Hi, there. This is a letter from Seoul to you all who will be reading this blog. Writing on this blog, I feel like I'm talking to you. So, I'm going to name this blog "letters". This will be the first letter, and the letters will be mostly about Korea, the country where I was born and have been living until now.

Last year, I went to Canada and lived there for about 9 months. It was my first time I've ever been abroad. At first, I stayed at Vancouver and then moved to Montreal, and during that time, I traveled to Quebec City, and also to New York and Seattle. I met a lot of awesome people, maybe some of you reading this blog are the people. :) Their kindness and hospitality made me open-minded and gave me warmness to love this world more. Once again, I realized that people are the most important part of life.

There was one thing peculiar to me as Korean. Whenever I met people there, I kept identifying myself as Korean, (because usually the first question people asked me was where I was from.) and I was really surprised at the fact that not only the people there didn't know much about Korea, but also me neither. It was pretty shocking but gave me a lesson. I could rethink about Korea and being a Korean. I gained the new perspective to see Korea from outside of itself for the first time.

What comes across your mind when you hear "Korea"? Once I asked myself this question when I was in Canada or in the US, and I felt kind of sad because I realized that there are't many good images or at all of Korea to remember for the people overseas. If there are some, it might be Kim chi or the "crazy" leader, Kim Jung Ill, of North Korea.

For me as the one living inside, I have lots, lots of things to talk about my own country, but most of them are the social problems of it. The funny thing is, despite the problems, I want to live, not leave, here. I have thought about the problems of Korea so long, so I almost forgot how much I like this country. (Exactly speaking, I like the "people" living here. I want to call the emotion not as Patriotism but as "Jung(情)". I'll talk about this word later.) The experiences from overseas made me remind of the foundation - why I became so critical about Korea.

Korea is a really small country, the size is the same as the state of Minnesota. I mean the combined territories of North and South Korea. The population is 73 million, among them, about 47 million live in South Korea. In spite of the small size, Korea has really complicated history, and the history is still going on, because it's surrounded by some big countries such as China, Japan, Russia, and the US. On the other hand, South Korea has the fifteenth biggest economy in the world. You can think South Korea as an in-between country, which is one of the semi-developed countries between the developed countries and the under-developed countries. Including me, many Korean envy the prosperity of the developed countries, but at the same time, there are lots of Migrant Workers from other Asian countries who have the "Korean Dream" and they are facing Racism and Discrimination.

Under those complexity and the defects of fast development, Korean people are struggling to survive, not just to survive but to survive as a human being. I love the people who have survived from the complex history, I feel compassion to them. I love and want to know more about how the ordinary people have lived and survived and made their own culture.

I'll try to show you those aspects of Korea through this blog. Once I told this to my good friend that "We humans live on the same earth, but have different points of view about many things. That diversity is really awesome. Plus, in spite of those differences, we also have similarities. That's moving." I hope this blog gives you that kind of emotion.

Are you willing to receive this letter continuously? :)

from Seoul,
Yurim

P.S I think I should notify you of this. My English is not good enough. I'm still learning English, so if there's too many mistakes that makes you uncomfortable to read, please understand me. It would be really helpful if you correct the mistakes when you find them only if you feel like.