A Family Divided-CC interview

Imagine coming home from school or work one day and finding your parents sobbing in the kitchen clutching photos of family a world away. Imagine the frustration you would feel at knowing that you came to this country in hopes of gaining opportunity, while leaving behind everyone and everything you know.

Now imagine that one day, your new land of opportunity, a land that you had become a proud citizen of had decided to invade your homeland for reasons you could never understand. For reasons that are insignificant to you because the only thing that matters to you there is your family and their safety.

Every day, as the United States and countries around the world bounce from one conflict to the next, families are torn apart in the fray. For the thousands of Muslim Americans who emigrated here from Iraq, they cannot do anything but sit back and watch, and pray, as chaos and death envelops their homeland and families.

Although the U.S government would like to censor what we see in order to minimize the horror and realizations of the true cost of war by its citizens, we have history to remind us that the battles we engage in have a cost that cannot be measured.

And as the insurgencies and rebellions continue in Iraq, we find ourselves again picking at a cultural scab, North Korea, and the question is when the blood will begin to flow.

For Korean born Jessica, Korea is as foreign to her as Iraq. She was born in Korea, but raised here in the United States and exemplifies all aspects of an American born citizen. She has no Korean accent and is even fluent in Spanish. But although she grew up as an American, she has never attempted to acquire citizenship; instead she lives in Chicago as a resident alien. She says that she just hasn’t gotten around to it, but even more so now, she doesn’t want to. And like most twenty-something Americans, she doesn’t even care if she can vote.

But for her Korean mother, becoming a citizen was something to be proud of. Jessica says that her mom still bugs her about taking the citizenship test, but she really doesn’t see the point, especially now in a time where the United States isn’t proving to be the helpful big brother nation that it claims to be. She feels conflicted about it in the same way that I’m sure many younger Americans feel now, especially following an election of a not-so-popular president after record turnout among younger voters.

As for the conflict of North Korea, she says she can feel how her mother feels divided. I asked Jessica about the current issue in North Korea and quizzed her on some general knowledge of Korea itself. The following was our conversation.

Q: So how much do you know about the conflict in North Korea?
A: Um..Well not as much as I should I guess.

Q: What part of Korea is your family originally from?
A: Well my mother is from South Korea but I know that she had family in North Korea, but I think they are all dead. Actually, my parents always told me that all of the Koreans that are in the U.S. now are from South Korea and that North Koreans were not allowed to leave the country, but I’m not sure if that’s
completely true.

Q: Now you’ve said that you are not really actively pursuing American citizenship,is there any reason for that? Do you have plans to go to Korea again?
A: (laughs) NO! No, I just don’t really think about it that much.

Q: So if there is a major conflict in Korea in the next few years, even if it is just
South Korea, how do you think you would be affected, if at all?
A: Um…I don’t really think that I would

Q: What about your mother?
A: Yeah, I guess she would. She’d probably be scared for family that she still has there. I never even thought about that before now though.

Q: Would you ever have any fears of similar racial profiling that a lot of Muslim Americans are facing in the states today?
A: I never really thought of that either. But not really I guess. I mean there are a lot of Asians living in the states so it would be kinda hard I think to single out the Koreans.

After talking with Jessica for a while, I realized that ethnic roots don’t always have a bearing on how informed people are when it comes to conflicts overseas, even if it involves a region from which they are born. But for Jessica’s mother, and the hundreds of thousands of people who have immigrated to this country over the last 100 years, the idea of conflict in their homeland is a sobering notion that we are only as safe as we believe we are.