From the Editor
The ending of our Fulbright grant year appears quite similar to how it started. We came into the grant year hopeful for a new adventure, but were soon met with obstacles. Many of this year’s grantees have felt loneliness in their year brought on by mask mandates, online classes, travel restrictions and social distancing rules. As we prepare for the end of the grant, it may feel like we leave with unfinished business and goals unachieved. It may feel like things haven’t really changed at all. Perhaps everything is exactly the same as how it started. Or perhaps there was change- small, mundane, daily- but change nonetheless. The kind of growth that occurs only through constant perseverance in the face of constant challenge. Our cohort was unable to do many things this year (we don’t even have a group photo together!). However, instead of passively accepting that there were things we could not do, we got creative with the things we could. Our classes were engaging both online and off; volunteer opportunities took form in new shapes and sizes; and we discovered more about our placements than perhaps any grantees before us. Although times were stagnant, we refused to remain still. This change is evident in the pieces shared in Volume 14 of Fulbright Korea’s Infusion. As you read through the magazine, I encourage you to read through it as if it were a 2021 diary composed by the cohort. We start with Kiki Marlam’s piece “acquisition of my senses” that will place you in a singular moment in a small city in Korea. Then we will take you through the discovery of Korea in pieces like Julia Zorc’s “Dragon Head” and the discovery of identity such as in William Lander’s “Speaker’s Block.” Some pieces will take you through both, like Miles Miller’s reflection on his family history and Hanoks, Korean traditional homes, in his piece titled “Re-Member the Future.” Our writers share personal testimonies about who they were before the grant year and who they have become. Read about the struggles grantees faced in pieces like Chloe Nelson’s “Hungry Ghost” and Carolyn Acosta’s “Conferences & In-Between.” Those that feel they are obvious outsiders open up about their experiences, such as in Andrianna Boykin’s “The Smudged Mirror” and Katherine Seibert’s “Cures for the Outsider.” Meanwhile “Lunch Box” by Tricia Park and “From a Great Distance Notes on Identity and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings” by Sarah Berg call attention to the Asian-American experience and the often ignored traumas of that experience. While the hurdles of the year cannot be ignored, there are stories of community that show just how persistent this year’s cohort is in the face of adversity. Joy Cariño’s “The Pinoy Grill” offers you a seat in a restaurant turned home-away-from-home, while Johanna Alexander’s “Trading Fall Favorites” is a humorous look at life in a homestay. Jame See Yang’s “Overheard in 영어” is a window into teaching in Korea, followed by the artworks of our talented students as well. Claire Ehr’s piece “Naju 11:46 p.m.” reminds us that sometimes art is just our way of expression, nothing more and nothing less. We share not only through our words but through our photography as well. From captures of Korean landscapes, to people, to architecture, to culture, the pictures will take you through a year of changes. Unlike past issues, there will be no photos from other countries taken by grantees enjoying their winter vacation abroad because unlike past issues, we never left the country. Everything in this issue was conceived of in Korea. Which leads me to our theme for the year. Volume 14 will give you a sense of limbo. Many of the written and photographed works will deal with the old and new. They are looking to the past in order to see what’s coming next. We modeled our magazine off of Korean films from the 1980s, a time when South Korea itself was facing a movement of change. Inspired by this country and its history, our cohort will continue to grow after we’ve gone our separate ways. No matter where we started, it wasn’t easy to get here. Now that it is all over, it won’t be easy to leave either. I want to thank my amazing staff for all of their hard work, including Managing Editors Elizabeth Stewart and Lydia O’Donnell. I want to thank every writer and photographer who submitted and everyone who worked through the long process of getting published, as well as each student who participated in our art competition. Thank you to the Korean-American Educational Commission (KAEC) Chair Dr. Anneliese Reinemeyer as well as Executive Director Byungok Kwon and Senior Program Officer Mrs. Young-Sook Lee. Lastly, my gratitude for Heidi Little, the Fulbright liaison for Infusion, and Isabel Moua, ETA program officer. Please enjoy Volume 14 of Fulbright Korea’s Infusion. I encourage you to sip on an ah-ah (iced americano) as you read.
the acquisition of my senses
by Kiki Marlam, ETA ’20 the acquisition of my senses Over the hills’ shoulders, the honey orb dips in the Geumosan Reservoir, melting to brew an ambrosia tea. Inhale. Pedal. Breathing in the crisp breeze, biking through the crunchy flecked soil. Exhale; time and reason doze to oblivion But, the moment stumbles and wanes… tripped up by the toasty scent of bungeoppangs wafting in the air, awakening my appetite. A coyly industrious ajhumma aproned in red stokes the piscean breads in the corner stall ahead. She understands the commercial topography well. Nestled near the bus stop, here a takeover of my moment is afoot. The hungry scent charges forth and my golden serene now forfeits. Time stirs, and with my reason reformed, I descend off the bike path, submitting to the acquisition of my senses. [Featured Photo by William Landers]
The Dragon Head
by Julia Zorc, ETA ’20 Along the Mugunghwa train line between Mokpo and Busan is a station with no name. When I have dinner with the Lim family, it is Tae Hee, my closest confidant among them, who tells me about it. I ask her for a more exact location on the line, but she doesn’t know. Her smile crinkles her face and she seems somewhere between a mother and a mischievous child. “It’s like a little legend. Maybe not true. But friends say they saw it.” She refills my glass and then calls out to her daughter, asking her to go to the corner store for some ice cream. There’s something I find romantic about this train station, but I attribute the mystery to a sort of clerical error that happens frequently here, like when a new address is put on a collapsed house. Tae Hee doesn’t have to mention it again. She knows the seed has already been planted. She knows that I like these kinds of out-of-the-way places, where few other foreigners have bothered to go. Places of quiet adventure and solitude. ********** I watch the landscape outside the train window. Mountains, high-rises and rice fields drift by. This season’s rice crop—not yet planted when I arrived in this country—is now ready for the harvest. Two hours of vigilance has made me drowsy, but I finally see my destination. The train stops at a small, square building; the yellow sideboards are faded and peeling. A discolored rectangle on the wall acts as the ghost of a signboard. I stand suddenly, afraid to lose my chance, and throw myself off the train as the door shuts. I am the only one on the platform, and when I look back at the train as it pulls away, I see concerned and confused faces looking back at me. I imagine that some of them think I accidentally wandered onto a plane, ended up in Korea and have been lost ever since. I walk purposefully into the station building to fool us all. The ticket window is shuttered, and the room is empty save for some benches and a banner reading “COVID-19 regulations: please stand two meters apart” in Korean. On the walls are old photos of railway workers, blurred by years of sunlight. I wonder if there is anyone left who remembers them. Outside of the station is a village that is nothing more than a handful of traditional homes in various states of decay. Beside them are rusty motorbikes and the occasional truck with a bed full of odds and ends. I see an elderly woman bent nearly in half, feebly pulling a wheelbarrow of vegetables behind her. I am suddenly self-conscious in the knowledge that I don’t belong here. But I have to see this through. I want to explore this place after taking all the trouble to get here. So I pass by the houses, their closed gates shuttering me in. A cat runs past, mewling, with sores all over its body. Blankets on clotheslines flutter in the breeze. On the edge of the village lie the remains of a small theme park. Child-sized rides sit buried in tall grass, more rust than paint. There is a merry-go-round of tiny rabbits instead of horses and a ferris wheel with seats that dangle from brittle chains. The most imposing one looks like a pirate ship ride—universal at any fair or carnival worth its salt—but the head of this ship is a great dragon. The red paint is peeled back, exposing the rotting wood beneath. I take a picture of it, and am taken aback. This beast is not dead. In fact, I can see it breathing and hear its ribbed body creaking. Its grimacing face seems to twitch. I hold my breath and close my eyes. When I open them, the movement has stopped, and I’m able to pretend that I imagined it. A voice calls out to me from a pavilion a little ways away, where two women are sitting and eating lunch. One woman is small, elderly, dark and wrinkled. The other is like a doll: tall, elegant and made-up to perfection. “Aigoo, a foreigner,” the old woman says in Korean. “Where are you from?” “America.” “What are you doing here?” “I’m just…walking.” I do not know the right English words to describe what I’m doing, let alone the Korean ones. “Walking? Cham! Take a rest. Please eat with us.” Her dialect is difficult to understand, but the kimbap in her outstretched hand says enough. I take it with a bow, remove my shoes and sit beside them. I want to ask about the dragon ride, but the younger woman is quick to speak. “You are bored here?” she says in English. “Not at all.” “Foreigners not come in here. Seoul is more interesting place. I live there.” “Stop using English,” the older woman interjects in Korean. “I can’t understand you!” “This is grandmother,” the young woman says, stubbornly sticking to English. “She live here.” “We can speak Korean,” I say with my faltering, pitiful accent. The grandmother doesn’t seem to understand me and her granddaughter continues on in English, undeterred. “I want to see L.A. and Vegas. You know? You go there?” I tell her that I’ve been to Vegas and wasn’t that impressed. “Really?” she says, her hand shooting up to hover over the little “o” of her mouth. It’s a perfectly choreographed gesture of surprise. Her grandmother is muttering beside us. I cannot understand what she is saying, but feel like I must address her. “Halmeoni,” I say, “how long have you lived here?” I notice that her granddaughter takes out her phone, and begins taking selcas with the serene, mountain landscape behind her. The old woman understands me this time and brightens considerably. She launches into her family history, snatches of which I am able to understand. I gather that she had ancestors who were of great importance in this town and