Editor's Note

Editor’s Note

June 29, 2024 by raistlin

Familiar people and activities and the orderly nature of fall | By Martha Vickery (Fall 2022)

*Minnesota 2022 Kimchi Festival. Photo by Kim Jackson*

In addition to visual cues, like geese practice-flying in a chevron shape in the sky or noticing less
pavement on a favorite walking trail as it gets covered with leaves, there are some energy cues that
signify fall is coming. I sense a certain sense of order about fall, some urges to get mentally organized for
the work ahead. Even for those of us who are no longer affected by school schedules, the instinct to get with it happens anyway as vacations come to a close, and we set our minds to being back at work again.

I also found myself tentatively thinking that perhaps, after two-and-a-half years of pandemic ups and
downs, things are getting back to normal. Or at least, in a state of new normal. Certain activities, like
outdoor festivals in late summer and early fall gave me a sense of old times.

*Some of the 2022 Minnesota Kimchi Festival kimchi competition entries. Photos by Kim Jackson*

One of the days I felt most normal was the day of the Kimchi Festival, presented by Adoptee Hub, a service and educational group by and for adult Korean adoptees, devoted to social services and cultural enrichment specifically tailored to them. The Kimchi Festival, although designed to provide fun access to Korean culture for Korean adoptees through food, was also of interest to a wide audience.

There was a sense of newness because there has never been a Kimchi Festival in Minnesota before. This was the first one, although Adoptee Hub wants it to be an annual event. It was fun to see the Kimchi Contest judges, volunteers from the Korean American Women’s Association, sit down before a bemused audience to give a little critique of the kimchi samples entered into the contest. It may have been a first-time experience for all of us to hear the results of a kimchi contest. Some were “a little salty,” or “a little fishy,” and a couple of the samples, including one made with asparagus, were pronounced to be “innovative.”

There was also a sense of newness because the Twin Cities Korean American community was showing up to its own large-scale in-person event for the first time in a few years. There were vendors, performers, churches, and community groups. It felt both new and old, and both strange and familiar at the same time.

For me, it was super-fun because I had to stop about every two feet as I walked along, to talk to
someone I knew and had not seen since before the pandemic. It was so satisfying to see so many of the
same people again; to know they were the same and see that they were OK.

The food was good too. I was having one of those moments of joy, resting at an outside table after
getting a couple kimchi samples, when a Korean American guy I did not know sat down next to me and we exchanged a few bits of small talk. One of the things he said was “Isn’t it great to just see the people?” I knew what he meant – it was not only great to see any people having fun at an outdoor event
together, it was also special for me and my Korean family members and friends to see so many Korean
faces at the same event. I felt somehow relieved. Intellectually, I knew the folks were still there. But, yes, it was great to just see them.

At the end of 2016, the year after the Adoptee Citizenship Act was first introduced, adoptees and allies from across the country travelled to Washington DC for an Adoptee Citizenship Day of Action, at which they delivered more than 35,000 postcards from supporters of their nationwide advocacy campaign.

Another event in of the fall involves government getting back into gear. I spent some time delving into
the progress of the Adoptee Citizenship Act (ACA) which would confer automatic citizenship on all
international adoptees, irrespective of their age or date of adoption. It would also bring home all
adoptees who have been deported to their country of origin. In 2022, the ACA made more progress than it has ever made in its seven-year history. It was passed in the House of Representatives in February,
then went to the Senate and was stripped from a bigger bill.

To bolster support for the bill, the lobbying group Adoptees for Justice (A4J) sought and received
support at the state level, including a resolution from the conservative state of Utah to unanimously
support the ACA and call for its U.S. Senators to get behind it. It still could get through in the last months
of the 2022 session of Congress. A4J is urging all supporters to tell their Senators to step up and support
it.

Kudos to Sara Jones, a community organizer and Korean adoptee along with all her allies in the Utah
business and government community for all the work needed to get their resolution through the state
legislation. Bi-partisan cooperation can happen!

*Dexieng Dae Yang and Laura Anderson in **The Humans**.*

Also among the fall 2020 stories are reviews of two recent live theater productions that put a new spin
on famous plays. One at Park Square Theater, was The Humans, a Tony-award-winning play that has
seen many productions in many theaters. This one was staged and casted by dramaturg Katie Bradley, a
Korean adoptee, to show this family drama as a family with two Asian daughters. Although nothing new
is added to the play, the substitution of two Asian daughters and one Black boyfriend, instead of a
white family whose members racially match, sends a different kind of message to the audience about
the nature of the drama.

Cast, directors and production crew of **Death of a Salesman**: (Front row left to right) Katie Bradley, Adelin Phelps, Christopher Thomas Pow, Greg Watanabe, Rich Remedios, Kevin Fanshaw, Ajah Williams; and (back row left to right): Rick Shiomi, Seth Patterson, Lily Tung Crystal, Eric Sharp, Olivia Wilusz.

Similarly, Theater Mu’s recent staged reading of the classic Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman,
directed by local actor/playwright Eric Sharp ( a Korean adoptee) in collaboration with Seth Patterson
and Theater 45, flipped the script on this well-known story of the failed American dream with an all-
Asian cast. Having live theater back is another great joy for Twin Citians as we step into a seemingly fragile new-normal environment.

As we enter the last quarter of 2022, we have to reflect on what a big year it has been for KQ and for all
who support us, as we transitioned from paper and online editions to 100 percent online with a new
digital archive still on the way. Before the end of the tax year, please consider a donation to help KQ
continue to bring this independent, volunteer-driven journal to you into the future. Thanks readers!

About focus

June 20, 2023 by Martha Vickery

Achieving it, sustaining it, and appreciating its gifts | By Martha Vickery (Spring 2023)

*Woman Cross DMZ members and supporters demonstrate for peace at Gwanghwamun plaza in Seoul, 2019. (Photo by Stephen Wunrow)*

The week that the pandemic was declared to be over was the week I had my first (and hopefully only) bout of COVID.

It was load of irony and misery together. That the pandemic was over officially was apparently never announced to the COVID virus, which keeps on spreading in stealth mode as we all soldier on, trying to believe we are in a post-pandemic era. Just goes to show you how much you should believe from the media, or from bureaucracy.

For the record, I had called a pharmacist a couple weeks before the fateful positive test to propose it might be time for a third booster, but she said she was not authorized to administer third doses yet. Two weeks later, I tested myself after a long flight and guess what?

During my eight or nine days of full-blown sickness, I was in denial about being sick (when I wasn’t taking an unscheduled nap) and determined to spend a few hours a day working from home. It wasn’t a great idea though, because my focus, along with access to my sinuses, was shut down. I would forget things people just told me and lose objects I had just put down. At one point, I heard a voice in my headset gently say “Umm, could you mute?” as I banged around in the kitchen, forgetting I was listening in on a work call. I was like an actor who is pretending to work.

However, when I could finally breathe normally and smell things again, my lack of focus persisted along with a dragging fatigue. The grip of COVID brain fog persisted. I never felt rested, and was falling asleep at 7 or 8 p.m., a time when I am usually just getting going. I had worried thoughts of “why can’t I get with it?”

I made more elaborate lists, reviewing my calendar to prepare for next day’s schedule. It helped, but it’s nothing like naturally knowing what day it is, what time it is, and how the course of events is going to play out. I stepped up my activity during the times I was feeling energetic and wide awake, knowing there were a limited number of hours before I crashed.

It was bewildering.

Then recently, my focus and energy, were suddenly back to near-normal. It was such a relief.

We don’t miss it until it’s gone. That is true of many ordinary things, but I never thought, until just recently, that I would ever miss the ability to focus and plan.

The experience taught me a better understanding of the “long-COVID” sufferers, who have persistent brain fog and many other debilitating long-term symptoms. I could see how that condition could quickly dilute a purposeful life into one of just hanging on from day to day.

I also thought about how focus is a primary skill. It drives our productivity, our sense of purpose, our feelings of accomplishment. There is a teaching in yoga that “energy follows thought,” which means we cannot achieve a goal until we can direct our focused energy toward it. Thoughts may be just thoughts, but every goal begins with one. Life’s most important achievements require long-term thinking – lack of focus robs us of that capability.

This year marks the 70^th anniversary of the Korean War’s armistice. On the topic of focus, the policy approach of the U.S. towards North Korea over the years has been inconsistent, dilute and contradictory, kind of a “long COVID” process of (non) policymaking. Informed Korea watchers agree – there have been no concrete achievements, basically, in the last 70 years.

Looking at KQ’s issue of spring 2013 for our running column on 10 Years Ago in KQ, the same on-again, off-again policy of what the Obama Administration called “strategic patience” and what the Trump administration made a show of but did nothing to fix, is still with us today, with the Biden Administration focused on the other side of the world. The hot war in Ukraine, and the new leader we love to hate – Putin – makes the Korea relations issue seem long ago and far away.

But that’s not the case. There is a severe ongoing human cost, not to mention the huge economic cost on us, the taxpayers, of ignoring a war that was never concluded with a peace treaty, and never resolved with normal diplomatic relations.

A symptom of this cost is the brinksmanship that South Korean and U.S. forces get into regularly by carrying out war games in the disputed waters between North and South Korea – it happened again recently. There is frequently news reporting when North Korea shoots a ballistic missile into the sea, as it did last week, but no reporting on the precipitating circumstances of that missile test – that North Korea is afraid and angry about the war games taking place right off its shores. What nation would not be?

Many peace organizations have been at it for much longer than 10 years ago, pushing for a formal end to the war. There have been so many peace actions, Congressional lobbies, conferences, and educational forums over the years. By now, we should have a well-educated Congress, which nonetheless continues to take no action on this important diplomatic issue.

*Women Cross DMZ march along the DMZ navigating between the barbed wire and road obstructions and (right) Women Cross DMZ director, Christine Ahn at the DMZ in 2019. (Photos by Stephen Wunrow)*

In 2015, a global group of women peace activists held rallies and marches in both North and South Korea, and crossed the DMZ from North to South. That group, Women Cross DMZ, is still hard at work, and is the chief organizer of a coalition behind the upcoming 70^th anniversary event in Washington, DC, July 26 through 28, which will urge the government to focus its energy on a peace treaty (see calendar item).

Women Cross DMZ, with coalition partners, has moved the needle towards peace over the years, standing in for the voice of marginalized survivors of the war, particularly separated families, and for the concerned next generation, who feel at risk of a new war in their lifetimes. However, really moving legislators and diplomats to work on a peace treaty requires more – it will take sustained focus and a collective political will to get things done. Some stakeholders and lawmakers are motivated and on board, but not enough of them.

In other business of the last quarter, the so-called “trifecta” state legislatures (where the House, Senate and governor are all dominated by the same party), got a rare opportunity to focus in on important business and work at top speed this legislative session. There are currently 17 Democratic trifectas, (four more than last year) and 22 Republican trifecta states — about the same for Republicans as it has been for many years.

This year, Minnesota is one of the new trifecta state governments, with the House and Senate dominated by the Democrats, with Democratic governor Tim Walz pushing an ambitious agenda. A new bill signing was publicized once or twice a week, and with a huge budget surplus of an estimated $17 billion, there was a lot of money to throw at the state’s neglected infrastructure and social programs.

*Members of the Minnesota Asian Pacific Caucus (MAP Caucus)*.

Minnesota’s Asian Pacific Caucus (the MAP Caucus) announced early on this year that it would be a good session to work on bills to benefit the Asian American community and the larger community of new immigrants and people of color. With a deadline of perhaps only one session to enjoy the speed and efficiency of a trifecta government, Minnesota Democratic legislators worked with purpose and focus, passing a volume of social program bills that have been called unprecedented in the state’s history.

Certain bills were aimed at uplifting and celebrating Asian Minnesotans and other people of color, including a bill to make ethnic studies a requirement for high school graduation (with a two-year phase-in period). A bill was also passed to supply small operational grants to ethnic non-profits, the kind of grant help that can fund a salary or plan a program, so that smaller non-profits can compete with large organizations for larger state, federal or corporate grants. The Coalition of Asian American Leaders was a key resource for that bill.

There was also a hate crimes recognition/training bill that I first reported on during the 2020 legislative session. Knowing how to charge and prosecute for hate crimes was a first step. Among other provisions, the bill will fund training for law enforcement staff, to help them to recognize (and act appropriately on) a hate crime when they see one. It was a slow roll-out over several years, but it finally passed in 2023.

Other bills targeted to make life easier for all parents of young children also became law, including a universal pre-kindergarten program, a grant to make school breakfasts and lunches free for all kids, and a paid family and medical leave bill, so that workers can be paid for time off for a medical condition, or for a new child or other family transition. The Child Care Aware bill will supply child care assistance, child care workforce support, licensing changes, and funds to build up infrastructure and technology. The legislature also passed the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, which protects the right to abortion in our state, and also addresses maternity care, family planning and fertility services.

Other laws were passed that will particularly help new Minnesotans and the marginalized, including a bill to make it possible for ex-felons to get their voting rights restored to them, and one that eliminates the requirement to be a citizen in order to get a driver’s license.

Sometimes hard work barely bends the arc toward justice, as with many peace initiatives that need to sustain a long view of what is progress. At other times, the way is cleared for a short but intense flurry of productivity. In any case, no one’s efforts should be judged completely on the results that come from it. Even the bills that seemed to get passed in a hurry took years to develop and put down roots before coming to fruition in the social policy-friendly climate of 2023. Sustained focus toward a goal is hard work.

In Washington, DC, starting July 26, peace activists will educate, rally and support each other as they have for many years, to agitate for the political will to bring a peaceful resolution to a very long war. Maintaining the focus and enthusiasm for short-term or very long-term goals, is as paramount in social justice pursuits, as it is in our individual lives. Whether it’s international peace-building or a state social programs agenda, getting things done might be a simple formula, but it is never easy.

After a tragic Lunar New Year, hope

March 11, 2023 by Martha Vickery

Minnesota’s Asian American caucus steps up with bills to recognize hate crimes, curb gun violence | By Martha Vickery (Winter/Spring 2023)

The Minnesota Asian Pacific caucus: Rep. Ethan Cha, Sen. Susan Pha, Sen. Foung Hawj, Rep. Fue Lee, Rep. Liz Lee, Rep. Kaohly Vang Her, Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura, Rep. Samantha Vang, Rep. Jay Xiong and Sen. Tou Xiong.

In a race against time, Minnesota’s legislature, with its slim Democratic majority in House and Senate, along with its Democratic governor Tim Walz, is engaged this winter in a fast-changing session, working on bills at a quick pace, as can only be done in a so-called “trifecta” state. The roster of bills is a hopeful one, featuring many that will improve life for marginalized Minnesotans, including children, elders, new immigrants, and the poor.

Trifecta as it applies to politics was a new word to me this year, maybe because it is such a rare occurrence in our state. A trifecta state is one in which a House majority, Senate majority and the state’s governor are all of the same party. Nationwide, it is not so rare, but it is in Minnesota. The last time there was a Minnesota trifecta was in 1990, which was also accomplished with a very slim majority of the Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) party for one session.

There are currently 22 Republican trifecta states and 17 Democratic ones in the country. There are 11 divided governments in which neither party holds trifecta control, according to the website Ballotpedia. In 2022, Democrats flipped the Michigan legislature from red to blue, and gained governorships to achieve trifectas in Massachusetts and Maryland. Dems also retained the control of the legislatures in Colorado, Maine, Nevada and Oregon.

*.MAP caucus town hall forum for Asian American community, held February 17.*

Perhaps one of the busiest groups in the Minnesota state legislature is the Minnesota Asian Pacific Caucus (the MAP Caucus), which gave a press conference on January 23, just after the Lunar New Year weekend and the horrific mass shootings of Asians and Latino victims in two separate incidents in the communities of Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, California, at which two shooters killed 18 people. The Monterey Park shooting was at a Lunar New Year event.

The mood was somber but also hopeful at the first press conference of the re-formed DFL MAP Caucus, chaired by Rep. Ethan Cha (D-47B), who was newly elected in 2022. Rep. Kaohly Vang Her later noted in her newsletter that their 10-person caucus of seven representatives and three senators is the second-largest Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) state behind Hawaii. She also wrote that Minnesota’s AAPI community (which in the 2020 Census topped 365,000) is the “fastest growing demographic in the state.” The MAP caucus also held a town hall-type event on February 17 to hear issues from the community.

Back in 2021, after the Atlanta shootings, and well after more than a year of growing numbers of hate crimes against Asians in Minnesota and nationwide, a very similar anti-hate crimes bill was patiently shepherded through a contentious legislature by principal author Rep. Samantha Vang (D-38B), with other coauthors. Vang, co-founder of the MAP caucus, appeared at the January 23 press conference to speak again about the same bill she has been championing for two years, now updated to this year’s version (HR 181, nicknamed the Stop Hate bill).

Two years ago, Ron Latz (D-46), DFL lead for the 2021 conference committee, speaking to KQ 10 days before the 2021 session ended ended, was presciently pessimistic about preserving the anti-hate/bias crimes portion of the bill. Despite strong support and preparation, and testimony by Katie Wright (the mother of Daunte Wright, who was killed during a traffic stop by a Brooklyn Center police officer), and Brandon Williams, nephew of George Floyd, the bill disintegrated. Republican members, Latz remarked, were only focused on the budget.

This session, it’s different.

In its press conference, the group talked more about anti-hate legislation and anti-gun legislation than the rest of the bills that are priorities for this year. Rep. Her noted that their caucus knows they are only chipping away at the edges of a pandemic of gun violence. “No one law is a panacea,” she said. The MAP caucus is strong on topics like safe gun storage and increased restrictions for open-carry laws, in addition to setting up a structure to educate law enforcement about and legally define and recognize hate/bias crimes.

Even if stricter gun laws are achieved, no Minnesota law will prevent the flow of guns from other states, Her noted. The caucus is strong on gun laws “at the risk of doing nothing,” she said. Federal legislation must happen too.

Other hopeful bills for Asian Minnesotans and the larger community include a bill to increase funding for English language learners (authored by Rep. Her); a bill to make ethnic studies a requirement for every high school student in Minnesota (authored by Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura (D-33A) ); capacity-building grants for Minnesota non-profit community organizations which filled public service gaps during COVID and reached many immigrant and marginalized Asian Minnesotans (authored by Sencer-Mura); and an AAPI Veterans’ Bill to boost mental health care and other health coverage for Asian American veterans (authored by Sens. Foung Hawj and Susan Pha).

You can’t be a pessimist if you are also in the business of creating legislation. Vang, along with her anti-hate coalition in 2021, would not shut up about the need for educating police and changing the structure of police departments to recognize hate crime for what it is. She is still talking. The Minnesota Ethnic Studies Coalition started up in 2019, and educator and now-representative Sencer-Mura has championed their bill. They are still talking after two years. This session is the first opportunity for progressive causes like these to get real traction.

That opportunity could slip away quickly – the governor’s desk will soon be buried in an avalanche of new bills. Between now and the end of May, there will be some new progressive laws to report on, in this state and in other Democratic-trifecta states nationwide.

Brave spirit

Over the winter 2023 quarter, a new book was launched by long-time KQ contributor Heinz Insu Fenkl, and KQ got one of the first post-launch interviews. A prolific writer, Fenkl has published only two novels, both autobiographical, about his childhood and early-teen years as the son of a GI father and Korean mother, growing up on the military bases and in the camptowns near Inchon. Over the last 25 years, while not writing his novel, he taught English literature at State University of New York- New Paltz, and translated Korean prose and poetry into English, publishing eight books of Korean literature in translation. He also learned a lot about ancient spirituality, philosophy and religion as a part of it. In the interview, he discusses his youthful, often funny misadventures of his youth and the unique culture in which he lived. He also reflects how, through his childhood, Korea changed and Westernized at a fast pace, while its ancient beliefs held sway, just below a thin veneer of modern life.

The joy of learning sijo

Another interesting literature project is a book on the Korean poetry form sijo, by the Chicago-based Sejong Cultural Society’s co-founder Lucy Park along with Wisconsin high school literature teacher Liz Jorgensen. The Sejong Cultural Society recognized a long time ago that to have a sijo-writing contest, the contestants first need how to write a sijo, not exactly a standard form in elementary and high school curricula. However, before students can learn it, teachers need to learn how to teach it – for some, teaching any poetry form is tricky. The Society has been sponsoring classes in instruction of sijo for teachers for many years. Jorgensen, who embraced the craft, teaches it every year, and helps her students to enter the poetry contest, collaborated in this book designed not only to teach the poetry form, but to help other teachers to persuade students to try it and learn to love it.

The life course of adoption

How adults experience and grow into their lives as adoptees is the topic of a new survey of adult adoptees, now live and available from a website. Hollee McGinnis, an activist and researcher, has created the survey to further study her own group, adult transnational adoptees, to learn more about how their identity, and also their mental and physical health, may be affected as they age.

This time of year is all about hope, especially right now in Minnesota, where spring is only an intellectual exercise. Staying strong as the snowbanks grow in late winter is the only way – that and snuggling in with a good book – we have a few recommendations.

Happy late winter, someday to be spring.

Kimchi and the new normal life

October 9, 2022 by Martha Vickery

Familiar people and activities and the orderly nature of fall | By Martha Vickery (Fall 2022)

The way we do things

April 3, 2022 by Martha Vickery

Remaking KQ for the future – virtually the same, except for the paper | By Martha Vickery (Spring 2022 issue)

In 25 years, I bet I have been asked 100 times how often Korean Quarterly gets published. I always feel a bit embarrassed to answer, like it will be taken the wrong way.

“It’s quarterly,” I say. “Like every three months?”

“Oh right!” the person always says, either looking embarrassed too, or ending with a laugh at themselves.

Korean Quarterly has been publishing quarterly, despite many life challenges for all of us involved in its making, for 25 years. We always stayed more-or-less on schedule. Accountability and stick-to-itiveness have been the watchwords. As newspaper folks to the core, we’ve been conscious of getting the newspaper into the readers’ hands with regularity, in the mindset of “publish or perish,” for a quarter century.

Working up to that press deadline requires some demanding labor, and some late nights in the weeks preceding publication. The relief is cathartic when that new paper is out. There are few things more satisfying than publishing something. At least, that is the way I’m built. And now, it’s a habit. It is just the way we do things.

But things will be a bit different from now on.

Next quarter, KQ will be 100 percent online at our website: www.koreanquarterly.org, where we have produced a parallel online publication for roughly two years. Instead of publishing a paper issue all on one day, we will leak out the new virtual issue a few stories at a time over a few weeks. Each story will have a season and a year of publication, but they won’t all go out simultaneously.

The reason – other than ‘why should we kill ourselves if we don’t have to?’ – has to do with the pace of output needed for growing our readership. The number of readers rise when we publish new content, even just one story; and it falls if we don’t publish online for awhile. We will be working on ways to interest new readers, and be employing some new website modifications to get us there.

The thing about a print newspaper – getting it out requires a lot of human interaction, pandemic or not. Volunteers were in short supply for awhile – people turned inward and had crazy things of their own to figure out. We developed a system of bringing page proofs to the copy editors’ homes instead of having our usual fun/serious get-together to do production and get the paper out the door. That was the saddest part of the pandemic for me!

Publishing also requires a cash outlay, which was in short supply as advertising dried up practically overnight. Restaurants (for awhile at least) and every live event shut down, and there was very little to advertise. We never got the other dropped advertising back. We still haven’t.

Today, exactly two years since I was first sent home from my job (the other job) to telework, in-person events are just barely coming back. Maybe they will return to past numbers. Or maybe they won’t, and we’ll accept that more virtual events are just part of the new normal, until COVID is well in the distant past.

However, we instinctively knew, way more than two years ago, before anyone had a pandemic in mind, that KQ would eventually need to re-tool for a more virtual future. There were plenty of good reasons to do it. The pandemic just speeded the transition up a bit.

Indeed, the pandemic has had a tendency to reorder many of our life priorities and our business priorities. At KQ, we started the pandemic with a grim determination to keep our print edition going. But suddenly, there was a re-ordering, a new way to think about our values. Our way of looking to the future changed.

An online publication would be cheaper to produce, more flexible, more responsive to our readership, and better suited to an increasingly virtual and global audience. Moreover, it could keep KQ going, although in a different form. We began to accept that keeping our non-profit media organization solvent and relevant was really the only thing.

Now in the last week of our last print issue, I am relieved that we will still be publishing. Other than the thing you read it on, the important things about KQ – the quality, mix of stories, the photos and the fun stuff, and most importantly, all the great people who make it happen, will all be there at: www.koreanquarterly.org. It will still be by and about a big, diverse community of people with Korean connections as the common link. It will still have everything that makes KQ important.

Stories that reveal how our priorities have been shaken up and reordered are told by several people in this issue. Carolyn Holbrook, editor with David Mura of the anthology We Are Meant to Rise, described how their invitations for the writers had to be revised, then re-revised. Starting out as a planned anthology for women writers of color in Minnesota, the editors invited more writers of color to talk about a broader range of topics: Living through the pandemic, and later still, to talk about life in the Twin Cities after George Floyd’s murder. Holbrook said that many writers felt paralyzed upon receiving the invitation – the trauma had been too much. By allowing the writers the time and space to write their own truth of the last two years, a unique collection emerged that could only have come from Minnesota.

Columnist Sarah Han’s unwillingness to accept a status quo apolitical attitude as a teacher, and her determination to re-think how to express representation and allyship in her life helped her find a new path, but created a lot of challenges in her workplace. She has found her voice as an activist – even if it is a voice that is too loud and too honest for its time. Thanks to Sarah for a second column in a hard year she knows has changed her for the better, and also changed her for good.

Columnist Kari Scanlon, like many other writers, was temporarily unable to express all the stuff coming at her over the last two years. A contributor and regular columnist since 2009, she was also overwhelmed with the challenges of work and supervising her son’s various online/in-person school arrangements. She stopped writing during that time, but is back this issue with an engaging account of suddenly being able to reorder her thoughts and do what was most important amid the chaos. Seeing her stand up for justice also helped her son to start finding his own voice too.

Kelley Katzenmeyer went to Korea in 2011 as a high school graduate in an exchange program in which students repeated their last year of high school in Korea. The last year of high school is probably the most stressful of any South Korean student’s life, when they study non-stop for the standardized test known as the sunung. Interested in film, Katzenmeyer had an idea to do a short film on effect of the sunung on South Korean students lives. Ten years later, still living in Seoul, the film was the impetus that reprioritized her life. After assembling a skilled core team and hundreds of volunteers, the bilingual film Permission to Exist was recently launched on a new internet platform that the team also created. The idea is to make available video resources designed to support the mental health of Korean students’ and other students globally.

The push to make our last issue the 25^th anniversary issue came from an essay I received from fellow journalist and longtime contributor Tom McCarthy back in December in which he writes of how KQ influenced his childhood, and especially how content by other Korean adoptee returnees to Korea helped him decide as a young adult that he could live and work in Korea too. Nine years later, there is nowhere else he would rather be.

There is nothing so satisfying and joy-inducing after 25 years than hearing from a longtime reader that KQ has accomplished something it was invented to do – provide resources, inspiration, empowerment, and people who get it, for Korean Americans who are maturing into their Korean identity. Tom now has a challenging new job at KBS Radio News but promised to hang in there as a contributor. He is indeed paying it forward by providing new readers the same modeling and encouragement he got from KQ as a child and young adult.

Finally, we owe a big shout-out to Kim Jackson, art director for KQ for 25 years. She always has a million ideas on how to make KQ look better than last time, in addition to so many other ways of contributing to the community. This issue’s offering is a cover featuring a re-invented taeguk, or Korean national symbol, inspired by an ancient Joseon naval flag (Where does she find these things?) Her talent and skill for graphic design is matched only by her loyalty to KQ – AKA her longest-ever graphic design project, spanning pretty much her whole adult life so far. Where does the time go? Those babies I once held so she would have enough time to put the KQ pages on a flash drive the night before publication? They are both now teenagers.

Happy spring, and let’s continue this long conversation at www.koreanquarterly.org!

Martha Vickery, editor

25 x 4 (plus one)

November 10, 2021 by Martha Vickery

Editor’s Note: Winning the future through radical love, and a KQ milestone | By Martha Vickery (Fall 2021 issue)

*Women Cross DMZ featured in the film documentary **Crossing** by Deann Borshay Liem. Photo by Stephen Wunrow*

Korean Quarterly has always been lucky and blessed in its complement of contributors, and it is a special benefit when there are American contributors observing Korean society while living in Korea. It is an enviable position from which to comment on Korean life.

In this issue, there are some great observations of South Korean society by two articulate South Korea residents, Seth Martin (and his student Yein Han) and Tom McCarthy.

Tom’s residency in South Korea fortunately (for KQ readers) coincided with the release of the media bomb which is Squid Game, the most-watched series in Netflix history. From it has emerged some deep social commentary in South Korea, and, through the magic of streaming services, into the living rooms of everyone within the reach of Netflix. In the Fall 2021 issue, Tom adds his insider-outsider opinion to the mix.

Squid Game is based on an over-the-top premise, in which hopelessly indebted people are locked into a sick, deadly game where winning means tons of money, and losing means death. It is, you might say, the ultimate “xtreme” sport. The exaggeration gets our attention, but the genius is in the details of the participants’ strategy and the relationships they develop in their journey. The bleak premise of the story invites all sorts of allegorical parallels; one obviously is the life-sucking effect of capitalism.

Many modern Koreans can recognize themselves somewhere this theme, which Tom explains so brilliantly in his essay. But it is a global theme too, that has repeated itself in the recent past. Aside from the crushing financial indebtedness experienced by so many ordinary people, this drama echoes other recent struggles of people globally. The pandemic has been its own life-and-death story over the last two years. So has the migration of huge numbers of people who pay a lot of money and bet their lives that they will get to a better place. So is climate change; drastically changing how we live could score a win, and we live; ignoring the problem will wipe us all out.

A subtopic of this is the way in which youth in Korea, and in some respects, youth globally, are being pushed to take on the thought leadership of the next generation, but well before their time. Tom observes that Squid Game is derived from a children’s game, which brings to mind how children in Korea are made little capitalism slaves too early, like with a grueling schedule that begins at age six or so, with regular school, followed by afternoon private academies.

U.S. society can only point fingers at itself on robbing children of the right to a childhood. Evidence of this is in the Wall Street Journal’s recent expose The Facebook Files, in which Jeff Horwitz, Georgia Wells and other investigative reporters pile up the evidence of how Facebook’s own researchers found that its photo-sharing app has negatively affected young viewers, and that its platform Instagram “is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, notably teenage girls, more so than other social media platforms.”

A Senate Subcommittee on Commerce questioned executives from Twitter, Facebook, Google, as well as Snapchat and Youtube in October, particularly about how the platforms are seemingly indifferent to this potential harm. One senator summed it up, saying that the companies know there are vulnerable teens and pre-teens on the platforms “but you continue to do it, because of the money.”

Our other frequent contributor in Korea, Seth Martin (aka Seth Mountain, which I think is either his nom de guerre or maybe his rock ‘n roll name) teaches at a high school in South Korea. In that role, he encourages his students to write about their lives in English. He persuaded a few of them to work with him to get their essays published in KQ (Summer 2020 issue) on their reflections about living through the pandemic.

The students revealed that they were a bit scared and isolated during the last nearly two years, but that it had its positive side, for example because they got to see their parents for more hours each day, and that everyone had less to do. It was encouraging to read that although the pandemic shook up their lives, it had the positive effect of helping them reorder their priorities, and reflect on what is really important.

On the topic of what’s really important, student Yein Han, one of the students who wrote a coronavirus essay last year, submitted a second essay for this issue which somewhat eerily complements Tom’s analysis in discussing the themes of desperation and life-or-death decisions. She also reflects on the need for youth to act in the face of the existential threat of climate change. She suggests that the planet can be saved, not through more agreements, treaties, and laws, but through radical love – caring as much for the long term as the short term, and caring as much about others as about ourselves. It is, in fact, the radical opposite of the Squid Game dystopia.

I remember at some years ago talking to a nutritionist about strategies to avoid a food allergen, and complaining about what a pain it is to always read food labels. She told me about one patient, a young and severely allergic child, whose mother taught him how to read labels and instructed him in how to remind teachers and caregivers not to give him anything containing the allergen. I made some comment about how smart that little boy must be, and how grown up, and she remarked, “No, not really. It’s just that it’s his life.”

The next generation are the ones who need to live longest with the world we are creating (or tearing down), so it is no wonder they are jumping into the fray instead of staying home and studying (or flipping through Tik Tok). The ones with the most at stake are the ones who get the most creative, think the deepest, and work the hardest to save others as well as themselves.

There are, however, some new inventions of the adult older generation intended to instill hope for the future. I know a group like that – it’s called Women Cross DMZ.

Founded by activist Christine Ahn, the project to organize 30 international women peace activists to cross the DMZ from North Korea to South Korea actually happened in 2015. Its journey to cross that boundary, and all the boundaries and obstacles between that event and its goal of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War continues today, and into the future. That journey, and what came before and since, is chronicled in a new film, Crossings, by noted documentary filmmaker (and Korean adoptee) Deann Borshay Liem.

Only a few days before this writing, the film launch was announced for the Hawaii International Film Festival. Deann explained to me in a phone call that the launch will be small, due to pandemic restrictions, and that the film streaming will be temporarily limited to Hawaii.

This issue, there is only a film review. Next issue, I will be interviewing the filmmaker. This week the film was barely done; Deann was still preparing it for the film festival. However, in 2022, there will be a general release to U.S. venues still to be determined.

The film describes an unprecedented international women’s campaign for peace, and sends a message that we must overcome the existential threat of war between the two Koreas with radical love. Because Deann is a Korean adoptee, I believe (and hope) she will screen it in Minnesota in 2022 for Korean adoptees and the greater Korean American community.

KQ is 25 years old as of this issue. One hundred editions of KQ have now been published, fall 2021 marks the 101^st. With this milestone, we recognize our hundreds of contributors, donors and advertisers over the years. With teamwork, we have made it happen.

Once each year, KQ participates in “Give to the Max Day“, an annual day of philanthropy in Minnesota, set for November 19. Please consider including KQ in a donation that day, or any day from now on in your end of year plans. Direct donation to KQ is also easy on the website. Our 2022 plan includes a new digital archive of every issue back to 1997. It is a big project, but we can do this.

With help from so many, KQ continues to speak from the heart of the Korean American community. Thank you!

Martha Vickery, editor

I can’t even

September 5, 2021 by Martha Vickery

Editor’s Note: Leading with empathy is trending as we claw back from the pandemic disaster | By Martha Vickery (Summer 2021 issue)

*Kimchi Girl art by Meaghan Uijung Dunn.*

Popular culture would have us believe that millennials (Gen Y or the group born between 1981 and 1996) are the collaborative types, the ones the who want to advance the well-being of the society. Gen Z is labelled the competitive group, for whom security is paramount. This tendency — if at all true — is blamed on the Great Recession of 2007-2008, which caused insecurity for many, and it is said, shook the Gen Z’s confidence at an early age, causing them to value the cushion of financial security for themselves above the value of making society better.

Are the ones coming up so very security conscious and unconcerned about the greater good? No stereotype is true, of course, however, I am wondering if recent events are blurring the lines of all our generational value systems and pushing us all towards expecting more humane workplaces, a more responsive government, systems that really work for our current reality, a model of leading by empathy.

I remember my son, as a high school student, told me he persuaded a discouraged younger kid on his school’s track team (sixth through 12th graders) to stay on the team and keep trying. He did it by admitting to his younger teammate that he was once the slowest runner on the team. It was true, actually. He did start out as the slowest kid on the team, but realizing that, he skipped the sprint events, and built up his endurance skills as a long-distance runner, eventually running a marathon.

Even as a high school kid, my son’s intuition was telling him that no sixth grader would be responsive to a pep talk intended to get him to go out there and beat the competition. The age differences and skill differences were immense. The competition was too much. There was no point.

One of the most significant events of this decade, possibly in the lives of all of us sharing the planet today, has been the pandemic. Although it’s not over, we can see some the effects of its permanent changes around us today; it is like perceiving the destruction of an invisible earthquake. A calamity like the one we have been through — are arguably still going through — tends to re-order our priorities. Big enough calamities can reorder a whole society’s priorities.

Already, we have seen effects in our awareness of societal and racial inequities, sensitivity to politics, greater expectations for our health care systems, and our decreased tolerance for how our workplaces run. Its effects have even been reflected in the values of old, rules-based sports organizations like the Olympics.

Can it be that we can push for more models that raise us all at the same time, demanding more in terms of support from systems that are supposed to support us? Pandemic social effects are reverberating around us, and are threaded through this issue. Increasingly, although I cannot fully express it yet, I can feel something like a seismic shift.

Just perhaps, is part of this unwillingness to go out there and beat down the competition, like we used to, simply exhaustion? I think we are all feeling the stress of the last 18 months in trying to get by — to not get sick, stay positive, stay employed if possible, pay the bills. The strikes against us have seemed like too much. It could be that.

Haven’t we all felt the bone-tired exhaustion of things seeming to have too many layers of difficulty; a feeling of “I can’t even think about this.” That it’s all just too tiring? Does it make us all a bit more empathetic than we were?

Columnist David Tizard (Punk Christianity, p. 11 in the print edition) noted the countercultural flavor in South Korea of Rev. Dong-Hwan Lee’s recent comments after being suspended by the Korean Methodist Church. The suspension was imposed after a trial (apparently the denomination is so bureaucratic that it has its own court). The infraction of the rules was that the pastor said a blessing for the participants in a Queer Culture Festival in Incheon.

The trial must have been quite unusual. It hit the headlines in June, and Christian progressives globally expressed support, and decried the punishment. Overall, the move was apparently not viewed favorably in South Korea, where more than 70 percent of millennials and the Gen Z age group favor same-sex marriage. My guess is that Methodists are thinking “with everything else going on, our leadership has to go after this guy?”

His denomination’s opposition to his actions was not a surprise to Lee, but the suspension was. “How can a blessing be seen as a sin?” he asked.

*Olympian* *Sunisa Lee featured in the Summer 2021 issue of **Korean Quarterly**.*

This spring, the French Open, another rule-based sports bureaucracy, was caught off-guard when four-time Grand Slam champion Naoko Osaka stepped aside after she was told she would have to have press conferences. She refused, citing mental health concerns, and resigned. During the Tokyo Olympics, Simone Biles, feeling that her mental attitude was a factor in a couple of repeat mistakes in events, told her teammates they would have to win without her. They did. Her decision may also have been strategic, and could have made the way for other teammates, like 18-year-old Sunisa Lee of St. Paul to step into the gap. Lee, who won a gold, a silver and a bronze medal, was celebrated in a hometown parade (photos and new story, p. 52 in the print edition).

*Olympic gymnast Yul Moldauer at the Tokyo Olympics featured in the Summer 2021 issue of **Korean Quarterly**.*

It’s all about how you decide to spend your energy — that is the philosophy of Korean adoptee gymnast Yul Moldauer, who used his Olympic opportunity as a way to shine, showing his competitiveness, but also support and understanding for his teammates, who, like him, have had a rough last two years. Moldauer also showed he knows how to avoid putting energy into something, like social media, or circumstances out of one’s control (story, p.37 in the print edition)

The campaign Citizenship4All is the ultimate “leave no one behind” social campaign, and a 100-day “occupation” of the White House (or probably Lafayette Park) was carried out from January to May by a broad coalition led by the National Korean American Service and Educational Consortium (NAKASEC). Advocating for youthful undocumented population used to be NAKASEC’s focus, but, as advocate Glo Harn Choi said, there was a suggestion of “deservingness” there; that U.S.-educated youth had more to contribute than working immigrants. So they dumped the idea. The world needs elders too, not in another country, but in the family. All or nothing is the theme of the current campaign, and it looks like they may get it all if the current budget reconciliation strategy works (news feature, p. 32 in the print edition)

Sejong Academy, the first and still only Korean language immersion charter school in the Midwest, went from 67 students to 360 in seven years with its dedicated staff and winning attitude, and opened a new school building this summer. The founding group fostered a community, not a school of individual achievers, but an empathetic leadership, leaning on the Korean values of “family and community, education, hard work, persistence and respect,” according to School Board chair Grace Lee (see news feature, p. 23 in the print edition). It has also exceeded expectations in reading and math scores, and will graduate its first 12th grade in 2022.

Minnesota’s Senator Paul Wellstone famously quipped “We all do better when we all do better.” Bringing everyone along in a post-pandemic society will make a big difference in recovery from this time. We just have to decide what we want to put our energy into, and what we just can’t do any more.

Close to a unified theory

May 9, 2021 by Martha Vickery

Editor’s Note: Eyewitnesses to flagrant racism, Twin Citians also experience the healing of solidarity | Editor’s Note by Martha Vickery (Spring 2021 issue)

Are we finally getting to a unified theory of everything?

I’m not talking about the kind that Albert Einstein invented with his theory of relativity, although that idea is often called “the theory of everything.” I’m not a science-y person, but even I was fascinated and more or less geeked out by a recent TV documentary relating Einstein’s hypotheses to discoveries about the universe just coming to light in recent years. For example, scientists can now observe that the behavior of dark matter (black holes) is consistent with Einstein’s theory, even though he could not make such measurements during his lifetime.

Einstein did not need to know about dark matter or other recently discovered behaviors of space to come up with the theory. He didn’t need to see it with his own eyes. He just needed to be convinced that no other theory worked. Whether he applied the idea to the behavior of planets being born, or to apples falling from a tree, it worked the same. He was a thinker ahead of his time, in that very few understood the idea at the outset, but as the future unfolded, his ideas have been proven right again and again.

These days, I am thinking more about a unified theory of social justice and public health, and we may as well throw in economic justice along with it. None are happening in their own spheres. They are all parts of one big theory. We have seen it right here in our own neighborhoods.

Emotionally, it has been a raw last couple months for many of us. In a normal year, we go from day to day believing that we will get home tonight, that we will not be killed by a cop during a traffic stop or other minor infraction of the law. We assume that our children, especially adult Asian American children, are reasonably safe while interacting with the world. However, trauma after trauma has been visited upon our communities, particularly African Americans and Asian Americans over the past year. Police violence has ended so many lives before their time.

The ongoing Derek Chauvin trial was certainly at the back of our minds for many weeks, particularly those of us in the Twin Cities. We heard and saw it every day. Then, there was the Atlanta mass murder, and then the police shooting death of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center. Stress, shock, grief and disbelief came in daily doses.

Like many others, I went months, particularly more recent weeks, dealing with a low-level anxiety, from no particular source. The world is suddenly a treacherous place for my loved ones. But if it is such a world, then how should we live?

*Capitol rally March 28, St. Paul, MN (Photo by Stephen Wunrow)*

Attending a couple of demonstrations where people gave voice to the grief and uncertainty, and called for calm and positive action, was helpful. Standing in the wind with perhaps 500 others at the Capitol rally March 28, I heard the thoughts of some of Minnesota’s best leaders on racial justice. One invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quotation “Racism anywhere threatens freedom everywhere.”

I considered the layered meanings of this short statement, and whether that sums up the unified theory I have been seeing play out. Like Einstein, King did not need to imagine America’s long struggle with becoming a fair and just country stretching more than 50 years into the future after his death. He didn’t have to be in Minneapolis in 2021 to know the situation here. He knew his theory would always be true.

Just as racism anywhere threatens freedom everywhere, the same is true of the pandemic — a deadly infectious virus anywhere also threatens freedom everywhere. It was Italy, then New York, and now it’s India’s disaster of overwhelming COVID cases right now that is a potential disaster for all.

Asian Americans have been facing these double plagues — racism and pandemic — in the last almost 18 months. But, as our columnists and some of the best thinkers on race who spoke at recent events told us, we can’t give up now.

In the Twin Cities, we can plainly see all around us what King knew in his heart. If it is not a theory of everything, it is a theory of almost everything. We can’t escape from the coronavirus because it comes after all of us. We need to beat it back with collective action, working on simple and boring public health measures, and getting the vaccine.

In the same way, we cannot dismiss racial justice after this moment of awakening has faded away. It’s imperative that we work on it every day. What kind of police do we want working for us? What will we allow them to do? What kind of outcomes of trials like Derek Chauvin’s do we want to see in the future? How do we want hate crimes to be addressed in our state? (see story, p. 52, in the print edition)

Of necessity, these issues took center stage in the Twin Cities this spring. And although they may eventually fade from the headlines, they should not fade from our consciousness.

I was immensely impressed that Sarah Han, longtime KQ volunteer, and her partner Kat Porter, took the time to write a joint essay about their night in the Hennepin County lock-up, after being cornered and arrested along with a crowd of others while protesting in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department. Their instinct to act for racial justice ended with an infuriating, boring and terrifying night, and getting hit up with some big fines the next day. Exhausted, with hurt wrists from being zip-tied so tightly, Sarah got up the day after her incarceration to prepare a program on racial justice for her students. After that, the two produced a joint essay.

Thanks both of you for your example, and for posing some important questions about why we march and how we want police, who supposedly work for us, to act toward those exercising their constitutional rights to peacefully protest. There is a lot to think about in this spare story.

I am also grateful for Mae Ouhr who wrote about her trip to Atlanta after the murders happened, and how connection with other Korean Americans there sparked some healing thoughts that she brought home to Minnesota and wrote about for us. If the Atlantans can hope for a better future, we can too.

*Demonstrators placed flowers around the stature of an Asian woman’s face at the commemoration vigil at Lake Phalen Regional Park in St. Paul. Photo by Stephen Wunrow*

After eight people, four of whom were Korean American women, were gunned down in Atlanta, Asian Minnesotans felt it at a gut level, hitting the streets and parks to mourn and be outraged together (see photo essay, p. 55, print edition). At the memorial demonstration at Lake Phalen in St. Paul, right after the murders, there was an outpouring of love and solidarity in the midst of all the grief. At the end of the event, participants symbolically tossed flowers into the water. The colorful petals floated on the still surface on that gray spring day, like little sparks of hope.

The New York Times recently reported that we may not reach the holy grail of “herd immunity.” Basically, we Americans, as a group, are too stupid and selfish to exercise the kind of respect for others and self-control needed to achieve it. (The Times didn’t exactly say that. It is my own summary). That story also said the pandemic will soon slide into an “endemic,” where pockets of the disease will still exist, but be contained due to the vaccinated population, but not quite enough to wipe out the disease. It is a depressing thought.

I listened to Gov. Tim Walz’ latest COVID update today, feeling like I was in a school assembly while the principal gives a pep talk (a role he had in a past life). Like I used to do during school assemblies, I started nodding off. It’s so relaxing to hear a reassuring voice of authority for a change — somebody who seems to have a handle on the problem. He and Commissioner of Health Jan Malcolm both have the rare talent of making something really scary and dangerous sound totally boring.

I guess we’re headed for endemic times now, where we just settle for a partial solution — Walz says when 70 percent of Minnesotans are vaccinated, we’re good. Apparently, we’re all supposed to go back to work and spend money at the malls or whatever.

Not so with racism. In these two issues, the unified theory comes apart a bit. There’s no vaccine for racism. We can’t accept the endemic state. Pockets of racism put all of us in danger too. We are seeing that in the Twin Cities. It’s a threat to freedom everywhere.

Gov. Walz ended with “Go out and have a great summer!” That, at least, I can agree with.

The year of loss and lessons

February 14, 2021 by Martha Vickery

Korean Quarterly’s snippets and snapshots of 2020, the weird year that was | Editor’s Note by Martha Vickery (Winter 2021 issue)

**Korean Quarterly** Winter 2021 cover of the print edition.

Toilet paper. That is what comes to mind about the beginning of the 2020 pandemic. It was a silly and selfish beginning phase of what became a horrifying challenge for our country. The ridiculous specter of shoppers fighting over toilet paper in big box stores was emblematic. Toilet paper wars stood in for how our normal lives were, in fact, going down the toilet.

We learned quickly how important the many small things in life really are – going to the library, hanging at the coffee shop, hugging our loved ones, seeing our coworkers, going to a play or concert, because those things were suddenly impossible. We complained. We looked at our own four walls way too many times. We grieved the small things. Some grieved the big things, like the loss of a career, or the biggest – loss of loved ones from a disease that left them dying alone.

For all of us our small and large disasters, they all seemed to shrink in importance because so many were happening to others all around us. It was a shared year of loss.

It may be too soon even to have much historical perspective on 2020, or to draw many meaningful lessons from having gotten through it. Right now, it’s more a sense of “What just happened?” like being hit by a truck, and watching it lumber away into the distance.

But this year in review is a chance to look back, on some of the good, bad, and ugly of a very weird year, as seen through the work of KQ’s reportage and its very perceptive contributors.

Winter 2020, before toilet paper weirdness
At the time we published the winter 2020 issue, the toilet paper mania was yet to come. The new virus as something in China, too distant from our reality to worry about yet. Was it sort of like the flu? We weren’t sure, and as we would learn many months later, Chinese authorities were deliberately tamping down release of information they knew about coronavirus at that time.

As South Korea competently ramped up to fight the virus, Americans were told by their fearless leader not to worry, that it would one day disappear like magic. Impeachment was ongoing. Columnist John Feffer wondered in his winter 2020 KQ column whether impeachment would even harm Trump’s chances for reelection, opining that it would really depend on whether the economy would hold steady through the election year. That prediction was partially fulfilled. The economy has tanked, but the reason Trump was not reelected was way more complex than the economy. It was not something anyone could have foreseen.

Also in February, KQ covered a once-in-a-lifetime get-together and concert HerBeat: Taiko Women All-Stars. Held at the Ordway Theater on February 29 to a packed house, the event took a year for local taiko artist/instructor (and Korean adoptee) Jennifer Weir to put together with funding, partners, timing, and invitations to 18 of the world’s most elite women taiko drummers. They had to be persuaded to come to Minnesota “in the dead of winter,” Weir remarked. No event like it had ever been held. Documentary filmmaker Dawn Mikkelson recorded the concert and other related events for a documentary film to be premiered sometime this year.

Weir spoke later about how the concert took place, serendipitously and luckily, just weeks before all performance venues had to shut down. If it had been two or three weeks later, it probably would not have happened at all. There is now a trailer for the film in which Weir says something like “This is the biggest thing I have done, ever, and it makes me very happy and slightly ill.” The trailer and other info about the film is available at a new website: www.herbeatfilm.com

Pandemic uncertainty
The spring 2020 issue of KQ had a graphic of three Korean faces wearing masks imprinted with U.S. and Korean flags. By then, the pandemic had arrived in the U.S. but it had arrived in Korea first. Some columnists felt we were headed for a drastic change in our own country, while others observed how Koreans were intelligently beating back the coronavirus through infection control methods (story here), contact tracing, testing, and plain old common sense.

Frequent KQ contributor and artist Lora Vahlsing described how there was uncertainty and change in the air during her trip to New York in early March to take a yoga instructors’ workshop and have some fun with her daughter (story here). One of the visits they made was to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The two went through many of the rooms of objects “from guitars to teapots,” enjoying the feeling of being around so much creative beauty. That night, they found out that the Met had closed its doors indefinitely that day, due to pandemic restrictions. She writes that is encouraged that a pandemic cannot take her creative spirit from her. “Art is necessary precisely because it allows us agency: It both grounds and elevates us, and it can even keep our hearts from breaking during these uncertain times.”

Vahlsing was busy creating during the pandemic year. Some new creations, made of paper, thread and canvas are in an exhibit entitled What the Paper Reveals, at a gallery in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin through March 28.

Columnist Seth Mountain, who writes from the perspective of an American living and working in South Korea delivered the bare truth that so many Americans hate, don’t want to hear and are still struggling with, that coronavirus is a “test for all of us”:

Coronavirus doesn’t care how we respond. But in a democracy, this contagion can only be subdued by people who understand that freedom requires self-restraint and caring for neighbors. The curve can only be flattened by collective effort.

Columnist Christine Heimann, a Korean adoptee from the Twin Cities, works with children through a service organization for adoptees she co-founded, Adoptee Bridge. After seeing Korean adoptee kids be the subject of racist remarks related to coronavirus, a beautiful, spare essay poured out of her that has enough food for thought for a year’s worth of podcasts or perhaps a Ph.D. thesis.

The jist of the essay is that through the ages, there were always racist or homophobic theories as to the origin of pandemics. In the 1300s, Jews got the blame for the bubonic plague, in the 1980s, gay men got the blame for AIDS, and in 2014, West Africans got the blame for Ebola. The flames of racism in the 2020 pandemic were further fanned by Trump as he continued to call COVID-19 “the Chinese virus.”

Heimann wrote with hard-headed commonsense about realities that became clouded by the speculation, suspicion and rumor that was the daily news cycle around coronavirus. “New diseases have been and will always be a part of our lives. We cannot let new diseases (or any new unknown) cause mass hysteria, and most importantly, we cannot permit new and unknown diseases to be an excuse for hate and racism.”

Teachers, actors, restaurateurs, and others who come into daily contact with the public had to either suspend their activities or retool to cope with new structures needed for a COVID reality in 2020. KQ checked in with friends and resource people around the Twin Cities about how coronavirus has affected their lives (story here). One group we spoke with were several people engaged in education, from kindergarten to college.

Laura Sharp getting “assistance” from her dogs and two of her four children while working at home.

Laura Sharp, a music teacher and Korean adoptee who works for a school in Roseville, observed how teachers re-tooled a whole system in about three weeks to provide online education, child care for essential workers, and breakfast and lunch delivery to students in their homes. The really tricky part, however, was persuading students to participate in their on-line education.

Some students take to online like a duck to water. Others drop out, and teachers don’t even see them again. Others are just too young. Teachers have a duty to make the online education as accessible and equitable as possible, but they can’t do much about the inequitable living situations some students experience. “That’s the powerful thing about teaching,” she said, “is that you do care about every single one of them.”

KQ also checked in with the Minnesota Theater Alliance, which reported that an estimated 2,933 Asian Minnesotans’ jobs were affected by theater closures that happened in mid-March – they are coming up on a year of closure in March. Katie Bradley, a Twin Cities actor, said in March that her future was uncertain. “Our job is to get in front of a lot of people crowded into one room. We won’t be able to do that now, but for how long? That is the terror, of not knowing.”

Actor Sun Mee Chomet had almost a year’s worth of performances scheduled when all her contracts were cancelled in March, and she was wondering what was next. In the midst of the uncertainty, she was trying to stay grounded and work on positive activities, like learning Korean. “Life is more important than art …and there are things more important than plays. We will come back, but this is one of those times.”

Minnesotan George Floyd, and how it happened in our neighborhood
A couple days after George Floyd was killed on Memorial Day, KQ’s board chair Phil Lee got in touch and asked if he could submit an essay. Because our new online edition had been launched a couple weeks before, we planned to put it on the website because his topic — Asian Americans in a moment of racial reckoning — was so timely, and the shock was still so new.

Lee wrote his essay from the point of view of a Korean American whose north Minneapolis church was mobilized to distribute food, water, and basic supplies to people whose neighborhood stores were burned down in the violence and anger that spilled out after the videotaped murder of George Floyd went viral. While packing and hauling groceries, he had a lot of conversations in early June with people of many races and economic classes.

As a 1.5-generation Korean American, Lee wrote, he has been the subjected to both racism and privilege. Reflecting on how people have asked him “why are Black people looting, rioting, and burning buildings?” he said if police did nothing about a crime committed against his family, such as a child getting murdered, he might burn down a building or do something else to get attention. “For the Black community, it’s not just one child, it’s generations.”

KQ contributor/volunteer Tiffany Pauling wrote an essay from ground zero of the movement to demand justice for George Floyd – her own neighborhood. She also contributed photos of some of the early George Floyd and Black Lives Matter mural artwork in the neighborhood. Pauling wrote that she got nervous when there was violence at the Lake Street Target and the Third Precinct police station (which was later burned down). But when she heard glass shatter in the window of the convenience store across the street from her home, she grabbed her car keys and went to stay at a friend’s house.

Later she attended the George Floyd memorial, spoke to the volunteers, and watched some of the now-iconic murals in the making.

After the memorial, after the crowds left, and she wandered the now quiet, beat-up, boarded-up neighborhood, she was left with conflicted feelings, and in her essay, she described them. “Korean adoptees and other interracial adoptee often experience a strange intersection of being the target of racism while also having their own internalized prejudices.” Understanding that intersection was, for her, a personal racial reckoning in a year of national racial reckoning. Likewise, her neighborhood may have undergone a permanent change. “In fact, I may never see it in the same way again.”

Despite everything, moving forward
Between summer and fall there was a movement to a new normal, in part because of the urgency and the excitement of the general election. Emphasis was on the hard work to push forward initiatives like getting out the vote among Asian Americans in the Twin Cities, and the Reclaiming the Block initiative. There was a sense of getting on with work that needed doing with or without a pandemic.

Cover of the Fall edition of **Korean Quarterly’s** print edition.

On the cover of our fall edition were the faces of five Korean American candidates for the House of Representatives, the most that ever ran at one time (story here). Only one, Andy Kim (D-NJ 3^rdDistrict), was an incumbent, fighting to get reelected in his swing district where only a few percent are Korean Americans. Of those, four were elected, and will (when they have time) form a small, but presumably mighty, Korean American Caucus, the first in the history. They have now changed their notoriety from the most Korean Americans to run at one time to the most to serve at one time.

The Coalition for Asian American Leaders (CAAL) in the Twin Cities went after the Asian American vote in the Twin Cities with energy and a smart strategy. The online session State of Asian Minnesotans: Fired Up and Ready to Go discussed the challenges of getting Asian Minnesotans to the polls, including language accessibility, and the large numbers of voting age that need to be reached in a variety of ethnic groups. Turnout for Asian Americans has been in the 50 percent range, and 75 percent for the overall population in Minnesota.

At the same session, activist Jae Hyun Shim discussed her work for the advocacy collective Reclaiming the Block. Shim worked with the group over several years to propose ways to shift financial resources away from the huge Minneapolis police budget to other neighborhood initiatives like social services and mental health support. The job took on more urgency post-George Floyd’s murder. Nationwide, while the idea of defunding police has gathered strength in the last year, opposition to it has also intensified, Shim pointed out, as police response has become more violent.

Also, very much behind of the scenes, the lobbying group Adoptees for Justice has been working to get now 91 cosponsors for the bill that would make every inter-country adoptee a citizen with no exceptions (story here). An estimated 18,000 or more Korean adoptees may be without citizenship, according to South Korean statistics. The bill needs only to get before Congress for a vote. A brand new short promotional video and letter of support to sign is now available at: adopteesforjustice.com/supportletter

As Georgia led the way to stop voter suppression and find voters of color to go to the polls, turning the state from red to blue in the general election, it also sent its first-ever Black senator to Capitol Hill. At the same time, Asian American participation has risen, mainly due to similar efforts to get out the vote, in Minnesota, Georgia and other states as well.

As a nation, there has been one reckoning after another. In dealing with white supremacy and the recent insurrection in the Capitol there have been contradictory cries of “America is not like this,” and “no, this is exactly what America is like.” At the same time, diverse candidates are stepping up and winning elections to show the rest of us exactly what democracy can look like.

It has been a year of turmoil, loss and lessons; it has also been a year of getting back to the most important basics of life. Many Korean Americans have reckoned with their own racial identity in an environment of heightened racial tensions. At the same time, there has been a new representation of Korean Americans in politics and advocacy. It is an energy that can no longer stand on the sidelines. With more Korean American leaders and activists to get us through 2021 and beyond, despite everything, the future is looking bright.

Pandemic election anxiety Rx

November 22, 2020 by Martha Vickery

Post-election season: Chill, feign patience, rest your fried brain and take the long view | Editor’s Note by Martha Vickery (Fall 2020 issue)

It was frustrating, at least at first, to discover that we would be publishing our print edition not before the election, not after the election, but right smack in the middle of election week.

However, the more I read about how election week would play out, the more I realized that it would not make much difference — publishing the week before the election, the week after, or bang in the middle. Before November 3, it really doesn’t matter what any pundit or poll or media person says. On election night, there will be a lot of shouting, but likely few results to depend on. The week after, we will probably still be waiting for official results of the presidential election, although local and state final tallies may be available.

All those talking heads may as well go home and publish a quarterly newspaper.

Although a lot of people will be saying a lot from now on, and we will continue to endure doomsaying, TV and social media ads, none of it really matters. There’s nothing to do but chill. Wait it out. Pop some popcorn, catch a movie. Stay off social media. Rest our fried brains.

The only thing that matters is the long view. What the future political landscape will look like. What are the prospects ahead for a more common-sense government, and coherent humane policies at home and abroad in 2021 and beyond. Those are the things worth thinking about.

In the quarterly newspaper business, the long view is the only view. There are no news bytes to generate, or news cycle to stay on top of. How we stay busy is by inquiring with interesting people about what they are working on, what they think about important topics, how they are going to get where they are going, and, most interesting to me, what drives them to keep on going.

The term “long view” comes from a story this issue by contributor Seth Martin about his friend, peace activist Christine Ahn. She has been working on the issue of peace and reconciliation in Korea for many years. Her quest took on power and a global reach when she founded WomenCrossDMZ, and in 2015, led 30 global women peace activists from North Korea to South Korea over the Demilitarized Zone in a radical event for peace activism. This spring, Ahn was awarded the 2020 U.S. Peace Prize from the Peace Memorial Foundation in recognition for her decades of work in forging peace.

International policy moves at a snail’s pace most of the time, and in order to endure the years of chipping away at this goal, Ahn explains that she has taken the long view that peace will happen, people will bring down the DMZ. In short, she said with no hesitation, “we will change the world,” and that the job of people who want to change the world is simply to give it our all while we can.

Another hard-worker who got my attention this issue was Jae Hyun Shim who worked for many years on issues related to defunding the Minneapolis Police Department, most of the time very much under the radar. Shim spoke at a political awareness and voting event sponsored in September by the Twin Cities organization Coalition of Asian American Leaders .

Shim self-describes as someone who likes to read things, especially budgets, and someone who has worked in the field of mental health. For years before the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, the group patiently chipped away at their goal, segregating $1.1 million in 2018 to be diverted to community mental health initiatives.

The long view suddenly became more urgent as the Reclaim the Block initiative was thrust into the spotlight after Floyd’s murder. Even with the backdrop of something so chilling demanding action, changing a bureaucracy will continue to require boring meetings, poring over columns of numbers, and hard hours making a complex subject accessible for less patient constituents, a kind of work Shim also spends time on. The long view is often the hard view, as Christine Ahn says.

Also in this issue, a national lobbying group that has existed under a few different names, but as Adoptees for Justice since 2018, worked since before 2015 to get a bill for universal adoptee citizenship to a vote in Congress. The bill, which has had its ups and downs, depending on the mood of Congress on immigration reform, finally has enough co-sponsors to be put before the Judiciary Committee in preparation for a vote next year. In short, it looks like a bill to make automatic and universal citizenship for all inter-country adoptees will soon be the law of the land.

It will also mean that adoptees like Adam Crapser, a Korean adoptee father of two, who was deported to South Korea in 2016, will be able to come home. So will about 30 other adoptees deported to 18 countries. It is a monumental accomplishment that will reverberate into the future for thousands of adoptees nationwide.

Korean Quarterly has also taken the long view towards its own budget in this year of unpleasant pandemic surprises. In a regular year, KQ’s advertising revenue comes from restaurants, events, services, theater, and all the wonderful (and sadly absent) things we promote because we love to get together in these Twin Cities. Many advertisers pulled ads due to nothing to advertise —- others who are still going have stayed with us, and we appreciate all of you so much.

It has been a long and bumpy road trip in 2020 for all of us, and our end-of-year funding appeal is even more meaningful this year, because we cannot replace donations with anything else. We are leaning on our Minnesota-based Give To The Max Day for our Minnesota supporters particularly, and for others, an email and social media appeal directing donations to our website. Subscribing to the print edition of Korean Quarterly is also another great way to show your support!

If you can afford it, please give a little extra to cover someone who cannot donate this year, or who had to pull their ads. Every donation helps. We want to keep our comprehensive, long view, and fiercely independent journalism going into 2021. There is a lot to report about, and we intend to keep doing it with your help.

The landscape looks better from the long view. On the road ahead, let’s leave 2020 in the rear-view mirror, fix our gaze on that brighter landscape, and keep the faith.

Editor's Note

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