Third Culture Kid

A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents' culture, which creates a third culture within that child. When I learned of this, my life in Japan for seven years was transformed into such a valuable and wonderful experience. This essay is the story of how wonderful it is to be a third culture kid and how painful experiences can transform us. Even when things seem hopeless, there may be some hidden treasure to be found.

I was born and brought up basically in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The reason why I said 'basically' is that my family moved a lot between Korea and Japan. Now I have been in Tokyo for seven years and am a student at a Japanese university.

When I was seven years old, my family lived in Tokyo, Japan for two years. Then we moved back to Seoul for what was to be a period of five years. I was fourteen when my mother suddenly announced that I had to transfer to a Japanese junior high school. I could not believe my ears! Because of my father's work, my family would have to go to Tokyo again. I felt like my life was over. Being in the middle of my adolescence, I was hypersensitive, and hated leaving behind all the things that I loved, especially my friends. Therefore, with such a strong feeling of resentment and dissatisfaction, I finally transferred to a private Japanese girls' school. After all, what choice did I have?

My first day at my new school began like this. I put on an unfamiliar uniform and sat in the class with all the strange Japanese words flying around me. I felt like an animal on display at the zoo because other students visited my class just to look at me. This school had never had a foreign student until I came there. On reflection, I can see that it was only natural for others to be interested in me, but can you imagine how I felt?

Until now, I cannot really explain how I acquired Japanese. All I can say is that I kept doing my best in the situation I was in. In addition, fortunately, I had lots of teachers and friends who were willing to teach me Japanese and their culture.

Nonetheless, I kept feeling that even if I managed Japanese, it would be useless in the future since Japanese is not a world language. Moreover, I had a resentful feeling about being relocated to Japan against my will and I wondered why I had to live in Japan for so long. My seven years of life in Japan seemed so meaningless and miserable, but I was wrong. At that moment, I did not understand that nothing I had acquired was really useless.

After all of those feelings and experiences in Japan, I went to Boston, Massachusetts in 2002 for about a year to attend the study program that my college offered. During my Boston life, my school had an annual festival for introducing Japanese culture to Bostonians. Our school tried to familiarize Americans with Korean and Japanese cultures, by putting them in touch with both cultures directly and trying to have a close relationship with people who live near the school. Also, for students, it was a wonderful chance to have contact with American families by explaining their cultures in English.

I was a leader of my group and was responsible for making the festival a success. In my dorm, by chance, there were a few other Korean students who had lived there since the summer. So, I was placed in the middle of two groups - Korean and Japanese. With the Japanese group, I arranged flowers, IKEBANA, one of traditional customs of Japan. Since the school is a Japanese school, there were few Korean materials available for decorating the exhibition room. Then I helped school staff searching for some Korean materials. Also, I gave a hand in cooking Korean pancakes, KIM-CHI BUCHIMGE, and Japanese pancakes, OKONOMIYAKI. Those were offered for visitors tasting both countries' traditional food. We had chosen pancakes because it was easy to compare differences in American pancakes to the Japanese and Korean versions.

While I helped to prepare both groups, I began to feel so lonely because I did not fully belong to either group. I was also confused about who I was and who I was supposed to be. The reason was, as you know, that I was culturally both Korean and Japanese. The Korean students felt that there was something Japanese about me and the Japanese students felt that there was something Korean. Simply put, I felt neither perfectly Korean nor Japanese.

When I was at a loss during the festival preparation, my American friend I loved most encouraged me a lot. She told me that I was an important person who could join both groups because of knowing two cultures. "A person like you is called like this." Then she gave me an article about "Third Culture Kid." She said. "Have more confidence in yourself and don't be so negative. Give me five!" You could never know how glad I was on hearing those words and how much I appreciated her.

I really enjoyed the festival due to preparing eagerly and I was especially happy to introduce both cultures to Bostonians. Also the festival finished successfully. Lots of American families visited and were interested in knowing about Japanese culture and Korean culture. Through this festival, I felt I had grown out of my narrow, superficial views of life. By the end of the event, I had been able to talk with my Korean and Japanese friends on common topics in conversation, exchange ideas and feelings. The idea that I was neither perfectly Korean nor Japanese had naturally been replaced by a kind of confidence that it was a wonderful thing that two different identities coexisted within me because I could see the differences as values. I was sure then that if I acquired the third culture, there would be another identity, which would widen my perspectives still larger.

Now I am more interested in intercultural communication and I hope to make the best of my experiences in a future career. What I have learned is a thousand people mean a thousand different personalities, each with his or her own identity and background, and that no one has exactly the same background as anyone else. I also now understand that if you do your best in every situation, no matter how terrible, you will have great experiences that others do not. Things look differently as you change your mind; be positive! The way to make the best of any situation is to use it to learn and develop into a unique and distinctive human being.

Yuzin, 19
Tokyo, Japan

* Reprinted from Positive Teens Magazine Volume 6 Issue 1, May/June 2004

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