One of the greatest travesties in my life is that it took me this long to visit Korea. Frankly, there’s an overarching travesty that it took me about as long to even cross an ocean in the first place, but the point remains as someone of Korean heritage and to some degree, upbringing, it does seem a little not right that I didn’t once visit Korea once until I was 34 and well into my own as an adult.
Admittedly, the idea of visiting Korea didn’t intrigue me that much growing up. Being born in the United States as pretty much as American as American can be, this was always home to me. Neither of my parents really talked much about Korea growing up, nor did they ever really put any ideas in my head of wanting to go. Maybe we were just so dirt-poor when I was growing up that they didn’t want to make any difficult promises to fulfill.
A long time ago, there was an opportunity to go to Korea on some sort of church group; not that my entire family’s been tremendously religious, but it was an economical means to get there. I’ve always been kind of nihilistic about religion in the first place, so it didn’t really interest me that much, and at that age, my priorities were vastly more interested in indulging in my no-school summer vacation, playing video games and being a slug at home. Ultimately, my dad and my sister went, and I’ll always remember just how tan they were when they got home, and there’s a photo of the two of them riding a horse that always stuck with me as symbolic of an opportunity that I probably missed out on because of my youthful stupidity.
