are you one of us?

“Are you Korean”, an inquiring voice that startled my engrossed attention to the sea of faces and vehicles among the crowds looking for my fetch from the airport, as the darkness of the night started to blanket the sky, made me think who could this be doing some prank jokes on me.  Maybe an acquaintance, a friend, or someone I knew who saw me seemingly looking for someone as I was waiting at the arrival area of the airport, seeing also that there were Japanese and Koreans going out, he thought he might get my attention with such remark.

            Hadji, an officemate keeps on saying that Im a part of the Korean invasion in the Philippines. One thing that I am a fan of Korean telenovelas and some of their movies, in fact, I have a collection of them both DVDs and the previously 16-disc VCD of a complete telenovela, another thing is I sport like Korean. He tagged me as the “Korean TV series” referring to how I look like. I am not a Korean fashion victim, though. I appreciated their fashion especially on their telenovelas, yet I am not that fashion adventurous, far more sporting Korean hairstyle.

            Back at the university when I was pursuing my Master’s in my field, I was thought as foreigner, then by one of our department’s professor. Resting in an empty classroom, he came in and started to make a conversation. Since I was new at the university, I thought it was customary to speak English inside the campus. I listened to him telling me how to survive at the university. When he asked me about my program and experiences in my few days stay at the campus, I tried to answer him in Tagalog. With astonishment, he asked, “Are you Filipino?”.

 I replied, yes, sir.

With a laugh, he said, “I thought you are Thai”.

When I turned around, it was really an honest question from a Korean guy. He definitely was looking for a Korean friend to fetch, probably visiting him at Davao City. I politely said, “No, Im not”.

It made me doubt again, do I really look like Korean?