Growing Up Korean Canadian in the Time of the Korean Wave

Abstract

Diasporic Korean youth in Canada grow up while realizing their cultural differences. Their awareness of difference often limits the scope of their possible lives. They internalize the White-dominant cultural frame that presents a view of themselves as the other. Young Korean Canadians feel that they are subject to (and have to be validated by) the dominant cultural norms of White Anglo groups at least for a period in their childhood, and later in life they develop more positive ethnic identification. As these young people grow up, they try to explore and negotiate their ethnic options and what it means to be Korean and Canadian. In this process of growing up, transnational Korean media offers the diasporic Korean youth cultural resources for exploring who they are in between different identity positions.