Kevin Jin Kwan Kim’s “Goodbye, From Afar” is a Beautiful 1-Minute Film About Love, Death, and Immigration

Would we have done well if we had stayed in Korea? Probably, because my parents were resilient. But would I choose to move to Korea permanently at this stage of my life? No, for the same reason that my father wanted to be buried here rather than in our family plot in Seoul. His family is here, he said, and he wanted to be near us even in death.

Losing My Korean Didn’t Make Me Any More American

Back in my era, the teachers encouraged immigrants to only speak English at home so that we wouldn’t fall behind. But what they didn’t know at the time — or perhaps they didn’t really care about — was that in the rush to make us understand English, many of us lost our ability to converse in our birth language.