From the Far East to the Midwest

Hour 7 Journalism | The Harbinger Online

Written by Clara Ma

On April 24, 1995, a boy named Chang Yoo-Bin was born to a Korean couple in Tae Gu, South Korea. He had dark brown eyes and dark brown hair. Today, that boy’s name is Timothy Whittaker. He is 16-years-old.

Tim is a junior at Shawnee Mission East. He’s an American that is a part of an American family, and he’s also an ethnic Korean. Under all that, Tim is just a boy who longs to know more about the place he comes from. In the past few years, Tim has struggled to make Korea a bigger part of his life.

Seven months after Tim was born, he was adopted by Americans John and Anne Whittaker. He was taken along with dozens of other babies to Seoul, South Korea, where military personnel brought him to the U.S.

“I remember when we first held Tim in our arms,” Anne said. “It was an emotional moment and I was crying, but I was really happy.”

Being different from the rest of the family hasn’t always been easy. Tim has two younger sisters: Nellie, 15, and Claire, 14; both have curly blond hair and blue eyes.

“When I was little, I was always confused on which crayon to use when I was drawing myself,” Tim said. “I ended up using, like, peach and brown and yellow.”

But having a Korean background has made life all the richer for Tim. His ethnicity has fueled his interest in a number of things, including learning Chinese and martial arts.

At age 10, Tim began to study Tae Kwan Do, a 2000-year-old form of Korean martial arts.

“I eventually stopped learning Tae Kwan Do because it was too pricy,” Tim said, “but my friend Daniel Schulte got me started again last year with martial arts tricking. We looked at videos on YouTube to learn different kinds of tricks.”

Last year, Tim began learning Mandarin Chinese because he wanted to be more linguistically connected with the part of the world he came from.

“I definitely want to be able to speak Korean someday, so last year I decided to take Chinese because they’re similar languages, like stepping stones,” Tim said.

From his interest in Tae Kwan Do and martial arts stemmed a passion for staying fit, exercising and cheerleading.

“I love expressing myself through movement,” Tim said. “I love to dance, do backyard gymnastics, hip-hop, tricking, wushu, and that kind of stuff.”

For now, Tim is content with his life being a balance of his Asian heritage and American upbringing. Cheerleading, for him, is part of what makes that balance.

“I think cheerleading is kind of a combination of [martial arts, gymnastics, and dance]. It lets me show who I am without letting go of martial arts. I do tricking and stuff to stay in shape. Plus, I get to be loud.”

As the only male cheerleader on SM East’s cheer squad, Tim definitely has to be loud for his voice to be heard. The same is true in his own family. Tim and his sisters, like other siblings, don’t always get along.

On a busy Monday morning, a brawl may escalate if they bump into one another on the stairs.

“It’s kind of a love-hate relationship,” Nellie, Tim’s younger sister, said. “But… well, I would do anything for him, I guess.”

Hour 7 Journalism | The Harbinger Online

“I did save her life one time,” Tim added, and his sister smiles sheepishly. “She fell down a well and I heard her screaming— one of her many talents— and pulled her out.”

Every year on December 13, Tim and his family celebrate his “adoption day”. They revisit the stories of Tim’s childhood and his journey to America. For dinner, they have Korean cuisine, including kimchi, a spicy-hot, pungent condiment of fermented vegetables that is served at almost every Korean meal.

Tim, like any other teenager, is still searching for a place in the world. Korea, he says, is an integral part of who he is.

“I definitely want to go back to Korea someday,” he said. “I’d like to meet my biological parents because I want to know where I come from. I want to see why I look the way I look, you know, my facial features and stuff, and why I am the way I am.”