“What was it like in the nineties?” What had my mother faced? Couldn’t she have sought help from the government to keep her baby? What about family support? Was she an orphan? Did her father kick her out when he discovered she was pregnant? Did she run away? What about Lee Jonghyung? Did he really not know that his girlfriend was pregnant? Would he have married my mother if he learned he was going to have a kid? Or would he have abandoned her? These questions pour out like candies spilling endlessly out of a vending machine until there are so many at the base of my brain my head starts to ache. When Yujun doesn’t answer right away, I feel foolish. Why am I asking him questions about a time period when he was barely old enough to read? “I mean, if you know.”

He slows down near a small park and climbs off his bike before replying. “I don’t know much of any detail, but there were difficult times in the nineties. We had to get a loan from the IMF. It seemed astronomical at the time and many countries did not think we were a good risk. But we paid it off early.” He gestures for me to follow him to a bench.

“How so?”

“We had a yellow-ribbon campaign.” He waits until I sit before continuing. “I know in the West that’s a sign of remembrance, but for us in Korea, it was a symbol for gold and selflessness. Everyone in the country, no matter how rich or how poor you were, gave up gold to the government to be melted down and delivered to the IMF to repay our debt. It was a national campaign. Everyone participated. Well, I was too young, but I remember that my grandmother gave up jewelry that she’d had since before the war. They put together a whole chest of things. Plates, jewelry, gold bars. Lee Jong-beom, a baseball player, gave up five years of trophies and medals. We paid off the debt three years early because of it.” He starts to unpack the bag.

“Wow.” This cultural identity—my cultural identity, one that I hadn’t ever known existed, one I hadn’t cared to explore, is fascinating. If I’d kept going to those Korean exchanges in the city with my mom, would I have learned these things? Would I have been prouder of my heritage? I would’ve at least known of it, right? My eyes fall to my lap as I recall how irritated I was at my coworker for asking about Korea and how proud I was to be ignorant. I’m American, like you. Hadn’t I said that with my whole chest?

“There’s a collectivism here that works well in times of trouble but can also cause problems. It’s hard to create social change when we’re all stuck thinking one way or another. It’s like steering the whole Titanic away from the iceberg.” He hands me a small paper box. “Like with every society, there is good and bad. I think the good outweighs the bad. You have been here a week. What do you think of Seoul so far?”