When I moved to Korea, I thought the hardest part would be the language. I didn’t realize how heavy it would feel to carry myself all of myself through a world that had never really seen someone like me.
I came to teach. English, of course. That’s what most of us come for. But I also came because I needed distance. I needed to breathe. To find myself away from noise from expectations from pain I didn’t know how to name yet. I came with my books, my headphones, my shea butter, and my hair long, thick, and braided in rows down to my back.
I’ve always taken pride in my hair. It’s the most honest part of me. It holds every story my mouth can’t say. My mother used to call it a crown. But in Korea, my crown was confusing to people. They’d stare on the subway. Whisper at the convenience store. Once, a man even tried to touch it without asking just reached out like I was an exhibit.
I learned quickly: people didn’t see me just what they didn’t understand.
But then came Jisoo.
He was five, with eyes too big for his face and a voice that tripped over English like it was learning to dance. I was assigned to help his kindergarten class once a week, and from the very first day, he stared at me like I was magic.
“Hair… teacher… like… lion!” he said, wide-eyed and serious.
At first, I laughed. Then I knelt down and let him touch it. He reached out slowly, fingers full of wonder, and whispered, “예뻐요.” Beautiful.
The next week, he brought a drawing of me. Stick figure. Big smile. Braids touching the ground. He had even colored them black with his mom’s eyeliner.
Soon, Jisoo’s parents invited me over for dinner partly out of curiosity, I think, and partly because their son wouldn’t stop talking about me. I went, politely. Nervous. Unsure.
And that night, something shifted.
His mother made kimchi jjigae and fried mandu from scratch. His father asked more questions than I had answers for about my country, about Black culture, about braids. And then, halfway through dinner, Jisoo asked:
“Can you braid my hair like yours?”
He didn’t even have long hair just a little bowl cut with a cowlick. But the way he asked broke me open a little. He didn’t want to be me. He just wanted to connect. To belong to something he didn’t have a name for yet.
I laughed, but I said yes. That weekend I brought over some braiding thread, and we sat on the floor while I gave him two tiny cornrows just for fun. He kept them for three days. His mom sent me pictures.
After that, I became a regular at their house.
Every Thursday evening turned into family dinner. His parents started calling me Isaac-hyung. His dad even asked me once, in hesitant English, how I kept my hair so “strong and shiny.” I ended up writing them a whole guide oils, satin pillowcases, protective styles. Jisoo’s mom went online and ordered me a jumbo tub of Eco Styler. I almost cried.
In a place where I often felt like a spectacle, that family gave me something else entirely ,presence. Not performance. Not curiosity. Just care. Just home.
But still, outside their apartment walls, the stares continued. On the street. At school. I once overheard a woman say my hair looked “dangerous.” Another time, a student’s mother asked if I ever planned to “cut it to look normal.”
I smiled, nodded politely, and kept walking. Because I knew now my hair was not the problem.
In fact, my hair is the reason a little boy in Korea looked at someone who didn’t look like anyone else he knew, and instead of fear or confusion… he saw something beautiful.
I used to think my hair made me an outsider in Korea. But it brought me family. It started conversations. It opened hearts. And it reminded me that sometimes, just existing as who you are fully and unapologetically is an act of quiet revolution.
183
3
