The Cut - I Became Asian When I Left Asia

I became Asian when I left Asia.

Born and raised in South Korea until a few months shy of turning 11, I had never heard of anyone around me referring to themselves as Asian, until I moved to Canada. Victoria is a beautiful city tucked in at the very corner of British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, whose quaint buildings on the charming waterfront downtown and range of temperatures resemble that of London. A paradise, a town for “newlyweds or the nearly deads,” Victoria was supposedly a place too nice for racism to exist.

This was less than a year after 9/11 and the following onslaught of Islamophobia and crime and prejudice against South, Central, and West Asians and North Africans (those who are or are perceived to be Muslim). Moving to Canada — the safer half of North America, my parents figured — I was met with assumptions that I was Chinese or Japanese and the inevitable question, “What kind of Asian are you?,” which were all novel to me.

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