 Good afternoon. First of all, I'd like to thank Iowa and for the invitation to be here today and for not giving up, actually. I'm saying that because I was invited to last year, but due to various reasons I wasn't able to come, and I almost didn't make it this time, too. The end of the year is the business time in the Korean assembly, so it's not easy to leave the country. But I am very much honored to be able to be here to share with you my story. I used to be a panelist for talk shows before I was into politics, so both fields required a lot of talking. So all that aside, I just happened to love to talk. So I could spend hours telling my story here, but I was informed I'm only allowed 15 minutes, so I made sure I bought a copy of my speech. So I get to say what I need to within the given time. And being migration experts that you are, you might be confused with some of the terms that I will use. I choose to use the terms as it is being used in the Korean context. Anyway, here goes. My first migration experience was when I was in fifth grade going to sixth back in the Philippines. Business went bad, so our family had to move from the city to the province, so we had to travel for three days on board a ship. So I wasn't in the same country, but everything was foreign to me. I started as an outcast. No friends didn't know the place, didn't know the language. Kids from school would call me names, which at first I thought was flattering because they were smiling when they said it, just to realize later on that it wasn't. So I was a fist, but at 12 years old I told myself I'm going to learn the language and be an honor student, and I will show everyone that I am it. For me, it was a tough battle that I have to fight on my own with just 12 years of life experience. Well, little did I know that that experience would be one of the greatest gifts life has ever given me. It made adjusting to life in Korea sort of a walk in the park, but, you know, but a really, really big park. So years after I met a man who at first glance decided I'm the girl that should marry, and after almost a year and a half later, I decided too that he's the man I should marry. So it was 1995 when I first set foot in Korea. It was to meet and greet his parents who were against the marriage, who were as against the marriage as much as my parents were. I got the hint that they were against the marriage when no one from his family attended our wedding. So, yeah, my parents were against the marriage because I was still a student and his parents because I am a foreigner. He was the oldest son and my father-in-law is the oldest son too, and for a country that prides itself for being homogenous, it was quite unimaginable by then to marry a foreigner, much less by the next head of the family. Before I went to Korea, the only thing I remembered from the textbooks about the country was that it was a hermit kingdom, not the IT powerhouse that Korea is today. For me, my husband embodied Korea. Everything I see from him is how I see Korea, and from him I saw strong and loving Korea. I had him, so I wasn't afraid of change. Going to Korea wasn't a big deal for me besides it was just to meet and greet his parents, so I wasn't worried for I knew I'll soon be back with my family and friends. It was different from the stories of the many marriage migrants who later came to Korea. Many of them are worried and lonely on their way to Korea because they have no idea what was waiting for them and when they're going to see their family again. All they knew was upon arrival, there will be a man. They will be a man they barely know waiting for them, a man they met for a few days in exchange I do. As for me, well to cut the story short, I've been meeting and greeting the parents for the past 20 years now. So going back in 1995, Koreans viewed foreigners as an object of curiosity. They'll see me and ask a series of questions ranging from how I came to Korea to how much my husband makes a month. Given that there were very few foreigners in Korea that time and it was only in the late 1980s that ordinary Koreans were allowed to have passports, I understood the curiosity and the lack of information. Many times they'd have discriminatory comments and that they don't even realize nor consider as discriminatory. It will be passed off as oh, I didn't know, I was just asking or that was what I heard. But one thing is for sure, Koreans back then looked at me, a foreigner, just only with tears eyes. Years later, with the influx of migrant wives and workers, came along the rise of the negative perception regarding foreigners. Of course, there was a double standard. Westerners aren't viewed as how migrants from Asian countries are seen. People would often ask me which was better, the Korea that when I first came or the Korean now. I always answer it was better before because people didn't look at me as if I'm there to take something away from them. The question how did you come to Korea has now been changed to why did you come to Korea. I never had any formal Korean language education. My husband's salary wasn't enough to pay for the Korean classes at the universities. So I had to study Korean on my own. I listened to cassette tapes, watched Korean soap, rewrote news articles at the back of used calendars, and memorized what my in-laws would say, and then bother my husband at work to ask him what it meant, and then practice Korean with my kids. Then I choose to work. Career-wise, being able to speak English in Korea is a definite advantage to Filipinas as compared with their counterparts from other Southeast Asian countries. But I realized teaching wasn't for me. I wanted a different job. I decided to put up my resume online, prepared for disappointment, but was totally surprised to get quite a number of calls the next day for job interviews. It's then that I realized that being bilingual, actually trilingual, is a very sought-after asset. Having worked for an import company, I decided to set up my own business, businesses actually, which eventually failed, but just like everyone else, I gained knowledge from my experience. And although it may seem the longer I stayed in Korea, the more I learned about the country and the culture I grew up in. People would tell me stories about how the Philippines helped Korea during the Korean War, and then they would ask me questions, questions about what they saw in the media, questions I've never thought of, which made me look within me, and of course, the internet. I realized how limited what we truly know about our country and culture, even though we were born and grew up in it. We have always thought of what's happening as natural, never questioned why things are the way they are, because it is the norm. So we never asked, but in Korea, I was asked about the Philippines a lot, and I made sure I gave them the answers they need, so I needed to read more and study more about the country that I was born into and about the culture that I'm supposed to know because I grew up in it. And it became another asset for me, an asset which eventually led me into working for TV programs, translating dialogues of TV documentaries, which most of the time needed a clear understanding of both cultures to be able to clearly express. It was a job that plays well, but not a lot of migrants could do. It needed a high level of fluency in Korean and the ability to write in Korean. A lot of migrants could speak the language, but not able to write it. It later landed me as spot in front of the camera as a panelist for talk shows and such, even as a Korean language teacher in a show called Basic Korean for Foreigners. Before I formally started working for TV programs, the only time you'll see foreigners on TV will be on special shows during the holidays and most of them, most of the time it was for laughter, but with the fast growth of international marriages, the society is beginning to see what, that we can just laugh it off and that something has to be done. The media, of course, played a big role. It jumped under Taemunhwa bandwagon. Taemunhwa is the Korean word that translates to multicultural or multiculturalism, a new word coined by a group of 30 experts in 2003 to use in place of the words that conveys a negative connotation such as mixed blood or Americans or Kosians and et cetera. It also became the key to the drafting and enactment of the Multicultural Family Support Act. With the name of the bill, one could actually guess that immigrant-related policies started from the policy for the family. I first heard of the word from my son. He came home from school one day with good news, he said. His after-school classes, which we were paying for the past three years, are now free, according to him, because he is a Taemunhwa kid. At first it felt good. It felt like the society is now taking notice of people like us. We were not invisible anymore. As the different ministries of the central government focused on the multicultural policies, it became a trend. Local government units, NGOs, corporate social responsibility projects, everything suddenly shifted to support the welfare of the multicultural families, most of which is material or monetary in nature. Policies were made, support centers were established, welfare benefits were extended. On media and television, however, problems faced by multicultural families were highlighted, and we were stereotyped. Multicultural families were depicted as underprivileged, poor, and problematic. Young migrant wives were bought and came from poor Southeast Asian countries seeking for money to send back home. Uneducated, can't speak Korean, having difficulty adjusting to Korean life, then eventually run away. Korean husbands were seen as poor old bachelors from the rural areas with behavioral problems, and sometimes are even mentally incapacitated. Kids were seen as underachievers, ostracized school in denial of being multicultural, and are considered society's time bombs. It didn't take long for the word to become a label, distinguishing multicultural families from Korean families. In efforts to better the negative perception about multicultural families, TV programs such as Love in Asia were produced, where ordinary lives of multicultural families were televised to show that we are no different and that we also live like any other Korean family. Though it wasn't perfect, it's interesting to know that Love in Asia shows good viewer ratings, making it one of the longest running TV programs in Korea as of the moment, so we can see that people are interested. So I've been a part of that particular program and other programs like it for five to six years. Through it, I met a lot of people like me, men and women alike. Many of us agreed that the biggest discrimination that multicultural families face in Korea is that people think of us as the weak link, the ones who need help and are just beneficiaries of welfare. In one seminar discussing multicultural policies that I attended, someone said that there's no clear hope for multicultural kids since they don't have a role model, that they are ticking time bombs that could blow up anytime soon and what happened in Paris or London will happen in Korea too. Sitting there and imagining my son hearing those words was fainting. We wanted to change that. We wanted to show that we can be agents of Korea's growth, fruitful members of the society and not just dependents and that we could be our own children's role models. We started a multicultural family network group called the Waterdrop Society of Korea. At first, we had one to two members each from about 20 different countries. We had cultural exchanges and charity events to help people in need. We attended immigration and multicultural-related policy seminars and voiced out our concerns. We joined hands with civic groups with the same goals. Multiculturalism is a pretty new phenomenon in Korea. We knew not only of the need of migrants to understand Korea and its culture, but also the need of Korea to have a correct perception and understanding of why and who we are. People started to acknowledge the need to hear that what we have to say, so I started doing lectures about my experiences and about understanding multiculturalism in Korea. I traveled all throughout the country and even outside of the country to do lectures in schools and universities for students and researchers, for ordinary people, for educators and government employees and even in the Blue House, which is the White House of Korea. I was the only speaker with a foreign background to speak in a G20-related series of lecture when the G20 conference was held in Korea. We started to make some noise and it did take long for a lot to notice. I was asked by different government ministries to be a part of their policy advisory committees. It was the start for the supply-based policies to turn into demand-based policies. People were starting to listen. This opened up the doors of opportunity for migrants to work in the government and I was able to work as one of Seoul City Hall's first migrant government employees. In 2008, I joined a project by the Center for Korean Women and Politics. The project was literally entitled The Making of the First Female Married Migrant as Member of the Local Council. Pretty long, yeah. It is targeted for the then-upcoming 2010 elections. The project wasn't given much attention at the beginning, but then Obama was elected president. The society began to recognize the probability of having a non-ethnic Korean politician and so the project made it to the newspapers. I was offered a seat for the local council but had to turn it down. Back then, I didn't want to do anything with politics. For me, it was just all about joining the movement for migrants to be seen and to be heard. In 2010, Korea saw the first migrant member of the local council, Councilor Ira, who is originally from Mongolia and a marriage migrant herself. In the team year, my husband tragically left us. I was devastated. He was my biggest supporter and the one who gave me the courage and confidence to stand up for what I believe in. He instilled in me the words, if you can do it, then no one in Korea can. After the funeral, people began to ask me when I'm going back to the Philippines. I was confused and then I was angry. I am Korean. I've been a Korean for the past 12 years then. Why is everyone asking me to leave? Once again, I felt like an outcast. And then I remembered what my father-in-law once said, no matter what people say, you are a Lee and we are your family. It even rhymes, dear. So also, and then I look at my kids. Right then and there, I knew I have to continue. So I went back to doing what I have been doing, television, lectures, civic works and all and I was in two movies. Both were blockbuster hits with more than five million ticket sales each. But I was disappointed to find an interview article of the director of the first movie I was in. In 2010, he mentioned that parts where I appeared were edited out because during the monitor screening, people from the industry found it awkward to see a Korean movie with too many foreign faces in the big screen. Then in a span of just a year and a half, I wondered back then how they felt about having aliens and monsters in movies. But anyway, in a span of just a year and a half, reactions were different from the second movie that I had. People commented that the movie made them think about multi-culturalism in Korea and the plight of the foreigners living in the country. It made people look around and take interest with the abruptly changing face of the society. When the seat at the assembly was offered to me, my mentor said, opportunity comes but once, but it came to me twice. There's a reason why it did. I felt it is something that I have to do. So I accepted the challenge. Being a pioneer means carving your own way. It's a tough and at times lonely road. The various episodes that I went through while starting out as an unusual member of the assembly will tell how difficult it is to break the social norms and the stereotype. By joining politics, I got people to think, which revealed both non-existent and existent but quiet negative and positive thoughts regarding immigration and multi-culturalism. In Korea, I embody multi-culturalism. Thus, I am at the forefront of the battle with the anti-immigrant and anti-multicultural groups. But this difficulties didn't stop me from continuing with my advocacies. Earlier in my term, I made sure I meet members of these anti-groups. They were thankful. I was the first member of the assembly to actually meet them. They already asked a few but they were turned down. Still, it didn't stop some of them from making a scene in some of the events that I organized. But I still believe it was a good call for me to open my doors to them. Since the last time I came to the assembly, I've engaged myself in a wide range of advocacies, drafting bills ranging from multi-culturalism, domestic violence, family and teen policies to labor and environment. I include it in my advocacy to minorities and underrepresented members of the society such as the comfort women, North Korean defectors, the disabled and more. I created and currently is the head of the Multicultural Society Forum, a group of like-minded members of the assembly who are interested in making relevant and sustainable policies for a multicultural Korea. I also made a dream school, a project to help female marriage migrants find their own spot in the society and fulfill their dreams like I am fulfilling mine. It has been said that I am a trailblazer and I always say being a trailblazer will always mean two things. Either I like the way or I burn the way. Of course, I choose and will always strive to achieve the former. And with that light is a dream that the future generation of Korea live in a more open society where migrants are regarded as wean, not they. Like what I said, multiculturalism is a pretty new phenomenon in Korea. There's still a lot to be done, but just like a line from one of my favorite songs I say.