Born in the US to Korean parents, the speaker grew up moving between countries and schools, always feeling like an outsider. Bullied and struggling to fit in, they dreamed of returning to America as an escape, imagining it as a place where they might finally belong.
Ever since I was born, my family moved houses every 1 to 2 years. As a child, I kind of remember always switching schools a lot, being a new kid on the block, and then always trying to break into a new social circle. So I grew up mostly in Korea. I was first born in the US. My dad was getting a PhD of economics in the US, so he proposed to my mom. They're originally both from Korea, South Korea. They moved to the US and they had me and my sister. And when I was 2.5, 3 years old, around that time, we moved back to Korea. I remember a lot of my childhood was like filled with, you know, like just feeling a bit different, being different. And at the same time, like, I would get bullied a lot. Yeah. I was like, oh, you know what? I need to like get out of here. And then the first place I thought of as a kid was like, okay, the US, right? Obviously, because I didn't have the passport.
