Korean Quarterly

Giving Voice to the Korean American Community

National News

Pitching in

by

Rep. Andy Kim looks to new Korean American members for help in urgent times | By Martha Vickery (Winter 2021 issue)

Rep. Andy Kim clears up trash after the Capitol insurrection January 6. Photo by Associated Press photographer Andrew Harnik

After a tough election year, and after winning his first reelection to his seat in a swing district of New Jersey, Rep. Andy Kim was hoping to sit down with his new colleagues in the soon-to-be Korean American caucus of the 117th Congress and talk about how they could collaborate in 2021.

Rep. Marilyn Strickland gets sworn in for Oregon’s 10th district wearing a hanbok.

The swearing-in ceremony for new members of Congress, held Sunday, January 3, included three Korean Americans:  California representatives Michelle Park Steel (R-38th District) and Young Kim (R-39th District); and Marilyn Strickland (D – Oregon’s 10th District). Strickland drew attention from Korean media because she took the oath wearing a Korean traditional dress (hanbok). Of five Korean American House candidates (including Kim) who ran in 2020, four were elected.  In addition to being the most Korean American candidates for Congress in one year, they are now the most Korean Americans to serve at one time in Congress.

The two days after the swearing-in were busy with members getting used to new roles and new committee assignments. Then January 6 happened. “Because of what happened on January 6, that kind of derailed the time we thought we would have to get together right now,” Kim said.

On January 6, Kim said, there was strong suspicion in Washington that there would be turmoil on the streets, in the form of demonstrations by pro-Trump extremists. “I told my staff not to come into the office. I told my wife not to come to DC that week,” he said.  “But we never imagined what actually unfolded in terms of an insurrection in the Capitol.”

“It was a day full of chaos,” he said. “We literally did not know what was happening. We didn’t know where people were at, and who was safe, who was not. And also, we did not know who was coming to help us. And it took hours before the Trump administration authorized the National Guard to be able to come to our defense.”

Despite the trauma of the day, Kim said he agreed with other members that the House should continue its work to certify the election in favor of Biden. “It was a very long night, but we were able to finish the votes of the electoral college and certify the election. That was very important.”

The next day, after a lot of horrifying videos and photos of the insurrection were broadcast and posted, a few photos by Associated Press photographer Andrew Harnik were posted on Twitter, showing Kim with a trash bag in a dress suit and a mask,  picking up the detritus of the day before. There were drink cans, clothing, and even tattered Trump flags and body armor left behind.  The photos quickly went viral.

The photos were taken very late at night, after the election was finally certified and most of the House members had gone home. Kim came out of the session, saw the destruction, and the staff who had begun to quietly put things back in order, since Congress had to be in session for the rest of the week. He grabbed a bag, and started helping out.

“It was very instinctual. I didn’t actually think about it,” he said. “I literally just started doing it. …I just felt that I needed to do something,” he said. 

Andy Kim with his mother and sister, visiting the Capitol.

After being asked about his clean-up duty several times by the press, Kim found and posted a photo of himself, perhaps age five, with his mother in a happy moment on the lawn of the Capitol. “She’s the one who the one who taught me to love and respect that building and this country.”

Kim’s father was a Ph.D. medical researcher, and his mother was a nurse. Their lives, both in Korea and the U.S. were very tough, he said.  “It is amazing what they accomplished here, and they really credit this country. They taught me to treat this country with respect, and to cherish it, and those instincts are part of what kicked in on that day.”

The day of the interview, Kim said, he had been thinking of the future Korean American Caucus because he was approached by advocates for the Adoptees for Citizenship Act, a group that has been pushing for citizenship for international adoptees who, through no fault of their own, were not made citizens by their parents or guardians. Because of the numbers of Korean adoptees, and the leadership of Korean adoptees in this cause, it could be a good bill for the Korean American Caucus to get behind, Kim remarked.

I have raised the Adoptee Citizenship Act with the Biden Administration to see where they are at on this,” he said.  “I think we can get it through both the House and Senate but it is not going to come up for a vote unless we can get it signaled as a priority, and that’s something I have been working towards.”

A future Korean American Caucus could presumably deal with issues impacting immigration reform and issues affecting small business entrepreneurs. It could also work on issues related to coronavirus relief rollout, Kim said, such as working with Asian American immigrant groups to solve issues involving language barriers and trouble obtaining appointments for vaccines.

In general, the workload before the House is urgent and overwhelming, Kim said. “We are in a very difficult situation, workwise, with an enormous quantity of issues we have to deal with and multiple crises we have to address simultaneously. There is a public health crisis and economic crisis,  and also a crisis in our democracy where many people across this country and many in government feel that it is in a very dire condition, and that it needs to be addressed immediately. I certainly feel like, after having lived through January 6, that if we don’t take some real steps to fix the trajectory we are heading in, things could get even worse. “

On the day of the interview, Kim said the first order of business was to “start to line up work for coronavirus relief negotiations. …It is a $1.9 trillion-dollar initiative which would make it the second-highest spending bill in the history of our country so there’s a lot we are trying to move forward.”

Asked about talk of a compromise on the relief bill, Kim said, “it is a matter of what you want to compromise. Yes, it needs to be bipartisan, but the main thing is that right now we are in a once-in-a-multi-generational crisis. People are dying at unbelievable frequency. We are hitting a half a million killed in this country from the pandemic. So, we have to rise to this moment.”

The worth of the relief bill, Kim said “has to be about ‘does this meaningfully address the magnitude of the problem we face right now?’ That is a more important threshold than getting a handful of Republicans on board.”

Economists who are both Republican and Democratic-leaning are saying “this is the moment to go big,” Kim said. “There is so much at stake here, and we are trying to find that right balance.” But, he said, “Right now, looking at all the hungry people in my district, literally seeing families down to their last meal, and I know we have to do something soon.”

Kim said he was surprised, then touched that photos of him with trash bag in hand went viral at a sad and traumatic moment.  “I certainly didn’t expect anyone to photograph that. And then I certainly didn’t expect it to get the attention it did. I have to say that if people saw the photographs and drew some hope from it, and if they saw there are people who are public servants, trying to do the right thing, I’m happy to play a positive role in an otherwise very tragic day.”

Poet and poet’s advocate

by

Yearn Hong Choi dies at 79 | By Martha Vickery (Winter 2021 issue)

Yearn Hong Choi making a pilgrimage to remember poet Dong-su Yun

Poet, translator and scholar Yearn Hong Choi, who has contributed poetry and poetry reviews to Korean Quarterly, and was KQ‘s own poet laureate for over 20 years, died January 6 from complications related to his battle with cancer.  He was 79.

In mid- to late 2020, Choi worked very hard in a short amount of time to self-publish two final works before his illness took over. One was a book of his own poems, entitled Snows of Kilimanjaro, a timely last collection featuring recollections of his travels, personal musings, and questions and perspectives on mortality. A favorite author, Ernest Hemingway, inspired the title, as well as the successful 2018 trek by his daughter Joyce Choi to the Kilimanjaro peak, on behalf of her dad’s dream.  

The second work was a collection of stories entitled Five Boyhood Recollections of the Korean War 1950-1953, featuring the experiences of five Korean American men who were boys during the war. In an interview in KQ (Summer 2020 issue, p. 64), he said the collection is significant for his generation, because “when we are gone, there will be no one who was a witness to the Korean War experience.”  

Choi, who was from Yeongdong, North Chungcheong Province, made his literary debut in 1963 while studying at Yonsei University in Seoul. He then moved to the U.S. where he earned master’s and doctorate degrees in political science and public administration at Indiana University.

Choi worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Assistant for Environmental Quality from 1981 to 1983. He was a prolific scholar on environmental policy, and also taught at several U.S. universities, including the University of Wisconsin, Old Dominion University and the University of the District of Columbia; he also taught at the University of Seoul before retiring in 2006.

Throughout his life, Choi maintained a second career as a poet, and took an interest in helping and promoting fellow Korean American poets, particularly those interested in publishing English translations of poetry collections. He founded both the Korean Poets and Writers Group and the Korean-American Poets’ Group in Washington, D.C.  In 1994, he became the first poet from Korea to be invited to read at the Library of Congress.

During his lifetime, Choi promoted and translated the works of Dong-Ju Yun, who wrote during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), and evoked in his work nostalgia for times of peace and independence in Korea. Choi translated and published Yun’s major poems.

A prolific writer himself, Choi won the Yun Dong-ju Literature Award in 2009 and was the recipient of Yun Dong-ju Poetry Award in 2016 for his poetry book, Incan Woman.

The Korea Times reported in a story about his life that Choi was one of the longest-serving columnists at that newspaper, sharing his insights on topics of cultural and social issues.

Choi’s passing is also very significant to KQ, since his depth of expertise in Korean poetry in translation made his contributions, in nearly every issue over the years, unique and irreplaceable.  We will also miss his humor, love of nature, and enthusiasm for literature and for life in general. Rest in power, Dr. Choi.

Universal adoptee citizenship

by

Four-year push by Adoptees for Justice to get a bill before Congress finally pays off | By Martha Vickery (Fall 2020 issue)

A 2019 photo of some of the activists of Adoptees for Justice, with Executive Director Kristopher Larsen (lower right) and Emily Kessel (second from lower right).

After four years of advocacy and awareness promotion for a law designed to make citizens of all persons adopted from another country to the U.S., the efforts of the lobbying group Adoptees for Justice (A4J) is finally paying off. 

According to A4J leaders, 2021 may be the year this bill finally becomes law.  After 20 years of fixes to laws intended to make adoptees citizens, this 2019 version will comprehensively fix the deficiencies of past bills and shield all adoptees from the risks of non-citizenship.

Although there was a period of adjustment due to the pandemic, said Kristopher Larsen, A4J executive director, this year has been a very productive year for advancing the Adoptee Citizenship Act (ACA).  Because of the way the meeting schedules work, they packed in more virtual meetings than could be done on a normal schedule, he said.

“We did 48 separate Zoom calls,  …and now we have 91 co-sponsors for the bill, which is incredible compared with other years” Larsen said.  Co-sponsors include the Judiciary Committee chair and co-chair —- the leaders of the committee that decides when the bill is ready to be introduced to Congress for a vote.  

They were also able to get co-sponsorships from the chair and vice-chair of the Immigration Subcommittee, another key group, the director said.

Now, the bill is before the Judiciary Committee, Larsen said, its last stop before it is moved forward to the House of Representatives.  “We are trying to push Chairman [Jerrold] Nadler to get it to mark-up,” he said, referring to a process where adjustments, changes and amendments are recommended by the Judiciary Committee.  “Once it gets a mark-up, and with 91 co-sponsors and a lot more support for this, we are pretty confident this bill could pass in the House.”

“We’ve also been working closely with the Senate on this bill.  We actually have more sponsors now than we have ever had in the Senate,” Larsen said.  “We’ve been told because of the language [now on the bill] that they would try to keep the language as inclusive as possible.  We know in the past, the Senate, especially the Republicans, there’s a lot of issues with the language on deportees.”  The election has the potential to improve chances for a favorable Senate version of the bill.  The language change that could be on the Senate’s bill would change the bill’s basics, Larson said. “This bill would still allow deportees to come back.” 

There is bi-partisan agreement to A4J’s guiding principle on its website that “Citizenship is a civil right of all children adopted by a U.S. citizen parent.  Children adopted by U.S. citizen parents should have the same rights as children of U.S. citizens.”  How to get there is the question that is now getting a deep dive in Congress.

Anissa Druesdow, an adoptee deportee and A4J staff member, calling in from Costa Rica, said “even if they don’t want to include us in citizenship, our goal is just to get back home, and to be able to work towards citizenship.  …from what I understand, it will get me back home and will give me a pathway to citizenship after a certain amount of time,” she said, adding “It doesn’t make sense not to include deportees, because we were adopted also.”

Previous versions of the ACA included versions in which language about returning deportees was going to be left out.  “But advocates who are pushing for an all-inclusive bill know that that can’t happen,” Larsen said, particularly since the purpose of the bill is to repair 20 years of inadequate fixes, he said, “there is no way we would support a bill that left off the deportees.  It has to include all adoptees.”

Larsen had worked for the precursor organization to A4J, called the Adoptee Rights Coalition, but quit the group in 2018, because there was language that excluded deportees, a concession to a Congress that was nervous about immigration issues at that time.  Larsen, a Vietnamese American adoptee, was working in training and mentoring people who had recently been released from prison.  He had been incarcerated, and a deportation order issued for him, he said, but deportation is prohibited by a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Vietnam.  In investigating this order for deportation, he said, he and his family discovered his adoption paperwork had been lost by immigration, so the application for citizenship never acted upon, and no one was ever notified.

After quitting the Adoptee Rights Coalition, Larsen said he was later called by the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) which was working on the legislation through some skilled Korean adoptees, including former Minnesotan Emily Kessel.  At a meeting in Chicago, Larsen said, he was asked to come back.  The future policy stance would be that deportees would be included in the bill.  NAKASEC provides support to A4J, as well as other partner organizations, and is the group’s fiscal sponsor.

The nuts and bolts of the bill include that for an adoptee to be covered by the bill, they must have been legally adopted in this country, through the court system, and must have arrived on a legal visa, Larsen said. Deportees would be subject to a background check, an as long as all legal obligations to the courts have been fulfilled, they would be able to come back.

The first version of the ACA was launched in 2015.  This recent version was introduced in Congress in 2019.

The ACA has also gotten official support through states and cities. In March 2019, the Illinois General Assembly enacted its own Adoptee Citizenship Resolution with bipartisan support.  Although states cannot grant citizenship, state resolutions raise the profile of this effort by urging Congress to support the 2019 ACA. Similar resolutions have been passed by Washington, California, and Minnesota, and city proclamations have been passed by Houston, Seattle, Philadelphia, and other cities.

The background of this newest version of the law is that non-citizens are routinely deported rather than incarcerated in the U.S. upon being convicted of a felony, such as a drug offense. When adoptees are deported, they typically do not know anyone and cannot speak the language of their country of origin. According to A4J’s website, about 30 adoptees have been deported to 18 countries.

The risk of deportation starts when parents of transnational adoptees fail to make their children citizens (citizenship is automatic for adoptees arriving now). In January 2019, Korean adoptee Adam Crapser, deported in 2016, sued the U.S. government and the Holt International adoption agency for failing to ensure his citizenship. Crapser’s well-publicized appeal to be spared from deportation fueled the campaign of A4J. More stories have emerged in recent years about adoptees like Crapser caught in the non-citizen trap, which have served to raise awareness in general about the issue of transnational adoptee deportations.

The South Korean Ministry of Health estimates that there are 18,603 transnational adoptees to the U.S. who do not have citizenship. There are also an unknown number of transnational adoptees sent to the U.S. from 28 countries, according to the A4J website. 

For more information on this and other activities of the organization, see the website at:  www.adopteesforjustice.org

Korean Americans in the House

by

Five make history as the most Korean Americans to run for Congress in one year | By Martha Vickery (Fall 2020 issue of Korean Quarterly)

Michelle Park Steel, Andy Kim, Marilyn Strickland, David Kim and Young Kim

Five Korean American congressional candidates, the most in the country’s history in one election, saw each other’s faces with some delight on Zoom in a recent free public session sponsored by a Korean American political advocacy organization.  They talked about the historical moment of this election, some basic issues that are on the minds of all voters, and a few, like the importance of U.S.-Korea relations, that are of special interest to Korean Americans.

Representative Andy Kim and family.

Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), video-calling from an outdoor perch in Washington, DC with the Capitol outline in the background, was the only incumbent in the webinar sponsored by Korean Americans for Political Action (KAPA). “This is just awesome to see all of us on one screen,” Kim said. “No matter what happens in just 34 days, congratulations to everybody for just stepping up and giving it your all.”

The other four panelists were west coast candidates with considerable experience in elected and appointed posts in city, state and county governments, and in coalition-building and community advocacy.  There were two Republicans:  Young Kim, who is running for California’s 39th District); and Michelle Park Steel, who is running for California’s 48th District.  There were also two other Democrats: Marilyn Strickland, running for the state of Washington’s 10th District; and David Kim, running for California’s 34th District, which includes Los Angeles’ Koreatown.

John Lim, KAPA board chair, gave an introduction that emphasized the importance of Korean Americans finding common ground so that Korean Americans’ joint interests can be expressed in a collective voice. “This has become an imperative for Korean Americans, because in the current political environment of extreme partisan polarization, we will not matter if we cannot come together,” he said.

The KAPA website is using national maps to indicate national, state and municipal races where  Korean American candidates are in the running. The KAPA site shows that Korean Americans of both major parties are running in state races in Hawaii, California, Washington state, Texas, Missouri, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Georgia. Additionally, there are Korean American candidates running in municipal races as Republicans, Democrats and in non-partisan races in cities in the states of Washington, California, Florida, New York and New Jersey.  

The webinar was emceed by veteran broadcast journalist Juju Chang (ABC News Nightline, World News Now). “There is a national reckoning on race, social justice, and identity,” Chang said. “We are all asking big questions about who we are, where come from and what our role is in civic engagement– that’s why orgs like KAPA are so crucial and why it is so important to have this dialogue.”

Marilyn Strickland

Asked why they are running for Congress, Strickland (D-WA) discussed her bi-racial background.  Strickland, the former mayor of Tacoma, Washington, now running in that state’s 10th District, said “when I think about the why, it is about where I come from; a descendant of slaves, and a daughter of Korea, and an American woman. There are people who came before me who struggled for dignity, for rights, for opportunity, and I have a duty and a responsibility to move forward and to carry on the work they’ve done.”

If elected, Strickland would be the first Korean American woman to be elected to Congress, and the first African American to represent the state of Washington at the federal level.  As mayor of Tacoma from 2010 to 2017, Strickland led her city out of the economic recession, by helping to attract more than $1 billion in housing and business investments, and spending $500,000 to repair the infrastructure at the port Tacoma, which attracted jobs and commerce. She also launched the Minority Business Development Agency and served as chair of CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

Michelle Park Steel

Michelle Park Steel (R-CA) is running for California’s 48th District, a coastal area of southeast of Los Angeles. Steel was elected to Orange County Board of Supervisors in 2014, was reelected, and now serves as the chair of that county administrative body.

As a teenager, Steel came to the U.S. with her mom and two younger sisters and talks a lot about how her mother’s struggle inspired her to run. On her website, she writes that she became interested in public office, particularly taxation, after watching her mother, who was single and a small business owner, try to appeal an unfair tax bill, and eventually acquiesce to the demands of the Board of Equalization.  She eventually ran for that board and became vice-chair in a district representing eight million residents of southern California. Her platform includes advocacy for business owners, combatting homelessness, and supporting environmental laws to keep California’s beaches clean.

In the webinar, Steel talked about her dissatisfaction with the partisan fighting in Congress. “I want to work for constituents, not for partisan work in Washington. That’s why I’m running,” she said. “My life is really good – I ran for four different elections, and won all four. At this point, I’m not going to change the record.  I am ready to win November 3rd, and I am going to get there.”  

Before running for Congress, Rep. Andy Kim worked for the Obama and Bush administrations as a national security expert. (See feature on Andy Kim in KQ’s spring 2020 issue and on the KQ website). After his years as a career public servant, he said, being a representative is different, but at its core “it’s still the same job actually.  It is about serving the American people, just from a different branch.”  The representative said that a State Department once told him “that you don’t have good government unless you have good people working in government. Government is a reflection of who we are as people. It is not just something that happens.”

Andy Kim also cited his roots as a son of immigrants, and as a husband of an immigrant. “I have served my country my whole life. I want to continue to hopefully do that if I can.”

Young Kim

Young Kim (R-CA) a former bank financial analyst and former controller for a large company, and also ran her own small women’s clothing business. She began her political career working for former Republican Congressman Ed Royce as a community liaison and director of Asian affairs. She was also the first Korean American woman to serve in the California Assembly, representing the 65th District.  She is now running for the seat Royce vacated in 2018 in the 39th District, which spans an area west of Los Angeles that includes parts of Orange County and San Bernadino County.  It is a tight race; in the March 3 primary, Young Kim picked up 48.3 percent of the votes, and her opponent, the incumbent Gil Cisneros, got 46.9 percent.

Born in South Korea, Young Kim came with her family to the U.S. in 1975. She has four children, and is sensitive to the issue of health care, particularly because one of her children has a pre-existing condition, her website states.

“Running for Congress, with the retirement of Ed Royce, is a natural progression for me to continue to bring the representation that southern California has come to know,” she said.  She “realized the American Dream,” in the community she is seeking to represent, she said. 

David Kim

David Kim, who is running for the 34th District that includes Koreatown in Los Angeles, started his career in public service by working for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, but went on to work in private practice representing artists in the music industry, including K-pop rising stars who needed help navigating in the U.S. music and business communities. He worked as an immigration lawyer for asylum seekers, often supplementing his small income by driving for Lyft and Uber. He has also recently served on a neighborhood council in his community.    

The son of two pastors, David Kim said running for Congress is “an extension of who I am” as a person who always organized and spoke up for others. What motivated him at this time, he said, is the urgent situation of extreme financial distress he sees in his district, which even before the pandemic was one of the poorest congressional districts in the country.

Overall, the candidates stayed away from their viewpoints as either progressives or conservatives, but David Kim remarked that Young Kim’s statement about realizing the American Dream looks different from where he lives, and the times he is living through. “The reality I have right now is that the American Dream is not so achievable. …I talk to my parents about how if they were to immigrate now, that they would not be able to create the same life that they made for us,” he pointed out.  

Chang asked the group to talk about representing a population that is minority Asian, and whether that affects how they run their campaigns. Andy Kim, who ran in an 85 percent white district with less than three percent Asian Americans, said “there were a number of people who told me I was wasting my time running in this district. …But I think the lesson is that we just cannot allow other people to define who we are or what we are capable of accomplishing. And that we are sick of other people setting the limits of what Korean Americans are able to do.”

Thinking of the next generation, Rep. Kim added “I just think it is a poor message to send that Korean Americans and Asian American candidates and other candidates of color can only win in communities and congressional districts that are dominated by a particular demographic or minority group. Korean American candidates can and should be able to win anywhere in this country.”

Andy Kim told his own story on the campaign trail of his parents’ struggle as immigrants, “but what was important was that it’s not just a Korean American story, or an Asian American story, it is fundamentally an American story.”  He found that out, he said, while on the campaign trail, “which is how this 85 percent white/one percent Korean American district elected its first Korean American in 20 years, and the first Korean American Democrat to Congress in the history of this country.”

“Being half Black and half Korean means that people have been trying to label me my entire life,” Strickland said. “Even in the context of politics – are you a moderate Democrat or are you a liberal Democrat?”  Strickland’s mother is Korean, and she joked “I say with complete affection that if you were raised by a Korean woman, then you are Korean!”

Strickland pointed out that her age demographic group of the second-generation were expected to “assimilate,’ which at that time meant to blend in and not embrace their culture of origin.  The idea of culture has appreciably changed since she was in her formative years, Strickland added, and as an adult, Strickland said, she began to appreciate her bi-cultural strengths.  

The 10th District is about 75 percent white, and 25 percent minority, divided among Latino, African American, and Asian American, according to Strickland. As a U.S. representative, the former mayor said she will join the Congressional Black Caucus and the AAPI Caucus, and that she is also a member of the New Democrats. The fact that there will be a small Korean American representation in the future “gives us a chance to build power with other Korean Americans with a shared agenda,” she added, “regardless of where we fall in the political spectrum.”

Young Kim

Young Kim said she is “blessed to be bilingual and bicultural in the incredibly diverse district I am running in.”  The 39th District is nearly evenly split as a third white, a third Latino, and a third Asian. “Korean American voters are the second-largest voting block among Asian American voters with about 18,000 voters,” she explained.  The voting population is projected as 260,000 in the district, so she has calculated she needs to get more than 130,000 on election day. “This election is close; it’s a major toss-up,” she said. “Therefore, the significance of the Korean American voting block cannot be overlooked and I certainly do not take their votes for granted. They could tip me over the top.”

There is no shortage of issues of importance to all voters, Young Kim said, and first on the list is the pandemic. “COVID has upended all our lives. I talk to voters about how we need to break the partisan gridlock to fight COVID.” That relieve needs to include extension of business loans and stimulus checks for families, as well as funding of schools and local governments, and funding for vaccine distribution.  Health care is another big one. “We need to talk about how we will work on reducing prescription drug costs affecting those with pre-existing conditions, end surprise billing, and ensure price transparency,” she pointed out.  Issues of economic opportunity, like the opportunities that were afforded to her and her family, are topics all voters want addressed, she said.

Andy Kim

Asked how he approaches the first generation of immigrants as a candidate from the second generation, David Kim said he views it as a “normal conversation,” not divided into categories of progressive or conservative. The first generation does not want their next generation to suffer, he said. “They actually came here as immigrants for us to have better lives.” On a personal level, that means the immigrant generation does believe in equal access and opportunity when it comes to promoting the success of the next generation, he said. 

How to make that happen on a policy level is what many in the second generation are struggling with at this moment, he said. “As an Asian American, although we are all Americans, we still don’t have equal footing in many areas whether it be education, workforce, etc. And, that is why it is not a surprise that 1.5- and second-generation Korean Americans are being a bit more progressive, because our parents fought to let us have the life we have right now, and we are not going to let that go to waste.” 

Steel said she views her position between elder immigrant voters and second generation as a bridge function, knowing both groups. Having Korean as her first language, Japanese second, and English third also helps her reach a wide variety of voters in her district. In the 48th District, she said, voters are mainly white, with 14.9 percent Asian and a few percent Black and Latino.

Steel says she bridges gaps by talking basics like taxes, which is her specialty. “The Trump tax policy really cut down the amount going to state and local taxes, where they tried to penalize the state but ended up penalizing residents.”  As an elected official since 2006, Steel said she has had plenty of experience talking to constituents, but “I don’t know everything, except maybe I know the California tax code!” She asks questions of constituents frequently, and listens to see where the needs are, she said.  

The group also discussed the U.S. strategic alliance, with national security expert Rep. Andy Kim commenting that in his experience, under both Obama and Bush, and during the Trump administration’s North Korea talks, the State Department did not work in consultation with any Korean American groups, which was a missed opportunity. “We need to make sure to make it clear they need to talk to us and get our opinions on these issues as well,” he said.

Steel said that having a few Korean Americans in Congress can be a “great asset in promoting a U.S.-South Korea relationship, an alliance of two democracies with open dialogue and mutual beneficial relationships.

Strickland added that “Andy has been in [Congress] by himself, so that’s why we all have to get in there and have our own caucus.”  There is a lot of misunderstanding among Americans on the U.S. relationship with the two Koreas, including the fact that the U.S. is still in a state of armistice, not peacetime, with North Korea. “We have to talk about how have a chance to formally end the Korean war and what does that mean,” she said.  “As someone who will belong to many caucuses – the AAPI and Congressional Black Caucus, and hopefully be starting a Korean American Caucus – we have an opportunity to help more people understand so we can have allies.”

Young Kim said she had many opportunities to assist with issues on the Korean peninsula as a staff to Rep. Ed Royce for 20 years.  “I served as interlocutor for a U.S.-Korea interparliamentary exchange for about 14 years,” she said. She also facilitated legislative meetings between members of the U.S. Congress and National Assembly of the ROK, with issues such as the U.S.- Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS-FTA), U.S.-South Korea defense cooperation matters, and the Congressional hearing on the former comfort women that led to the passage of House Resolution 121, which called on Japan to formally apologize to the war crime survivors.  

Young Kim said she favors reestablishing the former Advisory Council and reestablishing the Interparliamentary Exchange.  “I worked so hard on international relations between the two countries, I did not understand or appreciate the current administration’s aggressive demands to pay more for defense in South Korea,” she said.  “That is not the way to treat our partners. Any financial benefit to the U.S. is not worth the loss or damage to our relationship. Americans understand that the troops are not just there for South Korean state. They serve both nations by keeping stability in the region. I will work to build mutually beneficial, mutually respectful policies in the region because that is what I have done for decades now.”

Korean Americans for Political Action maintains a website at:  kapaction.org. Congressional race results will be summarized online at: Ballotpedia.com, politico.com and major network websites such as nbcnews.com

Kim for Koreatown

by

In one of the poorest districts, activist David Kim runs for Congress on values forged in the pandemic | By Martha Vickery (Fall 2020 issue)

A Los Angeles lawyer and neighborhood activist is making some waves and running hard for a congressional seat that includes Koreatown and many other ethnic neighborhoods. If elected, David Kim will be the first Korean American to represent this area, ranked as the 10th poorest congressional district in the country.  

As a child of a pastor in a Korean church, Kim remembers translating for his immigrant parents, and for many church members.  Kim recalls how normal it seemed to him as a kid to be at something like a parent-teacher school conference, “and instead of my parents talking, I would be talking!” His parents would ask him to make calls on behalf of a church member in some sort of predicament “so I would negotiate their car accidents, their phone bills or utility bills – I’d be, like eight years old, interpreting these things in Korean and English.”  

Being an advocate on other people’s behalf stuck with him. Going to law school, and learning to represent clients, from K-pop stars to undocumented immigrants, becoming a community council member and community activist is all “just an extension of what I would always do for my mom and dad,” Kim said.

Kim is running against incumbent Democrat Jimmy Gomez, who was elected in 2017. On March 3, Gomez and Kim were the two top vote-getters in a primary of five candidates; a slate of one Republican and four Democrats, including the incumbent. In the 2017 special election to fill the seat of Xavier Becerra (who became attorney general), Gomez beat out another fellow Democrat by getting 59 percent of the vote. Demographically, the 34th district is a mix of roughly 50 percent Latino, 25 percent Asian, 10 percent Black and 15 percent white, and includes numerous ethnic enclaves in addition to Koreatown.

David Kim

Recognition has been growing that the pandemic has accelerated the urgency of many national issues that were growing for years before March 2020.  In Kim’s district, because of poverty combined with high housing costs, these problems have been amplified.  Small entrepreneurial businesses have failed, people have lost employment, and with that, their health care.  This has prompted Kim to create a platform featuring various types of relief for basic needs. He calls it a “new New Deal,” referring to the program of jobs and benefits crafted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the end of the Depression in 1933.

“Our families are all financially depressed,” he said. “They all have two or three jobs.  And so it’s a common story that two parents don’t get to see their children at the same time, because the parents are taking turns to go work.”

In the 34th District, Kim said, “the per-capita income per month is less than the rent of a one-bedroom apartment here.”  Not surprisingly, homelessness has become a crisis in Los Angeles, but, Kim said, elected officials have been quiet about it. “Whether local officials, city, county or federal, no one is trying to address the elephant in the room, about there being more than 40,000 people unhoused now in our city, and the lack of affordable housing.” His website lists a statistic that more than 62 percent of Los Angeles residents spend at least 30 percent of their income on rent. An on-line campaign ad shows the view from a car window of one of the many tent cities that has sprung up in recent months.

David Kim

Recently, the Kim campaign launched a partnership with the start-up financial services company Steady to premiere a trial basic income grant to 25 families for three months. Part of Kim’s platform, endorsed by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, is to institute universal basic income, which would relieve the pressures of poverty and homelessness of Los Angeles residents, and people in many other cities. 

Steady is a service accessed through a phone app, and designed to help gig workers find more work to fit their skills and interests, and help them get financial advice. According to its website, Steady has given away $2.5 million in emergency cash grants to individuals since the pandemic began. As a special project, Steady has agreed to pay for the pilot program, which started at the beginning of October in the 34th District. It will track how an $840 monthly grant will help families who have experienced a significant income loss related to the pandemic.

Los Angeles does not have a real moratorium on eviction, Kim explained. “You have to show certain documentation to prove [your financial situation] is COVID-related.” Starting in September, he said “everyone in LA must pay at least 25 percent of their rent.  If they don’t, that can accrue and lead to evictions in March.”  Unless the pandemic rapidly improves, along with the city’s economy and availability of jobs, many more LA residents could be homeless by early 2021.

Kim is also looking at the high cost and low effectiveness of policing in Los Angeles. Half of the Los Angeles budget goes to the LA Police Department, Kim said, which he believes is way out of whack. People are “realizing that it is not more policing that makes things safer, it is providing resources to our community… Like if we were able to put some of that money toward education, health care and mental health services,” he said. In addition, Kim’s platform supports Medicare for All and the Green New Deal as well as progressive immigration reform.

In March, the campaign was ready to roll out a six-month strategy when the pandemic happened, and Kim’s team had to quickly adapt to the situation.  Instead of traditional appearances, “we switched immediately to community relief efforts,” he said, including food distribution, mutual aid, relief efforts, and dropping off masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) to people in need. The campaign also provided information resources through text blasts, he said, on where to go for food, or what kind of letter to write to avoid eviction.  

One unique campaign offering was a “mokbang,” he said, which, in Korea, is a live internet event where a person videos themselves eating a meal, usually an enormous one. “We had our own mokbang, so each week we featured a different community family-owned restaurant in our LA area,” he said.  They chose restaurants that that had had a drop in business of 80 percent or more. Kim and other participants sampled the food on a live video. “We would order a couple menu items and have the owner or manager be on the Zoom livestream, and we would just talk about the restaurant, how long it had been in the community, when it opened, some great menu items to order, and how people can help out the restaurant,” he said. 

A later addition to the mokbang was the opportunity for viewers to donate in order to sponsor meals for those in need.  “Then we would get 10 to 30 meals at the featured restaurant, and we would distribute them to unhoused neighbors too,” he said.

Kim has run a grassroots-funded campaign, and has railed against his well-funded opponent Jimmy Gomez, accusing him of taking large contributions from corporate special interests. Kim’s grassroots campaign is “totally disruptive to the world of politics in DC, because they can’t blackmail you or pressure you into taking certain stances,” Kim said.

There is a lot of distrust of politics in general in his district, Kim observed. Of 700,000 constituents in the district, 300,000 are voters. However, only about half of that number voted in the last election, according to the website Ballotpedia. “It is unfortunate, but I get it, because you vote for things to change but nothing happens, you get discouraged and jaded and you just don’t want to vote any more,” he said.  Sparking voter interest and increasing turnout on November 3 will favor him, Kim believes.

Once elected, Kim said, he will also meet regularly with his constituency about their concerns.  The former representative in that seat, Xavier Becerra, had frequent meetings with district constituents; Gomez does not have regular meetings, Kim said. Further, Kim said he wants to sponsor a bill to require U.S. representatives to meet with constituents monthly, and to file the meeting notes in congress.

“I feel our government should be one that’s more representative of the people, so it’s not just career politicians who are always in office, but it’s people from different walks of life, with different stories, different socio-economic statuses, and different backgrounds,” he said. “And that’s what a real representative government looks like. I know this sounds very idealistic, but hey, we are the answer that we are waiting for, so that is why I am stepping up.”

Kim’s campaign website is: DavidKim2020.com

House district contest with national implications

by

Rep. Andy Kim’s tight race in 2018 may be a repeat in this New Jersey swing district | By Martha Vickery (Summer 2020 issue)

Rep. Andy Kim of New Jersey.

Andy Kim, a candidate in New Jersey’s Third District, considered a swing district, recently discussed his goals for a second term, and his campaign strategies in what is looking like a hot contest.  Kim participated in a Zoom call in July with supporters in Minnesota, in Kim’s district, and elsewhere, arranged by Minneapolis DFL activist Kevin Armstrong, a financial services attorney and an elected delegate to the 2020 DNC National Convention. 

Elections for all 435 U.S. House seats will take place in the general election on November 3.  Kim, a Democrat, is running against first-time candidate Republican David Richter, a successful CEO of a construction services firm. According to the election information site Ballotpedia, 76 of the 435 seats are considered battlegrounds. Forty-two of those have Democratic incumbents, and 33 have Republican incumbents, with one vacancy. 

Kim’s Third District is known to be one of the most competitive in the nation.  Kim was part of the so-called Blue Wave of Democrats elected in 2018.  The Third District voted for Obama in both of his elections, and then went for Trump in 2016.

On the Zoom call, Kim explained that his family background contributed a lot to inspiring him to be a public employee, and ultimately a candidate for elected office. “My mon and dad grew up in Korea after the Korean War, through very difficult times,” he said.  “My dad grew up in an orphanage, and is a polio survivor.  It’s because he had polio that we suspect that his parents may have abandoned him at the door of the orphanage.  My mom grew up in a poor farm family to a single mother. She lost brothers and sisters to the famine after the Korean War.”

Kim said his father spent a lot of his childhood on the streets of Seoul, after running away from the orphanage because of bad treatment.  Eventually, his father got a scholarship to study in the U.S. “America took a chance on him by giving him an education here.  …so, that someone who grew up on the streets in Korea as a polio survivor ended up getting a Ph.D. degree in genetics in America. It is a story that drives my family and commits us to the greatness of this nation,” Kim said.

In his career as a health researcher, his father went on to dedicate his life to trying to cure cancer and Alzheimer’s, while his mother became a nurse and worked for a hospital system located in the Third District, Kim said. Making public service a lifestyle was something he saw his parents do, and wanted to emulate. 

Kim, a Rhodes scholar, spent a decade in Washington working first under President George W. Bush as a conflict specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development.  He earned his doctorate in international relations at Oxford University, and then worked for the Obama administration.  He was a State Department foreign affairs officer and an adviser to Gens. David Petraeus and John Allen in Afghanistan. Between 2013 and 2015, he handled matters having to do with Iraq at the National Security Council.

Andy Kim with son at a recent campaign rally.

Kim and his wife have two children, ages five and three.  Kim had taken some time off until about three years ago to “concentrate on being a dad” but when Trump got elected, he said, “I started to get really concerned about the direction of our country.”  Rep. Tom McArthur, who Kim defeated in 2018, was the chief architect of the bill to gut the Affordable Care Act. “He felt he was invincible,” in his seat, Kim said.  McArthur also had plenty of money to self-fund his election to the tune of $5 million.

It was thought to be impossible to win the race against McArthur, Kim recalled.  Besides being too poor and brand new at the job after being a career diplomat, people told him “that there was no way an Asian American could win a district that is 85 percent white, and voted for Trump by six points.”  It took nine extra days after election day to declare a winner, he said, because the votes were so close.

Kim said he has tried to show that he can represent a very divided district.  He has held 22 town hall sessions in two years.  Because he was a military advisor, Kim was appointed to the House Armed Services Committee.  He was also appointed to the Small Business Committee, an important committee “considering the dire situation hundreds of thousands of small businesses in our nation are facing right now.”  Most recently, he was asked to be on the Coronavirus Task Force Committee, and it’s “an honor to be on this committee to get our nation through this crisis,” Kim said.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose him because of his crisis management experience working in the White House, he said.

Kim is the only Korean American in Congress, and only the second Korean American in history to serve in the House.  At age 36 (in 2018), he was the youngest person ever to be elected to a federal office.  His election, he said, proves that Asian Americans can win anywhere in the country when they push hard and build strong coalitions.  It was also important “and show that my story is not a Korean American or Asian American story, that it is fundamentally an American story,” he said.

Kim reported to Joe Biden as vice-president when he was on an Iraq task force during the Obama Administration.

Will race be an issue again?  “It is an issue and other side did make a big fuss about it the last time.  My opponent ran an attack ad and at the end, it said ‘Andy Kim —- he’s not one of us,’” Kim said.  “They did a mailer that had my name in like won-ton-chop-suey font,” he added.  “Just trying to do things to ‘otherize’ me, to make it seem like I don’t belong there, and can’t represent them because of the color of my skin, and who I am. …It pained me to know that this kind of racism is in my home town.

“But we see right now that the movement against racial inequality and systemic racism” he said.  “We know that this kind of systemic racism is all over our country.  In fact, just before the social distancing was put in place, I experienced about five or six episodes where people yelled racist remarks at me, or even physically tried to assault me because they thought I would give them the coronavirus.”

Kim said he is standing with African Americans in his district who are fighting to represent their interests in this moment of consciousness, just as Black members of Congress stood with him a couple months ago to condemn xenophobia against Asian Americans. 

In answer to another question, Kim said he did not run for office only because he wanted to get in, or because the odds looked good.  In fact, he said, he resisted others’ suggestions to run in a less-white district. “I didn’t run for office because I thought I could win,” he said. “I ran for office because it was my home.”  

Breathing

by

From ground zero, reflecting on the mix of privilege and prejudice that is the Asian American experience | By Phillip Lee (Summer 2020 issue)

Mural of George Floyd marks the location where he was killed.
Mural of George Floyd marks the location where he was killed. Photo by Tiffany Pauling

It’s Thursday June 4 at 1 p.m. and I CAN breathe. 

I was kneeling (while socially distancing) on the lawn in front of my church in North Minneapolis —- a space mobilized for people to pick-up basic supplies, food… and breathe.  It was a space for people who wanted to help rebuild the community after the devastation and the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder on Memorial Day. On this day, George can’t breathe. But I can. 

Today is George’s memorial.  For some, it’s a time to cherish and celebrate George’s life.  For others, it’s a day to mourn.  For many, it’s another example of how skin tone can decide whether or not someone will be treated justly and humanely.  For that reason, George cannot breathe any more.

The Geneva Convention’s policies were established after the World Wars for the purpose of “clear prohibition of torture and other cruel or inhumane treatment and outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” This international human rights law was created to protect enemies and prisoners of war to be treated humanely.  How is it that in our own city, a black man is treated worse than an enemy during a time of war? 

George was held faced down on a pavement while his hands were cuffed with another man kneeling on top of his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. 

That’s not one minute

Not two minutes

Not three minutes

Not four minutes

Not five minutes

Not six minutes

Not seven minutes

Not eight minutes

At 1 p.m. today, collectively, we kneeled in remembrance of George for eight minutes and 46 seconds.  I couldn’t believe how long that was.  My knee hurt, my back hurt, I could feel the heat of the sun burning my neck… but I could breathe.  No one had a knee on my neck for that eight minutes and 46 seconds restricting my breathing.  I can’t even begin to imagine what that was like for George in his last minutes of life.

I’m left today feeling so many emotions —- anger, frustration, sadness, empathy, but I do also feel hope. As divided as we are in this country today, we have begun to expose the systemic issues which have been ignored for so long.  We need to see it and name it so we can address it.

Racism isn’t everybody’s experience.

If you’ve been on the side of privilege, then racism hasn’t interrupted your life or made you uncomfortable, because you’ve benefited from it.  As an Asian American man, I’ve experienced both.  Growing up in a rough part of Chicago, I remember fearing getting jumped by gangs for wearing the wrong colors, or being the wrong race.  As I grew older, while Asian Americans are people of color, many of us had the benefit of being the “model minority” or the “honorary whites.”  Because of that, we’re treated better than other brothers and sisters of color.  I work in a marketing department for a health care company.  When I am at our hospitals and clinics for meetings, most of the time people assume I’m a doctor when they see me.  This type of subversive racism divides the communities of color.  While I’m a person of color, I’m not black, so I have privilege.  I don’t worry about being pulled out of the car or being shot when I have an encounter with the police.

There are so many things I want to share with my friends and community about what’s going on.  However, I still consider myself privileged and must listen more to the voices of my black and brown brothers and sisters. 

Maybe I can share some of my thoughts for my other privileged friends.  I do want to clarify that privileged people are not only white people, as privilege comes from many places; socio-economic status, gender, your address, your title, where you work and much, much more.

A common way to explain difficult things for consumers is in a form of an FAQ.  Let me take a stab at some of the most frequently asked questions these days:

1. Why are all black people rioting, looting and burning buildings? 

a. They’re not. Yes, some have been involved, but many have been started by groups instigating violence and destruction.  There have been confirmed reports by law enforcement agencies that anarchists, white supremacists and opportunists are leading the destruction and looting.  Let’s also be very clear that legal peaceful protesters are not grouped together with the group rioting and looting, as many people have assumed.

b. Another example I’ve shared with friends about the destruction is that if someone killed one of my children, and the police did nothing to try to catch or protect my family, and my other child’s life is in danger, what would I do to get their attention?  I might burn down a building or two if that’s the only way to protect my family.  Yes, I would try all other efforts first, but if no one would answer me, show me sympathy or care for who I lost, I would be moved to make my voice heard in other ways.  Reflect on how much you love your family and what you would do to protect them.  For the black community, it’s not just one child, it’s generations.

2. Why do only Black Lives Matter?

a. Nobody is saying that “only” black lives matter, but when they are systematically being treated inhumanely, we have to call it out.  If I say that I love my daughter, that doesn’t mean I don’t love my son. 

b. It’s the idea of the fragility of the privileged that prompts this question over and over again.  We need to get past our own need to be recognized, and start seeing that historically and today, not all lives matter equally.  Very sad, but true.

3. Why are you disrespecting the flag and the police by kneeling in protest?

a. As many of you may have seen, when the former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt in peaceful protest, the privileged went nuts.  When seeing the former police officer Derek Chauvin (yes, we should say his name as well to recognize the perpetrator) kneeling on the neck of George, it was seen as “policing.”  The kneeling protest by Kaepernick was in protest of the police brutality towards the black community. Instead of dealing with the core issue, there was an effort to divert the focus in order to demean this athlete’s peaceful protest as un-American, anti-police and anti-U.S. flag. 

b. When white men, dressed in full body armor, armed with assault rifles, show up at the state capitals wielding confederate flags to protest their rights to free speech and right to bear arms, they are treated as loyal Americans defending their rights given to them by the Constitution of the United States.  They are called patriots.  When black communities gather in peaceful protest, unarmed and unarmored, they are shot at with rubber bullets, sprayed with water cannons, and tear gassed.  They are called scumbags, fascists, and the so subtle “those people,” meaning not Americans. This is why Black Lives Matter.

As I struggle through so many feelings of anxiety and anger, I cannot fathom the feelings of despair that my black brothers and sisters are going through now, and have been enduring for decades.  Seeing the tears, and hearing my friends share their fears for their black or brown children growing up in this country, with the fear that they can be killed without repercussion by those who are supposed to protect them, is heart-breaking, unjust and un-American.

As we all contemplate what our role is in abolishing racism, it starts with us.  Do an inventory of the people in your life, i.e. your friends, neighbors, and colleagues. If you notice that everyone in your life looks like you and lives like you, then recognize that it is time to get to know people who are different from you.  When was the last time you invited someone who didn’t look like you into your home to share a meal together?  If you take this step, you will notice that you will learn a lot, and that your life will be so much more flavorful.

Speak up, take action and support those who need you.  Privilege is a blessing.  If you have it, use it to make a difference.  Use to give life to those who may lose it.  

Vote.  When I went through my naturalization process to become a U.S. citizen, there was a question in the test, “What is the most important right promised to you by the Constitution of the United States?”  I initially thought freedom of speech or freedom of religion.  The correct answer was the right to vote.  When I inquired about the reasoning, I was told that freedom of speech has no power, if speech couldn’t cause change.  You can change policy and laws by voting elected officials who are interested in making needed systematic changes.  The right to vote gives all of us power. It is important to utilize it. 

For those who are still wondering:  why should we get involved if we don’t struggle with racism? 

Because we CAN breathe.

Korean Quarterly is dedicated to producing quality non-profit independent journalism rooted in the Korean American community. Please support us by subscribing, donating, or making a purchase through our store.  

COVID-19 and sanctions

by

Virtual briefing: Real crisis highlights need to reorient U.S. foreign policy toward peace outcomes  | National News Feature by Martha Vickery (Spring 2020 issue)

Screen capture of the Women Cross DMZ forum on North Korean sanctions in light of COVID-19.
A screen capture of facilitator Elizabeth Beavers of Women Cross DMZ (top left) who guided the forum about Sanctions in light of COVID-19, with Kee Park M.D. (top middle), Joy Yoon (top right), and (lower row) Dan Jasper from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); and Henri Feron of the Center for Internatinal Policy.

The state of peace on the Korean peninsula in the environment of pandemic was the subject of a COVID: Sanctions and North Korea Virtual Hill Briefing held April 20. The forum featured an introduction by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) who has authored a bill to call for the review of sanctions and a reshaping of  U.S.-North Korea policy. A policy analyst, a public health M.D., an aid professional working on food relief  in North Korea, and a second aid professional working with disabled children in North Korea, rounded out the panel.

The briefing, sponsored by the advocacy organizations Korea Peace Now and Women Cross DMZ, included perspectives of aid organizations of the current “maximum pressure” campaign by the Trump administration that applied more stringent sanctions starting in 2017. Sanctions and complicated new rules for business operations have hampered aid work.

Omar has co-authored a package of seven bills aimed at reorienting U.S. foreign policy toward human rights, justice and peace, with military force as a last resort. The initiative is called Pathway to PEACE (Progressive, Equitable and Constructive Engagement). New sanctions have been applied over time in North Korea with little effect in terms of the direction of diplomacy, Omar said.  “It hasn’t worked in Iran or Cuba, so it is really important for us to look at what a new approach would be like, and it needs to be a much more informed and thought-through process where we examine what impact these sanctions are going to have in many countries including, and especially in North Korea.” 

Another bill Omar co-sponsored, HR 152, calls for an official end to the Korean War.  “I believe no lasting solution is available until the war has been brought to a formal end,” she said. 

Joy Yoon, who runs a pediatric rehabilitation organization Ignis Community, said the organization has been working in North Korea for 13 years.  Their organization’s work in treating children with autism, cerebral palsy and other disabilities has shown North Koreans that many disabling conditions respond to treatment and patients’ lives can be improved, she said. 

The organization was still moving ahead with permission to build a new hospital in 2016.  But in 2017, the U.S. government issued travel restrictions, and their whole team were forced to leave the country.  The special passport validations were halted for awhile, and since 2018 there has been a two to three month wait for them.

Through 2017, Yoon said, they were making progress to work with the government to establish pediatric rehabilitation services in all nine provinces. “That was only possible because we were living in North Korea,” Yoon added.  “It is a misnomer that aid is a delivery of goods; it goes far beyond that to building relationships and trust with our North Korean counterparts, and it goes to bringing in our donors and our board members to see the work so that the support can continue to come in,” she said. Since 2017, many aid organizations have left the country due to the complicated travel restrictions and also sanction controls on banking transactions that make it difficult for aid organizations to access their money, she said.

Dan Jasper from American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) said his organization has been working in North Korea for 40 years.  The organization modified its emphasis to food security in the ‘90s when famine was emerging in North Korea. 

Jasper said that despite his organization’s transparency, it was subject to an investigation in 2017, which has had a chilling effect on the AFSC and other aid organizations.  “This is the most difficult period we have worked under, which is due to U.S. regulations,” he said, adding that they are hoping for structural fixes in the system of sanctions, like those Rep. Omar outlined in her legislation.  

Kee Park, an M.D. public health lecturer at Harvard Medical School, has also worked on the ground in North Korea as a surgeon. He now analyzes and writes about the effects of sanctions on the health of North Koreans. 

According to Park, North Korea has been “pretty successful at keeping COVID-19 out of the country.”  For the moment, they are not grappling with the pandemic, “but we know the virus will eventually enter North Korea; this is my prediction,” he said, which according to one projection could result in 150,000 deaths.  Park said the medical system in the country is not set up for the kind of emergency care the pandemic requires —- he estimates that there are 50 ventilators in the whole country.  If North Korea has to deal with an outbreak of COVID-19, “there is a huge gap in what they have compared to what they need to treat coronavirus patients.”

Right now, the government is building a “massive hospital in Pyongyang to increase its treatment capacity,” he said, and they are also opening a medical oxygen factory in North Hamhyung Province in direct response to the future need to treat respiratory problems associated with COVID-19, he said.

Park said the pandemic could be the chance for adversaries to lower their guard and try to cooperate with one another. “It could open up opportunities for diplomacy and hopefully peace,” he said. 

Henri Feron, an analyst from the Center for International Policy, said negotiations ongoing in 2018 and 2019 have broken down. “North Korea has said it is not interested in talking any more unless it is about peace,” he said.  As a result, North Korea refused COVID-19 aid, a relatively small amount compared to the disruption being caused by sanctions.  “From a North Korean perspective, the sanctions are so comprehensive now that nobody can tell if they are about non-proliferation or if they are about regime change,” he said.

In terms of whether the COVID-19 pandemic presents any diplomatic opportunities, Feron said he that the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for a global cease-fire, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet Jeria  has called for sectoral sanctions (sanctions of whole classes of products, regardless of use)  to be relieved for humanitarian reasons.  “It’s a way of starting this conversation that is understandable for everybody, that’s politically relatable for everybody.  So I think that’s the opportunity now.”

Right now, funding goes to preventing the next war, instead of to urgent causes now before us, Feron offered. According to research by the Congressional Research Service, a new Korean war could result in tens of millions dead.  Hundreds of billions are spent by neighboring countries to prepare against a new war outbreak.  “That’s a lot of potential dead people and a lot of money that could be used for something like pandemic prevention.”

Jasper commented that “the world is as vulnerable as the most vulnerable population out there, and to have a policy of isolation is dangerous” at the global health level, and for national security. The U.S. and North Korea have been engaged in a pointless dispute. “It’s a kind of a circular argument where they say  ‘we’re not going to give you a peace treaty unless you give us your weapons’ and they’re saying ‘well we are not going to give you our weapons until we have a peace treaty,”

Jasper said he has been suggesting that it may be helpful instead to “build up a level of confidence” where a peace treaty begins to sound doable.  “Kind of the low-hanging fruit in the humanitarian sphere,” he said, such as NGO assistance, North-South family reunions,  repatriation of service member remains. “These are the small things that can build trust and get us to a place where we can start to reinvest that money” that is now used for protection from war, he said.

There is an additional bill that should get support, Park said, the Enhancing North Korean Humanitarian Assistance Act, sponsored by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) which would expedite needed aid to non-governmental organizations in North Korea. 

Feron said that, in thinking of the COVID-19 crisis as a natural disaster.  “It puts in high relief how artificial and unnecessary the conflict with North Korea is.”  As the U.S. tries to use a continuing war as leverage for things we will not achieve. “There should be a review of the artificiality of this war, especially when we are confronted with natural disasters such as COVID.”

Park said that the paradigm the U.S. has used, particularly the design of policies from a military perspective, must be examined anew.  Denying aid, or tying it up so that it is effectively denied, risks lives.   “Are we willing to accept the deaths of innocent people in the pursuit of U.S. national interests?” he asked, “  Because that’s exactly what is happening now.  I would like to see fundamental structural changes in the way we think about human lives.” 

Korean Quarterly is dedicated to producing quality non-profit independent journalism rooted in the Korean American community. Please support us by subscribing, donating, or making a purchase through our store.  

Civil rights struggles

by

New PBS series examines Asian immigrant history, leadership and human rights victories  | National News Feature by Martha Vickery (Spring 2020 issue)

"Asian Americans" PBS series examines Asian immigrant history, leadership and human rights victories.
New PBS series

A comprehensive documentary that tells personal stories of people at the intersection of key momentsof American history, Asian Americans is a five-hour documentary premiered on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations in May and is now available online.

The series examines the significant role of Asian Americans in shaping American history and identity, beginning with the first wave of Chinese immigrants in the 1850s, through the emergence of identity politics during the 20th century, and modern refugee crises in today’s globally-connected world.

PBS series "Asian Americans" featuring Ralph Ahn, Philip Ahn and Susan Ahn Cuddy.
The Ahn siblings in military uniform in 1942: Ralph, Philip (who became a Hollywood actor), and Susan Ahn Cuddy

Two significant stories of Korean Americans are included in the series.  One is the story of Susan Ahn Cuddy, the first Asian American woman to enlist in the U.S Navy, and the daughter of Korean Independence Movement leader Chang-ho Ahn, who immigrated with his wife to California during the Japanese occupation. He died as a political prisoner in Korea after returning there to organize for the resistance.  As a young adult, Cuddy enlisted in the Navy in order to fight the Japanese during the War, and served as a gunnery officer, training soldiers in weaponry operation.

The other Korean American story was about Tereza Lee, a Chicago woman who inspired Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)  to propose the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. The act would give adult non-citizens who were born outside the U.S. but brought up and educated in the U.S. a path to attain citizenship.

At age 17, Lee won a coveted scholarship to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The artistic director encouraged her to apply to some of the nation’s top music colleges, but Lee told her something she had never told any adult: That she was undocumented, and her parents always feared deportation and permanent separation of the family.  The parents were born in South Korea, Lee in Brazil, and Lee’s younger brother in the U.S.  The teacher urged her to talk to her U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. 

From Lee’s story, the DREAM Act was written, and introduced in 2001. It became a civil rights movement that affects an estimated 2.1 million residents nationwide.  Since then, there have been 10 versions of the bill, and it still has not been ratified

The five-part documentary describes Asian American history in the context of hard-won civil rights.  It begins with a segment on the immigration of the Chinese, who were allowed guest worker status, but denied citizenship, while they built the Trans-continental Railway.  It discusses how Filipino agricultural workers joined with Mexican workers led by Cesar Chavez to agitate and organize for minimum wages and better working conditions.  The best known action was the grape strike against growers in Delano, California, and grape boycott which began in 1965 and lasted for five years. 

The series also contains testimony by Japanese American citizens who were incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps during World War II. Through her mother’s diary, a woman born in the camp describes the inhuman conditions in the Tulelake internment camp where she was born and spent her early childhood. 

It also describes the struggle for Asian Americans to be included in ethnic and race studies education curriculum for which students rallied at San Francisco State University starting in 1966.  It contains personal stories of many first Asian American leaders, such as U.S. Sen. Patsy Mink, the first woman of color in the U.S. Congress.

The documentary was led by a team of Asian American filmmakers, including Academy Award-nominated series producer Renee Tajima-Peña.  Korean American documentary filmmaker Grace Lee is one of the episode teams.  One of Lee’s first award-winning documentaries was The Grace Lee Project, where she explores identity and cultural expectations by meeting and interviewing women who share her name.  She is also producing a documentary entitled And She Could Be Next, about how women of color are transforming politics and civic engagement.

The Washington, D.C public television station WETA is co-producing the series.  WETA also co-produced three other documentaries on American ethnic groups; The Jewish Americans, The Italian Americans and Latino Americans. The program was in collaboration with the Center for Asian American Media, a non-profit San Francisco-based organization which produces multicultural programming for PBS.

The cosponsoring organizations have partnered with Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles, in order to accompany the premiere with some targeted community events and education initiatives.

Trailers and more information about the series are located at the website: PBS: Public Broadcasting Service

Korean Quarterly is dedicated to producing quality non-profit independent journalism rooted in the Korean American community. Please support us by subscribing, donating, or making a purchase through our store.  

WPGA Championship

by

19 Korean women golfers compete at Hazeltine with elite athletes from around the world | By Phillip Lee (Summer 2019 issue)

WPGA Championship in Minnesota, Jin Young Ko hits her tee shot in the final round.
Jin Young Ko hits her tee shot on the 8th hole during the final round.

On June 20, 2019, the best women golfers from around the world began their quest in Minnesota for the latest of the major golf championships held at Hazeltine National Golf Club.  This club has been site of two Men’s U.S. Opens, two Professional Golf Association (PGA) Championships and a Ryder Cup in 2016. 

This year, the championship field was comprised of 156 women, including 19 Korean nationals and 16 players of Korean descent representing the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

In 2008, the U.S. Women’s Open was held at the nearby Interlachen Country Club, where then- 19-year-old Inbee Park won her first of seven majors and 19 Ladies’ Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tournaments.  She was the LPGA player of the year in 2013 and joined the LPGA Hall of Fame in 2016.  She stayed in contention for most of the championship this year, but fell a few shots short and finished seventh. 

CHASKA, MN - JUNE 23: Inbee Park of the Republic of Korea hits her tee shot on the eighth hole during the final round for the 65th KPMG Women’s PGA Championship held at Hazeltine National Golf Club on June 23, 2019 in Chaska, Minnesota. (Photo by Montana Pritchard/PGA of America)
Inbee Park hits her tee shot on the eighth hole during the final round for the 65th KPMG Women’s PGA Championship held at Hazeltine National Golf Club on June 23, 2019 in Chaska, Minnesota. Photo by Montana Pritchard

Reflecting on her return to Minneapolis 11 years after her last victory here, Park said, “lots of stories I can think of coming to Minnesota area again and I was really pleased with so many people still remembering me.  Eleven years it’s been, but so many out here, rooting for me.  I was really happy with that. Got really good vibes from them.” 

At age 31, Inbee is considered one of the stateswomen of Korean golfers on tour.  She was inspired by Se Ri Pak’s 1998 victory at the U.S. Open when she became the youngest women ever to win this major championship.  Her win vaulted the sport of golf in Korea, and conferred celebrity status to Inbee.  Now many of Korean players look up to Inbee as a role model to inspire the next generation of Korean golfers on the LPGA tour.

2008 was also a pivotal year in LPGA history.  With half of the players coming from outside the U.S. and 45 of the 220 members on the tour coming from South Korea, there were a lot of racial tensions regarding the image of the LPGA tour.  The then-Commissioner of the LPGA, Carolyn Bivens, established a new rule that any foreign-born player on the tour for two years who couldn’t give an interview in English without a translator would be suspended from the tour. 

The response to this decision included a public outcry from the (usually passive) Korean American community.  This included a threat of a legislative bill authored by a Korean American State Senator to ban LPGA from holding tournaments in California for discriminatory policies, as well as major corporations pulling their sponsorship which ended seven tournaments. The English proficiency policy was speedily rescinded, and Commissioner Bivens was forced to resign the following year.

While the policy changed, the sentiment that emerged from it may have had a longer-lasting impact on Korean golfers on the tour.  While a large contingent of Korean golfers come to the U.S. for this major championship, the weekly tour membership of Korean golfers has decreased in recent years. 

One can speculate that even the tournaments and courses are being set up to make it harder for Korean players to succeed.  Hazeltine National Golf Course was set up to be the longest course in the history of LPGA major tournament courses.  Korean players tend to be more precise golfers, rather than long drivers.  Additionally, the wind and the rain that plagued much of the tournament added a much greater challenge for the shorter drivers from Korea.  The long-hitting Sung Hyun Park was the only Korean golfer finishing in the top five at this year’s tournament.

When you look at the success of Korean golfers on the LPGA tour, many have surmised that their approach of perfecting their swing through methodical repetition contributes to their success, similar to the skills needed to master a musical instrument.  This style-perfecting technique allows them to repeat the same swing under pressure.  Historically, LPGA tournament courses were shorter in distance, so precision was more important than distance.  In 2018, only four of the top 10 players in the year-end ranking were also in the top 10 longest drive list. 

Sung Hyun Park makes a sand shot at the 2019 WPGA held at Hazeltine in Minnesota in 2019. Photo by Phil Lee

Players to get to know

One player, Jeong Eun Lee6, certainly seems to have a typo in her last name.  The “6” is there for a reason —- when she joined the Korean LPGA Tour, there were five others with the same name on the tour, so they added the 6 to give her a unique identity.  After winning the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open and the first seven-figure prize money on tour history, she can let her game distinguish her from the other Jeong Euns.  She finished tied for 30th  place at this year’s championship.

Michelle Wie, arguably the best-known woman golfer in the world was on hand to compete for the first time after a break from competition to help her body recover from numerous injuries, most recently her wrist surgery.  Wie played her first LPGA tournament when she was only 13 years old, and in terms of her future potential, was often compared to Tiger Woods.  Her various injuries kept her from reaching her full potential, even though through all of her injuries, she has still won five tournaments and a U.S. Women’s Open in 2014.

Michelle Wie speaks during a press conference for the 65th KPMG Women's PGA Championship held at Hazeltine National Golf Club on June 18, 2019 in Chaska, Minnesota. (Photo by Carly Grenfell/PGA of America)
Michelle Wie at the pre-tournament press conference. Photo by Carly Grenfell

Unfortunately, Wie did not have the triumphant return she had hoped for and missed the cut after two very difficult rounds.  “It was kind of a little foolish to think that I would shoot really well, just starting to hit golf balls last week,” said Wie.  “It’s a tough golf course, but I’m really, really happy that I played.  Just feeling a lot of joy just being out there and competing again.”

CHASKA, MN - JUNE 21: Danielle Kang hits her tee shot on 14th hole during the second round for the 65th KPMG Women’s PGA Championship held at Hazeltine National Golf Club on June 21, 2019 in Chaska, Minnesota.
Danielle Kang hits her tee shot on 14th hole during the second round. Photo by Darren Carroll

Danielle Kang was born in San Francisco and grew up in southern California playing golf through the Southern California PGA Junior Tour.  She qualified for her first U.S. Women’s Open when she was 14.  She became the first woman to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur Open in back-to-back years in 2010 and 2011.  She turned pro after her second win.  Danielle went on to win the 2017 WPGA Open.  She came to Hazeltine with high hopes to repeat her win from two years ago.  “I had a really hot start. My game feels really good this week and I stayed very aggressive,” said Kang.  She finished with a strong final round that helped her place in a tie for fifth place.

Jin Young Ko started golfing when she was seven in Seoul and was a 10-time winner in the Korean LPGA tour prior to joining the LPGA in 2018.  She became the first woman player in 67 years to win in the first tournament she played on the LPGA tour.  She has won four tournaments and one major since joining the tour and is currently ranked as the top woman golfer in the world. 

With her consistent play week to week, she is in contention to win at every tournament.  There was a lot of pressure coming into the Women’s PGA Championship as the top player in the world.  Asked how she handles so many people asking her about being Number One, she replied, “I don’t know, I’m always praying to God and enjoying it.”  The pressure and the weather impacted Ko, as she shot a score of five over-par on the first day, which lowered her chances to make the cut.  She came back the next day and shot 5 under, lowest round of the tournament and put herself in position to be in contention.  She finished in 14th place.

Sung Hyun Park has been the Number One player in the world, a U.S. Women’s Open champion, WPGA Champion, Rookie of the Year and the Player of the Year.  Not bad for someone who has been on tour for less than two years. 

CHASKA, MN - JUNE 21: Sung Hyun Park of the Republic of Korea hits her tee shot on the 14th hole during the second round for the 65th KPMG Women’s PGA Championship held at Hazeltine National Golf Club on June 21, 2019 in Chaska, Minnesota.
Sung Hyun Park hits her tee shot on the 14th hole during the second round. Photo by Darren Carroll

Park has a fan club called “Namdalla” (translates from Korean as “I’m different”).  She definitely had a non-traditional path to the ultimate golf tour for women around the world.  While many of the Korean players come from wealthy families able to afford the best coaches and the very expensive golf fees in Korea, Park comes from a middle-class blue-collar family.  Her mom took her to a driving range when she was seven, and had her hit balls.  She fell in love with the game, and would go to the range every day after school to practice.  Her family struggled to pay for her golf, but they knew that her success would be worth it and it would help the family get financial stability.  The pressure was on.

Sung Hyun Park had a coach early in her life who made an impact on her, who was also a mentor and a friend.  While Sung Hyun has gone without a coach for long stretches in her career, as she likes to perfect her own swing, she stayed in contact with her first coach, Song Ju Park.  He still comes to the U.S. for major championships to help and give her advice. 

Sung Hyun Park's mother, Keum Ja lee, passes food in a Tupperware container as she walks down the ninth fairway at Hazeltine.
Sung Hyun Park’s mother, Keum Ja lee, passes food in a Tupperware container as she walks down the ninth fairway at Hazeltine. Photo by Phill Lee

Her mother Keum Ja Lee, has accompanied her daughter since the first day she took her to the driving range. Lee still travels with her daughter on the tour.  This is a greater sacrifice than most, as her husband and second daughter remains back in Korea.  Having her mother’s support and presence means that Park can travel for longer periods, making her family and nation proud.  Watching Sung Hyun Park pass the Tupperware to her mom as she walked down the ninth  fairway at Hazeltine reminds us that when your mom is nearby, so is her home cooking that provides comfort and familiarity in a foreign land.

Park finished just a shot behind in second place at the 2019 WPGA, as Hannah Greene from Australia made a touchy putt on the last hole of the tournament to secure her first major victory.  Park was as close as one shot behind in defending her title from the 2018 championship. 

As Sung Hyun Park’s fan club continues grow and show up in large numbers to her tournaments, I have a feeling that she will be leaving Minnesota with a lot of new Namdallas.

Maybe it was the weather, but it was surprising to see how low the attendance was at Hazeltine compared to the last major that was in Minneapolis.  While LPGA tries to improve its brand and popularity, they have to be intentional in supporting and marketing the success of their athletes, regardless of the ethnicities of those athletes.  I hope that the next time Minnesota hosts a major tournament we’ll see the fairway lined with fans appreciating the skills of players who have dedicated their lives to perform at the highest level.  Congratulations to all of the Korean golfers who competed this week.  Regardless of the outcome on the course, you’re setting the course for the next generation of young golfers around the world. Kamsahamnida! (Thank you!)

CHASKA, MN - JUNE 22: Sung Hyun Park of the Republic of Korea hits her tee shot on the first hole during the third round for the 65th KPMG Women’s PGA Championship held at Hazeltine National Golf Club on June 22, 2019 in Chaska, Minnesota.
Sung Hyun Park hits her tee shot on the first hole during the third round. Photo by Darren Carroll

Copyright ©2024 Korean Quarterly. All rights reserved.

Show Buttons
Share on X
Hide Buttons