> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.itsthespark.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 외국인 (Foreigner) - URL: https://www.itsthespark.com/oegugin-foreigner/ - Published: 2026-09-21T00:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-21T14:02:22.000Z - Description: I was born in Seoul, while living in Singapore for 12 years. At sixteen, when bleeding out on a basketball court, a coach questions which one of those identities I really am. But in eighteen months, the same country that questioned my belonging will draft me. - Author: Myungjun Kang - Tags: #active, Personal Essay, Issue 1: Fitting In, Volume 4 As I was getting pushed to the floor, my two front teeth dug deep into the hardwood. Blood rushed to my brain, and I got up with a fever, and the whole gym went quiet, watching the blood run down my mouth and onto my white shirt. The nurses reached me first. “Ah yuu okei?” But before I could respond, I heard another voice in the distant background. *“지금 나가.”* “Get out. Now.” Three commanding words from the gym’s owner, spoken in a low, flat voice—the kind one would use with one of his own kids. “What?” I said, still dazed, still processing what had happened. “You were playing dangerously on my basketball court. Get out.” He spoke in a thick Busan accent, each word striking my ear like a sharp needle. “What did I even do?” I questioned, confused about why he was blaming me when I stood there with the bloodstains on my white shirt, while the other guy stared at us unscathed. “Huh? What?” the coach snapped, cutting me off in Korean. I felt my heart sink into the hardwood. Although I knew I had done nothing objectively wrong, his aggressive tone still scared me. “Do you think it’s okay to disrespect the coach?” I stared into his cold, sullen eyes. I remained motionless in fear. I wanted to say something about how unfair he was being, but the words failed to leave my chapped lips. “HOW OLD ARE YOU? DO YOU THINK IT’S OKAY TO DISRESPECT THE COACH?” I wanted to question why he was yelling at me. I wanted to ask him why he was being so aggressive and immature and screaming at a bleeding kid. But all I felt leaving my body were the tears that began to form around my eyes, as the words I wanted to say in English exited my mouth in a broken set of Korean characters. “Uhh. Uhhhhhhh….” My parents speak to me in Korean. I answer in Korean. In Singapore, I am one of the only kids in my Korean friend group who still can, and for twelve years that has been enough to make me feel Korean. But my Korean is my home language. It knows food and family and apologies. There is no word for *“you are being unfair to me”* that I can say out loud to a man forty years older than me. “You’re in Korea. Speak Korean.” He said each word slowly, making sure I understood it. It was an expression I had heard many times before, but it was usually reserved specifically for Koreans making fun of foreigners. Finally I snapped. “I didn’t even say anything to you!” I snapped back in English. In my response, I had confirmed his accusations. I was simply a disrespectful *외국인*. A foreigner. I looked around in shock, looking to see if anybody else was surprised to see his animosity toward me, but none of them seemed to be surprised at what he was suggesting. They were all thinking it too. I had been clutching my teeth in my shirt for ten minutes by now, with the nurses who had once been checking on me also simply staring. I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk back to him. I was Korean enough to have shame envelop me as I thought about my actions, but the mutual respect my American school had drilled into me kept me from accepting how he was treating me. In tears, I walked out holding my shirt against my face. I was sixteen. And the people of Seoul, my people, had ostracized me. We have the same passport. In eighteen months, the country that threw me off that court will send me a notice, and I will go, and I will serve beside the same men who watched me bleed and said nothing. At that point, nobody will check whether I belong. At that point, I will stop being a 외국인.