"My Parents Did Their Best": Korean American Social Workers on the Cultural Ethics of Naming Trauma

Background and Purpose

While trauma-informed care (TIC) often centers open disclosure as a pathway to healing, Korean American (KA) clients may experience naming trauma as emotionally risky or morally complicated. Disclosure can conflict with beliefs that uphold suffering as virtue, silence as protection, and family loyalty as moral imperative. This study explores how KA social workers navigate these tensions, illuminating how disclosure is not always experienced as liberating but as ethically fraught. Drawing from participants’ experiences, this study examines the cultural logics and ethical dilemmas surrounding trauma recognition and naming in KA communities.

Methods

Using hermeneutic phenomenology, this qualitative study engaged 13 KA social workers in two rounds of semi-structured, in-depth interviews (26 total). Data were thematically analyzed through a cultural-ecological and ethical lens with attention to the internalized cultural scripts that shaped disclosure dynamics.

Results

Participants identified multiple cultural narratives that made trauma naming complex:

Suffering is virtuous: Naming harm may feel dishonorable or weak.

Protect family honor: Disclosure can feel disloyal, especially when parents are idealized or viewed as survivors.

Avoid shame: Family secrecy contracts and stigma discourage open discussion.

Others had it worse: Internalized trauma hierarchies lead to self-minimization.

Talking about it makes it real: Verbalizing pain may be feared to intensify it.

That’s just how things were: Normalization of systemic or generational harm blurs the line between survival and trauma.

Respect elders: Hierarchical structures make it difficult to name harm caused by authority figures.

One participant explained: "It’s almost like a badge of honor, 'I went through something really hard, but it wasn’t trauma. I can just keep going.'"

Another noted: "There’s this guilt that comes with saying something was traumatic, like, 'My parents did their best, how can I say that?'"

Rather than dismissing disclosure altogether, participants described using nunchi to discern whether naming trauma would be helpful or harmful, drawing on culturally resonant concepts such as han, and at times honoring silence as a form of care.

Conclusions and Implications

This study challenges the assumption that naming trauma is universally empowering. For KA clients, cultural, moral, and familial values shape whether and how trauma becomes speakable. Social workers must recognize when silence reflects protection rather than denial, and approach trauma naming as an ethical process informed by cultural logics. Trauma-informed frameworks should acknowledge alternative pathways to healing that reflect the lived experience of bicultural populations navigating loyalty, silence, and resilience. Culturally responsive practice must move beyond tailoring interventions for disclosure toward reimagining care that centers diverse ways of surviving, remembering, and making meaning.