Korean culture is having something of a renaissance at the moment. And like the rest of the country, North Texans are jumping at opportunities to immerse themselves in what Korea has to offer.
If you look at it briefly from the window of a moving car, the shopping center off Old Denton Road in Carrollton seems like any other strip mall: a block of bland suburban real estate that would normally host insurance agencies, office supply stores or, if you’re lucky, your preferred pizza chain. But the area more commonly known as Carrollton Koreatown transcends the unremarkable buildings.
Like the rest of the country, North Texans are jumping at opportunities to immerse themselves in what Korea has to offer. Special interest groups on Facebook such as “DFW Kpop” and “Asian Grub in DFDub” boast thousands of active members. K-pop groups in particular have become a resource for locals looking to buy and sell tickets and merch as well as a space to find local fan events.
The magnitude of fandoms represented in the shop may be overwhelming to the uninitiated, so it’s no surprise the staff are dedicated K-pop fans themselves. This isn’t the first time that a foreign country’s pop culture has captured the imagination of Americans. In the 2000s, all things Japanese were in vogue. The internet was leading to an increased availability of anime and manga series while also bringing attention to Japanese street fashion, and the music industry took note of this trend.
For one Dallasite, an appreciation for all of these things inspired her to take a job half a world way.Carly May GravleyZeinab Aly grew up in the suburbs of Dallas. She graduated from Plano West High School, studied business and vocal performance at Southern Methodist University and landed a highly desirable job at a “Big Four” accounting firm in downtown Dallas after she graduated.
“I just really didn’t know what to do,” she says of this period in her life. “I got the dream. Everyone aims for Big Four. Everyone aims for the big consulting firms. But I didn’t want to do that.” “I have an Egyptian-American background. My parents are immigrants and not very diverse in their palate,” she says over FaceTime. “So me and my brother would branch out and be like, ‘We really like Asian food now.’ As we got older, we were able to differentiate and say we wanted Korean food.”
The pandemic led to many workers questioning how much of their time and energy they should be dedicating to their jobs. “The Great Resignation” and “quiet quitting” are just a couple terms used to describe how people are re-evaluating their work-life balance. Aly was part of this movement. She quit her consulting job to find work that fulfilled her.
Helen Kim handles a traditional Korean drum, which is incorporated into the school’s culture lessons.The New Korean School of Dallas aims to teach more than a language. While classes are open to everyone, the institution was initially established as a resource for the local Korean-American community, a place where second- or third-generation immigrants, adoptees and people of mixed race could connect with their heritage.
And this widespread love of Korean media is driving throngs of non-Korean North Texans to take up classes. What unites the “pressure-cooker people” of previous generations and the TikTok beauty influencers today is an acute awareness that this is Korea’s time. Decades of work have led to this moment, and Koreans are rising to the occasion. Boy bands may come and go, but Korea’s influence as a cultural force is here to stay.“Learning about the history made me understand the Korean people a lot more,” she says of the cultural values imbedded in her lessons.
Nine months in, she’s more comfortable with day-to-day interactions. Though she doesn’t know what her long-term career goals are, Aly plans to teach in Korea for another year to build up her proficiency. She ironically notes that though she doesn’t have a formal degree in education, her opera training — the less conventionally practical of her two SMU degrees — gives her an advantage while teaching diction to her students.
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