#korean american

lehaaz:

I just got the news that a newlywed couple in our community were the target of hate crime. The guy has a broke nose, among other injuries, and the wife is in the ER and needed to get stitches on all of her face. They were merely were out to walk around the neighborhood and this happened to them within the comfort of their neighborhood.

These sort of hate crimes happen all the time, not too long ago, and old man was selling shoes/other little things in front of his house and was beaten up by 3-4 young men. In front of his house. On his porch.

I want to stress that these both cases (among others) weren’t carried out anyone other than the precious ~PoCs~. This is exactly what I mean when I talk about hierarchies, because in people’s little perfect theoretical worlds, everything is created into simple categories, where the Pakistanis/Asians have privilege and can’t be target of hate crime/racism when carried out by Black or Latin@ people because of the apparent political power we hold.

These hierarchies are created by White supremacist thought, and as long as we don’t move away from them, and go on about false sense of power dynamics (in which everything is depicted as one sided) we will not get to the root of the problem.

When people speak on Asian or Pakistani privilege they are completely removed from the reality we live in, and want a simple cookie-cutter theory when in fact reality is much more complicated than that.

I know this is supposed to be “controversial” because I’m going against whatever is held to be the truth on here, that Pakistanis/Asians hold certain power over Latin@ or Black communities and that whatever crime done against us, the constant spying, living under the security/surveillance apparatus is a mere form of “prejudice” without any sort of power behind it, the anti-islamic and anti-pakistani hate crimes exist in some sort of tight limited space of “privilege” but that’s not the reality many of us live in and I would rather not follow some removed-from-reality theory for others convenience.

Of course, I shouldn’t have to stress this as it’s obvious, that I don’t mean if X doesn’t have power than Y obviously does. But this is to complicate the simplistic approach to race most people have where the hate crimes carried out by people who fall into the PoC category get unchecked and unnoticed. White crimes on PoC exists in various forms, but that’s not the start and end of the conversation and racial dynamic.

Simply put, these hierarchic sand faux “privilege” politics distort reality.

The Korean American Coalition’s (KAC) Summer College Internship Program (SCIP) is designed to provide personal and professional development opportunities to highly qualified Korean American college students, and to encourage them to take on future leadership roles in the Korean American community.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
The program places participants in sponsor offices four days a week. Applicants will be able to rank their interest in four fields - Government/Political, Non-Profit, Corporate, and Media - and will be placed accordingly. Past internship placements have included positions at Samsung America, KTLA, FOX, KCBS, KNBC, an investment bank, Public Counsel Los Angeles, Center for the Pacific Asian Family, CRA, and the offices of Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Barbara Boxer, Congressman Xavier Becerra, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and State Controller John Chiang.
SCIP will begin at the KAC National College Leadership Conference, where participants hone their leadership skills by hearing from distinguished speakers, engaging in skill-building exercises, and learning about Korean American and Asian American history and identity.

PROGRAM DETAILS:
 1 week (June 22 – June 26, 2015), KAC National College Leadership Conference (NCLC)
 7 weeks (June 29 - August 7, 2015), 40 hours per week
 Potential internship placements, all Los Angeles County-based:
 Government/Political, Non-profit, Corporate, Media
 Unpaid
 Transportation and housing costs are not subsidized by the Program
 All applicants must be enrolled in a four-year college or university

APPLICATION PROCESS
Completed applications must be postmarked by Friday, February 27, 2015.
The application requires:

 Application Form
 Two Letters of Recommendation in Sealed Envelopes
 Two Essays
 Resume
 Academic Transcript
 $20 Processing Fee made to “Korean American Coalition”

IMPORTANT DATES
 Friday, February 27, 2015 Application Postmark Deadline
 March 2 – March 6, 2015 Phone Interviews
 Monday, March 9, 2015 Selected Interns Notification
 June

If you tell me, an American, to go “back to your country,” you are making less of America. The false America is puritan politics and displaced land. The true America would be the dream of my father, a place embracing every tribe and tongue and culture to build home.

I have always, always, always been a people-pleaser.

There were whole seasons where I would lose sleep and go stomach-sick thinking I might have remotely upset someone.

I was an expert on doing pirouette with shaky ankles over thin ice and dynamite, frantic apology dances, walking sideways until somebody could see I was really sorry, I didn’t mean to, what can I do to make it up to you, I will literally bleed tears for you, please for God’s sake just like me don’t leave me please like me.

It’s still a problem. I can feel my soul stretch to somebody when they’re upset with me. Desperate to correct it.

I have found too that our systems do not take kindly to those who who stand tall, take a knee, protest and petition, rock the boat and make waves—they will roll their eyes the second you call out *white supremacy* and xenophobia and oppression.

It is not so easy to “choose” to be ourselves everywhere we go, because a trip wire waits for those who run against assimilation and towards systemic change. In systems that reward conformers and punish the outspoken: how can we choose to be anything else?

What I’ve had to keep learning was I’d rather someone hear my “no” than to get a fraudulent yes-version of me.

I’d rather someone know me fully—husband, father, brother in Christ, Korean American, chaplain, fiercely for the wounded—then to get the pieces of me that were comfortable for them.

I’d rather scream against a system than be assimilated by it, so that others inside will know they are not alone, that their stories matter, that we seek the same horizon.

I’d rather someone love me for my boundaries than like me for violating all of them; otherwise what does that say for both of us?

People will still leave long after you pleased them. Long after you painfully sculpted yourself with their chisel. So you must sculpt with your own. So I must.

To speak, by grace, through all that God has made us, even when it does not make change in this lifetime, is still to give our story for one person, for the people who need it. Others need you: all of you. Not the one who pleases. But the one who speaks truly. Speak. Truly.

— J.S.

monolith: a comic for aapi heritage month 2022

Congrats to Far East Movement for charting on Billboard with their new album, Identity, now available on iTunes,Spotify,Google PlayandAmazon.

THANK U!!  our first indie release thru our own company @transparentfeedon@billboard

viaTwitter@fareastmovement

by REERA YOO

When Korean American novelistPatricia Park first read Charlotte Brontë’s Victorian novelJane Eyre at the age of 12, she was struck by how the titular heroine was scorned by society and her relatives solely because of her orphan status. “Orphan” was a word Park often heard her mother throw around whenever she misbehaved as a child.

“My mother used to say to me in her limited English, ‘You act like an orphan!’ This never made sense to me,” Park, 34, tells KoreAmvia email. “How do you actlike an orphan? You either are one or you aren’t.”

After reading Brontë’s 19th-century tale, Park realized that her mother’s generation of Koreans—those who grew up during the Korean War—perceived orphans as outcasts with questionable lineage, morals and manners. To “act like an orphan,” Park realized, meant you behaved in a shameful way that proved to others you didn’t receive a “good family education.”

“My mind drew the link between the Victorian construct of the orphan and the Korean post-war one, and ReJanewas born,” Park says.

Released in hardcover in May, Park’s debut novel is a modern retelling of Brontë’s classic tale, only set in New York’s sprawling outer boroughs and South Korea in the early aughts. Jane Re is a half-Korean, half-Caucasian recent college graduate who, since childhood, has lived with her strict uncle and his family in Flushing, a neighborhood Jane describes as “all Korean, all the time.”

Read full article here. 

Pictured below: The White House is lit up in rainbow colors in commemoration of the Supreme Court’s ruling to legalize same-sex marriage on Friday, June 26, 2015, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In a historic 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court held Friday that same-sex couples nationwide have an equal right to marry, sending waves of jubilation around the country among gay marriage supporters, including within the Korean American community.

“I’m just so joyous,” said Jeff Kim, a program director at the L.A.-based California Wellness Foundation who wed partner Curtis Chin in 2008 in California. “It’s the end of a long journey and battle for equal rights for LGBT people. It’s long overdue because when you boil it all down, there was no argument against gay marriage except bigotry—there was no justification for it.”

“It’s now the law of the land and I’m really happy that the Court caught up with what is justice,” added Kim.

Fellow Los Angeleno Paul Park, who also wed spouse Dean Larkin in 2008, wrote to KoreAmthat he had been checking SCOTUS blog all week long in anticipation of the ruling. “The moment Justice [Anthony] Kenndy’s opening remarks were shared, I was elated,” Park said via email. “Twenty years ago, [the idea of same-sex marriage] wasn’t in my vocabulary. In 20 years, the idea of families with delimiters will hopefully be an artifact of the past. The qualifier of ‘gay marriage’ will become a figment of the past. Maybe someday we won’t be ‘Asian American’ but just ‘Americans.’”

The Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges,in which the majority held that due process and equal protection under the law forbid the states from banning same-sex marriage, makes gay marriage legal throughout the country. Before Friday, same-sex marriage was legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia, but forbidden elsewhere in the country.

Read full article here. 

story and illustration by KAM REDLAWSK

As young as age 8, I was envisioning my future child—namely, a daughter. I remember having such love for her and a strong curiosity about her.

It wasn’t the typical stuff like, “What is she going to be when she grows up?” but, “Who is she going to be?” I’d have visions of a happy, vivacious, independent, strong, curious, sassy and loving person—all the characteristics I admired in female figures I read about as a kid.

Despite this abstract, if constant, love I had for a child I never met, I was not in a rush to get married and have children as I grew older. My goal was to put myself through school, travel, build a career and gain a sense of who I was before bringing a child into the world. I just hadn’t realized having children would no longer be an option for me.

Since I was 20, I’ve lived with an extremely rare genetic condition that slowly takes away the use of my muscles. At this stage, I am confined to a wheelchair: I can no longer walk or stand due to progressive loss of my upper body muscles, including my hands, arms, shoulders, fingers and neck. To physically carry and give birth to a child today would destroy my body and most likely advance my weakness more quickly. While there is the option of surrogacy, it is expensive, not to mention financially unrealistic for my husband Jason and I to be assisted by a full-time nanny and caretaker. Adoption or fostering is a possibility down the road, which would make beautiful sense since we are both adoptees, but it greatly depends on our own stability, the progression of my condition and whether or not it’s realistic to care for a child in spite of my future quadriplegia.

No matter how positively I spin my condition, it is a lifelong roadblock that has eliminated or greatly limited so many of my life plans. I feel as if my disability stifles who I really want to be and my best efforts to live adventurously.

As a 36-year-old woman, I won’t lie and say it isn’t difficult knowing that it is nearly impossible for me to have a child. It breaks my heart because it’s another example of a choice taken away from me—only this one hurts more than I could ever explain or describe.

Read full article here. 

by KARIN CHAN

A Chicago-based nonprofit founded by a Korean American independent filmmaker and producer has been awarded a $160,000 grant to create a 20-minute dramatic narrative about the Japanese American internment experience during World War II.

The Orange Story: An American Tale, a production of Full Spectrum Features founded by Eugene Sun Park, chronicles the so-called “day of removal” in 1942 following an order authorizing the forced relocation of 120,000 ethnic Japanese from their homes.

The grant is part of the National Park Service’s efforts to preserve the stories and sites of Japanese American internment; this year, a total $2.8 million has been awarded to fund a range of projects.

In a phone interview with KoreAm, Park said the film, directed by Erika Street, is the first phase of a three-year project that will also include an educational website featuring five different short films and personal stories about the Japanese internment through the use of multimedia.

Park, 37, was born in Michigan but moved with his family to New Jersey when he was 5. He grew up in a school district where he was one of only a few Asian Americans. Even at a young age, Park was aware of his outsider status.

“My family stood out,” he recalls. “I don’t remember how many times people referred to me as ‘the nice Chinese boy.’ This was the ’80s—the words ‘Chinese’ and ‘Asian’ were synonymous. My sense of being Asian American or Korean American was a point of embarrassment rather than filling me with any sense of pride. Like most kids, I just wanted to fit in.”

Read full article here.

KoreAmandAudrey Magazineteamed up to get acquainted with the cast of Wong Fu Productions’ debut feature film,Everything Before Us. The film is set in a modern day world where the Department of Emotional Integrity (DEI) monitors and grades all romantic relationship.

In the film, Ki Hong Lee plays Jay, a teacher’s assistant who guides Hayley through her freshman year in college and gives her relationship and academic advice.

Full name: Ki Hong Lee
Age: 21 and over
Where you were born: Seoul, South Korea
Where you were raised: Seoul, Auckland, Los Angeles, Berkeley

About the Film

1. Describe your character in three words.
HOT TEACHER’S ASSISTANT

2. What is the most crucial part of being in a romantic relationship?
“Love is all you need” – Beatles

3. What would your real-life relationship score be, and why?
I hope it would be in the 90’s. But I haven’t checked in a while — hope I’m not a victim of EI score theft.

4. Any bloopers or memorable episodes on set?
Brandon Soo Hoo is a real life ninja. He is so fast and agile. I learned the hard way.

5. What is your opinion of Wong Fu as film directors?
Same as my opinion of pizza — Cannot live without ‘em.

About Ki Hong

1. What always makes you laugh?
My wife.

2. Your go-to comfort food?
Not so much comfort but an obsession — PIZZA

3. Currently on “repeat” on your ipod?
I lost my ipod

4. A guilty pleasure you don’t feel guilty about?
Eating pizza every day

Read full article here.

Name: Victoria Park
Age:27
Ethnic background: Korean American
Where she was born: Urbana, Illinois
Where she was raised: Palatine, Illinois

Victoria Park first worked with Wong Fu in their 2012 short film Take It Slow, co-starring with Ki Hong Lee. In Everything Before Us, Park plays Haley, a high school senior who registers in an official DEI relationship with her boyfriend Seth before the two of them head to different colleges. As the long-distance relationship begins to strain, Haley struggles to balance her exciting college life and spending time with her boyfriend.

About the Film

1. Describe your character in three words.
Smart. Driven. Dreamer.

2. What is the most crucial part of being in a romantic relationship?
Loyalty. And a shared sense of humor. (I cheated and picked two, sorry!)

3. What would your real-life relationship score be, and why?
Probably pretty high. Because I’m obnoxiously an high-achiever. It would also probably be a number ending in 0 or 5 because I’m obnoxiously OCD.

4. Any bloopers or memorable episodes on set?
The day Ki Hong came in with an enormous pimple on his face (ironically, on the day we had our most intimate scene). Was my rejection of him acting or reacting to the pimple? I’ll never tell.

5. What is your opinion of Wong Fu as film directors?
No exaggeration, these guys are great. As directors, as filmmakers, as people. Can’t say enough good things about them.

About Victoria

1. What always makes you laugh?
A good pun.

2. Your go-to comfort food?
Macaroni and cheese.

3. Currently on “repeat” on your ipod?
“Bright” by Echosmith

4. A guilty pleasure you don’t feel guilty about?
Taylor Swift. I have every single one of her albums, and I am not ashamed to admit it. (I love you Taylor!)

5. Current favorite place?
The top of Griffith Park, looking down over L.A. at night. It’s so peaceful up there.

Read full article here.