My wife and I occasionally have conversations about being Korean-American, or Asian american etc.. She says that I am not at all like the typical Korean American guy.. She says that I'm too loud, aggressive, and obnoxious... (are typical Korean american guys quite and submissive? I hope not) I dont speak Korean. I dont have any interest or desire to speak Korean. I dont even care whether my son learns Korean or not, but am willing to send him to Korean school simply because my mother in law does not speak English, and I dont want my son to feel like a dumb-ass like me when I speak to my grandmother or mother-in-law in my bad Korean. (In Korean, I tried to say one time that I was sick.. but, I ended up saying that I had cancer.) I constantly lament at the stupidity of some of the aspects Korean culture and how it insidiously infects everything from family relations to church polity. If I didnt eat Korean food from this day forward to the day of my death, I would be OK with that. I have actually even gone 9 months without having a single morsel of Korean food, and the first thing on my mind when I came back home to my family wasnt about any korean food that I would be able to eat. I dont get all excited when we have the opportunity to eat Korean food like many I know who live in K-town area. And I have often been in many situations where I am the only Asian... among a sea of white and black people. and I dont even have any feelings of self consciousness about that. I associate the USA as being my country, and not Korea. I couldnt care less whether Korea wins any World Cup or Asian Games etc... If Korea and the US went to war, of course, I would be on the side of the US. I didnt really think that the Korean missionaries being captured in Afghanistan was a big deal simply because they were Korean. (Because I know that a bunch of Korean churches wouldnt really care about these missionaries or really pray for them if they werent Korean... Offensive? yes... Truth hurts sometimes...).I felt that it was a big deal because these were people dying for Christ. I didnt really think that the VA Tech shootings had a particularly big impact on my simply because the shooter was Korean. This was a big deal because a coward shot 32 people... (Again, I know that many people wouldnt be praying about the VA shootings if the coward wasnt Korean). (I dont really remember any particular outpouring of prayer when Scott Peterson killed his wife and son). And even with all of this, it seems very weird because I married a Korean woman, and I speak to my child in Korean (broken Korean, of course), although both of these things were surely not intentional. Additionally, I couldnt care less what my dad gave to my son for his Korean name, yet I call him by his Korean name about 95% of the time, as opposed to his English name. It is actually my desire to stay away from being a typical Korean American.. (ie: Only hanging around other Koreans... never making an effort to really integrate into the US in your heart and mind, thinking that "Americans" means white person.). Anyway, I guess I'm not a typical Korean American, probably a really messed up American Korean with a lot of emotional baggage that I am trying to dump off at the nearest trash site. Are you a typical Korean American? | 
