The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

40 SEPTEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL A member of the Senior Foreign Service who immigrated to the United States as a child reflects on her journey. BY JUL I E CHUNG Julie Chung currently serves as principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Western Hemi- sphere Affairs. She was previously the director for the Japan Desk and acting deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, with the rank of Min- ister Counselor, she has served as deputy chief of mission in Cambo- dia and economic counselor in Thailand. Other overseas assign- ments include Baghdad, Bogotá, Guangzhou, Tokyo and Hanoi. While working in the Office of Korean Affairs in Washington, D.C., she frequently traveled to North Korea to implement the U.S.–North Korea Agreed Framework. From Huntington Beach, California, she joined the Foreign Service in 1996 in the first cohort of the Thomas R. Pickering Fellowship program. “I want to talk to a real American.” Here we go again, I thought. I firmly repeated why the visa applicant was ineligible to visit the United States and that I really was a real American. Such interactions must have hap- pened hundreds of times during my first tour in Guangzhou. It’s something I’ve often been asked and I've asked of myself: Am I a real American? Am I a real American dip- FOCUS ON ADDRESSING RACE, DIVERSITY & INCLUSION TheMakingof a Real American Diplomat lomat? Many colleagues have shared similar stories about being asked that question and then fumbling over how to respond. Of course, in addition to being asked whether I am a “real American,” I often get the other popular question, “Where are you really from?” For many years, when my answer of California did not seem to suffice, I would go into my family history. I was annoyed by this interrogation, as I couldn’t imagine my white colleagues having to explain that they or their ancestors were really from Ireland or England. So I would explain “where I was from” to colleagues, to for- eign counterparts, to the guy at the grocery store and on customs forms: I was born in Seoul, Korea. v I recall tears falling like pattering raindrops on my leather jacket as I boarded an airplane for the first time at the age of 5; I was immigrating with my parents and sister to the United States. I really did not understand why I was leaving my friends and home, and my ears popped endlessly on the flight until I got a handful of brightly colored candy to suck on. My dad landed a $4.25 hourly wage job on the drafting floor of an engineering company, and my mom worked the night shift as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant. Twenty-two years later,