Sion Kim
Sion Kim, whose Korean name is Kim Seokhyun, is a retired pastor who calls L.A.’s Koreatown his home. Born as the fifth of six children in 1937, Sion spent most of his childhood in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, a small mountainous rural community.
Growing up in the countryside with parents who worked as farmers, Sion became deeply invested in livestock care and animal husbandry; his home itself a farm, he grew up raising pigs, chickens, and rabbits. When given the opportunity to study animal husbandry in Japan, Sion was sponsored by the provincial government to attend a school near Hokkaido to familiarize himself with the dairy farming industry. Upon his return, however, he found out that his father had sold much of their family’s land, taking away his opportunity to raise livestock. Instead, Sion had to move to Seoul, where he worked a variety of jobs before attending seminary to train to be a pastor.
Despite not having been a regular parishioner in his youth, Sion tells us that he felt compelled to become a pastor by God. In April of 1980, Sion immigrated to Koreatown, Los Angeles, where he has resided ever since, and after a long career working in the church, is now a passionate proponent of apitoxin, or bee sting, therapy.
As he’s aged, Sion tells us that the thing he realized was most important in life—above money and honor—is health and a positive attitude, reminding us that the way we think, speak, and carry ourselves all manifests in our well-being.
In collaboration with Koreatown Youth + Community Center (KYCCLA), Koreatown Storytelling Program is an intergenerational, multilingual and multiethnic oral history and digital media program that teaches ethnographic and storytelling techniques to high school students and elders to investigate cultural practices and racial, economic and health inequities in our community.
Special thanks to the Koreatown Storytelling Program (KSP) and the Koreatown Youth and Community Center of Los Angeles, California for hosting this Legacy Project recording.