iamkoream

KoreAm Cover Contest: Vote NOW for your favorite!

KoreAm — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:20:18 +0000

Click on each image for a larger view.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Thank you to all who submitted to the KoreAm “Generation 3″ Cover Contest! We are truly amazed by all the talent out there. The KoreAm editors have narrowed it down to three finalists. Read their artist statements below.

Christina Mijung Lee, Long Beach, Calif.
“The concept of this piece focuses on the inherent need to seek out and connect to one’s heritage. The young Korean American girl (who also may or may not be multiracial) ‘reaches out’ toward butterflies and flowers of traditional Korean symbolism, which signifies a longing to connect with Korean history and culture. The realistic rendering of the girl is juxtaposed against the flat painting style of her surroundings to reinforce the conceptual divide of time and space. The dreamy/idealistic scene alludes to the way we romanticize the culture from which we are disconnected.”

Josephine Park, Los Angeles, Calif.
“I attempted to create a cover that requires more than a quick glance. The longer you stare, the more recognizable the characters and their stories become. Korean Americans have so many shared life stories that are unique to each generation. I think it’s impossible to fully envision the third generation without considering the previous ones.”

Nathan Nowack, Redondo Beach, Calif.
“When I thought of third generation, my friends kids immediately came into mind. This third generation is still Korean on the outside but at the same time American. How could I portray that in a single photograph with a single person. Hmmm, what about creative makeup? Now not only were they still Korean on the outside, they had the patriotism of America painted all over their face. With iPods and next generation computers engraved in their everyday lives, these kids are truly third generation Korean Americans.”
Now it’s time for you to vote. Choose the cover that best conveys the theme of our issue: The Third Generation of Korean Americans.

Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, February 12. You can vote once per day. Tell your friends and spread the word! Your votes will determine the cover of an upcoming issue of KoreAm!

Love Aid

KoreAm — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:00:31 +0000

All outta love? How about a little help from a pocket-size love mascot? Handmade in Thailand by a fair trade cooperative, members of the Kamibashi String Doll Gang each serve their own purpose–from stealing hearts to finding love to mending a broken heart. Think of them as reverse voodoo dolls.

($10 each; www.kamibashi.com)

North Korea to Release U.S. Missionary

Julie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:12:33 +0000

Robert Park, left, prays with a child from his Arizona church.

North Korea’s state run news agency said Friday that Pyongyang will release Korean American missionary Robert Park.

Park, a United States citizen, was arrested on Christmas Day after illegally entering the communist nation in order to raise awareness about North Korea’s human rights abuses. The 28-year-old was reportedly carrying a letter for dictator Kim Jong-il, calling for him to release all political prisoners.

“The relevant organ of the DPRK (North Korea) decided to leniently forgive and release [Park], taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrong doings into consideration,” the state-run KCNA news agency said.

Prior to his journey across the frozen Tumen River from China, Park told a Reuters reporter that he did not want United States officials to negotiate his release. He said he wanted to stand with the North Korean people, even if it meant dying with them.

Pastor John Benson of the Life in Christ Community Church in Tucscon, Ariz., who has worked closely with Park for several years, told KoreAm in December that his friend is a fiercely devoted Christian who, after working with North Korean refugees in Seoul, committed himself to doing whatever it takes to alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people. And because they continue to live under a repressive regime, he felt a sense of urgency to his mission, prompting his drastic action in December.

“It’s driven by love,” said Benson. “Seriously, this is the source.”

The Alphabet for KAs

Liz — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:12:41 +0000

If you’re able to read what I’m writing here (in English) and a little bit of Korean, you’re automatically proficient in a new language! Called Suggu, it’s a project of Google Creative Lab’s Creative Director Ji Lee and Sue Park.

from Suggu.com:

Suggu (“Mix” in Korean) is a new alphabet mixing Hangul(Korean Alphabet) and Roman Alphabet. Because they are both Phonetic Alphabets—a writing system based on a set of symbols representing different sounds—mixing the two is possible and easy. Combine Roman Alphabet’s consonants (B, C, D, F, G…) with Hangul’s vowels (ㅏ, ㅑ, ㅓ, ㅕ…). That’s Suggu.

Project by Ji Lee, Sue Park / Font Design by Yi Kyung A

See if you can read this! And download the font if you want to write a little bit of Suggu of your own.

Ji Lee: The Transformative Power of Personal Projects

Be On Our March Cover!

Kai — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:08:50 +0000

This is your chance to be on the cover of KoreAm!

KoreAm is looking for Korean Americans based in Los Angeles to be on our March cover. No modeling experience necessary. If interested, please contact the photo editor, Eric Sueyoshi, at eric4sueyoshi@gmail.com. Shoots will take place in Gardena, Calif. on Feb. 7th, 11th, and 16th. We are looking for KAs of both genders and all ages (we are especially in need of kids, people 40+ and mixed-raced Koreans). Please contact us, or spread the word!

Do you know where your children are?

Ellis — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:38:33 +0000

Better keep them safe, cause Whitney is coming to town. It’s already too late for these two.

No related posts.

How We Met

Kai — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:11:55 +0000

By Kai Ma

Where does love find us? Often on the Internet. Sometimes, in a crowd. But for those who are very lucky, it finds us in the most romantic, surprising way—in a massage parlor or love motel, through the accidental reunion or in another country. It doesn’t always find us at first sight, and it can take years—even decades—before you realize that you’ve known your true love all along. As the oft-quoted Rumi wrote, “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

Meeting a beloved is nothing short of a blessing. In fact, some believe it’s a miracle. So in honor of the month of love, we asked readers to share their stories. Here, five couples on their fateful first encounters.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Janny and Eric on their wedding day in Los Angeles, October 17, 2009. Credit: Sam Lim Studio

The Set Up

Janny Kim & Eric Kim
Los Angeles, California

Says Janny,

Our mutual friend who introduced us told Eric that I was the “gatekeeper” to all these single, cute girls, and that in order for him to meet them, he would need my stamp of approval. I was like, “Gatekeeper? Who, me? Whatever.” A few months later, the three of us met up at one of those Chinese foot massage parlors in the San Gabriel Valley. I didn’t even remember the “gatekeeper” conversation from months ago. Eric walked in, and I had this feeling that this was the guy I was going to marry. We shared the same sense of wacky humor and immediately clicked over a bowl of shaved ice topped with sweetened red beans. Of course, our mutual friend said this was his ultimate plan all along. He’d secretly set us up, knowing we would like each other!

Says Eric,

“If you want to meet Janny’s single friends, you are going to have to get her stamp of approval…and that ain’t easy dude,” I remember my friend telling me. But really, I wondered, how hard could that be? So I told him, “Fine, set it up.” A few months later, he called me unexpectedly and told me to come out to the San Gabriel Valley. He was with Janny and said this would be a prime opportunity to finally pass her test. Not exactly thrilled to drive out that far but with no expectations, I went and found myself marveling at her cuteness, her unique voice (everyone who knows her knows her voice), and her witty sense of humor. Needless to say, I never did ask about her friends, nor did she ever offer them up!

Amy and Lee, the potential booty call that turned into a relationship.

The Second Chance

Amy Anderson & Lee Hunter
Los Angeles, California

Says Amy,

I have a really awesome boyfriend and we have been together for a little over a year. My best friend originally wanted to set me up with Lee thinking he would be a good booty call! I was a newly single mom with an infant in the beginning of 2008. My friend was urging me to start dating and she had a perfect “fun” guy to hook me up with. She said he probably wasn’t marriage material as he was a stereotypical bachelor, but that we had a lot in common, including motorcycling, and would probably enjoy each other’s company—(wink wink). I balked and protested, but finally agreed to meet him. We hit it off in the personality department, but I wasn’t sure about his looks. There was something about him that just looked dorky! Later, I accidentally bumped into him in the mall and he looked so much cuter. Like, really handsome! I realized that on our first date, he had driven his motorcycle and his helmet made his hair look horrible—like the Dumb and Dumber hair! It was all rainbows and puppy dogs after that. I guess he was just waiting to meet a girl who likes motorcycles. Also, I love that his first name is more Korean than my entire name. Our names and faces together confuse people all the time!

Matthew and Cathreen, who fell in love on a patch of grass.

The Unlikely Candidate

Matthew Salesses & Cathreen Na
Boston, Massachusetts

Says Matthew,

She once said she would never marry an American. We were resting illegally on what seemed the only grass in the city of Busan. I thought I would soon return to the United States, so I didn’t take offense. I’d arrived in Korea a month earlier, and my employer had rented me a red-lit, 10-by-10 windowless motel room with a round bed, porn channels, and calling cards on the stairs for hookers. The night Cathreen and I got together, I played her love songs on my computer. She called this place a “love motel.” See, by the time we got to that grass, we were already fooling ourselves. Something had quietly shifted inside us.

Edward proposed to Sarah during his 15-month deployment in Iraq, and married her the year he returned.

The War Story

Sarah Lee & Edward Ahn
Seattle, Washington

Says Sarah:

“The first time I saw Eddie was at an orientation event during law school. It was the summer of 2002, right after the World Cup in Korea/Japan. This random Asian boy was wearing a bright “Be the Reds” shirt, with a red bandana to match. I shook my head at his outfit. Then on Halloween, I saw the same Asian boy dressed head-to-toe in a furry Scooby Doo jumpsuit, walking to and from classes. Again, I shook my head and thought, “Wow, who is this guy…”

Says Eddie:

“I first saw Sarah during my first year of law school. This pretty girl was walking out of the library, and as I passed by her, she immediately caught my eye. She was gorgeous. I remember actually stopping in my tracks. I was floored by her beauty and had lost the ability to walk and gawk at the same time. After law school, I entered the Army. We kept in touch and finally got together one weekend. It was wonderful. A crush realized, a dream come true. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, I was deployed to Iraq and we were separated by thousands of miles, when we wanted nothing more than to be together. During my mid-deployment leave, I proposed. She said “yes,” and I’m still overjoyed that Sarah chose me.

Minhee and Truman met over rice cakes, in the fourth grade.

The Childhood Friend

Minhee Cho & Truman Cho
New York, New York

Minhee says,

We first met in the fourth grade, but didn’t start dating until years later. I recall asking my mother if I could celebrate my birthday the way the other kids did—by sharing cupcakes with all of my classmates. To my dismay, not knowing how to bake a cupcake, let alone knowing what a cupcake even was, my good-hearted mother brought over traditional Korean rice cakes (tteok) instead. All the other kids refused to eat them and made fun of me. That is, everyone except one boy named Truman. I didn’t know it at the time, but Truman said he ate as much as he could because he saw how sad I was. We grew up in the same town with the same group of friends but never considered taking our relationship beyond that. Years later, we ran into each other after college and reconnected, realizing how much we had in common in our love for the arts and especially, for food. Maybe it is true that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!

Truman says,

True story: My older sister, upon seeing my fourth grade class picture, pointed at Minhee and said, “Hey Tru, you should date her. She’s going to grow up to be very pretty.”

I answered, as any typical 9-year-old boy would, with “Ew. She’s a FOB!” After running into Minhee years later, my sister’s prophetic words came back to haunt me, and I realized just how beautiful a woman Minhee had indeed grown up to become. (Decades later, my wife still won’t let me live those words down.) I actually vividly remember the rice cake episode and recall trying to convince some of the non-Asian classmates to expand their culinary palettes—which looking back, was no small feat. Ironically however, these days Min and I can enjoy Korean rice cakes as much as anyone, but truth be told, we still prefer cupcakes just a little bit more.

Currency change worsens situation in North Korea

Ellis — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:48:54 +0000

Photo courtesy of AFP

In November of last year, North Korean Workers’ Party finance director Pak Nam-gi, implemented a currency change with the hopes of curtailing the market activities in North Korea. However, the change has been an economic disaster for the socialist state, as it has made a bad situation even worse. There have been reports of increased starvation, and even civil unrest when security forces have attempted to stop individuals from trading or smuggling food.

The North Korean citizens began resorting to illegal markets, to get the bare essentials that the government was failing to provide, after the famine in the 1990s. Pak’s program consisted of exchanging its currency, where the older Won currency would be changed for new ones at a rate of 100 to one. It was an attempt to wipe out the cash holdings of the emerging merchant class, who risked getting caught if they used the older currency, or deposited them in banks.

As a result, there has been even less available for people to buy, and prices of what is available has risen sharply. The sanctions imposed on North Korea by the United States, hasn’t helped the situation either.

Reports from the Chosun Ilbo indicate that Kim Jong-Il has fired Pak.

Dartmouth president Jim Yong Kim offers ways to help Haiti

KoreAm — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:00:51 +0000

Photos courtesy of UN Photo/Marco Dormino

By Karin Fischer

Dartmouth College is one of several American universities to announce it is sending faculty members with medical and global health expertise to Haiti to help with relief efforts following last month’s devastating earthquake.

But the Ivy League institution’s president, Jim Yong Kim, may be unusual among higher education leaders in the depth of his ties to the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Dr. Kim, who became Dartmouth’s president in July, is a co-founder and former executive director of Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that supports health programs in poor communities worldwide. The global health group has worked to provide medical services to the poorest Haitians for more than 20 years and is one of the main organizations on the ground treating those injured in the earthquake. Its co-founder, Paul Farmer, was appointed in August as deputy to former President Bill Clinton, the United Nations’ special envoy to Haiti.

The following are excerpts from a conversation with Dr. Kim.

You’ve been to Haiti some two dozen times through your work with Partners in Health. Could you talk about your experience?
I first went to Haiti in 1988, and it was a shocking experience for me. I had been to a lot of different places before, but I had never seen a place that was just so deeply poor. When I first went there, in the first walk that I took to one of the small villages that we served, I felt like I was walking on the face of the moon. The entire area had been deforested, and it had been deforested because the last line of income production for people who are so poor is to cut down trees and make charcoal. Since then I’ve traveled all over the world in my work in Partners in Health, in my work in the World Health Organization, and to this day I have never seen a place as tragic as Haiti.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (second from right) meets with residents of Port-au-Prince.

What about recently?
There was a lot of hope. President Clinton was the envoy to Haiti. My longtime colleague and best friend, Paul Farmer, was his deputy envoy. They were talking about a $3 billion package to build back basic services: public health, education, utilities, just basic things that Haiti needed. And then this happened. The one country in the world that couldn’t afford it, it did happen to them. This is why Haiti in many ways is the source, has been the source, of my passion to work in global health. Every time I used to go to Haiti, I used to feel, “This is so unfair. By accident of birth, I happened to not be born in Haiti. And these children, by accident of birth, happened to have to live in this place that’s just had so many calamities, so many bad things happen to it.”

Could you talk about the work you did with Partners in Health in Haiti?
Partners in Health works in a lot of countries, but the work we’ve done in Haiti is the foundation of the work we’ve done everywhere. What we try to do is to build effective and comprehensive health care services that are linked to community development, literacy, housing, job security. It’s really a very comprehensive approach to community development that just happens to be built on a backbone of health care.

Dartmouth and other universities, particularly ones with medical centers and global health programs, are in the process of sending faculty members to Haiti. How well are universities positioned to help with disaster relief?
Just as supplies are going to sit on the tarmac, it’s really possible for physicians to arrive in Haiti and sit on the tarmac and not have any effective way of helping out. At Dartmouth, we’ve been very fortunate to have been asked specifically by Partners in Health to supply specific kinds of physicians—trauma surgeons, orthopedic surgeons. When our physicians land on the ground, there are going to be very specific roles for them to take on. I think it’s great that so many physicians are anxious to go down there, but it’s going to take some time to establish facilities for physicians to be effective. Colleges and universities can certainly help, but they have to be sure when they get there, they are going to be helpful and not just clog up the system. Haiti right now needs a very focused and coordinated response. And just flying in because you feel bad is probably not a good idea.

What can colleges—and students and faculty and staff members—do to help, even if they don’t happen to be at an institution with a medical or public health program?
Let me give you three quick ideas. The first is, there is a desperate need for cash in the best organizations. Again, the one I know is Partners in Health, but there are others that students can donate to, and I encourage them to donate. Many, many lives are in the balance, and what we do over the next few days to few weeks is going to be critical for the quality and effectiveness of our response. So, just donate. Get into the experience of when these things happen, when your heart is full of sorrow and sympathy—do it.

The second thing, I think students should educate themselves about the history of Haiti. Haiti was the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere. In 1804, it defeated Napoleon’s army basically with sticks and uprooted them from their colonial anchorage in Haiti. And many people, historians, would argue that the Louisiana Purchase happened because of the loss of confidence of Napoleon in losing Haiti. American history, and certainly the history of the Western Hemisphere, has been deeply affected by events in Haiti. And then Haiti has had a series of just awful political situations. One of the modern leaders of Haiti, who came into power on a campaign focused on negritude, on blackness, turned out to be Papa Doc Duvalier, one of the most despotic leaders in the Western Hemisphere. So, Haiti has just had problem on problem on top of problem. And on top of that, an earthquake.

And the third and most important thing—this problem is going to get much worse before it gets better. So, give now, inform yourself about Haiti, develop a passion and a compassion for the problems of Haiti, and then stay involved.

Here at Dartmouth, one of our great presidents, John Sloan Dickey, would say constantly to his students, “The world’s troubles are your troubles. But there’s nothing wrong with the world that can’t be fixed by better human beings.”

Haitians leaving the quake-struck capital by bus.

A woman checks the toe tag on the body of a deceased earthquake victim, laid in the parking lot of Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital.

Bill Clinton (background, center), United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti, outside the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

Relief for Haiti: Donate Now

Donations to the following organizations will help fund services that include the deployment of medical teams, personnel and supplies; the distribution of food, water, blankets and tents; medical care; support for children; and, the rebuilding of Haiti.

Doctors Without Borders

www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Habitat for Humanity

www.habitat.org

Partners in Health

Red Cross

UNICEF

World Vision

Hitchens calls North Koreans ‘racist dwarves,’ fails to see irony

Sylvie Kim — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:04:21 +0000

In his recent Slate review of B.R. Myers’ book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, English-born writer Christopher Hitchens refers to North Korea as a nation of racist dwarves. I’m not paraphrasing; the title of his article is A Nation of Racist Dwarves.

If you’re unfamiliar with Hitchens, he frequently contributes to Vanity Fair by waterboarding himself and declaring that women aren’t funny.

I’m not disagreeing that the regime in North Korea is one that is indoctrinating and killing its people, but I can’t help but think there’s some Western privilege at play by referring to North Koreans, the people, in such a pejorative way. Particularly since many of these “racist dwarves” are essentially prisoners in a country whose borders, government, and ideologies were not of their choosing. I also find the use of ‘dwarf’ to describe the malnourished to be wrong on multiple levels.

In stating his contempt for a cruel regime who, according to Myers, is utilizing a national racist ideology, Hitchens degrades an entire nation’s people and apparently fails to see the irony.

Learn about humanitarian efforts for North Korea:

LiNK
Crossing Borders