Maiya Li was born to a Koryoin (ethnic Korean) dad and a Kazakh mom, and grew up in a small town in rural Kazakhstan with very few Koreans around. Born the year Kazakhstan declared independence from the USSR, Russian was her first language and Kazakh her second. She came to Korea to study in her early twenties looking for some answers to her heritage.  

When I approached her for this interview, she told me "she sometimes feels like she belongs nowhere in particular" since she's considered Korean in Kazakhstan while in Korea she's seen as a foreigner. I immediately knew her story would fit right into the spectrum of third-culture kid narratives here on the show. 

Maiya talked about her multicultural upbringing, her comfort food beshbarmak (бешбармак), living in Korea, and how Russia's war on Ukraine has been troubling post-Soviet countries including Kazakhstan. 

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