미국 (miguk, pronounced mee-gook) is the Korean word for the United States.

I’m a fourth-generation Japanese American. Growing up, I wanted to be fully American, whatever that meant. There was a period when I wanted very little to do with the Japanese side of myself. It wasn’t until I got older that I began to understand how much I valued it.

There were moments in my youth when I felt different from the people around me and wondered how fully I belonged in American culture.

Years later, I went to Japan and discovered that I certainly didn’t belong there either.

More recently, after meeting my wife Sara, who is Korean, Korea has become another part of my life. I want to learn the language, understand the culture, and communicate more deeply with her family. In many ways, I feel closer to Korean culture today than I ever felt to Japanese culture growing up.

And yet, whether I’m in Korea, Japan, America, or somewhere completely different, something funny keeps happening.

People rarely realize I’m American.

Sometimes they try to figure out what I am. Japanese? Korean? Chinese? Mixed? My appearance seems to provide just enough information to create a guess, but rarely enough to provide an answer.

Then I open my mouth.

And there it is.

American.

I’ve been thinking about culture, identity, and how we develop a sense of belonging. About the assumptions we make about each other and the strange ways a person can simultaneously belong to several worlds without fitting neatly into any of them. 

I think that’s why the name feels right. 

Wherever I go, there seems to be some part of me hiding in plain sight. 

Undercover Miguk.