Does K-Town’s Scarlet Chan Look Korean?

Scarlet Chan - Dave Contreras. Permission given for use.

I don’t usually pay attention to reality shows so when it flashed across my Facebook that Scarlet Chan had written something, I thought, “Hey, neato. Let me comment, even though she’ll never read it.”

“I don’t look Korean at all… well according to my mom, but she gave birth to me so her opinion is not valid.“

This is a funny statement coming from a Chinese American girl, but considering her K-Town Reality Show is about a group of Asians hanging out in Koreatown, I could see why people might think that Scarlet would be Korean. But it brought up a perfectly good point: how do Asians identify other Asians? Is this something that white people do in a similar fashion?

Ever hear about how Asians all look alike? I’m sure you have. For Caucasians, defining features that differentiate people are often hair color and eyes; yes, I understand that there are other obvious differences, but on a bigger picture level, that’s what you would look at to identify a person. But Asians all have black hair and black eyes, so that methodology doesn’t quite work out.

But because we have the same color hair and eyes, Asians seem to identify other nationalities with more subtle differences at first glance. Obviously, I haven’t actually done any research into this, and it was just a conversational piece that I had with my wife about identification since usually there are some features that are dominant with certain ethnicities. But back to the question itself: does Scarlet look Korean? And if not, why?

Let’s be honest: This was also a perfect chance to put up a semi-nude shot of Scarlet. Scarlet Chan approved. Boo-yah.