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I have lived in several cities in three different countries (United States, Taiwan and South Korea). Seoul is the first city to choose me.
On Dec. 9 at a ceremony in downtown Seoul, I was awarded Seoul Honorary Citizenship for my work with North Korean refugees.
Seoul has been my favorite city for a while, even beating out my hometown of Missouri City, Texas. In my seven stages of a relationship with Seoul, the honeymoon period has arrived three decades after I first made a short visit here and left with no plans of ever returning.
Seoul began honoring non-Koreans with honorary citizenship back in 1958. Predictably, most of the early awardees were U.S. military personnel or others with a military connection. South Korea was known then for bombs, not BTS.
A scholar who studies the award winners over six decades would probably find that the types of awardees have changed as Seoul has changed. As Seoul has become an international city that is no longer military-first, it has also expanded to honor more non-military personnel from other countries. There have been 914 people awarded Seoul Honorary Citizenship; 206 of them have been Americans. There are now about 145,000 Americans living in South Korea out of a foreign population of about 2 million. Of the 18 people honored earlier this month, I was the only American.
In 1962, Ms. Grover Thomas was presented with honorary Seoul citizenship by the mayor of Seoul, Maj. Gen. Yoon Tai-il (yes, the mayor was a high-ranking military general). Ms. Thomas had been a teacher at the U.S. artillery school at Fort Still, Okla. According to a news report, she had befriended more than 1,000 South Korean army officers, including Gen. Park Chung-hee, who would later go on to select himself as president of the country. She visited South Korea in 1962 and met with Gen. Park, then chairman of the ruling military junta, and Gen. Kim Chon-o, South Korea's army chief of staff.
In 1965, Mayor Tehi-Yung Yun presented Seoul Honorary Citizenship posthumously to American Marine Corps Pfc Walter Monegan Jr., who was killed in September 1950 after knocking out six North Korean tanks with a bazooka.
Some celebrities have been honored for their connections to South Korea. In 1968, media around the world reported when Pearl Buck, the Nobel prize-winning U.S. author, received a golden "key of luck" and a certificate of honorary Seoul citizenship from Mayor Kim Hyun-ok. She also visited an "opportunity center" near Seoul, which was operated by the Pearl S. Buck Foundation helping orphans born of American GIs and Koreans.
Some people have been honored by Seoul for things that weren't achievements for the city or country. In 1973, honorary Seoul citizenship was presented to Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a British couple who spent four months adrift in the Pacific Ocean aboard an open raft. Their yacht had sunk after being hit by an injured whale. The couple was rescued by the 650-ton Wolmi-ho ship off Guatemala.
As delighted as I am that Seoul has chosen to honor me, I will point out that Seoul didn't choose me quickly. In the last decade that I have lived in Seoul, others have been awarded honorary citizenship ahead of me, including Harvard professor Michael Sandel, Rev. Dr. Bernice King (daughter of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), and leaders of countries (e.g., Costa Rica, Poland, Israel) and mayors of cities such as Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Tallin (Estonia).
In an example of how times have changed racially in South Korea, former football star Hines Ward was awarded Seoul Honorary Citizenship in 2006 by Lee Myung-bak (then mayor of Seoul and later president of South Korea). According to news reports, Ward, the son of a Black American soldier and a Korean mother, wept and apologized for not previously embracing his Korean heritage after having a tough childhood.
Ward donated $1 million to the Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation and another $50,000 to the Pearl S. Buck Foundation (named after the 1968 Seoul Honorary Citizenship awardee).
Unlike Ward, I didn't cry and had nothing to regret, apologize for or have mixed feelings about. The city recognized the work I have done with FSI co-founder Eunkoo Lee and more than 1,200 volunteers and numerous donors to empower North Korean refugees. I have received awards recently from the Hansarang Rural Cultural Foundation (2017), Challenge Korea in 2018 and 2019, the Korea Hana Foundation (2021) and now Seoul Honorary Citizenship (2022) for my work empowering North Korean refugees.
I received my latest award, posed for photos with the vice-mayor and later with the other attendees. I took photos with some of the South Koreans and North Korean refugees who have helped make Seoul my favorite city in the world.
Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is co-founder with Lee Eun-koo of Freedom Speakers International (FSI) and co-author with Han Song-mi of "Greenlight to Freedom."
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