Name: Growing up Mixed in Korea (한글 자막) | Evolve Podcast
Uploaded: 2025-10-16T15:55:22.000Z
Duration: 14 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

But we would like to say French Korean because we are one and not half.

As you know, I'm half English, half Pakistani.

So I grew up also half Asian, half European in a monocultural country like Korea.

Could you speak about how that experience was?

It was eventful, there were beautiful moments.

But at the same time, I'm born in 91, so I was born in a time when mixed families were rare.

And youth 100% foreigners would not consider me as their own.

If I'm in a French, you know, with the French people, they will consider me Asian.

I don't want to say the word, but they will consider Asian.

And amongst Koreans I will be considered a mixed or a foreigner.

So only in that sense it creates xenophobia or the difference making them a little bit at unease.

My father and mother met, they loved each other and I was born.

So I just decided to do what I can do best, which is to persevere and to try to learn both cultures at the same time.

And even at home, coming back to a lighter register, is that at home?

Even my mother, when she's angry, she would tell me to not look at her face and her eyes.

She would tell me to look down because it's disrespectful to look directly at your parents face.

But when it comes to my father, as we all know that in the oxidant you have to look into the eyes.

How would you feel if I hey Clemente, how are you?

We all look at our face so it's different culture.

I had to learn the cues at a young age without them teaching me.

But it helped me understand other cultures and absorb even faster through this painful moment.

So I don't only look at it as a negative thing, but

as something that a catalyst that has changed me internally for sure.

I grew up in a very like white English area.

I was the Asian there, you were the Asian.

And now I come to Asia and often it's like, you know, I lived in Thailand, I'm Falang, you know, the white guy or you know, we're guggin here as well.

No, it was my brother who went to Europe.

He was born with cerebral palsy, so he had to be taken care of, so we would send him to France, and

If I go to France, it's a completely new world for me.

But still culturally and even within my DNA, somehow as I grow older, it feels more natural than when I went as a younger child.

When I was younger, I think I was more Asian, in a sense.

I believed in the hierarchy and in all the social cues and norms.

But now I understand both parties better as an older human being.

I only visited Pakistan for the first time two years ago, so I had that kind of Christie Dante, you know, the identity crisis when I was young.

But as I've gotten older, I've got in touch with that side.

My message to other mixed people would be, when you're young, like you said, it can be really confusing.

But as you get older, it opens up new worlds that other people may not have those opportunities to do so.

And I really like what you said about it.

Could you speak a little bit more about that?

In Korea, you have a lot of Chinese people, you have Japanese people, some other European people, Americans.

If you understand and learn a little bit of the psychology and, like, live it, you know that there is a high context culture and low context.

And in that sense, for me, having lived both in my youth helps me understand how to communicate with them better.

So some people like it, you know, more detailed, logical, like the low context, Germanic and, you know, Germanic cultures and other Asian cultures, they're very high context, as you know, you have to insinuate things.

You don't go directly to the point, otherwise it's offensive.

So just having this basic knowledge, anybody can learn it and use it for their benefit and for connecting with people.

So I think in that sense, it helped me materialize this.

When you were growing up, were you in any way connected to your French roots and culture, maybe through food or other things?

even when at home he wouldn't cook, we would always go out and eat French food.

We will come back and he will talk about soccer, he will talk about things that are happening in France.

He would just feed me all these information about France and Europe and the world.

And he was basically French, but pied noir.

He fled and went there during the war and came back.

So he has him himself with a Polish mother, an Algerian pied noire, father was French Jewish.

So there comes another set of cultures that I absorbed through him being that.

So, yeah, it was really, really crazy and incredible.

What do you think are some of the best aspects of Korean culture and the best aspects of French culture?

I think the best thing is within Korea and Asian culture is that there's a sense of respect, there's a sense of duty.

Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in Occident, but it's more prevalent.

It's very important, a sense of hierarchy, I guess.

And these things are, I think, are somehow very important in corporate structure and in life, but

not in the military, pseudo Confucianist way, but the real true holistic Confucianist way.

I think that's a very beautiful philosophy.

And if you adapt it, this type, this Asian culture, I think it's very nice.

But when I say Asian, it's, you know, Confucianism is from China.

But this type of culture really helped me understand where I am, who I am within the cosmos and amongst human beings and what I should do best now at this moment.

So in that sense, this Asian culture supported me from the Occidental side.

I learned how to be very descriptive, very direct and logical and to the point.

So I think that's the positive side, because if we lose use this universal language, there's no miscommunication.

Everybody will understand what we are talking about without metaphors, without, you know, allusions, nothing.

So I think this is more from the oxygen, in my opinion.

And blending these two, you can become a mega hybrid.

It's interesting you mentioned that though, because from the UK and I think, you know, spending a lot of time with French people, we're quite sarcastic, we have a lot of dark humor.

I can sense that you've got some of that as well.

So is that, do you think, unique to your Frenchness, or is that also evident in Korea?

Because, yeah, we love, you know, dark jokes and that kind of stuff.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Growing up Mixed in Korea (한글 자막) | Evolve Podcast

incredible

context

aspect

embrace