My Year 11 students burst out after class—

Teacher! Would you marry a Korean or a British dude? 

Teacher! One for the rest of your life: Kimchi or fish and chips?

Teacher! Who would you support in the World Cup—England or South Korea?

I laugh at their audacity. Don’t make me choose! 

And though the school bell has gone, and the teachers are trickling out 

of the office, I stay back in the classroom alone, mulling over 

what felt like a pop quiz, that trick question you’re repeatedly asked 

as a child—Who do you like more, Mum or Dad? Each time 

those nouns dropped onto my palms I could not tell which 

weighed heavier. And now, I’m staring at the whiteboard 

like it’s a blank map, thinking what does it mean to love a country?  

When my uncle picked me up from Incheon airport, he lectured in the car, 

You’re so lucky to be born in a nation whose mother tongue is English, 

but to have your parents’ ancestry. Isn’t that why you’re here? Curiosity 

for the motherland? I never asked to be born in a country 

other than his. As if that were a kind of privilege. My parents left 

their birthplace for greener pastures, but they didn’t know they’d be waging 

a war against me. Who knew that Tracy Beaker, the butt-pat jingle of Asda Price, 

and 120 episodes of ‘My Family’ would make such a difference?

And now I wish I’d joked back to my students, If Korea and Britain 

were two men, then my whole life I’ve been caught in a love-triangle. 

Only, which one have I been chasing? Have either of them 

been pursuing me? Yesterday, I forgot the English word for 차라리, 

could only retrieve the term Ggo-beki which means 

a double portion. Maybe because it relates to food, and aren’t I always 

ravenous? Sand down my teeth. Shrug off the growls. Each night, 

The Yellow Sea rattles her tongue in my sleep. Go home. Disappear. 

Go home. Drown. But there are no ships at bay. 

My co-workers envy my western education, but they don’t see me 

drowning underneath my smile. I hear the soles of my students’ sandals 

slapping up the stairs. Got class again in ten, but I’m still here figuring out,

can a patch of terrain be air-lifted to safety? Can a country’s skin 

be peeled back to check its vitals? I know for a fact 

no republic can spit out its dead. Each side inhabited 

by a tally of broken bones.