Growing up Korean-Sri Lankan

In my 26 years of existence, I have not met another Korean-Sri Lankan. Of the many ‘compliments’ I get when I talk about my ethnicity are“that’s a rare mix!” or “that’s so interesting!”. I have to agree, I’m one in the rare mixed-race population. I have finally accepted all the good and bad of being mixed-raced Korean but it was not an easy journey.

Childhood

1994, my Korean dad and Sri Lankan mom gave birth to their first child, a daughter. I was the first foreign baby in our neighborhood and my mom told me stories of how our neighbors would come to our house just to look at the “foreign baby”. My mom, being her bluntly honest self, said “you were ugly when you were little”. She hated it when people would come to look at me because she didn’t want them to think I was ugly or any less beautiful than I was. To this day, I have no idea what my mom’s intention was telling that story but that’s pretty much what happened when I was born.

I started going to school and being the only person in the room with dark skin, it wasn’t the best experience. I got bullied by people who weren’t even in my class and for absolutely no reason. At the time, the only dark-skinned race they knew was black and that’s what they would use to bully me. They would say “haha you’re African, your skin is so dark go back to your country”. Countless days, I would come home…