Min-Woo Park

"10 Things You Didn't Know About Me"

1) I was born Samuel Park, but my parents always called me Min-Woo. So at school that’s what they called me. Or something like that. Never quite Min-Woo, usually Min-WOO or Min-ooh. I hated it when kids called me Mean-Woo or worse, Min-Poo.

2) In a miraculous series of victories at the 2002 World Cup, South Korea made it to the semifinals. I was 8, and had never visited Korea before, but I remember cheering so hard. I don’t know why, but I really wanted them to win.

3) When I was 9, one of the older girls on my swim team noticed that when my wet hair plastered my face and covered my eyes, I looked like the boy from the Grudge. She had just compared me to a small Japanese demon child.

4) I used to not like traditional Korean food: rice and jjigae and kimchi. Again? Can’t we order, like, Taco Bell?

5) When I was in the 4th grade, my friend Brian asked me why I had such fat calves. For some time afterwards, I only wore long pants because I was ashamed of my radish-shaped legs, my “moo-dadi,” wanted to have slimmer, normal ones, wanted to hide the bottom-half strength that my father passed on to me.

6) My father was 16 when he immigrated to America. During lunch on his first day of high school, he picked up a sandwich and a clear cup holding some kind of hard soup. He held it up to the light. It wiggled translucent.

My father had never seen Jello before.

7) Senior year of college, I’m in an elevator with my Chinese-American friend Zac when the elevator doors open to reveal two white women. As we step out and the women step in, the older woman asks, “Are you guys twins?”

In the confusing heat of the moment, I don’t know what to say, but I put my wits together and retort, “Why, because we’re Asian?”

And as the doors close shut, she looks at me and replies,“ Yes.”

8) It’s 1am on a Friday night, and I’m performing at an open mic in Queens, New York City. I finish my piece and the stand-up comic after me opens his set with the joke, “Of all the things I expected to see tonight, I did not expect to see a Chinese poet.”

9) People ask me, so are you North Korean, or South Korean? To which I respond, “Neither. I’m West Korean.”

10) On my first day of Korean school, my teacher taught me the Korean word for milk “oo-yoo” by telling me that the vowels “oo” and “yoo” next to each other look like a cow’s udder. I told my mom I never wanted to go back, but to this day that is how I remember the vowels “oo” and “yoo.”

- - -

10) I still can’t speak fluently, much less read or write, but I’ve always been able to catch snippets of the Korean language from the white noise of a crowded mall, murmurs of Korean entering my ear canals, nestling into comfortable inundations at the base of my ear drums, they are whispers of home wherever I go.

9) If I were really a North Korean spy, do you think I’d tell you?

8) Mr. No-Name Struggling Stand-Up Comic, there’s nothing funny about ignorance. Microagressions are anything but micro.

7) I’m glad those elevator doors closed shut before I could say or do anything else because if those doors were open just a moment longer, I guarantee you…I still wouldn’t know what to do.

6) Jello, neither liquid nor solid. Jello, just ambiguously in between, like being Korean-American. Jello, two cultures jelling in a strange dance I call the culturally confused wiggle.

5) I get my legs from my dad, it’s genetics. When I joined the rowing team in high school, my thunder thighs and muscular calves became a blessing. See, I would soon discover that in the sport of rowing, the bigger your legs, the faster you are.

4) Now I can’t live without Korean food.

3) My swim team used to play games, like Sharks and Minnows. One person was the Shark and the rest were Minnows. The Shark would try to tag other people to make them Sharks too, until only one Minnow was left. The other kids sometimes called it Sharks and Min-Woos. I liked that.

2) Koreans are Nationalists. Ironically enough, Korean Americans almost more so. I always root for Korean athletes. It’s true, I bleed red, white, and blue for American sand, but understand I also bleed red, white, and blue for my Korean motherland.

1) I was born Samuel Park, but my parents always called me Min-Woo. In the 8th grade I visited the local courthouse to legally change my name to Min-Woo Samuel Park. I know many Korean Americans who have the done the exact opposite, trading in their foreign sounding name for one more familiar. But I love my name. Am I a heretic to love my heritage? Tell me is it narcissism or romanticism that fuels my ethnic duality? My name is two parts Korean, and one part English, but it is wholly proud of representing me.