“When Jae Sook Yo flew into Los Angeles with her family in 1995, she had some idea of what to expect. Many friends had told her what America was like. She was impressed by how huge Los Angeles was—after all, Korea is merely the size of Idaho.
But she didn’t expect to be so lonely. “The first couple months were especially bad. It was really hard, and every time I wrote to my friends in Korea or if they wrote to me, I would cry myself to sleep. ”
Her first day at North Hollywood High School was rough. She didn’t know anyone, she couldn’t speak English well enough to communicate, and there were people of all races. “It was scary… What especially intimidated me was the different color of skins, you know, since I grew up with yellow skin and occasionally saw white, but never others,” she said in Korean.
But she has never found racism to be a problem. “Before moving here, I was told that in the U.S. I would face all sorts of discrimination and prejudice, and that life would be good in most aspects but my family and I would always be made fun of. Well, that’s not true because the only discomfort I faced was when my teachers couldn’t pronounce my name correctly,” she adds with a smile. Soon she began making friends, almost all of them Koreans who arrived in America recently, like her. “They’re more comfortable to be around,” she said.
Some customs she won’t adopt
She said she has changed a little—she eats lots more fried foods, and she never puts her elbows on the table or links arms with girlfriends, as is common practice in Korea. But there are some American customs she said she’d never adopt. She said she still finds it hard to accept how disrespectful American teens are towards adults. “In Korea, a teenager could never, ever cuss or smoke in front of an adult, but here it’s the norm. Korean kids have rights and limits and we abuse neither. At school no makeup nor accessories are allowed because it’s an unnecessary distraction. Even though outwardly we may disagree, we know that that’s the right thing to do. In Korea, whenever, a student sees a teacher, he or she always bows as a sign of formal greeting. When a teacher tells the class to be quiet once, the class stays quiet. Teachers receive the ultimate respect. Here—I’m not going to even go there.”
Koreans won’t step on teachers’ shadows
Jae laughed and sighed. “I’m still disgusted to see kids rebelling and disrespecting teachers, especially since I’m coming from a country where students don’t even step on their teachers’ shadows. Here it’s whatever. America is a free country, but I think sometimes it’s too free, and the country loses some necessary reserve.”
In Korea, everyone knew everyone else in her 30-story apartment complex, while here in L.A., people don’t even know their next door neighbor. “Everything would be so much better if people knew who they lived with. Personally, a lot of my friends lived in my apartment complex, so we would always go out together all the time. And we always walked to wherever we may be going. That’s another [difference]. Here people always travel by car whenever they have to meet someone or go somewhere.”
But not all things are negative. Back home, she says, every student is expected to study till three in the morning. That’s all they do—study, study, study. Here, she sees that most kids do other things, too. “Almost every American teenager I know plays an instrument or does a sport.”
For the future, Jae Sook would like to go to college and pursue a career in fashion or interior designing. “America has very many opportunities, even if one does not attend college, and it is very up-to-date in technology… However, I was endlessly told that an education in the US is so much easier, but I find that very untrue, maybe because I’m a new immigrant, but anyhow the education actually seems harder.””