being a successful korean (american)

This is a continuation of this post: i pray for the day.

[TLDR: Lisa had spent decades absorbing her mother’s messaging about success, and came to me ready to flip the script and write her own definition.]

Our goal was to move Lisa from defense to offense: from her “not meeting” a mysterious and impossible bar, to standing aligned in her inner-generated power.

Since Lisa’s mother is Korean, we started by understanding the Korean word for success, 성공 (seong-gong).

This is a Sino-Korean noun (meaning words of Chinese origin incorporated into Korean) composed of the Hanja characters 成 (seong), meaning "to accomplish" or "to achieve," and 功 (gong), meaning "effort" or "work"—together conveying the sense of accomplishing a goal through effort.

In Korean, 성공 is used to denote:

• The successful outcome or result of an endeavor;
• Achieving a high position or goal;
• An achievement that required effort and was difficult to attain.

Wait, what does a “high position” mean?

According to our friend, Perplexity: A "high position" in the context of Korean usage, especially related to 성공 (success), generally refers to achieving a significant or prominent status in a particular field such as business, politics, or other professional areas. It implies a level of authority, responsibility, and recognition within that domain. These positions are typically associated with significant decision-making power and social prestige.

This paper on “Social Success and Happiness in Korean Higher Education” (2017) by educational scholar Dr. Jeong-Kyu Lee takes the definition of “success” even farther back to Confucius:

“Two of the classical Confucian scriptures, the Classic of Filial Piety (The Classic of Xiao in Chinese; Hyo-Kyung in Korean) describes ‘when we have established our character by the practice of the (filial) course, so as to make our name famous in future ages and thereby glorify our parents, this is the end of filial piety.’ (The Classic of Filial Piety, The Scope and Meaning of the Treatise; English translation: James Legge).”

So filial piety is the virtue of respect and care for one’s parents and elders, and emphasizes the parent-child relationship as the foundation of social responsibility. This responsibility is intertwined with establishing our character so as to make our name famous, which then glorifies our parents.

Damn.

I think what’s important to note here is that people don’t go around quoting the dictionary or looking up these words that go back to ancient philosophers who were around in the BC times. We assume we know the definitions of common words, like success.

But the meanings listed above are part of the fabric of deeply-held underlying beliefs. They impact the personal AND transcend into cultural and societal implications.

Of course, I also want to point out that this is a framework and not meant to be monolithic; I am not saying all Koreans think like this. I also want to specify that Lisa’s mother was born in Korea during the Korean War, which undoubtedly added another (traumatic) layer to her views of what it means to survive and thrive in life.

So ok, to summarize, if one is to “be a success” in the Korean context, then in explicit terms this means:

• Setting an ambitious, clearly-defined goal
• This goal is tied to recognized status in a particular field
• This goal has a direct relationship to power (authority, control, or influence)
• This goal is difficult to attain
• Achievement reflects positively on your name, and thus your family’s name
• It is your responsibility, not just to yourself, but to your family and society, to achieve this goal.

When we stood back and looked at this final explanation, we both (second-generation Korean-Americans) thought this was totally insane, yet also made sense. We knew plenty of other second-generation Korean-Americans who pursued high-prestige careers and visible accomplishments, sometimes at great cost to their actual desires or sense of selves.

We didn’t spend time looking at the English definition of success (perhaps we can do that in a future session), and certainly Americans are also obsessed with status and achievement. But what was striking to us, on its face, was the moral framing of the familial duty, as well as the fact that success HAD to be difficult to achieve.

All in all, very high drama.

As a result of this etymological investigation, we felt like we had achieved clarity around some of Lisa’s internalized parental expectations. Great. Next, we moved to the intergenerational transmission of values. We wanted to parse how these underlying beliefs and expectations shaped Lisa’s sense of identity and worth.

The important part of this exercise was: how did Lisa feel about some of these specific terms? Which would she keep and which would she modify? Where were her values?

To be continued, again…

Total time: 2.25 hrs / word count: ~820