“A Korean wave is sweeping the world,” read the first line in an article appearing in the Toronto Star last week. “Korean companies Samsung, LG, Hyundai and others have become household names. Until five years ago, Canada’s GDP was greater than Korea’s. Now Korea outpaces Canada and the gap grows each year.”
Terry and I could have predicted all this happening eleven years ago.
That’s when we welcomed Peter Nam, a 14 year old Korean lad, to our family.
At the outset, the decision to take in a boarder was largely financial. With two children in university at the time and a third waiting in the wings, the extra income was most welcome. Plus we were very curious to see what the addition of a foreign student would do to our family dynamic.
When Peter arrived, he barely spoke English although he could understand the spoken word quite well. We later discovered that he had already lived with other homestay families in both Hawaii and Colorado.
We were puzzled how his parents could let others parent their only son. Was their letting go part of some Korean national plan?
Peter had some difficulties adjusting to grade 9 studies at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic High School in Vaughan. He excelled at mathematics however word problems and the curriculum emphasis on explaining your reasoning were a real challenge for him.
On the home front, Peter did not enjoy our Canadian diet and often retired to his room to eat kimchi or rice with beans. Gradually, he became comfortable with my teasing, our games of crokinole, and watching Raptor basketball on television and at the ACC with my daughter Carolyn.
His ready smile and quirky sense of humour brought a new dimension to our family, especially when he tried in vain to teach us a few Korean expressions or explain why Koreans seem to have two birthdays every year.
After thirty months, Peter suddenly moved on. His guardian never explained exactly what happened but we suspect his parents grew tired of his mediocre marks and lack of significant improvement in language skills and called him back home.
Our family still speaks fondly of Peter and the kindness of his family. His parents came annually from Korea to spend some time with their son and also paid for our daughter Laura’s ten day trip to Korea to visit Peter and his family one summer.
I often wonder what happened to Peter. Maybe he’s part of the Gangnam Style phenomenon that swept the globe last year or perhaps he’s following in his father’s footsteps as a development contractor.
Despite his teenage struggles in Canada, my sincere hope is that Peter’s time in our family helped him become an active part in the astonishing Korean surge that is spreading across the world.
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