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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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It's much easier for an East Asian person to become integrated into a Western society than the other way around.
You can live in Japan/China/Korea for decades, be married and have children with a local, and speak the language fluently and people will still call you a foreigner to your face.
My son is 50/50 Thai / English.
We live in Thailand and he is accepted as 100% Thai.
I admit that I'll never be accepted as Thai but that comes with benefits as well as drawbacks.
It's generally easier on the kids in Thailand, I think, because mixed race couples are more widely accepted there than in Japan/China/Korea.
I did a few years teaching ESL in Seoul and out of hundred kids, there were just two siblings that were mixed race - Korean mom and American Dad.
Even though these two kids looked basically Korean (except their hair was dark brown instead of black) and spoke fluent Korean, I was shocked that some of the other kids in the class referred to them as 외국인 (foreigners), the exact same word they used to refer to me as white man.
Pretty much why I was prepared to settle here.