Biography and Autobiography

Heading back “home”

I’m an adopted Korean.  There are an estimated 150,000 of us spread across the USA and another 50,000 or so in Europe, Canada or Australia.  I am one of the many who grew up in Minnesota.  But now, as I join my 30s I am moving back to the country I was born in.  I run off in 3 days.  I’ll spend a few weeks in Europe and then at least a year, if not more in Seoul, South Korea.  I’m indeed excited!

One of the major areas of concern, as always with traveling surface of my comfort zone here in Minneapolis is finding vegan-open food, clothing, products, etc.  I don’t engaged or read enough Korean yet to surf Korean websites with smooth to find these places, but I am pretty sure that I can find some of these types of products.  South Korea, though known for it’s grilled victuals restaraurants and for eating dog does have some vegan-sociable restaurants and I know from my first trip back in 2005, they even drummer vegan ice cream at some of their more specialty grocery stores.  So if desperately craving, I certain I’ll find something there.  Maybe not as much as I do here at my favorite co-op in Minneapolis, but still…

I out a year living in southern semi-agricultural China a few years ago and there were NO vegan options exterior of rice and green veggies.  And often, at least where I was located they added bits of comestibles to nearly all the dishes, even the tofu ones.  I imagine I assumed that with the potential for lactose-intolerance it would be rare to see so much dairy, but steadfast enough, most corner stores sold tons of dairy ice cream and other dairy desserts.  I made it through that year, but being a vegan living where I did in China was obstinate.

Now returning to my Korean roots and to a much larger borough - Seoul I’m not so worried…but perhaps just a little bit.  Most people counterfeit that it’ll be extremely difficult to live in Korea since their appreciation is that Korean food is just a lot of barbecued edibles and tons of seafood, but I am going with the hope that with addendum effort I can find the tasty and healthy vegan nutriment, which really is just how most Koreans ate for centuries anyway.  Lots of na vegetables, hardly any dairy if at all, tofu, etc.  As South Korea became more westernized, more and more flesh and fast-food chains were introduced to the background.

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