My Pride and Prejudice

When I was studying at a state university in the Midwest, I went flat broke only two months into my junior year in 1960. Unlike many other foreign students, I could not expect any money from my family back in South Korea. Nor was I able to pay for my room and board and other living expenses with the wage I earned by working as a busboy at an American Legionnaire Club after classes.

A Korean friend of mine who was in a similar situation suggested that we drop out of school, go to Chicago and work there until the end of the semester the following February. By then, we would be able to make enough money to support ourselves through the second semester.

The job he had in mind was at a large wholesale bookstore where he had worked as a shipping clerk every summer for three years. There would be similar jobs for both of us even if we went there in the winter, he said.

The only trouble was that as foreign students, we were not supposed to drop out of school, much less work full time. But we didn’t have any other choice. We slipped out of town in a Greyhound bus at night without telling anyone where we were going.

In Chicago, we rented a one-room flat on the third floor of a decrepit red brick building near the downtown so that we could walk to work. That winter, it was especially cold even for the windy city, and we went to work everyday under a starry sky early in the morning and came home watching the stars again at around midnight. It really was a tough and dismal life.

That was why my roommate and I were so surprised when we discovered that a couple of female Korean students were living right next door. At that time, it was very rare for any Korean to run into another Korean on the street, even in big cities like Chicago. As I remember there was a total of only about 200 Koreans living in the entire city. There were fewer female students than male students as only the rich and powerful were able to send their daughters to the United States to study.

So, imagine, how surprised—and delighted, needless to say—we were to find ourselves as neighbors of two pretty and vivacious Korean girls!
Our excitement, however, didn’t last very long.

It turned out that the girls had many Korean boy friends, (“suitors,” probably, is a more appropriate word); there were so many of them that a long line was formed in the corridor outside our flat over the weekends.

Since my friend and I were working 16 hours a day every day, the weekend was the only time we could catch up on sleep, do the laundry and clean our roach-infested flat.

But we succumbed to the charms and coquetry of the girls and agreed to make our flat available as a sort of waiting room for their callers while the girls were meeting—or rather “interviewing”—other visitors in their room.

Years later, when I recalled that period, I wondered why we didn’t think of courting the girls ourselves. We were not so interested in the girls, I suppose, because we were simply too tired to pay any attention to the opposite sex.

What’s more, we must have been impressed by all those Korean guys who appeared to be rich without the slightest sign of the worry about money that my roommate and I had; many of them had their own cars and appeared to be only too glad to take the girls out for a spin.

Actually, though, we simply did not have the courage to ask them for a date. Besides, we were too proud to join all those guys who were competing against each other for the girls’ interest and favor.

Talking to the boys who were waiting in our flat for their turn to meet the girls, I found that the jealousy and sense of competition among them were so fierce that it was actually frightening. I wouldn’t have had the heart to join the race, however attractive the girls were.

“There are plenty of fish in the sea,” my friend and I joked about the expected abundant availability of girls later in our life.

But some of the visitors to the girls apparently didn’t see it that way. They must have seen us, who were lucky enough to live in the same building as the girls, as having plenty of chances to court them. And one or two of the guys must have decided to get rid of us to reduce the number of “competitors.” That is why my roommate and I were almost certain that one or more among the suitors had anonymously informed the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) about us.

One Saturday afternoon in early December, two INS agents visited our flat and asked us to accompany them to their office.

During the questioning, an INS official told us that we had violated the law by not attending school and by working instead.

“We can actually deport you back to your country,” he said.

We pleaded guilty but asked for his “understanding and generous consideration” as we were not working in order to make money but to continue our study. We pointed out to him that we had only a year and half to go before we graduate from the university.

“We will then go home,” we assured him.

“They all say that,” he said with a knowing smile. “But most of them stay on under one excuse or another and try to obtain a green card if they can.”

“But not me, sir,” I blurted out suddenly. “I’d go back because, I believe, I have a lot to contribute to my country which I love.”

Later, I realized that I hadn’t had to say what I did. But that wasn’t all, I added needlessly: “I’d leave this country even if you people asked me to stay.”

“Oh, yeah?” the officer exclaimed with a touch of disbelief and irony. “Well, then, let me record what you’ve just said in your file.”

After duly transcribing my remark in my file, the official told us that the INS would let us work until the beginning of the next semester. But on condition, he said firmly, that we go back to the university in February.

As dusk was falling on that day, we came out of the INS office, giving out a deep sigh of relief. But little did I know that my cheap nationalistic outburst and the uncalled for pledge that I would go back to my country after graduation would dog me around, posing an unexpected obstacle to my career as a journalist.

***

My friend and I went back to the University in January. And I graduated in the spring of 1962 with a degree in journalism. As all foreign students who earned a degree in a professional field were allowed to work for one year as an intern, the very day after I got my diploma, I packed up my things and left for New York where I was lucky enough to get a job at the Associated Press.

At the end of my internship, I decided to seek a permanent resident status in the United States. The INS, however, rejected the petition, filed by the employer on my behalf. It did not give detailed reasons for doing so, except to say that the applicant had expressed his desire to go back to his country as soon as he graduated from the university and that the INS had no choice but to honor his stated wish.

Told to leave the United States, I resigned from the AP and travelled to France first and then to Britain in order to see other parts of the world before returning to Korea three years later. I got married to a Korean girl and went to Tokyo where I worked as a reporter for the AP. After working in Japan for more than six years, I followed my wife who decided to immigrate to the United States.

***

Back in New York, I got a job at the AP, this time as an editor in the World Service Division. I worked there nearly 20 years but took early retirement in 1989 and returned to Seoul in order to work as an editorial adviser and columnist for an English language newspaper in Seoul.

It was a politically tumultuous time back home as the leftist national leaders took over the government and as anti-Americanism began to sweep the nation.
I have not been a particularly politically minded man. Nor was I one of those “pro-American” journalists. Despite my earlier personal difficulty with the INS, I have been a firm supporter of democracy and the free market system as well as the alliance between South Korea and the United States.

The popular thinking in South Korea, however, was that anyone who criticized “our” country and people must be pro-American. Conversely, anyone who condemned the United States as an imperialist state, or said he or she simply disliked America, was regarded as a patriot.

It was at a time like that that I wrote a column, pointing out the follies of nationalism and blind patriotism. For saying such a thing, though, scores of Koreans sent me angry e-mails, lashing out at me with verbal abuse that is not fit to print in any publication in a decent society.

Among the e-mails was the one sent by a student at Seoul National University, Korea’s equivalent to Harvard or Yale. It said:
“People who are eager to criticize our country and fellow countrymen are all traitors. They have no right to live here; indeed, they should be kick out of this country. The trouble with traitorous people like you, however, is that even the United States, which you no doubt worship, would not accept you; that means, you have no place to go; all you can do is fall into the Pacific Ocean and drown at the midway point between Korea and America.”

A few months after I received the e-mail, I had a chance to go to the United States for an extended stay. It would not be an exaggeration to say I had a sense of uneasiness when an immigration officer at an American airport went through my passport.

That was why I was a bit taken aback when the INS officer said, “Welcome to America and have a nice stay,” with a bright smile.

Of course, I knew he was saying the same thing to everybody who was arriving in the United States to live or visit unless he or she were on a list of terrorists or was an international criminal on the loose. Other than those, everyone is welcomed even if one had been—and still is—politically anti-American as long as one doesn’t publicly say so.

In fact, I have met a number of old Korean men and women in the United States, who, I knew, used to be politically active and who had taken part in numerous anti-American demonstrations in Seoul in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Naturally, I was surprised to find them in the United States because they used to say openly that they hated America so much.

The anti-American slogans they shouted during demonstrations in front of the U.S. embassy in Seoul and elsewhere were worse—to my way of thinking—than my youthful and immature outburst to the INS officer in Chicago some 50 years before. That had come from my youthful pride and nationalistic sentiment.

And yet, the anti-American Koreans from the old days apparently had had no trouble getting their green cards when they tried to immigrate to the United States.

When I thought about all this, I felt the whole thing was not quite fair somehow, but then, I suppose, that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.
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