{ "archive_path": "archive/1789034643.692007", "base_url": "www.bellanaija.com/2026/09/i-love-how-nigeria-makes-me-feel-how-renee-ju-a-south-korean-found-home-in-nigeria", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-10 10:04", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.bellanaija.com/2026/09/i-love-how-nigeria-makes-me-feel-how-renee-ju-a-south-korean-found-home-in-nigeria", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.bellanaija.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.bellanaija.com/2026/09/i-love-how-nigeria-makes-me-feel-how-renee-ju-a-south-korean-found-home-in-nigeria/index.html" }, "domain": "www.bellanaija.com", "extension": "", "hash": "1P96BPCGMVHC856QVP85", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.bellanaija.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:22:13.684492+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034643.692007", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:22:13.238960+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.bellanaija.com/2026/09/i-love-how-nigeria-makes-me-feel-how-renee-ju-a-south-korean-found-home-in-nigeria/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:22:14.406800+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034643.692007", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:22:13.692984+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.bellanaija.com/2026/09/i-love-how-nigeria-makes-me-feel-how-renee-ju-a-south-korean-found-home-in-nigeria/" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:23:13.109212+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789034643.692007", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-10T16:23:07.250203+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpv289_kyc", "https://www.bellanaija.com/2026/09/i-love-how-nigeria-makes-me-feel-how-renee-ju-a-south-korean-found-home-in-nigeria/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-10T16:23:07.239355+00:00", "index_texts": [ "The everyday story you hear is about Nigerians exploring every possible means to relocate abroad. As this article asks, what is the Nigerian dream beyond relocation? If you ask many Nigerians today what their ultimate dream is, \u201cjapa\u201d, the Yoruba word for relocation, will likely come up in one form or another.\nBut while many Nigerians dream of building a life abroad, foreigners from different parts of the world are also finding a reason to call Nigeria home, a word or phrase that, for some Nigerians at home and abroad, has become increasingly difficult to say. Renee Ju (of victorandrenee), a South Korean, is one of those foreigners.\nRenee moved to Nigeria for work in 2021. A few years later, she is married to a Nigerian, Victor Babatunde Yamuso, and together they have welcomed a child, Roi Ifeya. What began as a move to a country that initially felt unfamiliar to Renee has grown into a life of love, family and a deeper connection to Nigeria.\nIn this conversation, Renee tells me about what brought her to Nigeria, the cultural shocks she experienced when she arrived, how she fell in love with Nigerian culture, meeting Victor, becoming a mother, and why Nigeria has come to feel like home.\n\nHello Renee. How are you feeling today?\nHey, hey! Thank you so much for having me here. I feel on top of my toes to be gisting about my life with you!\nLove that! Tell me, when and why did you move from South Korea to Nigeria? \nI moved to Nigeria for work at Samsung Electronics in Lagos in 2021. It was my very first time on the vibrant African continent. To be honest, as soon as I arrived at the airport, I wanted to go back to my country because everything was too different from where I came from, a country of (sometimes too many) set rules. But when I began working with my Nigerian colleagues and mingling with them every chance I got, everything started to look different. The energy, laughter, attitude, the philosophy, and so much more. Nothing can stop them from living their best life.\n\nThat is Nigerians for you. We always try to stay positive, no matter what. How did your family take the news of you relocating to Nigeria?\nWell, they were shocked at my idea of working in Nigeria. My sister even started talking to everyone she could find on LinkedIn who had been to Nigeria, and to her surprise, they were all in one voice: let her go to Nigeria. She will have her best time there.\nAnd you\u2019re having your best time\nYes, I am. Yes, I am, haha.\nWhat do you remember about your first day or first few days in Nigeria?\nAt that time, COVID was still in the picture, so I stayed in quarantine mode in a hotel in Lagos for two weeks. I didn\u2019t get to experience much of \u2018life\u2018 yet then, but I remember being shocked at the yellowish, metallic water running down the basin in one of the most luxurious hotels. (No offence o.)\n\nHaha, we can explain the water situation. But after you were able to start enjoying the Nigerian life, what were some of the first things about Nigeria that surprised or shocked you? \nThe parties surprised me!\nNigeria is a party country, haha\nSee, even Nigerian marriage looked like one, which is vastly different from Korea. Nigerians are so passionate about enjoying life, and being with them lifted me up like never before. The most difficult thing to adjust to was the number of hours of church service. Wow, it could easily stretch to three or five hours.\n\nDon\u2019t blame us; we love God\nAs I do too!\nHaha. So, how did you settle in?\nIt was the people who made Nigeria my home gradually. To be precise, my ex-colleagues. Not because I saw them every day, but because anytime I needed them, they were there, not as colleagues but as friends and family. I laughed and cried with them.\nLove that! As you spent more time in Nigeria, what were some of the things you began to love about the country?\nWhat I love most about Nigeria is the way Nigeria makes me feel. Every emotion was so raw and unfiltered to the extent that it makes you live life with every cell in your body. I don\u2019t know how to explain it, but if I must try, it was as though if I were a fish, I was finally unleashed into the water, although the water was maybe lagoon water, but at least I wasn\u2019t anymore sitting in one display corner in one nice supermarket.\nI really like that metaphor. But let me quickly ask you this: How did you meet Victor, and what do you remember about your first interactions with him?\nI first met Victor at a beach concert at Landmark. (By the way, why did Nigeria allow Landmark to be demolished? Abeg!) It was far from love at first sight for me, although it was for him. He was just a friend to me, and because then, I had already submitted my resignation letter, I was trying to enjoy life more, hanging out with my friends more often, including him, at that beachside. As I got to know him more, I saw that delicately caring person in Victor that was first hidden from his \u2018bush\u2019 beard, and that was when I realised maybe it could develop into something more than friendship.\n\nAnd it did. It beautifully became more than a friendship. What was that transition like for you? What did marriage teach you about navigating two different cultures within one relationship?\nMy transition as a Korean newbie in Nigeria into \u2018Iyawo wa\u2019 here was quite smooth, actually, despite some culture shocks. My upbringing, as well as travelling all over the world in my 20s, made me such a highly adaptable person that even Koreans don\u2019t understand some life decisions I make; and my life taught me it\u2019s totally okay and even a luxury to just be myself. But navigating marriage and even bringing a life into this world in Nigeria was a whole different challenge. Before, cultural differences were a spice to our relationship. But with a baby especially, it means two values and two prides clashing. So, to answer your question, marriage and a child taught us one thing: God.\nBut every moment leading to now was so valuable and uneasy on its own. And I know nothing great comes easy. It\u2019s making me stronger and wiser as a person, as God only gives me the cross I can carry, however heavy it\u2019s been.\n\nHow has becoming a mother and building a family in Nigeria changed the way you see the country, your identity, and your relationship with both Korean and Nigerian culture?\nNigeria is now my child\u2019s MOTHERland. It\u2019s where Victor and I went through 9 months of pregnancy and birthing together to meet this beautifully mixed little human. Nigeria is no longer a country where I simply have fun shouting \u201cFisi Fisi\u201d in the marketplace. It\u2019s a home for our family, and I now call it \u2018my country \u2019, and you all are my people. Whatever the people go through in this land, they are my concerns too. No matter where our family is, Nigeria will always be in our hearts and is a place to come back to.\nIf you think about the woman who first arrived in Nigeria and compare her with who you are today, what has this journey changed about you?\nI learnt how privileged I was to have all the freedom to explore across the globe and how silly I had been thinking it was not something special because I am not from a wealthy family. This country humbled me. This country moved me. The journey has impacted the meaning and purpose of my life. I am sure God sent me here for a reason, and I am excited to see what I will do for this nation. And what does Nigeria mean to me? A child suddenly comes to my heart. 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