The Korea Society is located on the corner of Fifty-Seventh Street and Third Avenue in the same building with a bank. For a moment, I think I must be in the wrong place but then see the colorful signs ushering me to the eighth floor. I check in at the front desk, and the woman attendant points me towards a small classroom. I walk slowly, examining all the exhibits along the way, but I pause the longest in front of a display of Korean dresses. The placard reads, “Traditional Korean hanbok worn on special occasions.” They’re so colorful. Pinks, reds, greens, and blues all together in one dress with a short jacket over the top. I wonder what I’d look like in something like this.
The classroom is small and only a few people are seated here, mostly white men with their smartphones out, texting away, but there’s a woman about my age, maybe a little younger, sitting next to them reading, so I sit next to her. She has chin length, dark brown hair, clipped back on one side, a strong wave hooking a curl right over her cheek. She might be Indian or Middle Eastern, I think. She flips the page in her book and a stack of thin, gold bangle bracelets clink on her right wrist. Sitting up higher in her chair, she adjusts her red blouse in the process. We glance at each other and say “hi” briefly but she goes back to her book so I pull out my iPhone.