Between Two Homes

Last month, I went on a trip—not for work, not for obligation, but purely for myself. A quiet kind of vacation I had been postponing for years.

I was born in South Korea, but I’ve been living in the United States for more than 25 years now. Over time, New York slowly became my home. It’s where my family is, where my daily life is rooted. It became familiar in a way that quietly replaces everything else.

It had been 11 years since my last real visit to Korea.

There was a short trip in 2022, during the pandemic, but I barely left the hotel room. Three days confined indoors, so I don’t really count that as a visit. This time, it was different. This time, I returned with open eyes.

And yet, something unexpected happened.

Korea had changed—but so had I.

The city I once knew so well from my childhood now felt both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. There were moments when I stood still, realizing I didn’t fully recognize the place anymore. It was a strange feeling—like visiting a memory that had quietly continued growing without me.

For a brief moment, I felt like a stranger in my own homeland.

But instead of holding onto that feeling as something sad, I chose to see it differently. Maybe it wasn’t loss. Maybe it was expansion.

I started thinking: perhaps I now exist in both places.

Not perfectly in either, but comfortably in between. A version of myself shaped by two countries, two cultures, two ways of seeing the world.

And with that thought, something softened.

I began to experience Seoul in a new way—not just as someone who grew up there, but also as someone seeing it for the first time. I visited places I had never noticed before, even during my younger years there. Hidden corners of the city. Quiet streets. Traditional architecture and artworks filled with detail and intention.

They were always there. I just hadn’t seen them.

This time, I did.

Maybe it’s the distance, or maybe it’s the years spent elsewhere, but my eyes felt different. More open. More curious. My long life abroad had quietly changed the way I look at my own culture. And in that shift, something beautiful happened—familiar things became new again.

That is the quiet joy of travel.

The ability to rediscover what you thought you already knew.

It’s strange how something can exist in front of you for years, and then suddenly reveal itself in a completely different way. Like reading the same book at a different time in your life and discovering it holds entirely new meaning.

This trip became exactly that for me.

A rediscovery of my homeland—not with nostalgia, but with fresh eyes.

And in that rediscovery, I found something even more meaningful: a softer understanding of where I come from, and where I have become.