Living as a Christian In Korea

"Just like your father." - This is one of the most frequently used expressions I heard while growing up. It is my honor as well as my stigma; my being a good girl has made the line a compliment and an honor to my father, who is a Presbyterian / Methodist / Baptist minister, but that is a manacle which has always forced me to be good, and to look good in front of people.

Christianity has been very successful in Korea, and has garnered an estimated X-million followers since American Protestant missionaries first arrived in this remote Asian land. Still, a lot more people believe in Buddhism, Confucianism and Shamanism, and I have been living with those who look to me as an example of someone who follows the Christian faith. Since my father is a man who serves God, they hold me to a higher ethical standard.

As a child, I thrived on compliments - I always tried my best to be a good girl and successfully met others' expectations of me. As I grew up, however, I began to feel like my 'good girl' image confining. Apparently, I still behaved well - serving my father's church as a pianist during services and helping to manage Sunday School, but I sometimes felt so confused, wondering if this 'good girl' image is the only face I had.

I had many hidden desires -to try makeup, to take just one single puff on a cigarette and to go window-shopping with other girls and roam around the downtown district until dark. I wondered if I were really a good girl, whether I would want to try these things, and concluded I was only acting as if I were good, thus felt guilty.

Apparently, I looked calm throughout my teen years, but I would say those days were my Sturm und Drang. I felt confused and lost. A heavy sense of guilt weighed me down. One day, however, I was thinking about what freedom was, and got struck with a line from the Bible, “XXXX.” I realized that if I am true to myself in terms of pursuing what I want in life, and what I believe to be right and admit the way I am, I can be free, embracing my many different ‘faces’.