Legacy Project

Kymber Lim, raised in Georgia, grew up fighting for her ambitions despite her immigrant parents’ expectations of a simple life. Her drive led her to college, where she thrived in production classes, impressing professors and diving into video production.

Will Yun Lee was born in 1971 in Arlington, Virginia, though he tells us that he spent much of his childhood moving around. After his parents’ divorce, he was cared for by family and friends for a while before moving back in with his father, who operated a Taekwondo studio in Hawaii.

Jeanne Yang was born in Los Angeles in 1968 as the second child of immigrant parents. She recalls how the last thing her parents expected was another child—her mother worked three jobs, the family lived in a converted garage, and her “crib” was a drawer filled with blankets—but family circumstances improved after moving to Monterey Park.

Jeanne’s first career was in law, following her parents’ wishes, but she soon became disillusioned with the legal system and pivoted towards the world of entertainment, where her career as a stylist flourished. Today, she works alongside A-list talent, magazines, and brands, moved by the question: “What will be your legacy?”

Animator and film director Peter Sohn was born in the Bronx, New York, to parents who immigrated to the United States from South Korea during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. His father opened and operated several small businesses, from grocers to art supply stores, and his mother arrived in America to work as a nurse.

Peter’s love for drawing and animation emerged at a young age, though it wasn’t always encouraged by his parents, who had navigated the hardships of the Korean War and of emigrating to the U.S. Their experiences have shaped and informed the stories Peter animates, directs, and creates today, speaking to the valences of immigrant life which he masterfully captures through film.

Diana Son was born in Philadelphia, though she attributes most of her formative memories to Dover, Delaware, where her family moved when she was a child. A self-described “latchkey kid,” she talks about how she had been enamored with writing and storytelling from a young age through watching popular talk shows after school. This passion for creating and sharing narratives took a pivotal turn into the theatrical world when she saw a production of Hamlet in New York City with her high school class.

Despite her storied and successful career in TV, as a writer/producer/showrunner and playwriting, she believes that she is still growing, learning, and “evolving” as an artist, telling us that there’s still so much more she wishes to accomplish; in her own words, “I’m still hungry.”

MiRan Powell was born in Texas in 1964 to a Korean mother and a white father. At the time of her and her sister’s birth, anti-miscegenation laws were still in effect across parts of the United States. She recalls how their dual heritage brought them grief and confusion throughout childhood. Hoping her daughters would better assimilate into American society, her mother did not teach her Korean beyond a few folk songs. Because her maternal relatives lived in North Korea, she was never able to meet them. The stories her mother told of Korea felt like little more than fairy tales.

In her career as an actress, MiRan has played a wide range of characters, including a British heiress, Japanese maiden, and a Greek Princess. However, regardless of the roles she was cast in, MiRan tells us that her goal was always to just become “the best actress that she could be.” On stage, she has had to find and command a confidence she hoped she possessed as a child while navigating the anxieties of her identity. She has since transformed this confidence into a sense of responsibility, advocating for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Joy Lee Gebhard was born in Tokchon, North Korea, during the Japanese occupation. When she was one and a half years old her family moved to Pyeongyang, where she remembers spending her childhood around the massive royal tombs near her home, as well seeing their exhumation and excavation by the Japanese Army. Upon liberation, her father slaughtered the family’s single cow, which had been used to work farmland, to hand out cuts of meat to the community in celebrating their independence. During the Korean War, she was brought to the South Korea by a South Korean man visiting Pyeongyang in search of his family, promising her mother that she would be able to live a fuller life south of the 38thparallel; this would be the last time she ever saw her mother. In South Korea, she found herself at a military nursing school in Busan, where both South Korean and American soldiers were fascinated by the fact that she was from the North, at times treating her with suspicion. She worked a variety of jobs to study at Busan University, one of which was as a morning news broadcaster, before receiving an unprompted invitation by a minister in Texas to come to the United States; apparently, news of a “North Korean” nurse in Busan had circulated around the world. She emphasizes how it was never her intention to come to the U.S. as it would further separate her from her family; even from America, her search for her family continued as she sent countless letters to the embassies of countries which maintained diplomatic relations with the newly partitioned country. Upon the invitation of the North Korean government, she was briefly reunited with her family in 1988, and has gone back multiple times since then.

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.

Sam Hyun was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, where he spent most of his life before moving to D.C. Sharing his family story, he tells us of how the immigrant’s psyche can be worn down and damaged in the pursuit of the American Dream, an experience he both witnessed and encountered through his relationship with his father. Raised by his mother, Sam recalls how she had to endure grueling hours of multiple jobs to care for her family while his father, who traveled often on business trips, was largely absent from his life. He shares with us a memory of the exact moment his father left the family for good: an argument over his mother purchasing the laundromat she had worked at for years, a decision which would improve the family’s financial prospects but one which exposed the pride and insecurities of a father who had failed to live up his myth of an American life. Today, as Co-Founder of @1587sneakers and the Director of Government Relations at @taaforg, Sam works to change both the narrative of how we as Asian Americans present ourselves, as well as the harmful narratives to which we subscribe.