My wife, first time voter

I was born in communist Poland, and I remember the sham of a voting process my parents had to go through. Basically, they had to go voting, but there was only one party to vote for, and if you didn't vote or made your vote invalid, you’d get into trouble.

So once we moved to Germany, election day was a very important day in my family. We would dress up nicely and accompany our parents to the polling station. Later, when I was of age, I would continue this new tradition for myself too, both in Germany, where I had full voting rights and voted for the national government two or three times, and also in Sweden, where I at least could vote for the local government. So, even though theoretically I was in the free west, most of my life I somehow lived somewhere where I couldn’t quite vote like everyone else.

Now I’m in South Korea, and today they are electing the new president after the previous one got impeached because he installed martial law. And here again, I am not allowed to vote.

My wife was born in communist China, and there she was obviously not allowed to vote either. After she moved to Korea, she was still a Chinese citizen, so as a foreigner, she was still not allowed to vote.

But last year, she finally became Korean, like her grandparents were who fled to China because of WWII and Japan attacking Busan and the other cities in the south of Korea.

So today, it was her first time in her life that she was allowed to vote. I proposed to continue the tradition my parents invented, and we waited until our daughter was back from school, put on nice clothes, and went to the close-by school where they set up a polling station.

I really wanted especially our teenage daughter to see that active participation in the democratic process is something important to us and that we treat it with the respect it deserves. Many people in the world don't have the privilege to shape the future of the place they live in – including me.

Anyway, congratulations for finally getting to vote in a general election of your country, my love!