Someone forwarded me the below youtube video and it really blew my mind. The breakdancing is incredible and a part of me feels proud to be from Korea, where there are people who are so passionate, talented, and work so damn hard to create something beautiful.

And then another part of me just feels uncomfortable. I know Koreans aren’t the only non-black community to have adopted hip-hop music, dance, style, etc, but it seems like they have embraced it with an especially high level of enthusiasm. Koreans dominate competitive breakdancing. A lot of Kpop is heavily influenced by hip-hop. There are hip-hop ‘personas’ throughout Korean variety and reality shows.

What I fear is that Korean and Korean-Americans’ embrace of hip hop and aspects of black American culture is an extremely superficial one. I’m not sure if Koreans consuming this media, even participating in the various aspects of hip-hop culture, understand the basic outlines of the community that it comes from. At the very least, I may feel better if there was an acknowledgement that this art form comes from another community and Koreans and KAs have benefitted from being able to express ourselves through adopting this cultural medium. That would be just a small first step to address the cultural appropriation taking place… what do you think?