We went to the KORUS festival last Saturday. We're a hybrid family (Korean-American husband, Caucasian wife, mixed children) so we fit right in. This particular festival, though, was far more US than KOR, and more weird than either.
The top-level parking deck at Tyson's Corner Center is first of all a less-than-festive venue for a festival, particularly on a hot day. Almost all of the tents belonged to corporate or political sponsors; small-time electioneering ahead of the mid-terms was in full swing, and my sons collected stickers, pens, and shopping bags from council, register-of-wills, and judicial candidates. We can't vote for any of them, of course; we live in Maryland.
The stage was occupied by a Korean girl rapper who was accompanied by a Black rapper and backing band. I suppose that the Korean girl, who had a definite Iggy Azalea accent, would have been accused of appropriation had there been any other Black people or SJWs listening, but the audience was made up of 95% Koreans with a handful of Caucasians who were married to Koreans. The rap was in English, and Christian-themed. Both rappers claimed to be former thug lifers, almost lost to crack and the street, but now redeemed, having found the Lord. I didn't fact-check them. The audience regarded them with a mixture of puzzlement and curiosity.
We wandered around to see the other exhibitors, who were mostly food vendors. My husband waited in line for bulgogi and kimchi, while I took my two-year-old nephew for frozen yogurt. He ignored the two halmonis who smiled and waved and made faces and tried their hardest to get a tiny smile or giggle from the Toddler of Nope. He wasn't having any, and he ignored my advice to enjoy the female attention now when it's readily available. He ate his yogurt and barely deigned to turn his head toward the ladies; when he did, he gave them no more than a baleful stare.
After an hour or so, we'd seen all of the exhibitors once and had just begun one last circuit to make sure that we hadn't missed anything. Anyone in the audience who had thought that witnessing the rap performance had moved them into "Now I've Seen It All" territory had only to hang around for a few minutes, when they'd have heard a Korean version of "Country Roads," made even better by a Korean dance team dressed in rhinestone-studded satin cowboy dresses.
My Korean husband, born in Seoul and raised in the close-in suburbs of Washington DC, has always claimed that he should have been a country boy. He's more urban than a subway pass, but that doesn't stop him from rhapsodizing about country living. He'd bale his own hay, and he'd grow his own food, and he'd live off the grid, if only he were in the country.
"This is what I'm talking about," he said. "See? My people know that I'm a country boy. They're singing my song." On a sun-beaten blacktop parking platform connecting one wing of a suburban mall to another, just off one of the most heavily traveled Capital Beltway exits, surrounded by high-density mixed-use development, which is surrounded by traditional suburban sprawl, an all-American Korean longs for the place where he belongs, which is apparently West Virginia. Meanwhile, the heat reflecting off the blacktop beneath our feet and the relentless sun overhead were finally enough. "Take me home," I said.
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