My Korean Kin in Ukraine

This past weekend I was in Kiev to rendezvous with fellow volunteers. We were all either en route to or had just finished visiting our Ukrainian host families. A couple days before leaving for Kiev, I received a link to a Kievpost article on a Korean festival that was to take place in the city on the same day that we were there.

A fellow volunteer and friend, notoriously fond of Asian and particularly Korean culture, was among us and showed no hesitation in attending the festival. Really, I just wanted to get some free food, engage in some conversations in Korean for the sake of nostalgia, and head out. I had only to proffer the idea to him and it was almost a surety that we’d go.

The event was for me very surreal. Up until that moment when I walked into the building, I’d only spotted Asians every once in a while, mostly in the city. And every instance of it was a huge deal for me. Every time I spotted one, I’d take a candid photo. I started a collection of photos of Asians in Ukraine. Don’t ask why. I just thought it would be funny and that maybe I’d do a blog entry one day entitled, “proof that there are Asians in Eastern Europe”. After attending this event, the novelty of such a fact has worn off for me and the consummation of such a blog is unlikely. I digress.

On the second (or third) floor of this complex, there were long tables set up with food. It was like lunch after church, courtesy of the ahjuma’s: kimbap, bulgogi, japchae, kimchi, etc. They even served little cups of makoli.

We’d beaten the crowd to the food, but before long the place was bustling. There was a strange cacophony of English, Russian, Ukrainian, and Korean. What was even stranger was the fact that fluent Russian was flowing from the mouths of Koreans. Not just young Koreans but Korean adults. It was utterly surreal to me.

There was an instance when I went up to a teenaged Korean girl and asked her a question in Korean (I think something about the food). She said, “что?” (what?). Then in English I said, “what language do you speak?”. And I finally spoke in Russian and she understood. Here I was speaking to a Korean girl in Korean and she didn’t understand me. She knew only Russian. I know this is the Ukrainian equivalent to a Twinkie (yellow on the outside, white on the inside [for my non-Asian readers]) in the states and we see plenty of those back home. But it was just weird hearing Russian from a Korean. Sorry I’m ruminating on this fact. But it was just too surreal.

I spent the rest of the time talking to the restaurant owners in Kiev and striking up conversations with Korean strangers, who were not so strange after all.