International Dating, International Marriages ... and such

Last month (or last year!) on the 27th, some old friends got together for the first time in six years - Andrew - a Korean-Canadian-American who is currently attending Waterloo University (Canada's MIT, as he stresses) in Waterloo, ON, Julia - a Korean-Southern U.S.A.er making her way in U. of Alabama, and me, Won - a Korean-Nothing living in the most mundane of all cities and countries.

It was nice to get together and talk about various things - the high school we once went to together (not exactly together because Andrew attended for one term, Jules for two years and I went the whole nine yards and graduated from the horrible place), the people we once knew but didn't or couldn't keep in touch with, U.S. vs Canada, internships and careers and so on.

One subject matter we got to is the problems of relationships. Having lived in multicultural environments for a significant amount of time of ours lives (me having lived the least unfortunately; but also having had the opportunity to actually visit more countries than the other two :P) and having the benefit of using the big-daddy lingua franca of the world, English, quite adeptly, we have the "freedom of choice" of developing intimate relationships with other nationalities and ethnicities.

Andrew was currently in a relationship with a Portuguese-Canadian (Canadian of Portuguese background). He'd been in relationships with people of various backgrounds - a Hong Kong Chinese, a Korean-Canadian and a few more, I think. His parents were pretty much okay with the international relationships as long as the person he was dating was a Christian (typical Korean Christian family); I dunno the exact reason but his parents were against his former Korean-Canadian a few years back. So his parents criterion was apparently religion and, I would suppose, the basic decency you would expect in a human being.

Julia's parents were more conservative. Simply put - no foreigners for marriage. So that restricted her dating circles since there are not a lot of Koreans in the Deep South and her clique consists of hillbilles, dixies, and confederates (hah). Inferring from what Julia said, her parents are quite aghast by the international/interracial dating phenomenon.

Her current boyfriend was one of those rare Deep South Korean-Americans - frat boy, jock, partyer, quite affluent family background etc etc. We (Andrew and I) had the pleasure of meeting him after our lunch together. Toot toot!

And as for me and my parents? As I told the guys ... my mom is borderline racist. She said that when it came to international relationships and marriages, she would be okay with white people, but would have "a hard time accepting" other skin tones and colors. And this is coming from a woman who is probably one of the most international of her generation. Imagine what my more conservative extended family would say if I was marrying someone out of their daily color palettes.

My perspective on international relationships and marriages? If I choose to forge a relationship it will probably be with accepted other cultures as dearly as their own, or at least a foreigner who intends to. Thus the order of probability from highest would be .... a Korean-Something -> a foreigner -> a multicultural Korean. I would never ever consider anyone who is not "into" foreign cultures (this is not the same as "I would not consider a racist or cultural exclusivist" .. isn't that given in this era of globalization and multiculturalism?).

All of this is hypothetical though ... who knows ... maybe the lady of my life will be a person who doesn't know how to draw the Sunni Triangle on a map of Iraq ;)