Honey, I am not used to this real love

This self-reflective documentary work explores my dual identity—rooted in conformist, collective South Korea and shaped by New York City, where self-acceptance and individualism are celebrated. The story unfolds through the lens of the city’s youth.

Growing up in South Korea, I constantly struggled between the desire to belong and the need to stand out. Since moving to the U.S. at 22—mostly living in New York City—learning self-acceptance has been an ongoing, transformative journey. Now, nearly twenty years later, I still question the comfort of blending in and following an expected path, while also feeling the exhilarating pull of continually becoming—and accepting—who I am.

Each year, I return to Korea for three to six weeks, and every visit feels like time travel. No matter how much I’ve learned to claim my own identity, I’m confronted again with a life that can feel pre-written: buying a home by a certain age, having children if you’re married, performing prescribed gender roles, and becoming a “proper” participant who fits in. Korea can be deeply comforting in a way that’s hard to explain—everything is optimized, fast, and accessible. At times it feels like living inside a set, like The Truman Show or a virtual reality where the environment has already decided how you should live. You don’t only live as who you are; you live as who you’re supposed to be.

This body of work began as a way to understand myself by photographing young people in New York City—where love and identity can feel expansive—against the backdrop of how I grew up in Korea, where love often arrived as guidance, correction, and constant self-improvement: polished, conditional, and outcome-driven. At first, I thought the project was about New York and the freedom its youth culture revealed to me. But returning to Seoul made me realize it is also about the long-running identity conflict I carry—and the wider pressure Korean society places on young people to perform. The work has become a conversation between my old self and my new self.

This project is ongoing. Through cityscapes and portraits of youth, I continue to explore the tension and overlap between these two worlds—juxtaposing them while also showing how they blend, much like the constant merging of both sides within me that shapes my identity.