When did you find people around you who were similar to you and made you feel accepted?

Probably when I went to college. I went to UCLA. It is really funny, like, in a Korean family, there’s no question whether you should consider going to college or not. It’s something that you just do, right? I went to college, and there I found people who were similar to me. There were about 300 Koreans. I don’t know [about] right now — maybe a few thousand [Korean students]. But I started to meet friends who were similar to me: Korean speakers, bilingual, bicultural, and having similar struggles with family. So I began to hang out with people who were similar to me. I graduated in 1976, and now I’m still hanging out with the same people. It’s been almost 50 years. We still talk about how it used to be. And a couple of times, we went back to the campus, walked around and reminisced [about] where we used to hang out and take naps … the sculpture gardens, the libraries. 

There were different groups of Korean people at school. Some were just foreign students who came from Korea. But culturally, for someone like you, you probably feel more mainstream. But for me, I felt like I couldn’t really get along with people from Korea because they were a little bit different. But the people who were born here also have different social cultures. So when I began to hang out with people like me, we could speak in Korean. When we talked about a family situation, we just knew right away what it was about. I had friends or roommates who were Caucasians or of other races, but I don’t keep in touch with them anymore. But with my Korean friends, I still keep in touch. We’re still very good friends. We’ve traveled back to Korea together. We went to different countries together. And I know you probably think all these aunties and grandmas are still talking like they’re little kids, laughing with each other. I bet people probably think we are so weird. But you know, when we are together, it’s probably the same as you [and your friends]. Like when you see old friends many years later, you’re going to [joke around] and act like silly little kids. We would ask each other, “When did we start to feel so ancient?”

No, no, it’s amazing because I see so many parallels with my parents’ stories and then also with my own goal of trying to find things in common with those around me. Even when I was growing up — and I still am growing up — in elementary school, it was still strange to bring the Korean food that my mom packed to school. It felt a little embarrassing to eat foods that were so different. I had to find peace with that.

I think you guys are living in a better time. Because when I was going to school, I don’t know if they made fun of us, but they looked at me differently, and even little kids were saying things like ‘Ching Chong’ and then running away. I remember going to certain places, and these little babies would just stare at me, just because they’d never seen an Asian face. It’s not like they were picking on me, but that baby thought that I looked really different. Also, you know, people would ask, ‘Where are you from?’ And when I said Korea, they thought of the Korean War. They thought Korea was such a devastated place. But look, now we’re talking about Korean movies winning awards, K-culture, and K-food. I feel very proud. I know we should be focusing on accepting everyone, and no one should feel superior, but that pride that you have about your own culture — maybe that’s why it’s so hard to harmonize different races. People say blood is thicker than water. I guess it’s because somehow there’s a unifying force, and we don’t exactly know why. For example, when you say you’re Korean, I feel like we’re linked up. When I was growing up in Pomona, my dad had a church. I would find someone who spoke Korean because a lot of them were Korean women married to GI soldiers. We would ask if they were Korean. And if they said “yes” that evening, they would be at my house eating dinner with us.

I’ve never heard it put into words so concisely in a way that resonates with me so much.

This is why projects like this are good, because I think young people need to get pulled back into the community. One thing that’s very important when you’re growing up is your identity. You think about who you are and where you belong, because belonging is very important. Not only family but certain groups in society. Although we shouldn’t be divisive and should be accepting of others, we have to know who we are. It gives you purpose. I’m sure you’ve thought about that a lot. You seem to be more engaged in the community. And so I think it’s very important for the Korean agencies or communities to pull a lot of young people back so that they get to really identify with the community. The [Korean American] youth are accepting.

How did you start getting involved with Koreatown?

When I was in college, I majored in sociology. I did some volunteer work at different places, and I volunteered at the Chinatown Tutorial Project. I was tutoring some Chinese-born Chinese [students] living in Chinatown with their schoolwork. I began to realize my career goals after graduation and wanted to find out what my strengths were. To me, it wasn’t just about money. I grew up as a pastor’s kid, so I was more in tune with helping people. I just grew up that way. When I went to school, I began to realize the strengths that I gained from the difficulties that I went through. I am bilingual and bicultural, and I went through a hard time as an adolescent. I knew a lot of people went through a lot of struggles too. I realized that I probably wanted to work with young people to whom I could relate, which is why I got involved with the Korean Youth Center project. It used to be part of an organization called the Asian American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP). It’s a big organization focusing on the prevention and treatment of Asian American youth who get involved with drugs. So that’s why I got involved in the Korean Youth Center, and that was in 1977. I worked at KYCC [Koreatown Youth and Community Center] for 11 years until I had my third child, and I said, “I need to focus on my kids.” You know, I needed to be a mother.

Do you feel that you’ve gained a lot from the Koreatown community?

Working at KYCC was a gratifying experience for me.You’re working with all these people who have this passion, dedication, and commitment to make people’s lives better. People with a lot of compassion and feelings — more than just trying to help people. I learned a lot from the people that I was working with — people who really work selflessly to help others. I just learned so much. The Korean community also went through a lot. Although I wasn’t around because I retired in 1988, a lot of things happened after that. The L.A. riots, and so on, changed a lot of things. When I was first working at KYCC, the Korean community wasn’t really there. Now it’s a big community that has political and social powers that can influence other groups. KYCC is a big organization now. When we first started KYCC, it used to be just me and some of the other workers; we used to work with youth who were gang members, using drugs, or runaways. Most of them were first-generation Korean-speaking youth. Before I came in, there was a director named Inhwan Kim, and he was an inspiration for me also because he used to work at the social [services] agency, and he used to work with homeless people in Korea and also with young people who were going through a lot of troubles. So when he came here to the Korean Youth Center, he was helping people who had gang affiliations and drug problems. I learned a lot from him because I never went through such severe difficulties as those kids. That’s how he and I started this gang intervention program, which evolved into KYCC.