Comments on: The Westerner at the Korean Funeral: Another Foreigner Story

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:26:43 +0000

Whassup Clay!
I can’t wait for you to deal with what I think is one of the most important passages in the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is when Gilgamesh goes off in search of the secret of eternal life and encounters the goddess Siduri who attempts to dissuade him with words that forshadow those in Ecclesiastes 9:7-9. I’d be very keen to hear your take on this as the “meaning of life.”
(I should add that it’s not a view I subscribe to, certainly not after encountering Carl Sagan’s work. One more thing, whoever coded your website did a fantastic job!)

By: Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:18:01 +0000

Thank you.

By: ms_fat_pinkie

ms_fat_pinkie — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 06:37:14 +0000

this is a story worth reading… I’m glad I stumbled upon this

By: Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:46:09 +0000

Tamara,

I just found your comment in my spam queue, oddly, and approved it so it would show.

Your comment is so powerful it speaks for itself. If I hear you right, you’re still in high school. If that’s true, all I want to say is that you’ve been given a unique condition to transcend and, if you do the inner work to achieve that transcendence, you just might find yourself looking back on this otherwise ugly circumstance as a strange sort of blessing.

As you can read in “Of Jocks and Fags,” my account of my own high school years in hell being bullied (see the sidebar under “Best of Beyond School” above on the right), I’m now strangely thankful for those dark years. I hope you will be too, one day.

“For Zeus the Helmsman laid it down as law: that we must suffer, suffer, suffer into Truth.” — Aeschylus, The Oresteia. I’ve always loved that line (though I’m typically a light-hearted and playful guy now who’s way beyond caring to waste time on suffering any more!).

Thanks for dropping in, Tamara. You sound interesting.

By: Tamara

Tamara — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:58:59 +0000

I understand how it feels to be the foreigner, only, I’m half-Korean and half-white, and was born in Seoul (raised in America). My father was the white man who ended up marrying my mother and they both were dropped from the family until I was born, being that when my parents got married, any Korean woman married to a white man was considered a whore (pardon the language). I was important to the family (being the first grandchild, I am supposedly the most important), but I was what was considered “tainted blood”. I’m looked down upon by society more so than foreigners themselves.
We left Korea while I was still young after discovering how I was not recieved with open arms in the world I had been brought in to.
I visited just last year (almost 16 that year, so I was allowed to go by myself to visit my family) and I was not welcome in the slightest bit. I would get dirty looks, they would overprice things if my family wasn’t around, and in one instance (that made me decide to never take the subway again) they didn’t let me sit down on the trains just because of what I am.
I don’t know what brought about this hatred for half-breeds and foreigners, but it hurts.
I’m happy that your family accepts you, though, and I highly recommend learning Korean. It’s worth it, and it’ll catch many people off guard. I know Korean (can write, write, and understand perfectly), but I cannot speak.

Reading this made me think about the Korean culture and wonder some more, however. I never knew there was this sort of struggle.
My grandmother is Christian, but we are all traditional. Christian morals took her away from smoking and drinking, as she did both rather heavily, and she’s a devout Christian, but nothing has taken her away from traditional Korean things like the funeral rites…
Maybe my family never had much of a struggle with deciding which way to go.. Before my mother abandoned me, she always told me to keep the tradition and carry it on. I had recently thought to abandon them, like she did with me, just to spite her. And now after reading this, I think I should perhaps carry the traditions on to preserve my heritage and maybe help it become more tolerant of “half-breed” children like myself. Or atleast tolerate them as much as they do with foreigners, which is FAR more than you would suspect.

I’d like to think I’ve become a little less bitter after reading this, but I’d only be becoming less of a cynic.
Mostly what I was trying to say here was that I’ve been briefly educated, and I thank you. I’ve hopefully given some more insight on a culture I’m attracted to, yet disgusted at.

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