Conscious Living

Essay Collection: Recordings from Seoul. (Summer 2025).

*The introduction has been updated in September 2025.

Hi everyone — it’s here.
I’m grateful to share Recordings from Seoul — a new collection of essays I wrote during a recent trip to South Korea. What began as reflective notes on memory evolved into something more layered: a written homecoming across time, identity, and legacy.

I’m EJ Elena Shin — an impact investor and writer shaped by a transnational life. Born in Seoul, educated in Toronto and New York, and shaped by time with German and Israeli host families, I now live in London, navigating the space between expat and immigrant. For over two decades, I built a global career in finance while distancing myself from Korean cultural spaces.

I left Seoul at 14, on my own. It was a pivotal and necessary move away from rigid hierarchies and expectations, especially for women. For years I kept my distance from the Korean language and customs — not out of indifference, but as a way to protect and redefine myself. When people asked me about Korea, or for travel and K-pop recommendations, it used to hurt and trigger me. I had been disconnected for 22 years, and for me, Korea was not a place of light entertainment but of sorrow, silence, and escape.

Part of that pain is historical. Korea has a rich history spanning 5,000 years. However, with the arrival of Confucianism in the late 13th century, women’s rights were systematically dismantled: inheritance, property, education, and divorce rights were stripped away. Women’s existence was reduced to bearing sons, their voices suppressed, and violence normalized to the point of saying “wives and dogs should be beaten every three days.” That legacy ran deep in family, culture, and psyche.

In the midst of this, I also came to see that I had been living in a kind of limbo — suspended between worlds. Not entirely white, not entirely Korean. I tried to assimilate into Western culture, believing that erasing my Korean identity was the only way to stay relevant in Western spaces. But now I realize I don’t need to choose. I can be both Korean and American, and also Canadian and British — carrying the fullness of my identity without apology.

During the pandemic, something shifted. I began reconnecting with Korean food, community, and stories. Slowly, shame loosened its hold. On this recent visit, the healing accelerated. I realized I had always carried deeply Korean values within me — the principles of ancestors, even of Joseon queens — but frozen in time, out of sync with a culture that had evolved in my absence. Writing became a way to bridge that distance.

This collection marks a turning point — a reconciliation.
It is not memoir, but emotional cartography. Writing here became an act of repair: reclaiming voice, body, and belonging on my own terms. For the first time, I no longer find Korean language or culture triggering. What once felt like exile now feels like re-integration — with the past, and with the parts of myself I had left behind.

This is a love letter to my ancestors — to my grandmothers and the women who came before them. My lineage stretches far: my mother’s line back to 57 B.C., my father’s to the 9th century.

If you’ve ever wrestled with diaspora, legacy, or the question of what it means to return — I hope this offers a moment of resonance. A little more held. A little more seen.

Thank you for holding space for my voice.
And when was the last time you wrote — just because?