"Go back to your country." How a guy with Belarusian roots lives in South Korea

Screenshot from video: JoReudik / YouTube

Kang Se-han shared his story in an interview with the YouTube channel 세계인 조르딕 (JoReudik). The episode featuring him was titled by the creators: "Why did a white mixed-race person refuse the Belarusian army and join the Korean Air Force?"

According to Se-han, his mother came to South Korea as a tourist in the late 1990s. She liked the country so much that she decided to stay and found a job as an English teacher in Seoul.

His mother had friends who were already married and living in Gwangju. One day, they invited Se-han's future father over, and it was at this time that the Belarusian woman also came to visit them. That's how their first meeting happened.

For the young Korean man, it was love at first sight. For the girl, it was not.

After the meeting, she returned to Seoul, but he couldn't forget her. Social networks didn't exist then, so the man started looking for her. Using a phone directory, he called English schools and even came to Seoul several times. At first, the girl refused him, but he didn't give up. Eventually, his persistence won her over – they started dating and later got married.

"Now, he'd probably be reported to the police for stalking, but back then it was considered a very romantic story," Se-han says with a laugh.

A Belarusian woman accepted as one of their own

Equally surprising to him is how his Korean family welcomed his Belarusian daughter-in-law. According to Se-han, in those years, there were almost no foreigners in Korea, but his paternal grandmother did everything to make his mother feel at home. She taught her Korean, showed her how to cook national dishes, and helped her understand local customs. Other relatives also treated her very warmly.

"Even now, I find it strange that they accepted my mother so easily at that time. For me, it's a real miracle," he admits.

When his mother first moved to Korea, she didn't know Korean yet, so his parents mostly spoke English to each other. At the same time, the boy also heard Russian.

As a result, today he is fluent in three languages – Korean, Russian, and English. However, he admits that he now feels most comfortable speaking Korean.

Belarus – a country you start to miss if you haven't been there for a long time

Despite the fact that Se-han has never lived in Belarus, his family visited his grandmother there almost every year.

Explaining what Belarus means to him is not easy for the young man.

"In my feelings, it's like a second homeland. If I don't go there for a long time, I want to return. It's a place associated with many memories," he says.

According to Se-han, Belarus resembles Russia in many ways but has its own special atmosphere. "It's very different from Korea. There's some ancient atmosphere here. It's hard to describe in words," he admits.

It is with this atmosphere that he associates what he remembers most from his trips:

"It was a country of the former Soviet Union, and there are still many communist things there. For example, you can see monuments to Lenin just walking down the street. Portraits of people who worked well hang in the main squares of cities. Seeing something like that is very unusual."

Se-han also notes that it is now much harder for Koreans to get to Belarus than before. While recently the simplest routes passed through Russia, now, due to the war in Ukraine, one has to fly via Turkey or Dubai.

The young man himself does not speak Belarusian. According to him, his mother also does not use it. He explains this by the fact that she grew up in the Soviet Union, when Russian predominated in everyday life and education, and his maternal grandparents were Russian.

Павялічыць

Se-han with his grandmother from Belarus. Screenshot from video: JoReudik / YouTube

However, he knows that Belarus has two official languages and believes that Belarusian is gradually returning to everyday life:

"Locals seem to be in the process of learning it now, but everyone uses Russian. I think I can understand Belarusian. Both Russian and Belarusian are official languages in Belarus. If you use Russian in Belarus, from the point of view of Russians, there is a difference in intonation and accent."

"Go back to your country"

Se-han's most difficult memories are related to his childhood in Korea. As the young man explains, he grew up in Gwangju, where there were almost no people of other races then. Therefore, both he and his mother constantly felt curious stares.

The first signs that he was different from others, the boy felt already in kindergarten. Peers would say "I won't play with you" just because he looked different. His parents were so worried about their son that they came to the kindergarten and asked the educators to help him build relationships with other children.

In middle and high school, open hostility was rarer, but it was replaced by another feeling — loneliness. Se-han recalls that it was difficult for him to make friends, and sometimes he simply wandered alone, having no one to talk to. At that time, he even began to blame himself for this, although now he understands that the reason was largely that he was simply different from others.

There were also open insults. Strangers on the street might shout: "Go back to your country!" or "Why did you come to Korea?". According to him, there were even cases when people threw stones at him.

At the same time, the young man admits that not everything was bad. School principals and many teachers, on the contrary, treated him with special warmth. They invited him to their office, treated him to sweets, and sometimes even forgave minor misdeeds. However, such attention also had a downside: Se-han understood that he was always in plain sight and could not simply disappear into the crowd of classmates.

A year and a half in the air force

According to Se-han, initially, by law, he was not obliged to serve in the military, but later the legislation changed. The young man admits that he couldn't accept this fact for a long time and lived with the thought that the army wouldn't affect him, until he underwent a medical examination and began his service.

Since Se-han had dual citizenship (he now only has Korean citizenship), he pondered what service would be like in Belarus, where military duty also exists. In his estimation, the Belarusian army feels harsher, similar to what the Korean army was like in the past.

Павялічыць

Kang Se-han after completing his service in the South Korean Air Force. The inscription on the building reads "Discharge from reserve." Screenshot from video: JoReudik / YouTube

Se-han served in the Air Force as an engineering equipment driver. He says that during his service, he often felt like someone who "doesn't belong here." The main problem for him was the constant attention from those around him. His service coincided with the pandemic period, so mandatory mask-wearing helped the young man maintain some inconspicuousness.

"Thanks to masks, I could hide a bit. When I had to take off my mask, for example, when we were eating, I would eat quickly and leave immediately. I really didn't like that people looked at me as if I were a marvel," he recalls.

The young man's appearance became a topic of discussion on the popular Korean internet forum DC Inside in the section dedicated to the Air Force.

Messages such as: "Who is this foreigner?", "What is he doing here?" regularly appeared there. Soon, users were already writing that he was a "mixed-race person from Belarus," and some even mentioned his specialty.

The young man admits that such attention was very unpleasant for him. Sometimes he even went into the discussions himself and asked for posts about him to be deleted. Some messages indeed disappeared, others remained on the forum.

However, after some time, according to Se-han, everyone got used to it, and the service became completely normal. After demobilization, he even went on a trip to South America with his former colleagues.

"I am Korean. But…"

But this did not mean that the feeling of his "otherness" disappeared. As in childhood, Se-han still often feels like a person who has to explain who he is.

"Wherever I go — for example, to a restaurant — as soon as I speak Korean, I hear: 'You're a foreigner, but you speak Korean so well?' This happens dozens of times a day," he says.

The young man recalls how recently, returning home, he went through passport control at a Korean airport. While other passengers proceeded without delay, he was stopped. The staff couldn't understand for a long time why a person of European appearance bore the Korean name Kang Se-han. When everything was clarified, they apologized and let him through.

That is why he cannot yet say that he completely feels like one of them.

"Even when I am in Korea, I almost never feel Korean. Usually, I have to explain who I am, or just smile, thank them, and accept it. So, even though I am Korean, inside I often feel like a foreigner. I have thought many times how nice it would be to be like everyone else," he admits.

This experience also influenced how Se-han imagines his future family. He admits that he wants to meet someone who will completely accept him for who he is.

"If I have children, they will also be from a multicultural family. And I already know what prejudices they might face. Therefore, it is very important for me to have someone by my side who will not have such prejudices," he says.

The young man admits that even while dating, he sometimes finds himself worrying not so much about himself as about how others will look at them.

"It seems I'm still in the process of overcoming this. I try to live with dignity and perceive my distinctiveness as my attractiveness. But after all I've had to go through in childhood and youth, it's not that simple. I think I'm still learning to overcome it," Se-han admits.

Now, 25-year-old Kang Se-han is studying management in Seoul. He says he wants to live with his head held high and no longer feel like a stranger in the country where he was born. Another dream of his is to help children from multicultural families.

"When I was growing up, almost no one told me that being a child from such a family is normal. Most such children go through a very difficult period of growing up. I really want to help them," he says.

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