Teddy’s Lonely American Life – Interview Translation

This interview is part of a series that ran in a Korean daily newspaper from Jan. 10 to Feb. 23, 1999. It was first translated to Japanese by Jinhye, then to English by the YG Bounce team. We hope you enjoy the deeper look into Teddy’s teen-aged years.

Teddy’s Lonely American Life

Translation: Tama
Editor: Josh
(Extra thanks to Momo from Milkcho for helping us out with a few Japanese grammar points.)

Back then, my friend Seong-Won and I were the only Koreans at the school I attended. The school also had very few black people and no one else of Asian descent. Even though it was in New York, the school was in a good location, which is why I went there. If I think back now, the school was a cruel place full of on-the-sly racial discrimination. Moreover, I had just come to the US, my English was bad, and I was alone. Seong-Won was there, but we only had each other to play with. There was nothing to do. It was boring. I did little besides shutting myself into my house when school ended and listening to music. Nowadays, if I hear songs I used to listen to back then, I can almost hear my mother saying “turn that off” in a fed-up voice and I start shuddering.

I really missed Seoul. I really wanted to see my friends. In Seoul, even though I played a lot, I studied properly, but in New York, because I couldn’t play, I couldn’t manage to study regularly. I got angry. However, during that period, I was angry at things I couldn’t do anything about. Seong-Won and I got bullied at that school. It wasn’t just the students – the teachers slyly ignored us, too. I started speaking less and less, and my health started to decline. It really hurt my father to see me like that.

It was during that time that something happened one day. An incident where I used violence finally occurred. It was in P.E class. We were doing baseball that day, and I was ordered to carry the equipment to the playing field by myself. I carried the equipment without saying anything.

When baseball was over, I was told everything had to be put away, so I put everything away neatly. As soon as I was done, the teacher told me I had to bring a bicycle. I struggled to walk with it. While carrying the bicycle like the teacher had told me to, I heard someone grumble behind me. I didn’t understand English very well yet and I wondered why I couldn’t understand the words of the complaint. My self-control had held up until then, but in an instant, I exploded. I lost control of myself completely. Instead of going to the locker room, I turned around and ran up to him, waving my fists. At that point he stood there unmoving, without knowing what to do, and took my punch. He fell and I kept on hitting him wildly.

He was a popular student at the school. He looked good, he was an athlete, and he was the most popular guy with the girls there. I think I kept hitting him for a whole three minutes. A little while later, I came to myself, still hitting him. That’s when I began to regret it. When I went to turn around, the teacher grabbed me. I shook off his hands and returned to the locker room. Almost everyone had left the locker room. Everyone had run out to see the fight. As soon as I returned, the crowd parted, and the jeers began to fly. I could heard the girls’ jeers well. “I don’t like you.”
Everyone really looked at me like I was an animal.

I got suspended from school. I was terribly worried while I was suspended. Naturally, my mother’s grief was the most painful thing to bear. In truth, having gotten suspended wasn’t particularly worrying me, but I really hated the fact that I’d have to go to that school again. The lessons in American schools are roughly all in presentation format, and I was sure everyone would laugh every time I did a presentation.

Eventually, I changed schools. I didn’t receive a warm welcome there either. I wonder if the rumors about me spread, because everyone excluded me.

The harsh junior high period eventually passed, and I changed schools for senior high, to Richwood High School. Luckily, I had many Korean friends there, and there were also many black people and Latinos. It was a completely different world from junior high.
I had older friends there. I hung out with the seniors from Korea, and I got along with the black people. There were quite a lot of delinquents among the seniors and the black people too. The resentment from junior high was severely hardening my heart, and when I was a senior high school student, I spent my time denying that sorrow from junior high to try and get through it.
I fought in those days. When I think about it now, I wonder if it was necessary to go that far, but I had serious problems in those days.

Back then, I was a lot of trouble for my mother. But still, she saw that I appeared to be happily going to school and was relieved.

Then, in my second year of senior high, we moved to Los Angeles. Father was retiring from his company to start his own enterprise in LA. I was excited to be in LA, since I had come the whole way across. Weren’t 80% of the students Korean? There was a large difference in style between my New Yorker self and the LA kids, though. The LA kids had short hair and handsome looks, and I had a hip-hop style like a black New Yorker. Everyone was looking at me like they’d look at an alien.

Jason from the Philippines was a breath of fresh air. As I’d thought, he liked hip-hop. One day, he came by my place. It was lunch break. We shared a conversation about hip-hop, put on music, and he started dancing. I danced with him too.
Jason and I came to understand each other well. He had a lot of Korean friends and I got introduced to them. The first time they went to hang out all together in one place is the day I met Danny. He was in the middle of the crowd, looking severe and grim, silently standing there with his arms crossed. At first glance, he behaved like a gang leader, telling the juniors to go buy him food. Of course, he gave them money, but there was no reason he couldn’t have been made to go and buy his own food.

Danny’s first words to me were “lemme try it.”
At that time I was wearing a hat that was unusual, I guess, and so that’s what he was talking about – he was asking to try it on. After that, we couldn’t even go a day without seeing each other. We hung out every day, listening to music, singing songs and dancing.

Danny was well-informed, and he told me about a music video for a popular Korean song he saw on a video-ranking program playing in a video store, so I went and rented it. While watching that video, we decided we wanted to hurry up and get to Korea to make music.

At that time, I was on close terms with my senior Yoo Seung Jun (Steve Yoo) in Los Angeles. We talked about music a lot together. Instead of befriending other seniors, Seung Jun focused only on music and lived a well-ordered life by exercising and going to church in his remaining time. The exercising part was of course basketball.
Even though he said he’d make music, he didn’t rush around aimlessly. Working hard by himself according to what he’d planned was his style. I learned many things from that senior.

And then one day I saw an older guy I had hung out with who had succeeded as a singer in Korea, and Danny and I really started envying him. The idea of going to Korea and becoming singers started to preoccupy us more and more. America and Korea are very far apart, so even though the idea of becoming singers was strong, at the same time the geographical distance and how far-off it felt made Korea seem like a very distant place.

One day I was with Danny, when we were renting and watching videos of popular Korean songs every day. An amazing group had become famous. It was none other that Jinusean. In one moment, we felt like our hearts had stopped. That was because the music we wanted to make was exactly that kind of music.

We’d been too reluctant. Even knowing we were just kids, we wished we had gone [to Korea] earlier. We were really disappointed at the time. And now we belong to the same company as our seniors Jinusean, the ones we were watching. A person’s destiny is really unfathomable.

At that time, there was a composer we personally associated with, and we were writing music together. That guy was visiting us again one day, and as we were playing our demo tape and joking around, a phone call came. We learned this later, but it was from Yang Hyun Suk. While the composer spoke with him on the phone, Hyun Suk asked what the music playing in the background was, and explaining the situation turned into “let’s meet”.

Hyun Suk was already planning to come to America for business, so it was decided that we should meet then. And then he told us not to tell anyone else. It was something we were to keep off the record. We were waiting on tenterhooks, but he came more quickly than we thought. The audition we’d been called for began in Hyun Suk’s hotel room. And then, before a month had passed, our American lives were in order and we’d come over to Korea, and to the point we are now. Now, while talking about myself, the person I recall is of course my mother. The son she raised with great care flew off in a flash and she must have been really worried. So for her too, I’m going to keep on doing my best. When I came to Korea, I came with the resolution to become the best. Now is the time for me to come out and make that dream come true.