Tag: philanthropist

Wonsook Kim was born in 1953 in Busan, South Korea, just after the war’s end. Upon her first birthday, her family moved back to Seoul where they had lived prior to the Korean War; Wonsook recounts growing up in a large family—the 2nd of 8 children—with her many siblings, aunts, and two grandmothers. As the 2nd eldest daughter, she felt as though she was an outsider in many ways, always in the background, while worrying about what she could do be recognized as someone who brought delight and joy into different spaces. In hindsight, Wonsook states that it was perhaps due to this distance that she was able to grow as an artist. This distance grew when she came to the United States to pursue college and graduate school at Illinois State University, which today houses the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts as well as the Wonsook Kim School of Art. Upon graduation, her career took a turn upon winning the 1976 Elizabeth Stein Art Scholarship which allowed her to relocate to New York City, where she worked a variety of jobs to support herself as an artist. In 1977, a passing curator noticed her studio and offered for her work to be displayed at The Drawing Center in SoHo, and the rest is history; since then, she has displayed her artwork at 67 solo exhibitions and galleries. Wonsook stresses how blessed she feels to be able to do what she loves with the full support of her husband and children, and is determined to “pay back”—her words—all those who supported her throughout her long career.

Paul Kim was born in Seoul and immigrated to the United States in 1996. His family settled in St. Paul, Minnesota, fulfilling his father’s dream of moving to America. When Paul entered middle school, the family moved from St. Paul to the surrounding suburbs, which Paul recounts as having much better schools than the city, albeit being much less diverse than the city itself. Education was of utmost importance in the Kim family, and Paul chased what he believed was, at the time, the natural pipeline that was getting good grades, getting into college, and landing a high-paying job. Paul graduated from university convinced he wanted to become a businessman, so he moved to Chicago to work as a trader. After two years in Chicago, he relocated to Portland, where he worked as the only Asian worker at his workplace, to trade grain with Asia. While in Oregon, he received an offer from a different firm in Chicago, but it wasn’t until after he moved back to the Midwest that he learned his offer had been reneged. He eventually found work again as a trader but was compelled through his faith to find a higher calling in philanthropy. In partnership with a church in South Korea, Paul leveraged the skills he’d gained in industry to buy grain and ship it to North Korea, over time expanding the type and scale of the humanitarian efforts he found himself involved in.