where the problems would begin. 

Because it’s one thing if my drunk great aunt starts badmouthing her sister at the table for abandoning her 90 year old mother for a lake house with her new boyfriend. That’s fine. 

But when Laszlo hops in and starts picking apart the mommy issues and underlying reasons for their decades long sibling rivalry? 

Oh it would be over for him. 

The yelling would never end. 

And, I have no doubt that Laszlo would start to psychoanalyze whoever started to yell at him, which would only lead to more yelling. 

In the end, someone would throw a probably full and probably fresh out of the oven casserole dish at his head and he’d be unable to defend himself because of his weak arm. 

We’d have to cart him out in a wheelchair and even if he were to technically survive, he’d never come back. 

Therefor, Laszlo Kreizler would fall victim to my family and die before we even got to dessert. 

Alex Kerner

YES

Ah, little baby Alex! A great contender here for holiday survival.

He seems relatively young in comparison to most of the Dannys on this list, though I don’t actually know how old he’s supposed to be. 

Based on his relative youth, he would automatically get points with the fam for not seeming like a creep or sugar daddy. Instead, he could be just about any dude I brought home from college. 

His skillset as a semi-skilled laborer would also earn him some points, seeing as several members of the family are in similar professions.

Alex might get lost in some of the more complex conversations about the local organic scene or the fine details of running a fine art gallery, but he would fit right in with the majority of the younger members of the family, smiling and nodding his way through the conversation. 

His enthusiasm and optimism would brighten the room and leave everyone excited to see him around again. 

There’s also the semi-small detail of him caring for his mother, which would earn sympathy from the older members of the family as they are in charge of caring for my deaf, blind great grandmother. 

Now, all of these aspects have already set Alex up for a successful survival of a holiday dinner with my family, but the real secret weapon he has up his sleeve is what really cements him in place as a survivor. 

What is his secret weapon, you may ask?

Lies.

Alex Kerner is really, really good at lying, and is even better at figuring out increasingly convoluted ways to keep his lies straight. 

If he managed to hide to fuckin’ Berlin Wall coming down from his mother for as long as he did, he could keep a couple of white lies up for appearances if he was asked any potentially embarrassing or weird questions that would make him look bad. 

He could also lie about enjoying my great aunt’s cooking, which is a vital skill for holiday survival in my family. 

Therefor, at the end of the day, Alex Kerner would not only survive a holiday with my family, but he’d probably enjoy it and get invited back for every subsequent holiday he could possibly attend. 

Niki Lauda

NO

Niki is another Danny that falls very firmly into the category of characters that would absolutely not survive a holiday with my family, for many, many reasons. 

First of all, just like Laszlo, Niki is not huge on going to big huggy kissy parties. 

Both adults and children would be all over him the second he walked in the door, which would probably make Niki get very uncomfortable and cagey. 

Little does he know at that point that people aren’t just all over you when you get in the door. 

No, no, no; from the moment you show up to the moment you leave, if you’re at a holiday with my family you are being basically accosted with questions and hugs and conversations that get weirdly personal. 

It doesn’t help that the whole entire house is packed and there are eyes on you at every moment, so he wouldn’t even be able to sneak in a break for air or a cigarette. 

If my own mother can’t sneak out for a smoke when she’s been going to these events her whole life, the new guy who’s still being vetted by the family sure as hell won’t be able to either.

Needless to say, Niki would start to get really, really tired of it all in an hour tops. I’ll give him until dinner at most. 

That’s where things would start getting really sticky.

See, a lovely little fact about the Niki Lauda that lives in my brain, as portrayed by Daniel Bruhl in Rush (2013), is that he’s just a little bit misogynistic. No more than would be period typical, but a little misogynistic.

Another fun little important thing to note is that my family is entirely matriarchal in nature. 

There are only 4 reoccurring male guests at family holidays out of about 20 to 25 guests at each event; My great aunt’s husband of many, many years, the two male siblings my mother has that live in the area, and the young son of one of those siblings. 

Men, specifically boyfriends, simply do not last in my family. They are considered pretty disposable and easily banned from family events after breakups or small mishaps. 

So, not only would Niki not have any other manly men there to chat about sports with over a scotch and a cigarette, he would be surrounded by so much estrogen that he would definitely struggle with his inner asshole even more than usual. 

In fact, we never have sports on, even on Thanksgiving. Poor Niki would be stuck hearing conversations about artisanal candlemakers and how to hand felt a woodland elf puppet.

Back to his downfall, the second he made a slightly sketchy joke about women in the kitchen at the dinner table to my great uncle, his fate would be sealed.

If you thought the yelling at Laszlo would have been bad, this yelling would be ten times worse, because he would be surrounded by like 20 very angry, very defensive, and very strong women waiting to beat the shit out of him and I would not be any help. 

He dug the hole, so he can climb out of it. 

In the end, his death would come when he tried to light a cigarette and calm himself down at the dinner table while trying to rescind his earlier statement, because smoking inside around all the precious textile art? Thats a big no no. 

My great aunt would grab the lighter right out of his hand, light up whatever cocktail she had at the moment, and throw it all directly into Niki’s face.

It would be like crashing his car all over again, only this time he would be surrounded by people who would rather he burn than try to get him out of the situation. 

Moral of the story, Niki would die within the first few hours of a holiday with my family because he made an asshole comment to a room full of women who don’t put up with that shit. Don’t be like Niki, even if you think you won’t get killed for it. 

Andrea Marowski

YES

Andrea is pretty much the polar opposite of Niki here, and I love him for it. 

He is very soft, very kind, very pure, and would never dare to say something rude at the dinner table like a certain racer we all know.

He couldn’t even say something rude if he tried to, because he probably wouldn’t have the English in his vocabulary to say the things he wanted to say even if he intended to say them out loud. 

But let’s be honest here, Andrea would never. 

Even with his limited English, Andrea would appreciate being surrounded by a whole bunch of people who think he’s the sweetest little thing since the invention of cake. 

My great grandmother, despite being almost entirely blind and deaf, would say he looked darling and he would immediately be a member of the family from the moment he stuttered out his thanks. 

Andrea, like Alex, is also relatively young, so he would get points for not being old enough to be my father. 

I feel like, because Andrea was shown living happily in a tiny village by the ocean with two old ladies, he would have an appreciation for craft, so he wouldn’t mind sitting quietly as my great aunt pawns off a handmade blanket from my great grandmother to him. 

He would also happily sit with the younger children and do whatever craft or simple game one of my aunts brought for them that time. 

The cherry on top with Andrea is his skill with the violin. 

My family is one that appreciates fine art a lot, but more than anything we appreciate music. 

I wouldn’t say that any of us are anywhere close to Andrea’s proficiency, but we definitely aren’t terrible, and we all can appreciate the effort, practice, and talent that goes into getting truly good on an instrument like Andrea is on his violin. 

He would be encouraged to play, of course, and he would happily oblige. 

If he felt comfortable enough, I could even see my great uncle grabbing his guitar, my cousin sitting at the piano, and my sister bringing out her own violin to do a little quartet with some simple song they knew as everybody else sang along. 

By the end of the holiday evening, once dinner was served and people were heading to the cars, Andrea would definitely be considered a member of the family. 

Needless to say, he’d survive and pass their tests with better than flying colors, even despite the language barrier. 

Ernst Schmidt

NO

Now, Ernst was probably the most difficult one on this entire list to put into the living or dying category. In the end, though, there were a few things that couldn’t be overlooked that send him into bad territory. 

To be fair, though, he would last the longest out of everyone who would die tragically at one of my family’s holiday gatherings. 

He, like the past two victims, would not be exactly suited for the mushy crowding that’s inevitable when it comes to my family. 

That being said, I think he would deal with it a little bit better than the other two did and would make polite conversation with the family when he could. 

The fact that he was trapped in a packed house filled with drunk people who have several generations worth of beef with each other, though, would start to get him eventually. 

If we consider all of the shit that happened while he was in space to be canonical minus, you know, the earth getting really fucked up, he would probably start to go a little bit nuts while packed together with that many passive aggressive people.

The second someone burst into tears on the way to the bathroom he would start to lose his shit. 

Still, I think Schmidt would probably be fine-ish until dessert was served, because that’s about the time where all the adults are absurdly drunk, so insanity ensues. 

They would start poking at him about his credentials and experiences as a physicist. 

He would answer their questions at first, but, unfortunately for him, the questions would turn more and more personal and uncomfortable as time went on. 

Did he ever still think about what happened up in space? Did he blame himself for not getting things to work correctly? How much did he miss his old world and old life? Did he ever have nightmares about what he saw? How much did it hurt to get shot?

They’d poke and poke and poke in their drunken state until poor Schmidt would snap at them, flying into a slight rage at their insistent probing. 

From there, he would be swiftly asked to leave and then “accidentally” run over while calling an Uber to take him to wherever he’s staying as my drunk great aunt tries to back out of the driveway to drive down the block to her house. 

In the end, Schmidt and his wit would be really close to surviving a holiday with my family , but he would, unfortunately, let his anger get the best of him, and it would be the last thing he ever did. Literally. 

Helmut Zemo

YES, BUT ONLY BARELY

Okay, so my earlier comment about Ernst being the most difficult out of everyone was incorrect. Zemo was, by far, the hardest to put into one category or the other. 

His wit and charm won out in the end, though, and I determined that he would survive one single holiday with my family. 

If he ever came back for a second he definitely wouldn’t make it, but he would succeed in living past the first one. 

Helmut’s problems start, surprisingly, not with the fact that he is a criminal. In fact that doesn’t even cause any problems for him. 

No, instead they start with the fact that he is 43.

I am 99% sure that my mother is 43, and I know for a definite fact that he’s older than one of my uncles who would be present. I, at the time of writing this, am 18. 

Needless to say, literally everyone would be massively suspicious of him and his intentions the second he walked through the door. The amount of money in his bank account definitely wouldn’t help in this situation either. 

The family would warm up to him eventually, though, because if there’s one thing Helmut is good at besides killing people, it’s making people like him even if they absolutely shouldn’t. 

With his expansive knowledge of what feels like literally everything rich and niche, he would slowly win over the older members of the family. Who knew the strange old man Jac brought home was so well versed in the American pottery scene, or that he could name specific jewelry artists from across the world that my family had done business with for years?

My family definitely wouldn’t. At least, not at first. 

Oh how they’d learn, though. 

Another nice thing about Zemo that would allow him to survive is his aggressive politeness.

No matter how many weird glances or dirty looks he got over the course of dinner, he would simply continue to be the best version of himself in the hopes of impressing everyone. 

He would even pretend to enjoy my great aunt’s cooking and get himself seconds, because I’m sure it would be easier to scarf down than whatever he and his EKO Scorpion squad had to eat while serving in the Sokovian special forces. 

On the tail end of reasons he would be accepted, Helmut Zemo drinks alcohol like it’s water, so he would fit right in drinking white wine and cocktails through the night with the rest of the adults. 

((I think he’d totally tease me about not being able to drink with him, but that’s a story for another time. Anyways...))

His slight downfall would come from something entirely uncontrollable by him or anybody else. 

And that something would be my flirty aunt. 

I love my aunt. She’s wonderful in her own special way. 

That being said, I know if a hot Sokovian baron with a nice smile and a fat pocketbook showed up to one of out holidays, even if he was introduced as my partner, she would be going for the kill all night long. 

This would make Helmut more and more uncomfortable as she got more and more drunk, because lets face it, he’s probably not very comfortable with being touched by near-strangers anyways, and being touched by a drunk member of his partners family who is very obviously coming on to him? 

That’s even more difficult to deal with. 

That being said, Helmut is a man who has been shown to be extremely in control of his emotions. 

He would swallow down whatever awkwardness he felt, make it to the end of the night, and, once he had escaped her clutches, he would politely say that he was never going back to another holiday function with my family again, though he would be happy to facilitate me still attending them. 

So, in the end, Helmut Zemo would survive one holiday with his sheer stubborn politeness alone. 

I will say that his patience would absolutely wear thin if he attended a couple more holidays and he would eventually die of a stress induced heart attack after being unable to politely decline my aunt’s advances. 

For now, though, he’s safe.

[disorientedblog-archive]

Back in Korea

by Chris Yang / photo: Flickr Creative Commons

On the first day at my new high school, my history teacher began his class by asking a question.

“Why are you Korean?” he asked. There was a brief moment of silence in the classroom.

“Uh, ‘cause we were born in Korea?” one of us finally answered.

“So just because you were born in Korea you are a Korean?” the teacher retorted.

“Yeah, because I have Korean citizenship.”

“Don’t approach the question like that. Stop thinking of the law. What makes you Korean? Why do you think you’re Korean?”

Another long moment of silence.

We sat there for minutes without being able to provide a clear answer.

“Because we grew up in Korea.” Another one of us broke the silence.

“Because you grew up in Korea. But what if you grew up in Korea and were born in America in a typical American family? What if you grew up in Korea, but attended international schools and knew nothing about Korean culture?” the teacher posed even more questions.

“...then you’re an American.”

“So the place of your birth doesn’t matter,” he pointed out.

He waited another few minutes in silence in the hope of one of us coming up with a good answer.

There was no good answer.

He finally gave up waiting and gave us his answer. “You’re Korean. You’re Korean because you speak Korean and learn Korean history. Because you know Korean history better than the history of any other nation. Because you speak Korean better than any other language in the world. Because you are comfortable with the Korean culture. Because you take that culture as part of yourself.”

Everyone else seemed to agree.

I did not.

On July 26th, 2013, my cousin and I boarded our first flight to Toronto, Ontario. It was the very beginning of my temporary life in Canada. I lived in Scarborough with my host family and attended a private elementary school about thirty minutes away from the house. My parents stayed in Korea and my younger brother joined me six months later.

My memories of those next three years have been glorified a little, but, in the end, it is an undeniable fact that those years changed me in more ways than anyone can possibly imagine.

I came back to Korea on June 26th, 2016. I was fourteen years old at the time.

When I transferred to my local Korean middle school in August, I was quick to realize that I no longer fit into Korean society. I felt like an outsider. I couldn’t quite understand this strange feeling. I was born in Korea, grew up in Korea and had absolutely no affiliation with Western culture until the age of eleven. Yet, when I came back to my home country, the very culture I was raised in seemed unfamiliar. It was like living in a foreign country all over again.

I remember telling my friend, just a few days before my final trip back to Korea, that I missed home after three years of living abroad. She told me she could never imagine herself doing what I was doing. That is, studying alone in a country halfway across the earth within a different culture and using a different language to get around. Until then, it didn’t occur to me that not only did I leave my parents behind, but also my country, culture, and language. I began feeling nostalgic and was finally ready to go back home.

But when I did come back home...home was no longer home.

I spent months thinking about why I felt so foreign in the very country where my identity originated from. I managed to come up with two broad, reasonable answers by the time I graduated middle school: 1) bilingual problems and 2) cultural differences.

Being bilingual comes with its benefits. But for me, those benefits came with a somewhat costly price, particularly during the first six months back in Korea. I had rarely used Korean in the past three years and now I had trouble with my native language. I would have sentences I wanted to say that I could only think of in English. I would spend most of my speech stuttering while trying to translate words in my head.

The same problem continues even to this day although it is not as severe as it used to be. I use two languages interchangeably but in different proportions. I speak faster and more fluently in Korean, but I have a richer vocabulary in English. While I still have trouble understanding idioms and cultural references in English, my comprehension of academic materials in English is undoubtedly better. In my history class, I was asked to explain my opinion of the dissolution of Singanhoe, a Korean nationalist organization during the Japanese colonial era. I knew my stance, but I struggled to get my answer out in Korean. After spending a few minutes stuttering out a few random words for my argument, I gave up and said the sentence in English, just like I did other times when I faced similar situations. My classmates understood and kindly translated the sentence for the teacher. I also remember spending hours trying to understand the concept of quantum fluctuation before my first science exam in high school. I struggled to understand the sentences in the textbook. It was as if Korean was my second language, not my native one. My friend suggested to Google it in English. It worked and it only took 15 minutes. My Korean writing is so hopeless that at one point I decided to write my entire physics essay in English and use Naver Papago, an online translating service, to translate my essay to Korean. But again, my English pronunciation is nowhere close to being that of my native Korean one and I have always had difficulties with various English accents. Oh, and of course, definite/indefinite articles and preposition struggles are real.

The cultural issues I faced are slightly harder to explain in words, even though it was just as problematic and complex as the challenges of my bilingualism. There were certain aspects of Korean culture that I had forgotten about and, as a result, had grown distant. Think of head-bowing. You know how in Asian countries you bow your head to show respect for others and especially elders? For some reason, I had to relearn this and probably appeared to be extremely rude on my first day of school until I got used to it again. I also had trouble keeping a straight face as strangers at school grabbed my hand, hugged me and made other physical interactions. Korea has a very intimate culture and I did not realize this until I came back from spending a few years in a culture where physical intimacy was not as socially accepted.

Another aspect of Korean culture that I struggled with, and still wrestle with to this day, is the hierarchy of students. And by hierarchy, I mean the alpha-omega relationship between students in different grades. I understand the need for teachers’ authority over students. What I don’t understand is how upper-class students are granted the same, if not more, authority and control over younger students. Age is power in Korea. Younger students are openly exposed to frequent physical hazings and have absolutely no voice within the student council and no say in any form of decision-making processes. Whatever is decided by older students, we are supposed to follow without question.

Most problems with cultural differences faded after a few months, but not the student hierarchy as I was part of that pyramid of authority. Likely, language issues were also something I had to face every day. My inability to use my native language as fluently as others around me and my struggle to fit into the culture I grew up with, but left behind years ago, made me question who I was. Legally I was a Korean; but, did I consider myself a Korean? Did I belong in the same country and culture my classmates belong in? Do we share the same cultural understanding?

I couldn’t come up with a clear answer.

“I’m Korean because I speak Korean the best”. But what if that’s limited to certain situations? What if I feel more comfortable with English? “I’m Korean because I learn Korean history”. But what if I learned Canadian history first and then Korean history next? Do I know Korean history better than Canadian history? I’m not sure. “I’m Korean because I take Korean culture as part of myself”. Do I? Am I able to fully immerse myself within Korean culture? Can I consider that as part of my identity? Again, I’m not sure. But if so, am I more comfortable with Korean culture than Western culture? My answer is closer to a no.

So who am I? Am I “Korean” enough to call myself Korean?

After countless debates with myself, I have come up with the answer. No. I no longer feel like I’m part of this country, this culture, nor this society. I have no idea why but I do not see myself as the same person as I was before I left for Canada. I feel foreign no matter how hard I try to assimilate myself back into this community. I just don’t feel like I belong here.

Then where do I belong?

Because as much as I don’t feel like a Korean anymore, I don’t see myself as a Canadian either. I know I don’t belong in that country either. I lived there only for three years. That time took a chunk of identity away from me but didn’t give back anything to replace that missing piece.

It left me stuck between two nationalities.

My theory is that I am in this position now because I spent my early teenage years in a culture so foreign to my home country. I went through a lot of rapid, personal changes during those three years. It was in Canada that I established my identity, shaped my beliefs and developed my personality. This does sound a little odd, but my lifestyle changed dramatically from that very moment I landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport. I became a completely different person.

I used to define myself as a Korean, especially in Canada. My identity was my nationality. Whenever someone asked where I was from, I answered “South Korea” without a moment of hesitation. My answer stayed the same even when someone asked me who I was. But when I came back to the place I defined myself with, I realized I was no longer who I used to say I was. That realization was basically the denial of the person who I believed I was.  

Although I came to admit that my nationality no longer defines me, I still question where I belong and where I fit in. The sense of belonging has been missing ever since I came back to Korea.

Now after about two years of living in Korea, I am planning on leaving again. This time not to Canada, but to the U.S. Partially for better future opportunities, partially to redefine my identity, and partially as the result of my failure to adjust back to the culture that I left behind years ago.

But for now, I shall go back to my school and try to figure out how to survive another year of what some teachers call “a government sanctioned, illegal social experiment.”

Chris Yang is a student at a foreign language high school in South Korea.