2026년 6월 2일
June 2, 2026

Dear Jieun,

I am so proud of you.

Today was a 쓰레기 같은 day. So was yesterday. So many 억울한 things were said to you. So many 억울한 things were said about you. So many 억울한 things were said about 엄마. You broke under the weight of all their words. You broke under the weight of all the things you’re carrying on your shoulders. You are carrying so much.

I am furious. I am grieved. I am with you.

Breaking is normal.
Breaking makes sense.
Breaking is universal.

Breaking does not mean you are weak, incompetent, or incapable. Breaking means you are human. Every human being that has ever existed has been broken many, many times. No one is unbreakable.

Take as much time as you need to move your way through these very difficult incidents, this very difficult day, the very difficult days that lie behind us, and the very difficult days that lie ahead.

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On Monday, June 8, I will be flying back to America from Korea to move 엄마 and our dog 감자 to Korea with us.

In 10 days, I will be going back through the portal.

I will be traveling to America by myself. Greg will be staying in Korea, and Haejoon will be staying in Korea with him.

Greg and I have not spent more than two days apart since 2014.
Haejoon and I have not spent one single day apart since his creation.
Moving 엄마 to Korea is going to be really, really hard.

I 고민ed a lot about this decision.

Should I bring Haejoon to America?
Should I leave Haejoon in Korea?
Am I a bad 엄마 if I leave Haejoon in Korea?
Am I a bad 엄마 if I bring Haejoon to America?
Am I a bad 엄마 if I leave Haejoon in Korea for two months?
Can I tolerate living without Haejoon for two months of our lives?
Will Haejoon be irrevocably impacted by my two-month physical absence?
Amy I crazy?
Am I insane?

This was not “supposed” to happen like this.
엄마’s move to Korea was not “supposed” to happen this soon.

엄마 was supposed to come to Korea in June. 엄마 was supposed to live in Korea with us for two months. 엄마 and I were supposed to fly back to America together with Haejoon in August. 엄마 and I were supposed to go through all of our belongings together in August, September, and maybe October, and move to Korea around October, maybe November, or by the latest, December. I hadn’t fully figured this part of Operation: Move Our Family to Korea yet because I didn’t think I needed to.

I thought I had more time.

I could’ve had more time. It was a combination of my choice, Greg’s choice, and 엄마’s choice to pull up our timeline.

Our original plan was to move 엄마 to Korea by the end of the year, December 2026. At the very latest, we planned to move her out here by February 2027, within a year of us moving to Korea.

I did not want to go more than a year living across the world from her.

But plans made in theory are always different from plans made in reality.

We can think we know how a transglobal move from America to Korea is going to go. But once we move, our reality reveals to us what our new plans are.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the difference between foolishness and courage is. I don’t know about you, but for me, a lot of the time, courageous decisions feel foolish.

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2026년 5월 21일
May 21, 2026

Dear friend,

I’m writing this letter to you while I sit in a coffee shop near the 포항 철길숲, on a cold, cloudy, windy morning. The first two days of this week, the sun was unforgiving. The next day, the rain poured through the sky. And today, the wind is sweeping in on the tail of the storm.

This month, the weather has been erratic. The weather in the spring is always erratic. It takes time for the world to adjust to change.

Here in 포항, there have been days where the sun relentlessly beats down on us, where we can feel the heat radiating through our skin. There have been days where it rains all day long, where the roses droop from the weight of the water in their petals. And there have been days where the wind is so strong that I feel like I’m pushing my body through a wall of air.

In my neighborhood, the 장미s are in full bloom. Roses of all colors — blush, magenta, crimson, canary, cream, peach, and beyond — have covered the 포항 철길숲 and all of the roads, sidewalks, and 골목길s. There are so many roses planted along the walking path that you can smell their fragrance just by walking past them.

The streets are brimming with life. Families are outside playing with their kids. The outdoor gyms are filled with 할머니s 할아버지s. The trees are covered in leaves. Everything is green. Spring is making its way out, and we are on the cusp of welcoming of our first summer as new, old dwellers of Korea.

Because 포항 is positioned in the southeast region of Korea right next to the waters of 동해, it’s always really windy here.

In Korean, the word “wind” is 바람, baram.
바람 also means an aspiration, a dream, a hope, a wish.

Today marks three months of us living in Korea.

Three months ago, Greg, Haejoon, and I landed at 인천 Airport. Three months ago, the three of us got on a 고속 bus that took us five hours to 포항 in the middle of the night. Three months ago, the three of us arrived in this unfamiliar place and started making it our home.

It has taken us an entire season, a 석달, to adjust to our new lives here in Korea.

Over the past three months — by magic, by miracle, by grit, by the kindness and generosity of strangers who have become an extension of our family — we have built ourselves a home here in 포항.

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Thursday, April 24, 2025

What is forgiveness?

I think about forgiveness a lot.

Should I forgive her? Should I forgive him? Should I forgive them? What is forgiveness? What happens after forgiveness? Is forgiveness an intentional act in a moment? Or is forgiveness a repeated act, over and over again? Is forgiveness a practice? Do we forgive a person? Do we forgive their actions and their words? Is forgiveness the same as erasure? How do we forgive the unforgivable? How do we forgive the unforgivable act done unto us? How do we forgive the unforgivable words spoken over us? How do we forgive the unforgivable person? Is there such a thing as “unforgivable?” Is forgiveness letting someone get away with their harmful behavior and words? Are there people who deserve forgiveness? Are there people who don’t deserve forgiveness? Are there actions that deserve forgiveness? Are there actions that don’t deserve forgiveness?

In recent years, I’ve heard people try to convince people to be more forgiving by saying, “Forgiveness is for you.” “You” is the forgiver.

To me, forgiveness sometimes feels like an acceptance of injustice and harm done unto me or others.

There are things I can forgive,
and there are things I cannot.
There are things that are easier to forgive,
and there are things that are much more difficult to forgive.

Experiencing death and grief has given me more capacity to forgive.

If you break my favorite mug on accident, I can forgive you.
If you break my spirit, I find it much harder to forgive you.

Maybe it’s the value of the object that has been broken that makes forgiveness easier and more difficult.

If you break something I love, I can forgive you.
If you break someone I love, I find it a lot harder to forgive you.

Forgiveness is a sacrifice.
Is forgiveness a sacrifice?

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Last year, in April, in the hibernation of grief and the chaos of matrescence, I submitted my writing to a publication for the first time in my life.

I submitted my writing to choa, an independent online platform devoted to recognizing, examining, and understanding the nuances and complexities of the Korean female diasporic experiences.

On March 5, the editors of choa, Harriet Kim and Mirae Lee, put out an open call on Instagram asking for submissions for their publication’s fifth and final theme: 이별, ibyeol.

According to choa:

“이별, ibyeol—farewell, parting—arrives in many forms. A quiet goodbye, a sudden rupture. A choice or a compelled parting. Some farewells carry regret; others, relief. Some are whispered, some spoken, some left unsaid. Some linger in memory, others fade with time.”

As someone who has an intimate relationship with 이별, my discovery of this open call felt like 인연. While I didn’t have anything specific that I wanted to submit to choa, I did endure an entire year and a half of grief. I figured I had plenty of pieces in my archive of writing about saying goodbye.

When I looked through my writing, these letters emerged.

From 2023 to 2025, I had written four letters to 아빠.
From 2023 to 2025, I had also had two conversations with him at his grave at the cemetery that I had recorded on my phone.

October 26, 2023: one month after 아빠 died ⛅
March 26, 2024: six months after 아빠 died 💌
June 30, 2024: 아빠’s 64th birthday 💌
September 26, 2024: one year after 아빠 died 💌
January 1, 2025: the second new year’s day since 아빠 died ⛅
February 26, 2025: 17 months after 아빠 died 💌

I never wrote these letters thinking they would ever be published. I wrote them for 아빠. I wrote them for myself. I wrote them as a way to stay connected to 아빠. I wrote them as a way to move through my immense grief. I wrote them to keep our relationship alive. I wrote them to create a bridge, a portal, a pathway, between his world and mine.

But when I looked at these six pieces, I saw a collection. I saw a story. I realized that this was the piece I was going to submit to choa — these letters for 아빠, these letters to the sky.

Letters for 아빠

* * *

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Our flight to Korea was 15 hours long.
Our entire transglobal-plus-cross-country trip from Annandale to 포항 was 30 hours long.

We flew from Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, to 인천공항 in 인천, 대한민국.

We left America at 11:50 am on Friday, February 20.
We landed in Korea at 3:20 am, on Saturday, February 21, Eastern Standard Time.
We landed in Korea at 5:20 pm on Saturday, February 21, Korea Standard Time.

We changed days.
We changed nights.
We changed worlds.
We changed skies.

We barely slept.
Haejoon barely slept.
We barely slept because Haejoon barely slept.

Korean Air gave us a free seat for Haejoon, so we had a row to ourselves.
Korean Air let us check our bags, even though they each weighed more than 23 kilograms.
Korean Air let us check Greg’s guitar at the gate for free, even though we had met our limit for checked bags.
Korean Air let us check our stroller bag that weighed 42 kilograms.

역시, 한국 서비스 최고야, 최고.

Our seats were 49A, 49B, and 49C.
Our seats were towards the back of the plane.

I don’t know how we would have survived that 15-hour flight without the entire row to ourselves. Eight months after his first international flight, he was more vocal, more restless, more screamy to get his needs met, more curious, more grabby, more throwy, more aware of his surroundings. Because he didn’t have headphones, the TV could only entertain him for so long. Greg and I were essentially his entertainment for 15 hours, with little glimpses of sleep here and there.

The flight attendants loved him.
He loved the flight attendants.

Flying to Korea with a 9-month-old is easier than flying to Korea with a 17-month-old. Flying to Korea in my memory is easier than flying to Korea in reality. Flying to Korea to go on a trip is easier than flying to Korea to move your life there.

You have less bags.
You have less fear.
The goodbyes are harder in Korea, not America.
The grief is heavier in Korea, not America.

It felt surreal to be at the airport going back to Korea.

It felt like, all of a sudden, I was at the airport, walking towards my gate, allegedly going to Korea, allegedly moving my life and my family there, but nothing in my body felt like that was actually happening.

It felt weird to be at the airport because I never go to Korea this frequently. There are always large spans of time — at least five years — between my trips to Korea.

* * *

Our first flight meal was 비빔밥 and 오이무침. It was so good — they should offer this meal as an option for every meal throughout the flight. While we were attempting to eat, Haejoon threw an airplane pillow into the air and knocked his small container of 김 that 엄마 packed for him off of my tray table onto the airplane pillows beneath my feet. Then he knocked my 오이무침 off of my tray table and got 고춧가루 and 식초 liquid all over one of the pillows beneath my feet.

Greg and I ate the 김. I ate the 오이무침. Don’t judge us — see: Ali Wong on eating her child’s cold quesadilla off the ground.

Eating three meals while wrangling a restless, screaming toddler on a fucking 15-hour international flight deserves one billion awards.

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In Korea, March 1 is known as 삼일절, Samiljeol. This day is also known as 삼일 운동, 만세 운동, the Mansae Demonstrations, and Independence Movement Day.

In Korean history, 삼일절 marks one of the earliest and most significant displays of Korean resistance against Japan’s brutal occupation and colonization of Korea.

On March 1, 1919, 107 years ago, around 12:00 pm, 29 of the 33 independence activists gathered together at 태화관, a small restaurant in 서울, to sign the 3·1독립선언서 and start their protest. The 3·1독립선언서 was a declaration protesting against Japanese rule, denouncing the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, and declaring Korea’s independence. The owner of 태화관, 안순환 (An Soon-Hwan), reported the protest to the Japanese Government-General of Joseon, and immediately, 80 Japanese military police officers arrived and arrested all 33 independence activists.

At 탑골 공원, a public park in Seoul, 5,000 people gathered to hear an upcoming announcement. Around 2:00 PM, independence activist and student, 정재용 (Jung Jae-Yong), stood in front of the crowd and began reading the declaration. Near the end of his reading, cheers of “대한독립 만세!”1 exploded from the crowd. The people all filed out onto 종로, a main street in Seoul, and began their public march.

Below is a translation of the first few lines of the declaration:

“We declare today that Joseon is an independent nation and that the Korean people are its masters. We will make this known to all nations of the world, clearly demonstrating the great principle of human equality and ensuring that our descendants will forever enjoy the legitimate right to self-reliance.

This declaration is made with the strength of our five thousand years of history and the collective dedication of twenty million people. It represents our people’s desire for eternal, free development and our commitment to keeping pace with the great current of global change driven by humanity’s conscience. This is the will of Heaven, the trend of the times, and the legitimate right of all humanity to live together. Nothing in this world can stand in the way of our independence.”

Independence activists presented the Declaration of Independence all across Korea. That same day, protests were held in cities all across Korea, including 평양, 진남포, 안주, and 원산. Despite the Japanese government’s efforts to stop the spread of information and the mobilization of the Korean people, news of the protest reached these cities quickly, as they were connected to Seoul via 경의선 and 경원선 railway lines. Protests continued to spread until March 19, when all thirteen provinces of Korea had hosted protests.

Thousands of people gathered together to listen to the declaration and unite against forced Japanese occupation, colonization, erasure, and assimilation.

The Independence Movement inspired 1.06 million people to join Korea’s fight for freedom. In addition to activists, Korean merchants, noblemen, literati, 기생2, laborers, monks, Christians, Cheondoists, Buddhists, students, and farmers all joined the nonviolent protests together to secure their country’s independence.

The peaceful protests of the 만세 운동 lasted for six weeks. During those six weeks of protest, 7,500 people were killed, 16,000 people were injured, and 47,000 people were arrested and tortured by Japanese authorities. 경성 감옥, presently known as 서대문 감옥, located in central 서울, serves as a memorial to the thousands of activists that were imprisoned, tortured, and killed in the fight for Korea’s independence.

The Mansae Demonstrations did not result in Korea’s immediate liberation — that did not come until 26 years later in 1945, and Korea is still not liberated, as we are still being occupied by American forces — but the movement had a massive impact on the nation and the world. The 만세 운동 sparked over 1,500 spontaneous nonviolent protests, rallies, and demonstrations across the country and the world, extending to China, Manchuria, Japan, India, and the United States. It was the catalyst for other nonviolent independence movements across the world, like the Wǔsì Yùndòng, or 5-4 Movement, against imperialism in China, and Gandhi’s satyagraha protests, the peaceful protests against British colonization in India.

유관순 (Yu Gwan-Sun) was an independence activist leader during the 만세 운동. She served in the independence movement for 21 months. Today, she is regarded as a national hero.

유관순 was a 17-year-old high school student at 이화 학당. Encouraged by her parents, she joined the independence movement with four of her friends from school. She attended two protests, and she was imprisoned both times. Her parents were brutally killed, and she was tortured to death at 서대문 가목. She is famously remembered for the harrowing words she wrote while she was in prison:

내 손톱이 빠져 나가고
내 귀와 코가 잘리고
내 다리가 부러져도
그 고통은 이길 수 있으나
나라를 잃은 고통만큼은 견딜 수 없습니다.

나라에 바칠 목숨이
오직 하나밖에 없는 것만이
유일한 슬픔 입니다.

Even if my fingernails are torn out,
my nose and ears are severed,
and my legs are crushed,
this excruciating physical pain cannot compare
to the pain of losing our nation.

My greatest grief is
having but one life
to devote to our country.

— 유관순, Yu Gwan-Sun

삼일절 is a day to remember the courage and sacrifice of our ancestors.

We would not exist without their courage.
We would not exist without their sacrifice.

3/1 is a day to remember that the courage that lives in them, lives in us.

3/1 is a day to recommit ourselves to the fight for freedom from colonialism, occupation, and imperialism — for South Korea, for North Korea, for Palestine, for America, and for all occupied, colonized, and stolen lands.

3/1 is a day to remember the blood shed, the lives lost — the genocide of the Korean people, at the hands of the Japanese government.

3/1 is a day to remember that the Korean people survived. With courage, faith, love, and sacrifice, we survived.

May we carry the courage of our ancestors forward. May we have the audacity to hope. May we believe in our dreams that we cannot see. May we fight to build a safer, kinder, more beautiful world, for the next generation, and for all the generations to come.

대한독립만세!

With love,
Jieun

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Films about the Korean Independence Movement:

항거: 유관순 이야기 • A Resistance: The Story of Ryu Gwan-sun (2019)

항거 chronicles the final year of the life of independence heroine and martyr Yu Gwan-Sun (1902-1920) when she was incarcerated at Seodaemun Prison in Seoul after taking part in the March First Independence Movement. During the Japanese colonial period, 유관순, who led the March First Movement, is imprisoned. However, she does not give in and unites fellow prisoners to resist Japan. The Japanese security chief, suspicious of unrest, tricks her colleagues and uncovers 관순’s role as the leader, and tortures her severely. After this, 관순 pretends to obey the Japanese but secretly prepares another independence movement. This movement spreads beyond the prison and into the streets. 관순 is once again subjected to merciless torture. She dies two days before her release.

밀정 • The Age of Shadows (2016)

Set in the late 1920s, 밀정 follows the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them.

암살 • Assassination (2015):

암살 is a historic espionage action drama set in Shanghai and Seoul in 1933, during Japanese colonial rule. The Korean government in exile has given one of its top undercover operatives, 염석진 (Agent Yeom Seok-jin), a mission: recruit three people to infiltrate occupied Seoul and assassinate the Japanese general along with a Korean collaborator. He selects steely-eyed female sniper, 안옥윤 (Ahn Ok-yun, Mitsuko), a brawler 주상옥 (Big Gun), and an explosives expert, 황덕삼. But 염석진 is a double-agent for the Japanese and he hires a hitman 하와이 피스톨 (Hawaii Pistol), to kill the assassins.

동주 • Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet (2016):

동주 is a Korean biopic based on the life of poet 윤동주 (Yun Dong-Ju, 1917-1945). Taking place during the colonial period in Korea, the film follows the artist’s years as a student, up until his imprisonment by the Japanese authorities in 1945. In the Japanese colonial era, young 동주 writes poems about the harsh reality of his life. As Japan’s policies get more serious, writing anything in Korean is prohibited. Just when the slight possibility of publishing his poems seems to have evaporated, a Japanese professor sees 동주’s talent and suggests that he publish his poems in English. But before his work is done, 동주 is suspected of anti-Japanese activities.

말모이 Mal-Mo-E: The Secret Mission (2019):

김판수 (Kim Pan-Soo) is a street thief living in 1940s Korea, and he has spent more time in prison than in school. Looking to support his son’s education, 판수 steals the bag of a rich-looking guy named 정환 to help pay for his son's tuition fees, but he gets caught. He’s in for a surprise when he discovers who his captors are: a group of revolutionaries whose weapons of resistance are words. 정환 is the son of a wealthy Korean family who are pro-Japanese, and yet he is a representative of the Korean Language Society at a time when Japanese colonial administrators have banned the use of Korean and moved to replace it with Japanese. 정환 wants to make a Korean language dictionary to collect the words and dialects of Korea and protect the culture of the nation. Even though he is from a different walk of life, 판수 agrees to help him at a time when protecting the Korean language could get them both imprisoned.

2026년 2월 20일 금요일 • Friday, February 23, 2026

This was a Friday.
We left for Korea on this day.
We flew out of Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia.

We finished packing all 13 of our bags by 12:00 am — 4 large suitcases, 1 backpacking backpack, 1 stroller bag, 1 carseat bag, 2 small suitcases, 3 backpacks, and 1 purse. We went to sleep at 2:00 am. We woke up at 6:30 am. We drove to the airport at 8:00 am — Greg rode in a Lyft with most of our bags, and I drove Haejoon and 엄마. We arrived at the airport at 9:00 am. We checked all of our bags by 10:00 am. We said goodbye to 엄마 at 10:30 am. We arrived at our gate at 10:45 am. We boarded our plane at 11:30 am. We took off at 11:50 am. Our flight was 15 hours long. We landed in Korea the next day, at 3:40 am Virginia time, 5:40 pm Korea time.

엄마 and I are living under separate skies.

I cried on our way to the security screening.
엄마 and I said goodbye and hugged.
I got my flight ticket verified by an airport attendant.
I walked back to 엄마, said goodbye again, and hugged her again.

We said goodbye to each other all the way until I got on the elevator to go down to the security screening area. We waved. I cried. She waved. 엄마 did not cry.

In that moment, she held it together for me.
Maybe she held it together for herself, too.

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Happy 설날, friends. 새해 복 많이 받으세요.

Today is the first day of 병오년, 불의 말해, 붉은 말의 해 — The Year of the Fire Horse. This is the year where the energy of fire and the movement of the horse come together. The year of the Fire Horse only comes around every 60 years. The last 붉은 말의 해 was in 1966.

In her piece, “The Year of the Fire Horse 2026,” Korean American mudang and teaching artist, says, “The fire horse year is a time of audit — an energy that can reveal the underlayers and what’s hidden — and the horse energy will respond in movements. It’s a moving force that brings in the wind, and the fire energy feeds and supports the earth elements to build foundations or reset.”

In her piece, “What Horses Can Teach Humans About Living Our Truth,” writer and reclamation artist, says:

“Before we answer the calls for momentum in the Year of the Fire Horse, the horse teaches us to pause and ask: Are you truly ready? Is this actually aligned? Or are you feigning readiness when what you actually need is time? Most of us won’t have regular access to an arena with a horse. But we all have a body that has been trying to tell us the truth: the discomfort you notice before you make a decision that looks right but feels wrong; the tension you feel when your mind agrees to something that your heart resists; the internal disconnect you sense when trying to live up to the expectations of others without first asking whether or not it’s what you truly want. Aligned action is far more powerful and sustainable than pushing, performing, or forcing. And that is what the Fire Horse year teaches us — that we should focus more on regulation than acceleration; listening to ourselves over listening to others, and slowing down if we truly want to speed up.”

It’s uncanny to me that all of these layered meanings have been held within this year before its arrival. It’s like I’m living into an 인연 that was already laid out before me.

We are moving to Korea in three days. I

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Thank you for all your love for Goodbye, New York. My words about leaving New York have been read by 800,000 people, which is an unbelievably humbling honor.

There are quite a few new people here, so I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself to new readers, and reintroduce myself to all of the people who have been here with me through the many evolutions of my life.

Hi, friends. My name is Jieun and I am a writer, singer-songwriter, and artist.

I am the author of this newsletter, With Love, Jieun, weekly letters about grief, identity, belonging, and diaspora. I am the singer and songwriter of the indie folk-soul duo, Jieun & Greg. And I am the host of Stay Soft, Stay Open, a podcast about vulnerability, courage, and creativity.

I was born in Seoul, Korea in 1988, and at the age of two, I was displaced to America. I grew up in white dominated-spaces on native Piscataway and Manahoac land (Annandale, Springfield, and Great Falls, Virginia). I am the only child of first-generation Korean immigrants. I was raised by the fierce care and diligent hands of my parents, 곽미정 Mijung Kwak and 고승현 Seunghyun Ko. I was raised in dry cleaners, delis, pizza shops, and laundromats. After 36 years of displacement and separation, my family and I are moving back to Korea this year.

I started writing this newsletter back in 2016 on Mailchimp. I was 27 years old, and I had just moved from California to New York to continue building my music career with Greg and our best friend, Andrew. This newsletter was my way of keeping our friends, family, and supporters updated throughout our endeavors of pursuing our dreams.

After two years of pouring all of my strength into music, in late 2017, I suffered from a traumatic vocal injury. I developed polyps and hemorrhages on my vocal cords which made it impossible to sing, and this led to a sudden halt in my music career. In 2018, I started going to therapy. In 2018, my parents lost their home and their entire life’s savings that was wrapped up in their laundromat — 30 years of endless toiling, destroyed by their landlord. In 2019, they lost their dry cleaners. And in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, 아빠, my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. For the next four years, my husband Greg and I set aside our careers and devoted ourselves to battling his cancer alongside him, splitting ourselves between New York and Virginia.

It was during this time that my writing shifted from talking about my music career to talking about my life. It was during this time that my career shifted from music to writing.

In 2020, everything in my life collided.

The global pandemic collided with 아빠’s battle with cancer, where I was becoming intimately aware of the ugly realities of my parents’ day-to-day experiences in America — poverty, housing instability, segregated medical care, limited resources, language barriers, class divides, under-supported caregivers, and systems built against us. We were simultaneously experiencing an increase in anti-Asian violence because Asians were being scapegoated for the Coronavirus — Noel Quintana had his face slashed on the New York City subway; Vilma Kari was stomped and kicked in front of a hotel in Times Square; Christina Yuna Lee was stalked and murdered in her apartment in Chinatown, and six Asian women were killed in the Atlanta Spa Shootings. We were also experiencing an increase in Asians, diasporic and native, in mainstream media — Crazy Rich Asians, Minor Feelings, Parasite, BTS, and Squid Game. In therapy, I was unraveling the disorienting reality that the majority of my trauma was rooted in my experiences with racism in this country — a lifelong diet of gaslighting and abuse spanning three decades.

Growing up in Virginia and living in America, I had to split myself in half to exist. I had my private identity — the person who hung out with her Korean and Asian friends, ate rice and kimchi, spoke Korean, listened to g.o.d., and watched 가을동화. And I had my public identity — the person who hung out with her white and black friends, ate burgers and pizza, spoke English, listened to Mariah Carey, and watched Gilmore Girls.

I never dared to bring my private self into my public life. I wanted to protect her at all costs, and the best I could do at the time was keep her hidden. I was afraid that if I actually showed up as myself in public, I would lose all of my friends. Even if these friends didn’t know the real me, I believed that having fake friends was better than the very real possibility of being alone.

When 아빠 was sick, when the pandemic hit, and when Asians were simultaneously being scapegoated for the virus and celebrated for our talents on television, I broke. So many of us did. I couldn’t hold up the weight of a fake identity anymore. I couldn’t suppress my rage about my experiences in this country anymore. This was the beginning of my awakening.

Through writing, I started saying all the things I was never allowed to say. I started saying all the things I was too scared to say. I started telling the actual stories of my life.

“I have experienced racism.”
“I have been attacked for being Asian.”
“I was taught to hate myself.”
“I grew up poor.”
“My parents worked at dry cleaners, laundromats, pizza shops, and delis.”
“My dad is dying of cancer.”
“I’m an immigrant.”
“My parents are immigrants.”
“Our lives in America have been devastating.”
“What my parents have endured throughout their lives in America is a massive injustice that can never be repaid.”
“The American dream is a lie.”

Slowly, I started to reveal my true self to the outside world. In 2021, I reclaimed my name. I integrated my private self with my public self. I stopped keeping up appearances and switching between masks. I publicly embraced the things I was shamed into hiding — my language, my food, my parents, my life. I spoke my realities into the air, I made space for my righteous anger, with trembling hands and courage. For the first time in my life, I found the courage to be myself. It was terrifying, but I finally felt free.

During the most vulnerable time of my life, I lost the majority of my friends. This was devastating because this was when I needed them the most. But looking back, losing those relationships was inevitable. At that point in my life, most of my friends were friends with a fabricated version of me — a version I made to survive, a version for the masses. In all of those lost relationships, I could not exist as myself, so as devastating as it was to lose them, it was necessary.

Losing those friends created more space for my lifelong friends, and for the new people in my life who celebrated and held the complexities of my identity. These friends held my stories, witnessed our family’s suffering, sat with me in my rage, grief, and tears, and we held our collective grief together.

The constants throughout my life have always been grief, love, and change.

In 2021, 아빠’s cancer advanced to Leptomeningeal Disease, an aggressive, untreatable cancer of the cerebrospinal fluid. In 2023, we watched my beloved 아빠 leave this world. At the end 2023, I became pregnant. Less than one year after 아빠 died, I gave birth to my first child, my son, Haejoon. And in 2025, we decided to move our family to Korea.

Writing has always saved me.

I have been writing ever since I could hold a pencil in my left hand. When I was a little girl, 엄마, my mom, gave me a composition notebook and told me to keep a journal, so journaling has always been a regular rhythm of my life. As an only child, as a little girl from Korea growing up in white-dominated Virginia, my journal was a place that I could safely exist. Writing was a place for me to make sense of my worlds, a safe space to loosen the knot-scribbles that lived inside my mind.

Writing gave me power.
Writing gave me agency.
Writing liberated me.

Through writing, I have been able to find myself, again and again.

These letters are a collection of memories, mournings, celebrations, and reclamations.

If you are on your own journey of decolonization, identity deconstruction, reconstruction, and reclamation, I hope my writing can feel like a friend. If you are a part of the diaspora, I hope my words can help you find the language to describe your life’s experiences that might have felt singular to you. If you are a griever, I hope my words can give you the courage to pull your grief out of the dark and speak its devastating complexities into the light.

I hope my words can be the reminder you need that you are never alone. I hope they can root you in the truth that you belong — to humanity, to a lineage, to an ancestry. I hope they can be a balm. I hope they can be an anchor when you feel unmoored. I hope they can be a guide, as we all find our way back home.

With love,
Jieun

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What is an American?

Growing up as a little girl from Korea in Virginia, in my mind, Americans were always white.

Americans were always people of European descent who didn’t have one home country they could fully point back to and claim — “A little Irish, a little German, a little Scottish, a little French?”

To be “more American,” “more white,” meant to be more civilized, less foreign, and more dignified.

To be American meant to speak English with fluency.
To be American meant to have a high-paying job at an office.
To be an American meant to be Christian.

Americans weren’t Asian, Arab, or Black
Americans weren’t Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim.
Americans didn’t work as janitors, lunch ladies, or laundry workers.
Americans were white, Christian, and rich.

When Korean people in Korea, or my parents’ generation of Korean immigrants in America, talk about Americans, they are always talking about white people. When I tell my mom, “I’m an American. You’re an American.” she laughs.

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The First Displacement of Koreans in America

123 years ago, on January 13, 1903, the first significant wave of Korean immigrants arrived to the colonized lands of America. On this day, 102 Koreans — 56 men, 21 women, and 25 children — were displaced from their homeland to occupied Hawai’i. They boarded the SS Gaelic, left their homes, their families, and their lives behind, and worked on pineapple and sugar plantations owned by European colonizers.

The majority of early Korean immigrants were young bachelors, largely uneducated, and previously engaged in semi-skilled or unskilled occupations. Every day, they worked under excruciating working conditions on the plantations and earned only 69 cents a day. They were paid less than the Japanese laborers who worked alongside them.

Korean immigrants left their homeland in the hopes of earning more money, improving their lives, and saving up enough to bring their families over from Korea. They left in the hopes that someday, they could return home.1

In the late 1800s, European plantation owners heavily relied upon Chinese and Japanese labor. But in the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur, enforcing an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the U.S., extending to Japanese laborers, as well. Plantation owners were now banned from recruiting Chinese and Japanese labor, so Horace Allen, a U.S. diplomat and Presbyterian missionary, started to recruit Korean laborers.

According to Soojin Chung from Princeton Theological Seminary, “Korean immigrants displayed a higher rate of religious participation than other minority groups because missionaries played a major role in recruiting more than half of the first 102 immigrants from the Naeri Methodist Church in the Incheon Area.”

Korean immigrant churches functioned as cultural and religious sanctuaries, where the immigrants, isolated due to their language, social, and cultural barriers, found community. When the plantation labor contract expired, half of the Korean workers moved to the U.S. mainland. Without the privileges, opportunities, or resources to advance their careers through higher education or social connections, their only option for survival was to establish self-employed businesses, such as laundry stores and nail salons. The other half of the immigrants returned to Korea to reunite with their families, or because they had a difficult time adjusting to a foreign culture.

From 1905 to 1924, approximately 2,000 additional Korean immigrants moved to Hawai’i and California as “picture brides” of the bachelor immigrants who were already working as plantation laborers. The mass immigration abruptly ended in 1924 when Congress passed the Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924, banning all Asian immigrants from entering the country.2

The first actual wave of immigrants was in 1883. Following the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and Korea—then referred to as Joseon—a small number of diplomats entered the U.S. as part of the 1883 Korean special mission to the United States.

The first displaced Koreans didn’t leave everything they knew behind in pursuit of any dreams. They left because they were forced out. They were escaping famine, poverty, physical danger, and the turbulent political climate of Korea, largely caused by the involvement and invasions of the most powerful nations in the world: Japan, Russia, China, and America.

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a poem: 미국, miguk, beautiful country

The Korean word for America is 미국, miguk.
The word miguk comes from the Chinese word 美国, meiguo.
In Korean, mi means beautiful; guk means country.
In Korean, America means beautiful country.

In 2025, there were 425 mass shootings in America.
In 2025, America deported 2,505,000 people.
In 2025, there were 232 school shootings in America.
In 2025, 68,440 people were held in detention by America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a 78% increase from the number detained in December 2024.
In 2025, 32 people died while in the custody of America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), making it the agency’s deadliest year in over two decades.
In the first 13 days of 2026, there have been 16 mass shootings in America.

미국, miguk,
covered in red,
what a beautiful country.

Propaganda for Kids

“This land is your land, this land is my land, from California, to the New York island, from the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters, this land was made for you and me.” —Woodie Guthrie, “This Land is Your Land,” 1944

Growing up, we sang songs and recited pledges that I now understand to be propaganda. “America the Beautiful,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “This Land is Your Land.” The Pledge of Allegiance. When you teach patriotism in schools to little kids without teaching them the truth about the history of this country, you are brainwashing them to believe the lies as the truth. Kids come into the world innocent and open, so they are the easiest to brainwash. When the people in power do this over and over again, for generations upon generations — when they hang our truth-tellers, when they burn our books, when they erase our stories, they are attempting to change history. They are attempting to change the truth.

But the truth never changes.

The truth cannot be burned in a fire.
The truth cannot be sunk in the sea.
The truth cannot be thrown away.
The truth cannot be erased.

The truth always remains.

America is a country that was stolen from the people indigenous to this land. The thieves of this country were European colonizers.

I don’t identify with being American anymore.

I don’t know what being American means.

I have a U.S. passport, I have lived in this country for 36 years of my life. My mind has been shaped by the European colonizers who set up the education system and society here. Does this make me an American?

What are American customs? What is American culture? As a nation, we don’t practice any of the customs or traditions of any Indigenous tribes. That was never the plan anyway. The indigenous roots of this place were destroyed 534 years ago. We don’t equally celebrate all of the customs and traditions of all of the diasporic people who have come to this country. That was never the plan either.

If we dig down to their core, American traditions are rooted in European traditions. We see the proof of that in American holidays: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Independence Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day.

If we’re uncomfortably honest with ourselves, American culture is primarily rooted in European traditions, and secondarily influenced by the traditions of the diaspora that ended up here by force, by choice, or by circumstance — Black, Asian, Arab, Latino, Indigenous, etc.

If European traditions are the voice, diaspora traditions are the echo.
If European culture is the tree, diaspora culture is the shadow.

I don’t know what it means to be American, if I’m living on stolen land, and I’m only here from Korea because I had no other choice.

I identify as Korean, and I identify as diasporic.

I’m a part of a larger community of people who were displaced to America because of economic hardship, political instability, and the lasting impacts of occupation, colonization, and war in my home country.

I am Korean. I am a part of the diaspora.

With love,
Jieun

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This year, my family and I will be moving to Korea. In one month, we will be packing our things, boarding an airplane, flying across the world, and building our lives in 포항, Pohang.

After 36 years of displacement and separation, we will finally be returning home. We will finally be fulfilling one of my lifelong dreams of living in the land of my birth. We will finally be fulfilling one of our family’s long-yearned dreams of living in Korea, together.

We are finally unearthing our buried dream.

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“There’s a word in Korean: 인연, inyun. It means ‘providence’ or ‘fate’. But it’s specifically about relationships between people. I think it comes from buddhism and reincarnation. It’s an inyun if two strangers even walk by each other on the street and their clothes accidentally brush because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married, they say it’s because there have been eight thousand layers of inyun, over eight thousand lifetimes.” — 나영 Nayoung, Past Lives

Today is our 13-year anniversary.

Today marks the completion of 13 years of us being together, living together, growing together, and building a life together.

13 years ago, on January 8, 2013, Greg and I met on a sunny, Los Angeles morning, in a Ford Econoline, 8-passenger van named Judy (or maybe it was Ivy?) outside of the arrivals area at Los Angeles International Airport. We were both flying in to work for the nonprofit organization, Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) — I was flying in from Dulles International Airport and Greg was flying in from Raleigh International Airport. I had already been working for LiNK since September 2012, and Greg was at the beginning of his time with the organization. Greg and I were landing around the same time, but he landed a little bit earlier than I did, so he got picked up first.

I was 24. Greg was 23.

My initial thoughts upon meeting him were:

“He’s cute. He’s kind. He’s quiet.”
“Meyer is an unfortunate last name.”
“He’s from the South.”
“I like that he taught English in Korea.”
“I like that he’s planning on working for the Peace Corps.”
“I’m sad that he’s leaving the country to work for the Peace Corps.”
“I’m screwed.”

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“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
―Zora Neale Hurston, writer and anthropologist

We are not celebrating Christmas this year.

We stopped celebrating “Thanksgiving” in 2023 because we discovered that it’s actually a National Day of Mourning. “Thanksgiving” is a day in history when European colonizers celebrated the genocide of hundreds of women, men, and children of the Pequot tribe in present-day Groton, Connecticut, and the theft and occupation of their land. The fabricated story about pilgrims and Natives getting together for a peaceful, festive feast is a lie.

Writer and author, Moses Ose Utomi, says, “History is only a story, told by those with power to justify why they have it.”

One of the most effective ways of colonizing people is through religion. One of the most effective ways of colonizing people is by forcing them to celebrate your holidays and adopt your traditions.

“All Americans celebrate Christmas. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, you aren’t American. Therefore, if you want to be an American, you have to celebrate Christmas. You’re a foreigner, from a foreign land, and this is ‘our’ land. You have to prove that you belong with us by adopting our holidays and acting like us. You have to celebrate our holidays — the holidays of your colonizers — to be accepted. To belong.”

Ever since I can remember, Christmas never really fit.

It felt like a straitjacket. It felt like a coat or a pair of shoes that was three sizes too small.

Every year since my displacement to this country in 1990, I have tried to shove myself into the straitjacket of Christmas, and without fail, I have vehemently blamed and berated myself for its inability to fit every year.

Christmas is a holiday that has always made me feel foreign, different, weird, and “too Asian.” It’s a holiday that made me feel lonely, poor, and inadequate.

Growing up, I felt a heightened awareness of my perceived foreignness around these colonizer holidays.

“You don’t have a Christmas tree? You’re not American.”
“You don’t believe in Santa? You’re not American.”
“You don’t believe in Jesus? You’re not American.”

American was synonymous with white.
American was synonymous with European.

Growing up, my classmates and friends would ask me the dreaded holiday question, “Does your family even celebrate Christmas?” I have been asked this question so many times throughout my life, mostly by white people, all the way into my adulthood. The other words that were always invisibly hovering around this question were:

“You’re Asian. You’re weird. You’re foreign. You’re different from the rest of us. I don’t think Asians celebrate Christmas because Christmas is a holiday created by and for white people — the descendants of Europeans. You’re from one of those strange Asian countries where they don’t celebrate ‘normal’ holidays like Christmas.”

The conniving strategy behind colonization is to take a land from a people that already exist, eradicate their existence and their lineage, erase their stories, their history, their religion, their language, their traditions, and their relics, write a fabricated story in place of the giant empty space left behind, and gaslight them into believing that none of it ever happened.

You must dehumanize a people in order to validate their systematic eradication.

In her essay, “A Letter to My Husband,” Palestinian American poet, writer, and clinical psychologist, Hala Alyan writes:

“It isn’t a coincidence that one of the most insidious ways of erasing heritage has been missionary work. To truly understand how dehumanizing its legacy is, imagine hundreds of thousands of well-off foreign Muslims entering the United States with the sole purpose of converting non-Muslim Americans, papering grocery stores with flyers, casually bulldozing churches, and discarding statues of Jesus. It wouldn’t be seen as humanitarian work; it would be seen as an overt act of war.”

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The History of Christmas

After 아빠 died, I didn’t feel like celebrating anything. In Korean tradition, you customarily don’t celebrate any holidays for the entire year after your loved one’s death, to honor their death, to honor your grief, and to validate your needed time of mourning.

In 2023 and 2024, before the arrival of each ‘American’ holiday, I looked into the holiday’s history. I had already been interrogating the narratives of my life, years before 아빠 died — my name, my family’s displacement through immigration, my childhood growing up in Virginia — but his death brought everything into blinding, unflinching relief. His death made me question everything. I became much more intentional about my life and how I lived it.

“Why do we celebrate these ‘American’ holidays? What is the history behind these holidays? Why don’t we celebrate any of the Korean holidays? What traditions do I want to carry forward in my life? What traditions do I want to pass down to Haejoon?”

When I looked into the history of all of these ‘American’ holidays, I was disturbed to discover that all of them were rooted in European traditions. Looking back, it’s as obvious as the sky being blue, but that’s how insidious colonization is.

It’s like getting punched by a ghost.

Here is a brief history behind Christmas in America:

Christmas was brought to America by European colonizers — the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, and the British. The holiday is a blend of pagan winter solstice traditions brought to America by Europeans, and Christian traditions surrounding the birth of Jesus, brought to America by Europeans.

Before Christmas was ever created and before Jesus was ever born, early Europeans celebrated the pagan holiday, the winter solstice. When the coldest days of the winter were over, people all over Europe celebrated the changing of the seasons, longer days, and more sunlight by worshiping their gods and feasting. In recognition of the return of the sun, fathers and sons would bring home large logs, set them on fire, and feast until the log burned out.

When they came to colonize Turtle Island which they colonized into America, the Dutch brought Sinterklaas, the Germans brought Christmas trees, the Spanish brought Christmas Eve Mass, and the British brought mistletoe, eggnog, yule logs, and Christmas feasts.

Regarding the birth of Jesus, December 25th is not actually the day Jesus was born. No one knows when Jesus was born, but according to UMEM, “Most historians agree that Jesus was probably not born in winter at all, but in spring or early autumn, and a few years before year 1 AD. December 25th only became celebrated as the day of Jesus’s birth in the 4th century, likely because it coincided with the Roman festival of Sol Invictus, the birth of the Unconquered Sun. The symbolism was convenient — light overcoming darkness at the winter solstice.”

St. Nicholas, also known as Santa Claus, was also a bishop from Turkey. Turkey is located in Western Asia, with roots in Central Asia.

After years of being banned as a pagan holiday in Puritan New England, in 1870, the pagan traditions were erased with Jesus’s birthday to create the American version of Christmas we know today.

European colonizers created the myth of Christmas through literature and art. European colonizers whitewashed the birth of Jesus — a Palestinian, brown-skinned, exiled man, and a baby who was born in a barn, of two very poor and marginalized people. Through the writing of literature and the creation of artwork supporting the fabricated story of White Jesus, White Santa, and White Christmas, the story of kind, generous, God-like, savior-like white people was reinforced until it became lore, tradition, religion, and truth.

This is the power of stories.

Dehumanizing Racism in Christmas Movies

Christmas is the peak of capitalism. There is an entire industry built around this fabricated holiday — Christmas music, gifts, decorations, trees, food, pictures with Santa, movies, television shows, television specials, television channels, gift guides, parades, festivals, and parties.

Santa is an old, fat, jolly, white man who enters your home through the chimney in the middle of the night and magically brings gifts to all the children of the world.

Can you imagine if Santa were Asian? Black? Arab? He would be labeled as dangerous, scary, a foreigner, a terrorist, a criminal.

Every mainstream Christmas movie is a story about the importance of white people, their families, their lives, and their stories — Home Alone, Polar Express, Elf, The Santa Clause, A Christmas Story, National Lampoon’s Family Vacation, The Holiday, Love Actually, and It’s a Beautiful Life.

Within the first ten minutes of The Santa Clause (1994), there is a scene where 20 Japanese businessmen in black suits are gathered around tables at Denny’s, having loud conversations in Japanese. They are being portrayed as foreign and un-American for not celebrating Christmas at home with their families, and instead, having a business dinner at a diner. Tim Allen is only there with his son because he burned the turkey for their Christmas dinner.

At the end of A Christmas Story (1983), there is a scene where the family goes to a Chinese restaurant called Bo-Ling Chop Suey Palace because their Christmas dinner was eaten by their neighbors’ dogs. In this scene, there are three Chinese men singing Christmas carols with thick accents that racist, white people think Asians have. The server brings out a peking duck and the white family — a father, mother, and two sons — freak out and the children laugh hysterically at the “weirdness” of seeing an animal’s head on the table. The server cuts the duck’s head off, and the family goes into a frenzy. At the end, the narrator calls it a “Chinese turkey.”

32 years later, in 2015, Family Guy made a parody of this exact scene in one of their Christmas episodes.

In The Holiday Inn (1942), there’s a scene where Bing Crosby and a band of 15 white men all perform a song in blackface, praising and worshiping Abraham Lincoln and all of his “magnanimous” deeds. In one scene, a black mother and her two children sing a part of the song, praising Abraham Lincoln for saving their ancestors from slavery.

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” —James Baldwin

This is brainwashing.
This is propaganda.
This is indoctrination.
This is colonization.

My Korean Immigrant Experience of Christmas

In my life, Christmas has never been the “most wonderful time of the year.”

Growing up, my parents usually had to work on Christmas — at the dry cleaners, at the laundromat, at the deli, at Jerry’s Subs and Pizza.

If they didn’t have to work, they were too tired from working to celebrate Christmas. They were also immigrants from Korea, so they didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas. They didn’t know the lore or the traditions. They learned how to celebrate this European colonizer’s holiday along with me. I brought a lot of the traditions home from school and my life in the colonized lands of the Piscataway and Manahoac people, or “Northern Virginia.”

I grew up with a Christmas tree, I grew up getting Christmas presents, and I grew up unwrapping presents on Christmas morning. But because my parents were always working, they didn’t have time to buy a lot of gifts, they didn’t have time or capacity to think about what gifts to buy, and they didn’t have a lot of money to buy gifts. They were usually stressed out, exhausted, and overworked.

I remember on one Christmas, we went to the movie theater because it was one of the only places that was open, and we watched Night at the Museum (another deeply problematic movie). Because the movie theater was packed, we had to sit in the second row. In the middle of the movie, I looked over at 아빠 and he was passed out asleep with his head back and his mouth wide open. He always fell asleep at the movie theater, but looking back on this memory now, I also wonder how fucking exhausted he must have been from working at the dry cleaners from 6 am to 7 pm every fucking day, washing the clothes of strangers, sweating over shirt steamers, and getting burned on irons.

The “holiday season” wasn’t a time where we went on some big, Christmas family vacation. My parents, if they even had the day off, would always have to go to work the very next day.

We also had a very small nuclear family — just the three of us — and our closest extended family that lived nearby were my parent’s cousins and their families. Christmas was usually just the three of us, and when I watched Christmas movies where the families were massive and the home was filled with “joy and love and cheer,” I have never felt more lonely or different.

I could not help but compare my Korean immigrant family Christmas with these white family Christmases and feel like something was wrong with us, and we were doing it “wrong.” In my adulthood, I really tried to “right the wrongs” by bringing the “holiday spirit” into my house.

Christmas was a constant, glaring reminder that I was different from “everyone else” — from all of the white people I went to school with, and all the white people that surrounded me in my life.

My parents didn’t know how to celebrate Christmas because the holiday never belonged to them. It never belonged to me. It never belonged to us.

Looking back, I am so grateful.

The Grief of Christmas

Christmas is a day of tremendous grief.

Christmas came with the stress of spending money and buying gifts. It came with the shame of not having enough money to spend money and buy gifts.

Christmas came with the grief of not having much family — extended family, immediate family, a community.

Christmas came with this feeling of inadequacy if I didn’t get invited to the “cool” Christmas parties, or if I wasn’t included in the friends’ Christmas gift exchange.

Christmas came with the anxiety of “what do we do today?” because everything was closed, this holiday was not ours, and as immigrants who always worked, my parents didn’t know what to do on days off.

I remember feeling disappointed that my parents didn’t know how to create a “traditional American Christmas experience” for me.

Looking back, I feel so much regret for resenting them now.

Decolonizing Christmas

I don’t want to celebrate European colonizer traditions anymore.

We are allowed to stop celebrating Christmas.
We are allowed to not get a Christmas tree.
We are allowed to not decorate the house with wreaths, mistletoe, and lights.
We are allowed to not watch Christmas movies.
We are allowed to not bake Christmas cookies.
We are allowed to not buy and exchange Christmas gifts.
We are allowed to not attend Christmas parties.
We are allowed to not like Christmas.
We are allowed to grieve Christmas.

This does not make us “party poopers, a Grinch, a Scrooge, cheap, lame, weird, foreign, dramatic, depressing, poor, downers, bad parents robbing our children of Christmas magic” — the list goes on.

I am allowed to grieve all the years I felt forced to celebrate this European colonizer’s holiday.

I am allowed to grieve the reality that 아빠 isn’t here to see us change our traditions.

I am allowed to grieve all the years I felt shame — all the years I felt like an outcast, like a foreigner, like a non-American — because our family didn’t celebrate Christmas the way white people did.

I am allowed to grieve all the years I resented my parents for not being able to assimilate enough to have a “normal family Christmas like everybody else,” and they had to work at the dry cleaners, the laundromat, the deli, and Jerry’s Subs and Pizza instead.

In 2023, we watched Christmas movies, we didn’t buy and exchange gifts and we didn’t buy a tree, but we found two free Christmas trees in Brooklyn and set them up in our living room, one after the other one dried up and shriveled.

In 2024, we watched Christmas movies, we didn’t buy and exchange gifts, and we bought a tree on Christmas Eve, set it up, and decorated it.

This year, we have not bought any gifts, we have not bought a tree, and we have not decorated anything. We have not watched a single Christmas movie, and aside from the Christmas music playing in stores, we have not listened to any Christmas music.

This is the work of decolonization.

Decolonization is uprooting the deep roots that colonization embedded into my brain, body, spirit, and being, and planting the roots of my truth, my ancestors, my heritage, my lineage, and my homeland. Decolonization is leveling every monument that colonization built in my life — thoughts, narratives, beliefs, desires, dreams, music, films, television shows, books, histories — and planting the trees that used to live there, the trees that feed life, purpose, and truth back into my bones.

It takes time. It takes gentleness. It takes work. It takes rage. It takes regret. It takes grief.

This is the work of liberation.

With love,
Jieun

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Hi friends,

After ten years, we are leaving New York.

We moved here on January 4, 2016. I was 27, and Greg was 26.
We are moving out on November 30, 2025. I will be 37, and Greg will be 36.

I can’t believe we’re actually moving. It feels surreal.

As we’re packing our things, selling our things, a…

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Hi friends,

September is a complicated month for our family.

September 15 was Haejoon’s first birthday, his 돌.
September 20, yesterday, was our five-year wedding anniversary.
September 21, today, is my 37th birthday.
Septe…

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Hi friends,

Today is Haejoon’s first birthday.
Today is his 돌.

On Sunday, September 15, 2024, at 11:42 pm, during the final hour of the day, Haejoon was born. After nine and a half months of pregnancy, 48 hours of labor, multiple adverse reactions to the epidural, a uterine infection, and an eventual c-section, Haejoon made his way into the world. After 39 weeks and 6 days of waiting, he arrived just 18 minutes shy of his due date. He weighed a sturdy 8 pounds, 12 ounces.

This idea, this hope, this dream of ours, became a living, breathing human being. Our child was finally here.

I will never forget the joy, the love, and the relief I felt, when I heard the sound of his first cry. I will never forget the pain and the suffering it required to bring him into this world.

Our suffering and our celebration, our grief and our love, our joy and our devastation, our hope and our despair — they are tightly woven together like a braid, inextricably linked, each unable to exist without its counterpart.

Haejoon is proof that unimaginable beauty can grow out of the darkest days of our lives.

Haejoon is the joy of our lives.
He is our dream.
He brought light into the darkness of our grieving hearts.
He was the answer to our prayers.
He is the embodiment of love.
His existence is evidence of hope.
He is a reminder to never, ever give up.
He is proof of the impossible.
Haejoon is a miracle.

This is a poem I wrote for him today, as I reflect back on one year with our beloved Haejoon.

With love,
Jieun

Share With Love, Jieun

생일 축하해, 해준아.

우리 인생에 제일 큰 기쁨,
우리 마음에 가장 큰 꿈,
우리 날에 제일 밝은 빛,
우리 하나밖에 없는 아들, 고해준.

사랑이 뭔지 매일 가르쳐 주는 사람.
용기가 뭔지 매일 가르쳐 주는 사람.
용서가 뭔지 매일 가르쳐 주는 사람.
희망이 뭔지 매일 가르쳐 주는 사람.
인내심이 뭔지 매일 가르쳐 주는 사람.
우리 하나밖에 없는 아들, 고해준.

경이감을 절대 잃지 말아라.
순수함을 절대 잃지 말아라.
넓은 마음을 절대 잃지 말아라.
깊은 정을 절대 잃지 말아라.

꽃이 필 때,
비가 내릴 때,
나뭇잎이 떨어질 때,
눈이 내릴 때,
해가 뜰 때,
다리 뜰 때,
엄마는 해준이를 늘 사랑한다.

하늘만큼, 땅만큼.
하늘만큼, 땅만큼.

엄마 아들 되줘서 고마워.

Happy birthday, Haejoon.

The greatest joy of our lives,
The deepest dream of our hearts,
The brightest light of our days,
Our one and only son, Haejoon Ko.

The one who teaches us what love is every day.
The one who teaches us what courage is every day.
The one who teaches us what forgiveness is every day.
The one who teaches us what hope is every day.
The one who teaches us what perseverance is every day.
Our one and only son, Haejoon Ko.

Never lose your sense of wonder.
Never lose your sense of innocence.
Never lose your sense of mercy.
Never lose your sense of love.

When the flowers bloom,
When the rain comes,
When the leaves fall,
When the snow falls,
When the sun rises,
When the moon rises,
I will always love you.

As high as the sky, to the ends of the earth.
As high as the sky, to the ends of the earth.

Thank you for being my son.

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Hi friends,

Today is 아빠’s 65th birthday.
He would have turned 65 today.
He has missed two birthdays since he left this world.

In Korean tradition, when a person dies, their death day becomes their birthday.

Influenced by Buddhist beliefs, Koreans view a person’s death day as their birth into the new world. The day is viewed less as a day of celebration, and …

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Hi friends,

This week’s piece is about performing on stage for the first time since 아빠 died.

Thank you to William Gresham, Mat Junsuk Ha, and Sharon Ahn for becoming Substack Subscribers! 🎉🎉🎉

All three of them are our friends — through LiNK, cancer, and grief — and they’ve also all been members of our Patreon community for several years. We are immensely grateful for your extended support of our work.

If you read my letters every week, consider becoming a Patron of the Arts! For $5+ a month, you can have access to this week’s letter, my full archive of writing, full access to my podcast, my monthly field trips list, acknowledgement in our credits, and our heartfelt gratitude for investing in us and our work every month.

Art Patron Highlight of the Week:

RM of BTS, 김남준, is an Art Patron! He has centered his collecting on Korean artists who lived through the Korean War, military dictatorships, and the resulting, massive economic instability. According to an interview in the New York Times, RM said, “These artists remain too-little-known beyond their country. I was able to feel their sweat and blood and relate to them as human beings that were trying to present their artworks in the world.”

Financial support of artists is more than funding — it’s encouragement and belief in the artist and their life’s work.

Thank you for your support, friends.

With love,
Jieun

Become a Patron

On March 18, 2025, Greg, Haejoon, and I drove to Long Island City and attended Asian American Arts Alliance’s March Town Hall. They have a theme for every town hall, and March’s theme was Poetry.

At every town hall, artists are given the opportunity to pitch a project. The first and only time I had pitched anything was in May 2023, right before 아빠 began to die. Greg and I played “Together Apart” and talked about being cancer caregivers.

The last time I performed was in June 2023, at a Sofar DC show.

The last time I performed was in September 2023, at Fairfax Hospital, doing one last show for 아빠 before he left this world forever.

The last time I performed was in October 2023, at 아빠’s funeral at Fairfax Memorial Park, singing 아리랑, while Greg played guitar and friends and family laid flowers on 아빠’s casket.

At the beginning of 2024, I set a goal for myself to record and release one song every month. Between January and June, we recorded and released six beautiful, original songs. I recorded these songs pregnant and full of grief.

Playing shows felt impossible.
Recording was the best I could do.

Playing shows felt like a distant dream.
Playing shows felt too exposing.
I did not want to be witnessed.

I wanted to get back on stage, but there was a giant boulder of grief in the way.

On March 18, at A4’s March Town Hall, poet and musician, Taiyo Na, opened us up by performing his poetry for us.

I had originally planned on pitching Asian American Art Club that day — I had prepared a slideshow presentation and everything. But hearing Taiyo read his poetry inspired me to seize this opportunity and perform, too.

I had never done a public reading before. I quickly searched through my Substack letters for a piece to read, and then it came to me: I was going to read the letter I wrote for The Faraway Nearby — Grief, motherhood, and mandu.

When it was my turn to pitch, I walked up on stage. The lights were bright. I was nervous. I looked out at the audience. My friend David was sitting in the middle, towards the back. I took the microphone off the mic stand, as I’ve always done, for the first time in a year and a half.

I began to read my words.

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Who is Chi?

In 2021, I reclaimed my name. After 33 years of living a double life as Chi and Jieun; after enduring a year of 아빠’s cancer, a global pandemic, and a rise in anti-Asian violence; after surviving a lifetime of racism — I reclaimed my name. The Atlanta Spa Shootings was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In 1988, when I was born in Korea, I …

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