Korean-Americanism as I know it
The conclusion to my series, "Korea by a Korean-American 'kyo-po.'"
Part 2: Some traveling logistics for Korea
Part 4: On visiting the Korean comfort women memorial
Welcome to the final installment of my series on Korea. What started as a short list of some good Korean restaurants and go-to karaoke songs ended up becoming some four thousand words, including footnotes. And I may even be tempted to write an Appendix.
Besides my family’s trip, my recent thoughts on my culture have been very influenced by it coming into stark relief. To start, my family moved away from the San Francisco Bay Area to Oregon about five years ago. A pretty apples to apples sort of move, one would think, but it actually wasn’t as even in comparison to liberal Portland, the Bay Area is *very* unique. Second, my husband and I became foster parents to a young Mexican-American teenager, now young man. Let’s just say that you can take a foster parent out of Cupertino, but you cannot take the Cupertino out of a foster parent!1 And nothing matters, even culture, when caring for a child.
Lastly, I chanced upon Rob Henderson’s writing, a half-Korean, half-Mexican former foster kid who grew up in Northern California, served in the Army and then graduated from both Yale and Cambridge. Check out his Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class about what it is that actually can help the poor (of all stripes) build a more secure life for themselves. And more importantly, how no achievement, badge, degree or eventual tax bracket can make up for a lifetime of pain and neglect at the hands of your own parents. That pain and neglect is what we need to focus on, and not getting people into Harvard. Excuse me, a small school in Boston. Cambridge, actually.2
I’m also working thru Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Main takeaway: It’s a very good thing that most of us stopped marrying our cousins a long time ago.
Put it all together, and I am much more an organism from a Korean-American petrie dish than I had ever thought. I’ve become contented in my heritage in the process, and happy to pass along whatever I can to my children and our community—Korean, not Korean and otherwise.
Brief outline first, then the body below.
BEFORE THE THREE WARS
ON KOREAN CHRISTIANITY
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AFTER THE KOREAN WAR
ON KOREAN ADOPTION
ON THE KOREAN CONCEPT OF “HAN”
ON THE KOREAN OBSESSION WITH APPEARANCE
ON KOREA’S WESTERNIZATION
ON THE KOREAN DIASPORA
ON KOREAN MEN
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IN CONCLUSION: DR. LUKE IK CHANG KIM
BEFORE THE THREE WARS
ON KOREAN CHRISTIANITY
My Halmoni - Mountains in General - Young Nak Church of Los Angeles
It is often proclaimed that no other Asian country caught such holy fire as Korea in the 20th century. Christianity is thus as important to Korean culture as the fact that it is a geographical peninsula. One simple reason for this is political; Christianity had always been associated with the West and democracy, and therefore a simple way to practice anti-Japanese sentiment. Behold the union of church and state!
My Halmoni
My “halmoni,” or grandmother, was my Christian example in all things. She got up early to pray every morning, loudly, and read her Bible back to front so many times as to have her name engraved on a plaque at our church. She also sang Christian hymns, again loudly, with an acoustic pride that I have a hard time describing. She was our family’s rock.
Halmoni was born at the start of the 20th century. She likely learned to read as a young girl with a Bible given to her by Western missionaries, though under Japanese colonial rule. Once she and the rest of her family were settled as far south of North Korea after the war, I imagine she taught her kids to read with a Bible as well.
But you know her reading thru the whole Bible part? She was the only woman on that plaque at the time, and possibly still. And you know who else has read thru the whole Bible? Me. Not that surprising considering how religious my family was. But then you know who else? MY 14-YEAR OLD SON. Who has been to church maybe five times in his life! We’re just like the NBA, people! KOREAN CHRISTIAN NEPO-BABIES, REPRESENT!
I am all kinds of proud that my son is now the fourth generation whole-Bible reader in my family. But the truth is, I never asked him to do this; he did it himself. Or rather, his DNA made him do it.3 And it started with my baby Halmoni attending one of the big Korean revivals around 1907.
Mountains in General
I once took a class on the Christian missionary movement, and I remember the teacher saying that early missionaries always tried to find parallels to the Christian God in indigenous cultures. As Korea was a shamanistic culture surrounded by mountains that symbolized power, it was easy for missionaries to find ways to “translate” certain Bible stories to Koreans, such as the story of Moses on Mount Sinai. I think this directly correlates to Koreans’ passion for prayer mountains, such as The Fasting Prayer Mountain of the World in Scotts Valley, California.
What is a “prayer mountain,” you ask? It’s usually a woodsy cabin far away from city life that one makes a pilgrimage to in order to grow closer to God through prayer. Maybe a church youth group will have a retreat there, or maybe a young couple trying to discern God’s will in their marriage.
Both my husband and I have actually physically been to The Fasting Prayer Mountain of the World in Scotts Valley for various church events, and to a few other such prayer mountains throughout California. And we were definitely not the only race represented on these campuses. Other people groups of course value mountains as well, but do they own and operate prayer mountains such as The Fasting Prayer Mountain of the World in Scotts Valley?!
I should also mention the ur-Korean mountain, Mount Paektu, on the border of North Korea and China. Wikipedia says that both Korean and Manchu peoples call Mount Paektu their ancestral homeland, and North Korean legend has it that Kim Il Sung was himself begotten there.
Hence this little North Korean patriotic ditty, “Horse Hooves on Mount Paektu,” featuring an incredible electric band of North Korean musicians! The violinist at around 52 seconds has a stupendous bow arm in particular. Violin playing is all about Newton’s Third Law, even in North Korea.
Young Nak Church of Los Angeles
You can’t go a few miles in Los Angeles without running into a Korean church of some sort, big or small. But Young Nak is one of the largest churches in the world, and still runs multiple Korean-language and English-language ministries every Sunday. Make sure to stay and get the “gook-bap” (beef porridge) after service for just two dollars.
AFTER THE KOREAN WAR
ON KOREAN ADOPTION
“Ayla”
When my maternal aunt came to visit the States for the first time in the 90’s, she brought another Korean woman with her who quickly got to work around the house alongside my mom and aunt. I asked my mom who she was, and she replied, “That’s your other maternal aunt, of course!” Now the only other maternal aunt I had known of passed away from ovarian cancer years prior, so I was a bit confused. I then realized that this living maternal aunt was a young girl orphaned by the war that my grandparents had taken in, one of the many stories about the war I had vague recollection of. “Have I never told you about her?” my mom asked.
Local adoption was thus very commonplace in postwar Korea, and international adoption followed suit. My husband and I have known around five such Korean-born American citizen adoptees, adopted mostly by Christian families from the Midwest. Some have returned to Korea looking for their birth families, some have not. At least two of our peer Korean-American families have also adopted Korean children.
An increased number of adoptions makes sense after all wars. But for some reason South Koreans continue to put children up for international adoption at a very high clip, even half a century after the war. According to Wikipedia, Korean international adoption reached its peak in 1985, but continues to be a source of pain and confusion among the contemporary electorate.
“Ayla”
I chanced upon the following Korean TV special during my time in Korea last month. It shares the story of a young Turkish soldier named Süleyman Dilbirliği, who, during the Korean War, befriended a young Korean orphan girl he named “Ayla.” Sergeant Dilbirliği grew so close to Ayla that he tried to bring her home with him to Turkey, but was prevented from doing so by international law. They were separated until 2010, when Korean TV caught wind of their story after a War memorial event. And the rest is history! They were able to reunite due to the efforts of citizens in both countries, and were together multiple times before Sergeant Dilbirliği passed away in 2017.
ON THE KOREAN CONCEPT OF “HAN”
Dr. Elaine H. Kim - Shimtuh at KCCEB
I first heard of the Korean concept of “Han,” or “suffering,” from my dad. We were sitting in a hospital meeting room with a social worker, my mom and my husband, shortly after I was hospitalized for depression. I believe the social worker meant to simply offer my parents a basic, “Where do we go from here?” presentation, which my dad turned into a lecture on Korean “Han.” I had my head down for most of the meeting, but in retrospect, it may have been pretty priceless to see the look on my social worker’s face as my dad rambled on. I think he may have even used the whiteboard.
I have since heard the term among other Korean-Americans of my generation, and am not at all surprised a Wikipedia exists (“a pseudoscientific concept of an emotion, variously described as some form of grief or resentment, among others, that is said to be an essential element of Korean identity by some, and a modern post-colonial identity by others”). We usually laugh about it, thinking it could explain our parents’ inability to understand that we, their “American” children, may too have suffered as Korean-Americans, despite having food, shelter and free dry cleaning. I share it here to say that there is something we Koreans have identified as being possibly part of our collective human experience. At best, it helps us share in said collective human experience. At worst, it is an excuse for never taking responsibility for our actions.
Dr. Elaine H. Kim
Dr. Kim is a beloved Ethnic Studies professor at U.C. Berkeley. Check out her work if you’re interested in anything Korean- or Asian-American in general.
Shimtuh at the Korean Community Center of the East Bay
Shimtuh, which means “resting place,” is a domestic violence crisis support program based out of the Korean Community Center of the (SF) East Bay. A girlfriend of mine used to volunteer there before she went to law school.
ON THE KOREAN OBSESSION WITH APPEARANCE
#kbeauty - Kim Sun Young - ROKH
A relative of mine used to tell me that I could be Miss Korea if I only let my mom get me a nose job. Another relative told me that my face had really improved since I was little. I can literally bring out my violin here, but instead check out my post #kbeauty: How to find a hair salon, skin clinic and optometrist in Korea, even if you don't speak Korean! for more information. That post and the entries below are how I personally try and make the best of this peerlessly Korean predicament.
Kim Sun Young Hair & Beauty Salon, Los Angeles
I first went to Kim Sun Young in 2002 to get the revolutionary “Magic” straight perm for my very wavy hair. The salon was a cacophony of highly skilled Korean beauticians, clients of all ages and races, an army of unwitting assistants, a few Hispanic janitors and someone I assumed was Ms. Kim Sun Young herself, all hollering at each other in mostly Korean. Add some K-Pop and the occasional fiery sermon a beautician is playing from his/her device to that as well. Mind the bibles and open containers of Korean food when you set your things down on your stylist’s table!
ROKH
Koreans love fashion as much as they love beauty. Rok Hwang is a contemporary fashion designer who is growing in international stature by the minute.
Prior to launching his own line, Mr. Hwang worked at Céline under Phoebe Philo. You can see her influence (or vice versa?) in these two posts especially:
I’ll admit, it was a the Philo-esqueness of his designs that first caught my eye. But I love me a conceptual designer, and Mr. Hwang has consistently stayed very close to two of fashion’s most basic concepts: The trench coat and the tailored shirt. Conceptual designers can really showcase their seriousness about form, which is all fashion is in the end.
And ROKH just released a line for H&M! It’s all tremendous, but since I’m older now, all I really wanted was the grey sweatshirt. I unfortunately missed it the morning of the launch, and the only available size S in the world is now twice the retail price. Did I say I was old?
ON KOREA’S WESTERNIZATION
The Chung Family of Classical Music - Korean Dramas - K-Pop - Osulloc Tea
I have been hearing that a lot of Koreans are disturbed by how materialistic and anti-family their culture has become. I would imagine this has a lot to do with how rapidly the country industrialized and became a world power. I don’t know how that could not create disturbances, but I for one really do not the Animé ideal of Korean beauty these days. Thank goodness for…
The Chung Family of Classical Music
Classical music came to Korea via a general Westernization in the late 19th century. It was then aided and abetted by Japanese colonization, and by the 80’s in America, most of my Korean-American friends took piano or violin lessons (or both).
Kyung-wha Chung was the first Korean-born violinist to break onto the international stage. I particularly love her recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto to this day. Her brother, Myung-whun Chung, became a celebrated conductor who elevated the Seoul Philharmonic to international standard after enjoying a career throughout Europe. Their sister, Myung-wha Chung, is a similarly decorated cellist.
One of the Chung grandchildren by blood or marriage took cello lessons with the same teacher as my younger sister. He must have been maybe 10 or 11 when I heard him play, and he had such incredibly mature expression! I also remember his mother sitting in the very back of the concert hall, moving and feeling every last note and phrase her son played. There’s just no other way, folks. However placing in the Tchaikovsky competition was not enough for this young man; I believe he’s a scientist now.
Korean Dramas
Korean dramas were the soundtrack of my childhood. I thus do not share a lot of my compatriots’, nor Southeast Asia’s, passion for the genre. However, I do remember how popular “질투” / “Jealousy” was!
“Jealousy” is about a young couple in serious need of a DTR, starring Choi Jin-sil, a.k.a. the Audrey Hepburn of Korean dramas. The drama become an instant hit in Korea, and birthed the whole “eating ramen in a convenience store” trend that is somehow still a trend. The “Jealousy” theme song is also on any self-respecting Korean-American’s karaoke list.4
K-Pop
I have never seen a Korean man with a nose bridge. Thus listening to BTS is not a Korean-American activity to me. However, I do love me some K-Pop, and I hereby present to you the absolute BEST K-Pop song of all time: “천생연분” / “Meant to Be,” by Orange County’s own Solid (1996)!
The album cover communicates just so much, but I’ll add some context: “Meant to Be” follows a young man who has recently been set up with a young woman by a mutual friend. However, this young man is already dating someone. And although he’s truly sorry to cheat and asks for his girlfriend’s forgiveness just this once (in his mind), he’s going to go see about this new girl.
Turns out, the new girl IS his girlfriend! I.e., they are meant to be, infidelity aside! I have multiple versions of this song I have dug up over the years, dating back to Napster. It is THE best.
In addition, set-up culture is very real in Korea. My local dry cleaning lady here in Oregon asked me to try and find a nice girl for her son when we first met. And when one of my relatives successfully matched a man from her church with her niece, the man’s mother gifted her a piece of diamond jewelry.
Osulloc Tea
My sister-in-law brought me this beautiful gift set of Osulloc tea, grown and harvested to perfection on South Korea’s Jeju Island. It has to be the smoothest, deepest, fullest, yet crispest cup of tea I have ever tasted. Luckily it is sold on Amazon.
Tourists and locals alike can visit the Osulloc Tea Museum, captured so beautifully here by Yong-Kwan Kim:
ON THE KOREAN DIASPORA
Dry Cleaners in Bethesda - Han Il Kwan in San Francisco
I have met Koreans from Germany, Brazil and Australia, but we’re pretty much everywhere. We are apparently the third most emigrating people group in the world after the Jews and the Chinese. We gravitate toward towns with excellent schools, and quickly set up a dry cleaning business after getting our kids settled. My own in-laws ran a dry cleaners in Palo Alto for over thirty years. They loved having good, honest work, and clients always expressed how much they appreciated my in-laws when I worked the counter. Someone even gifted them company stock in their son’s biotech business!
Dry Cleaners in Bethesda
The first time my family visited my sister in Bethesda, Maryland, we went out for a few errands. In the space of about one mile, we drove by a Jewish temple, a fancy Italian grocery and a Korean-owned dry cleaners. I quickly figured out what kind of town Bethesda was.
I happened to click on some of the reviews of the W W Family Cleaners, and there is one by a female Korean name stating how “meticulous” the lady here is. This is incredible proof of dry cleaning excellence as it comes from a Korean woman herself. Korean women are notoriously meticulous, which is why they have had such success in golf, archery, speed skating, piano, violin and of course, dry cleaning.
Han Il Kwan in San Francisco
You know a Korean restaurant such as Han Il Kwan is good if you see multiple tour buses full of actual Koreans pull up multiple times during dinner, and watch the tour buses park in the spot right in front of the restaurant designated, “Tour Buses Only.”5 The parking spot alone must account for half of the restaurant’s operating budget.
Everything is excellent at this very popular restaurant, but remember the following: 1) Get there right when it opens to chance a table for dinner; 2) Don’t forget to bring home all the little side dishes and leftovers to make into an authentic “bibimbap,” no matter how little the amount; 3) Be sure to ask for the potato side dish that is specially reserved for the tour bus tourists. If they say no, just go and steal some before the next group of tourists come through. It’s that yummy!
ON KOREAN MEN
“The Korean Dads’ 12-Step Program”
The relative looked straight at me and my sisters and said, “Girls, make sure you marry a Chinese man. Do not marry a Korean man. Especially one you feel sorry for.”
I ended up marrying a Korean man, but one that I have never felt sorry for. But I see what that relative meant. Korean men of her generation were born right after the Korean War. Their fathers endured brutal violence at the hands of the Japanese, and after being liberated from their colonizer, had to pull up their bootstraps to fight their own people in a war that ultimately destroyed the whole country. Like all wars, it permanently divided many people from their spouses, children, siblings and parents, not just through death, but also by the North-South divide. Then came postwar poverty, rapid Westernization and immigration. Is it a wonder they just want to play golf all the time?
My own paternal grandfather was a taciturn man, but always kindly. I learned only years after his passing that he was one of the people that lost his family after the war; he had a wife and children in North Korea that he got separated from and never saw again. He then married my grandmother in South Korea and had my father and my aunt.
Beginning in 1985, North and South Korea agreed to organize family reunions for families separated by the war. I don’t know if my grandfather would ever have tried to do something like that, but I wish that he did. Here is the PBS NewsHour on one such reunion from 2019:
“The Korean Dads’ 12-Step Program”
A group of Korean men from Duranno Bible College in Seoul began something called Father School in 1995. It was created to counteract the “the growing national epidemic of abusive, ineffective and absentee fathers” in Korea, and has since spread to the United States. I first heard of Father School from an article in the New York Times Magazine, which quickly made the rounds among my generation. A girlfriend told me that her dad had attended one in Orange County, and the first night’s homework was to ask my friend’s mother on a date.
The need is real, and it goes beyond wondering why our fathers were not like Greg Brady. I remember a man trying to drag his wife out of a Korean restaurant to beat her while their son sat at the table crying. Or the man who threw a Bible at my friend’s dad at church. Or a high school friend saying she tried to jump out of her 3rd floor window the night before to simply avoid her father’s screaming. Or my floor-mate in college creating fake transcripts so that her father didn’t find out she had been kicked out of school. It is not odd for children of my generation to simply not be in touch with our fathers at all, especially now that we’ve had our own children. The need is real.
IN CONCLUSION: DR. LUKE IK CHANG KIM
And some Korean men overcame and began anew. Here is the obituary of one such man, also father to the wonderful LA-based drummer, Danny Kim.
April 22, 1930 – July 12, 2015
Dr. Luke Ik Chang Kim, 85, passed away on July 12, 2015, in Seal Beach, Calif.
A resident of Davis from 1969 to 2006, he served for three decades as chief psychiatrist and chief of research and staff development at the California Department of Corrections’ California Medical Facility in Vacaville. During his tenure, he provided psychiatric treatment to inmates Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Juan Corona and Timothy Leary, among others. Additionally, he was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UC Davis Medical School from 1973 to 2005.
Dr. Kim was actively involved in the American Psychiatric Association and founded the Association of Korean American Psychiatrists. Much of his career was focused on raising awareness of and promoting cultural psychiatry: understanding one’s cultural background, customs and values in order to effectively diagnose and treat psychiatric disorders. He also published extensively on the mental health and psychiatric care of Asian American immigrants.
In 2006, he and his wife established the Luke and Grace Kim Endowed Professorship in Cultural Psychiatry at UC Davis Medical School in order to build on its nationally renowned training and research center for cultural psychiatry.
Dr. Kim was born on April 22, 1930, in Sinuiju, Korea. His youth was marked by turmoil, political strife and great personal loss as a result of events surrounding the Japanese occupation of Korea followed by the Korean War. His family escaped to South Korea in 1945 in order to flee the communist government that took over North Korea following World War II.
Four years after receiving an M.D. from Seoul National University in 1956, Dr. Kim earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Arizona. He completed post-doctoral training in Arizona, New York and California.
He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Grace; sons David of Vienna, Va., and Danny, of North Tustin, Calif.; daughters-in-law Julie and Janet; grandchildren Tessa, Jaisohn, Jeffrey and Luke; and siblings Iknan Kim of Seoul, Korea, Iksung Kim of Bridgewater, N.J., and Paul Ikpoong Kim of Seal Beach, Calif.
In lieu of flowers, contributions in his honor are greatly appreciated to: The Luke and Grace Kim Endowed Professorship in Cultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, UC Davis Health System, 2230 Stockton Blvd., Sacramento CA 95817.
A memorial service open to friends and community members will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday, July 18, at Davis Community Church, 412 C St. A reception will follow.
My grandfather always told me to read a lot of books. He said that life could never bring me happiness, but that I might be able to find it in reading. I think he’d be very glad to know how alive I feel writing this Substack about the many things I have loved to read.
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I think this is my best joke ever.
This is my BIL’s brother’s joke that I refuse to stop repeating.
He’s quite normal otherwise.
Choi Jin-sil was the victim of a vicious Internet rumor linking her to the suicide of another Korean drama actor. She committed suicide herself in 2008.
The tour bus parking spot may have since become a parklet.
Haraboji really said that???
I am curious, how do you feel about Korean culture being so prevalent and relevant in today’s ubiquitous culture? I am thinking about Netflix k-dramas, South Korean films like Parasite, and Kpop stars music industry giants like Black Pink receiving investment and interest in American 2024 culture. Btw, thank you for sharing and describing your Asian American experience! It is unique, real, and matters.