Our own Irene Kim was featured recently on the popular blog “I Am Korean American.” It’s a website dedicated to showcasing a diversity of Korean Americans. Each day they profile someone like yourself, and Irene was one of the lucky ones. Do you know Irene? What 5 words describe Irene?
5 words to describe me: Loud, Sassy, Sarcastic, Optimistic, Fun
Nicknames: Non-Stop and Asian Fury
Irene Kim is our resident makeup artist and beauty expert. There’s a reason why Fashion Week calls on her. Click here to see Irene’s profile at I am Korean American.
Can we call Maggie Kim a Parisian Korean-American? What we do know is that Maggie Kim is one of the prettiest bassist you’ll ever meet with a voice that sweeps you away into her indie-pop-rock music. We sat down with Maggie in the midst of her busy schedule while she was in New York City. When we showed up at the Dominion, we walked in during the middle of rehearsal and her busy life. We quietly sat down to watch what was a pretty cool scene: a Korean female at center stage playing the bass guitar. How many Korean gals do you know that can play a mean bass? She was pregnant at the time and she was just finishing up her mini-tour across the U.S. In between one of the sets, she sat down with us to talk about her love for music and the adventures in trying to produce her latest album, “Love Like Everyone,” her third solo record but first full-length album. During our conversation, she told us about how dire things got as a starving musician in New York, but since that rough patch, she’s been moving on up and enjoying life with her music, life in paris, and motherhood.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met with South Korean residents in the U.S., requesting them to help strengthen the alliance between South Korea and the United States, the presidential office said Tuesday.
President Lee met with a group of 13 representatives of South Korean communities in New York and its surrounding areas on Monday(local time), praising their efforts on establishing a steady and lively Korean-American community in the area, the presidential office said.
“President Lee expressed hope the (South) Korean residents here will work as a bridge that will help strengthen the mutual trust and understanding between Korea and the U.S.,” the presidential office said in a press release.
The president also called for unity in the Korean-American society and contribution to the U.S. and the outer world as members of the international community, presidential spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said.
President Lee is currently paying a seven-day visit to the United States, during which he is to participate in a UN summit on climate changes in New York and the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.
What is a Kyopo? What is the Kyopo Project? We interviewed Cindy Hwang who explored, studied and brought to life the word “Kyopo.” What is a Kyopo? It is people of Korean ancestry who reside outside of the Korean peninsula. Kyopos are everywhere and in almost every country, but the vast majority reside in just three countries: China, Japan and the U.S. There are approximately 6.5 million Kyopos—one for every ten Koreans residing in the Korean Peninsula. However, it’s more complex than that and what Cindy discovers through her encounters with many Koreans is that there is incredible diversity. Yet among Kyopos, we are woven together by our identity as outsiders of Korea. The Kyopo Project is a collection of photographs that illustrate the diversity of this “tribe.”
BEING A KYOPO IS BEING PART OF A TRIBE, FOR WE ARE TIED TOGETHER BY OUR EXPERIENCE, RACE, CULTURE AND ETHNICITY IN A SPECIFIC WAY. INDEED, THE INDIVIDUALS WHO APPEAR IN THIS BOOK REPRESENT THE COMPLEX AND RANDOM INTER-WEAVINGS OF THIS TRIBE; TAKEN AS A WHOLE, THIS GROUP IS NOT MEANT TO SUGGEST A REPRESENTATIVE GROUP, BUT SOMETHING MUCH MORE INTERESTING: IT IS A VISUAL AND TEXTUAL EXPRESSION OF AN ORGANIC WEB OF RELATIONAL CONNECTIONS. PUT IN ANOTHER WAY, THE PROJECT BEGAN WITH A SINGLE PERSON BEING PHOTOGRAPHED. THAT PERSON WENT ON TO RECOMMEND OTHERS, WHO WENT ON TO RECOMMEND OTHERS, AND SO FORTH, UNTIL THE ONE BLOOMED INTO MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED SUBJECTS, AND THE INTRICATELY OVERLAPPING AND INTERCONNECTING RELATIONSHIPS OF A CERTAIN KYOPO COMMUNITY IS WHAT THE WORK HAS PRODUCED…
IT INCLUDES KYOPOS WHO HAVE LIVED IN COUNTRIES BESIDES AMERICA, INCLUDING ARGENTINA, CANADA, CHINA, DENMARK, FRANCE, INDIA, JAPAN, THE UK, THE PHILIPPINES, CUBA, AND BRAZIL. THERE ARE KYOPOS ADOPTED INTO WHITE FAMILIES, MIXED-RACE KYOPOS, AND A RANGE OF AGES FROM TEEN TO SEPTUAGENARIAN. PROFESSIONS INCLUDE BANKERS, A CHEF, A HAT DESIGNER, TAE KWON DO INSTRUCTORS, A HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER WHO REPRESENTS THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY, WRITERS, A WELL-KNOWN ACTOR. SOME CAN SPEAK KOREAN, SOME CANNOT, AND SOME SPEAK ONLY A CHILD’S VERSION OF KOREAN EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE ADULTS. SOME HAVE KOREAN FIRST NAMES, SOME HAVE BOTH AMERICAN AND KOREAN NAMES, ONE PERSON, CABIN GOLD KIM, HAS A NAME HIS PARENTS CHARMINGLY MADE UP FOR HIM…
KYOPO LIFE, YOU WILL SEE, CONTINUALLY CHANGES AS THE INDIVIDUAL AND ALSO THE WORLD CHANGES. WHAT AT FIRST GLANCE APPEARS TO BE A BOOK ON “KOREANS” AND “KOREAN CULTURE WILL PROVE TO BE INSTEAD ONE ENCOMPASSING THE WORLD.
For more information on the Kyopo Project, visit kyopoproject.com.
Gallup Korea conducted a telephone poll among 501 ethnic Koreans living in the Los Angeles area. So are Korean-Americans proud of their Korean heritage?
78% of respondants said “Yes” they were proud to be Korean. Only 3% said no and the rest just didn’t feel strongly either way.
Those of Korean descent were equally proud whether they were second- or first-generation immigrants. Age and education were also not a factor.
Asked when they felt most proud of their heritage: 32% said when the Korean national teams triumphed in sporting events. Approximately 14% singled out the moment when Korea beat the U.S. team in the World Baseball Classic in March.
Next was when Koreans despite being a minority are able to achieve prominence in any field (9 percent), and when people acknowledge that there are many outstanding and intelligent Koreans (6 percent). Times when respondents saw Korean-Americans work hard were proud moments for 5 percent, and another 5 percent glowed when the quality of Korean products was praised.
The survey also asked about the discrimination Korean immigrants face. But 61% said they were not being discriminated against, while 24% thought they had been the victims of discrimination, and 16% said the level was “normal.” Those in their 20s experienced less discrimination with 10 percent than those in their 30s and 40s (30%).
Asked why they experienced discrimination, 30% cited their poor English. Ten percent cited Caucasians’ bias about Asians, 9% felt discriminated against at public institutions, and 3% when they go out to eat in a fancy restaurant.
To the question whether Koreans living abroad should have the right to vote in the Korean presidential election, 57% said yes and 42% no.
Corey Lee, of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, is causing a lot of curiosity and buzz lately because he’s going to go off on his own to open a restaurant in San Francisco. We all know about the brilliance of David Chang with his Momofuku restaurants in New York, but not many know about Corey Lee. How good is Corey Lee? For starters, he won the Rising Star Chef of the Year award from the James Beard Foundation. Interestingly, he started off his career washing dishes and after stints at New York’s Daniel and Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York, he finally became chef de cuisine at one of the most famous restaurants in the world at French Laundry: a three star restaurant according to the famed Michelin Guide. So what did Corey Lee learn from his time at French Laundry?
I think it really has to do with commitment and the work ethic. Those things go hand in hand. When I started here, Thomas was here working almost every service, and working past every service. It’s that kind of dedication that allowed him to have the success he has now and allowed him the opportunities he has now. It’s that hands-on approach that struck me right away and stayed with me. It’s the kind of chef and operator I want to be.
A Los Angeles middle school that is located in Koreatown will be named after Korean-American war hero Kim Young-Oak. The late colonel is a decorated veteran of World War II and the Korean War, who served in the U.S. Army’s 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team. Colonel Oak left a legacy with his charity work with war orphans.
If you are of Korean descent, then you may have a greater appreciation of the 4th of July, but then again you may not. What’s amazing today is that Korea is the only country in the world that is divided by a military zone and is technically still at war with each other: North vs. South. Events from the past few weeks have been a stark reminder of this divide, and not just between the Koreas but between North Korea and the world. Euna Lee and Laura Ling’s capture and trial in North Korea, Mike Kim’s recent press tour of his book about North Korea, and the recent missle and nuclear tests near Pyongyang has reminded the world that the cold war may be being revived in Asia. The irony is that Iraq was supposed to have weapons of mass destruction and the U.S. invaded, and found nothing. Then you have Kim Jong-Il who keeps telling the world that he has WMDs and will continue to test and will threaten to use them. Yet the difficulty is that North Korea sits central to Japan, South Korea and China, which is like a scene out of a movie with the detonator and dynamite attached to the one lunatic sitting in the middle of the hostages. The recent craziness of Kim Jong-Il makes you wonder, what if your parents or grandparents had been born on the wrong side of the DMZ or had not migrated fast enough south from Pyongyang. Mike Kim tells the story of how the Kim Jong-Il propaganda is propagated: kids are taught math by the question of, how many total Americans are killed if you kill two and three American soldiers? That’s crazy but had our grandparents been left behind, we would be learning this type of propaganda math.
The 4th of July is America’s commemoration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its freedom from Great Britain. Unfortunately, freedom is a result of wars and bloodshed (remember the Revolutionary War from history class). No one knows how the North Korean story is going to end, but everyone’s hope is that it’ll end peacefully, the North Koreans will be freed from their tyranny, and the nuclear threat will end. But until then, for all the Koreans and Korean-Americans out there, be thankful for the freedoms that we do have because our parents and grandparents were on the right side of the DMZ and also for the opportunity that America brings to everyone one of us. Let freedom ring!!!
July 1 was a historic day for Asian-Americans as Dr. Jim Yong Kim stepped into his post as the first Asian-American president of an Ivy league institution. Dr. Kim comes to Dartmouth from his tenure at Harvard and what you may not know is that he first arrived in Iowa at the age of 5 before 99% of all Korean-Americans immigrated to the U.S. He even played high school football growing up in Iowa. Along the way, Dr. Kim was the director of the HIV/AIDS department of the World Health Organization and was once named Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential people back in 2006. Fast forward to yesterday: Dr. Kim officially became the president of Dartmouth College, a truly historic day. So what was on the agenda yesterday? Dr. Kim toured the engineering and business schools and met with faculty, students and then addressed the Dartmouth community.
Kim told the students, alumni, faculty and staff gathered on the Green that it was his belief in the ability of Dartmouth students to take on global problems broader than those of his own work that led him to forgo those other career possibilities.
“It’s a gamble for me but it’s a gamble that I took knowing that we were going to win,” Kim said, referencing his confidence in the potential of the College’s students. Read more>
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Our own Irene Kim was featured recently on the popular blog “I Am Korean American.” It’s a website dedicated to showcasing a diversity of Korean Americans. Each day they profile someone like yourself, and Irene was one of the lucky ones. Do you know Irene? What 5 words describe Irene?
