a different point of view of koreans

Having Korean blood and family seemed to almost be a curse to me for most of my life. I got forced into Korean church in my childhood, and Korean language school, and was treated as an outsider freak because I couldn't speak Korean nor did I act like a typical Korean girl. Every time I visited Korea I would love the shopping and the food and the karaoke but I hated everything else. I hated the way people judge each other all the time, how everyone's so shallow, how I'm considered fat and ugly there because I haven't had plastic surgery... To me, the typical Korean is very conformist, perfectionist, snobby and compares themselves to everyone else all the time. They're constantly sizing you up to see if they're better than you or not. Of course, I know these are only the negative things about Korean society these days, people can be generous and have tighter knit groups of people than here. There's more of a sense of community. But that still didn't make up for all the bad stuff I saw. Then I realized today that instead of hating on them, I should be more sympathetic. Why? Picture yourself being the typical Korean I described. You would be incredibly depressed and self-loathing. There will always be someone better than you and you are depending on people outside you to determine your self-worth. It's like being an athlete who won silver, you may be high-performing, but there's always someone better than you and it's upsetting. Look at Olympic podium pictures, you'll see that the silver winner is often unhappy, the bronze one is just happy to be there and obviously the gold winner is happy too. But what if life to you was a constant competition? You could never always win gold so you can never be content. What a horrible life to live, and I'm sure I'm right because South Korea's suicide rate is second in the world, even higher than Japan's. So I was in a bit of a shock after this realization. I think it happened in part because of the incident with my aunt. She is the most typical Korean I have yet met, and I found out she secretly takes psychiatric tranquilizers. Clearly, she's not a happy person. 

I'm so used to hating on Koreans and now I realize they are the most in need of God's love and psychological help which happens to be the way I want to make the world a better place. Weird. It's like finding out my enemy is in fact a victim who needs my help in the future when I'm ready. Am I supposed to work as a psychologist in Korea perhaps? Wow that would be sooo hard...