Guest: Marina Yugay
Interviewer: Chris
Duration: 42 minutes
Recording Date: June 24, 2009

Marina Yugay is a 22 year-old ethnic Korean from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, the country home to the largest number of ethnic Koreans in the former Soviet states. Marina grew up a minority among minorities, in a country comprised of 80% Uzbeks, 5% ethnic Russians, 5% Tajik and 10% other ethnic minorities, including somewhere around 200,000 Koreans. These ethnic Koreans, known as goryeo-saram, are the descendants of Korean peasants who sought better lives in (or were moved to) Eastern Russia, but then were deported to Central Asia under Stalin during World War II.

Marina attended a Russian-speaking school with few other ethnic Koreans and as such, her parents were strict with her education in traditional Korean fashion and her father encouraged her to learn how to defend herself. Marina had some access, but little interest, in Korea and Korean culture growing up, more interested in Western pop culture. Under constant encouragement from her parents to gain more interest in Korea (and find a proper Korean husband), Marina applied for a full-ride scholarship through the National Institute for International Education Development to study for her undergraduate degree in Korea. She received a place to study at Kyunghee University, and with this opportunity gave up her three years of studies in Uzbekistan to study tourism management in Korea.

In this interview, hear how Marina has navigated cultural differences such as alcohol consumption (Uzbekistan is a primarily Muslim country), learning Korean through dongari, special interest clubs at her university, rather than her studies, and evaluating the prospects of future work in Korea and abroad.

“Korean culture somehow is close to me. Even if I feel distance in communication with Korean people, they try to treat me not as bad as I was at home.”

Korea is a wonderful country … it has everything, it’s growing up, getting globalized. I really thank my lucky stars for giving me a chance to come here for five years. It’s a really great experience for me.

Click here to listen.

Other links:

Information on ethnic Koreans in Uzbekistan.

The National Institute for International Education Development

Wikipedia also has some interesting articles on Uzbekistan, Goryeo-saram (Koryo-saram), and the deportation of Koreans within the Soviet Union.

Guest: Susan Selin
Interviewer: Chris
Duration: 32 minutes
Recording Date: June 10, 2009

Susan Selin is a half-Korean, half-Jewish American from San Francisco, California. Her parents met in a “disgustingly romantic” fashion while her father was working in Korea as a civil engineer and her mother rented rooms to foreigners. After growing up attending school in the ethnically diverse San Francisco public school system, Susan attended the University of California at San Diego, majored in economics and began working in finance. Dissatisfied with her situation at the time, and itching to make a move, Susan made the choice to move to Korea, where she has been living for approximately six years.

Susan came to Korea with a plan to prepare herself for an ambitious future: learn Korean and gain experience in the financial industry to prepare for the development of a post-dictatorship North Korea. In this interview, Susan discusses her years-long struggle to learn Korean and notable aspects of life in the Korean business world, in both the public and private sectors.

“A lot of people in the world think that America is the land of opportunity, but I think Korea has been my land of opportunity.”

Click here to listen.

Guest: Daniel Lee Gray
Interviewer: Chris
Duration: 59 minutes
Recording Date: June 3, 2009

Daniel Lee Gray is a 29 year-old Korean American from Wilmington, Delware. Dan was adopted from Korea around the age of five to a family with one other adopted Korean daughter and one biological. Daniel studied English, wrote plays and worked as a chef before deciding to move to Korea about five years ago at which point he began working as an English teacher. Here in Korea Dan has worked teaching English, writing about food in Korea (both Korean and foreign) and is now taking a year to himself to learn Korean and enjoy what Korea has to offer. In this interview listen to Dan talk about the detriment of the release of “The Karate Kid” during his youth and trips to Korean cultural activities, becoming a connoisseur of world foods, cooking with his biological mother in Korea and turning into a de facto guide to Korea.

Click here to listen.

To check out Dan’s musings on food, go to his blog, Seoul Eats.

Guest: Alexander Kim
Interviewer: Chris
Duration: 40 minutes
Recording Date: May 26, 2009

Alexander Kim is a 4th generation Korean Russian from Khabarovsk, a city in the far East of Russia. His ancestors came from what is now North Korea and with the onset of World War II his family was deported from the East to Central Asia, far away from Japan. Upon recognizing the misdeed it had done, the Russia government offered to relocate ethnic Koreans back to the far East. Alexander grew up in Khabarovsk, a city of around 600,000 people, with few other ethnic Koreans around as he was younger, but a growing community.

In this interview, Alexander discusses growing up as one of two ethnic Koreans in his school, developing an interest in learning Korean and moving to Korea, his life in Korea studying for an MBA with a full scholarship from the National Institute of International Education and developing a desire to settle permanently in Korea.

Click here to listen.

Guest: Annie Koh
Interviewer: Chris
Duration: 56 minutes
Recording Date: March 31, 2009

Annie Koh is a 30 year-old Korean American from Chicago who has been living in Korea for about four years. Annie has the perfect Asian American academic record: Phillips Exeter, Yale, Seoul National … but also proves that going to an Ivy League school doesn’t have to end in giving up your dreams of making a difference in the world. After college Annie moved to the Bay Area where she worked on a fellowship for an Asian arts foundation and worked as one of the founders of HYPHEN magazine. In this interview, Annie talks about her experiences growing up in a primarily Jewish environment and living on a track of academic success, discovering Asian America at a less-than-progressive ivory tower university in the US and exploring the world of activism and creativity in Korea.

Click here to listen.

Guest: Lisa Collins
Interviewer: Chris
Recording Date: March 19, 2009
Duration: 59 minutes

Lisa Collins is a 29-year old, half-Korean, half-Irish American form Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lisa has lived in Korea on and off for over four years and her time here has included intensive language study through both a language school and a US government specialists’ training program, as well as graduate work at the Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies and Korea University. Lisa currently works at a Korean think tank that specializes in US-Korea relations and North-east Asian policy. In this interview she discusses moving back and forth between the US and Korea for training in international studies and law school, studying Korean long-term at a professional level, the Korean group mentality and perpetual branding as a cultural outsider.

Click here to listen.

Guest: John Cho
Interviewer: Chris
Recording Date: February 23, 2009
Duration: 49 minutes

John Cho is a Korean-born Canadian citizen who immigrated to Canada at the age of eight with his family. After attending university in Ottawa, John moved to Vancouver to do editing work and then decided to move to Korea over 10 years ago. John’s case is interesting in that he actually lived in Korea for seven years-or-so, during which time he worked as an English teacher and attended graduate school in culture and gender studies, then moved to the United States to matriculate in a PhD program in Anthropology, and then back to Korea for a year of research. In this interview, listen to John discuss his thoughts on the Korean psyche, both heterosexual and homosexual, doing qualitative research in Korea, and the changing face of Korean society vis-a-vis globalization and competition.

Click here to listen.

Guest: Sarah Jun
Interviewer: Chris
Recording Date: January 30, 2009
Length: 57 minutes

Sarah Jun is a 26 year-old Korean American who spent her formative years between Fiji, Hawaii and California. She moved to Korea four years ago with the intention of working at a hagwon for one year, but ended up finding work in broadcasting, and ever since has continuously extended her stay. One peculiarity of Sarah’s story is her experience with her Korean boyfriend, whom she met before he had performed his mandatory military service. In this interview listen to Sarah discuss her experiences working as an English teacher and then in the English-language broadcasting field, maintaining her relationship with a man for whom she waited for two years, and constantly contemplating the merits of staying.

Click here to listen.

Guest: Josh Kim
Interviewer: Chris
Recording Date: June 15, 2008
Length: 49 minutes

Josh Kim is a 27 year-old Korean American filmmaker from Orange, Texas. Over the course of his life he says he’s been to Korea over 20 times. As an adult, he’s lived in Korea for nearly three years. In addition to this, Josh has spent time working and studying in France, Beijing and Hong Kong. Here in Korea he teaches at times, but otherwise works for a film production company as well as his own projects, including a short film that premiered at the Busan International Film Festival. In this interview he discusses growing up in small-town Texas, working hours in his mother’s wig shop, steadfastly pursuing his desire to learn Korean, and settling and working here as an artist.

Click here to listen.

Guest: Sarah Kim Randolph
Interviewer: Jessica Conte
Recording Date: December 16, 2007
Length: 68 minutes

In this special interview, foreign correspondent Jessica Conte interviews Sarah Kim Randolph, a 29 year-old Korean-American adoptee from Seattle via Kansas City, Kansas and Omaha, Nebraska. A certain friend of hers here at Canaries lovingly refers to her as “the Queen of the Adoptees” for her exorbitant role in multiple adoptee organizations and enterprises. In this interview, Sarah shares poignant anecdotes about growing up an only child in a White household in the mid-Western Bible Belt, slowly coming to gain Asian American friends, self-imposed pressures to follow Asian American model minority stereotypes, and subsequent liberation from them. In regard to her life in Korea, she shares stories of navigating the Korean dating and working scenes, meeting her birth family, the gender gap, as well as her thoughts on Korea’s potential for social change.

Click here to listen.