ahnyeonghaseyo!
I’M KAT문순자
Korean adoptee · 10x traveler to Korea · ARMY (OT7 — don’t make me choose) · born in Busan, raised in Iowa
Lover of K-dramas, BTS, and all things Korean. Forever planning my next trip to Korea. But my life didn’t always look like this...
For most of my life, I wanted nothing to do with being Korean.
I grew up in Iowa — often the only Korean face in my home, my school, my church, sometimes the whole town. I got made fun of for my squinty eyes, my flat nose, and a nonexistent Asian accent so often that not a single day passed without a reminder I was different.
The only picture I had of where I came from was one I’d invented: an old woman in a pointy straw hat, bent over a rice field. That was the birth mother I’d built in my head, and I wanted nothing to do with her. So when people asked if I was curious — about her, about Korea, about any of it — I wasn’t. For decades, I wasn’t.
K-dramas changed my life
Then in 2020, during COVID, I stumbled upon a Korean drama called Crash Landing on You. For the first time in my life, I watched Korean people who weren’t the punchline — they were the leads. Beautiful, funny, whole. And they looked like me. I had no interest in Korea my entire life. Now I wanted to know more.
Since then…
I’ve been back to Korea more than ten times since 2022 — typically for a month at a stretch.
I’ve strolled on the beach in Busan, seen Seoul from the seat of an e-bike, learned to order in Korean, gotten lost and found my way. A reel I made about Arirang and what it means to me has been watched over 1.2 million times. The Korea JoongAng Daily wrote about me; Jae-Ha Kim defended me in her Substack newsletter — and bestselling author, Min Jin Lee, reposted it.
Nobody gets to hand you a quiz on your own belonging and grade it.
Not strangers on the internet, not the people who made you feel like a perpetual guest. You don’t have to earn your way back to something that was always yours — you just have to walk in the door.
I’m not afraid to admit that…
I don’t want to be a tourist in my own home country.
I've been there: worried I’ll feel like a guest in a place that is my birthright. But what I discovered on the other side of that fear was not only beautiful — it was life changing.
If you want to go beyond “just visiting” Korea — and experience firsthand what it’s really like — I can help.
Help me plan my Korea trip →
K-drama filming location: The Heirs & True Beauty
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