Legacy Project

Janet Burt was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1967. When she was a junior in high school, her parents made the decision to move their family to the United States in hopes that their children might have access to better education. After a decade of navigating the hurdles of obtaining American visas, the family immigrated to Los Angeles in 1983, uprooting their life in Korea to join their relatives abroad. Because she moved to America a little later in life, she feels that she straddles the generational gap between Korean and American cultures, identifying as a 1.5th generation Korean American; her family speaks Korean and maintains certain Korean traditions while interacting and working within a larger, multiethnic American sphere. In the time since she’s moved to L.A., she’s gotten married and raised a family of her own; having lived in Los Angeles for over thirty years, she considers it to be her hometown. Today, she serves as the Director of Diversity and Business Development at the largest law firm in Los Angeles and is an active member in a number of community organizations in Koreatown, working to attract the younger generation of Korean Americans to engage more with the neighborhood while its elders hold down the fort.

Nancy Cho was born in North Pyongan Province in what is today North Korea, spending her early childhood there. At the age of six, she and her family moved to Seoul, and only two years later had to flee to Busan to escape the violence of the Korean War. She completed middle school in Busan before moving back to Seoul with her family to attend high school, after which she began college at Ewha. After graduation, she met her husband and had their first child, later moving to Houston where her husband had been attending business school. Restless, Ms. Cho studied to become a keypunch operator, passing her licensing examination at the top of her class. In December of 1968 she had their second child, and her husband began working at Houston Natural Gas, though as their family continued to grow, she couldn’t help but notice how barren of Koreans Houston was at the time. Four years after having their third child, the family decided to move to Los Angeles after hearing of its Korean community from a church elder. Living in Koreatown, she remembers thinking that “LA felt like Korea,” from hearing Korean being spoken on the streets to how she could get her hair done at a Korean salon. She worked with her husband at his CPA practice for forty-five years while taking care of their family, and today finds much joy in cooking at home following Korean recipes on YouTube.

Kyu Min Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, to a family who worked for the Korean government. When he was only 1 year old, his family moved to Bogota, Colombia, after his father accepted a position to work at the South Korean Embassy, and Kyu Min grew up in Bogota until he was ten. At the time, it was not uncommon for Korean families living in Colombia to send their kids, sometimes accompanied by a relative, abroad for their education. For Kyu Min, his siblings, and his mother, this meant moving to Los Angeles where they soon found out that the economic resources they had in Colombia didn’t translate to living in the United States. His mother had to work multiple jobs to take care of her children in L.A., but soon moved back to Colombia to take care of their father, and for the first time in his life Kyu Min had to learn how to navigate the world without his parents by his side. As a teen, he recounts run-ins with gangs, being kicked out of multiple high schools, and “experiencing everything America had to offer—the good and the bad.” Encouraged by his high school art teacher, he applied, and was accepted to, the Otis School to study art, but dropped out a year later to pursue a career in the music industry, where he worked with a record label for almost 20 years. After the digitization revamped the music world, Kyu Min pivoted to operating a restaurant bar with a space to host various DJs and artists. Although he had little experience with food, he created a menu consisting of Korean-Colombian dishes from his childhood. He remains thankful for how “his life turned out,” while remaining fully aware that there were risks that could have taken him down a very different path.

Jaesook Kim was born in 1948 in Seoul, Korea, just before the Korean War began. Although she was too young to remember the conflict in detail, she remembers how her older brother was drafted into the war, never to return. Despite her family’s impoverished conditions after the war ended, they managed to continue living in Seoul; specifically, Mrs. Kim recalls living in shack near Dongdaemun Gate. Through all of the hardship, her mother desired for her to one day become a teacher, and so sent her to a special elementary school far from home which was affiliated with a teacher’s college—eventually, her mother’s dream came to fruition, and Mrs. Kim taught as a teacher in Korea for 20 years. During this time she met her husband who, after encountering business misfortunes, asked to move to the United States. At first, the couple moved to New York, but Mrs. Kim never quite felt at home in the busy city. They then moved to Los Angeles which she loved, describing it as feeling like her hometown. After experiencing some setbacks while working in the restaurant industry, Mrs. Kim decided to try to find work where she could interact with children, seeing as she’d been a teacher for all those years in Korea, eventually babysitting for children with an appetite for Korean food. Her husband passed in 2005, and she occasionally feels lonely—at times, she longs for Korea as well. Yet feels that living in America has been a blessing as well, and feels lucky to have had this life.

Cathy Yi was born in 1950 in Gyeonggi Province, Korea, just outside of Seoul. At a young age, she moved with her family to Seoul, where she received her primary and secondary education; after graduating from high school, she moved to the United States to live with some of her relatives who had already immigrated to the country. She had heard stories of discriminatory attitudes towards minorities while living in Korea and was disheartened to experience such attitudes for herself in places as unassuming as the local grocery market, but was nevertheless resolved to make a better life for herself in spite of the racism she encountered. When she was 27 years old, she married and moved to New York where she and her husband lived for five years before moving to New Jersey to be closer to her business, which was located in Philadelphia. In 1986, she moved to Los Angeles where she and her family got by comfortable while working in wholesale, though a change in fortune would later cause her to close the business. Today, from retirement, Cathy appreciates how she was able to acclimate to an American way of life early on, recognizing that although there exists cultural differences between the Korea she remembers and the America she’d immigrate to, the choices we make as individuals are not predetermined by the society we live in.

Justine Yoon was born in Los Angeles to immigrant parents. She grew up to the north of Koreatown in Los Feliz, and describes her childhood as having been lively and active: from a young age, her parents put her and her older siblings through a variety of local leagues, sports, and extracurriculars, in part so that they might grow up immersed within American culture. Her parents were active within the Korean community as well: her father operated a private practice in Koreatown, and after his retirement ventured into the restaurant business with her mother which they’ve continued to this day. Justine would often work in her parents’ restaurants, whether it was by peeling and cleaning vegetables or going out into the markets to secure the best deals on wholesale ingredients. Today, she has taken a smaller role at her parents’ restaurants to pursue her own passions, something which exemplifies a larger internal struggle that children of immigrants must personally and uniquely reckon with: how we might actualize our own dreams—which our parents worked tirelessly for—while also honoring the sacrifices that went into creating opportunities for the next generation.

Aileen Kim was born in Yanji, Jilin Province, China, in 1972, and she is a third-generation Korean Chinese: her grandmother sought refuge in China during the Japanese occupation, and her parents were born in Manchuria. She talks about having a relatively middle-class upbringing, with both parents both working as public servants, as well as attending Yanbian University of Science and Technology, where she studied English. After graduation, she worked for the school’s human resources team—her fluency across languages and cultures meant that she could work in translation and in cultural introductions with visiting students and scholars. Her husband was one such visiting student, and after the two married they lived in Ulsan, Korea, for six years, where Aileen worked as a Chinese instructor. While pregnant with their second child, the family moved to Los Angeles for Aileen’s husband’s career. Through Radio Korea, she later found work in a restaurant whose owner was also Korean Chinese; here, too, her fluency in Chinese, Korean, and English proved useful in working the front of house. Although she wasn’t aware of it at first, she came to find a sizable Korean Chinese community in Los Angeles, and takes pride in her identity. She relates to her children in understanding what it’s like to grow up Korean in a non-Korean-majority environment, and just as she held onto her heritage through the Korean language, she hopes for her children to continue using it as well.

Laura Park is a hanbok business owner based in Los Angeles. She was born in 1964 to a family that operated a textile store in Gwangjang Market in Seoul and recounted a comfortable childhood containing memories of time spent at her parent’s store. She explains how the store had been in operation since before she was born: her mother had begun working in the market when she was 18, and by the time Laura came around, she was running a textile business that had become woven into the fabric of Gwangjang. Laura initially expressed an interest in languages and so worked as a translator for diplomatic correspondences between Korea and Japan ahead of the 1988 Olympics, but realized that her true passions lay in business; with the money earned from working as a translator, she moved to Los Angeles, where her uncle lived. Following in the footsteps of her parents, she opened a hanbok store which she called “Lee Hwa Korean Traditional Dress;” before long, she was selling wedding dresses as well, and so renamed the store to “Lee Hwa Wedding and Korean Traditional Dress.” As more and more non-Koreans became familiar with what a hanbok was, she renamed her store to “Lee Hwa Wedding and Hanbok,” a final DBA change that reflected shifting attitudes toward Korean culture in the United States. Today, most of her customers are non-Korean—compared to her clientele being 90% Korean when she first began her business—and her store caters to three styles of hanbok: traditional attire, modernized, and streetwear.

Kyungbin Min is a chef based in Los Angeles. He was born in Seoul, Korea, and immigrated with his family to SoCal where his aunt lived. He knew from an early age that his calling was in food service: as a child, he grew to love the instant gratification of being a part of dinner service, even if it it meant simply setting up plates at the table (even today, he says that it’s his customers’ positive reviews that “gives him the pump” to keep on going). He worked in restaurants right out of college, and after saving enough money paid his way through culinary school, after which he worked in a variety of kitchens, from fine dining to upscale casual. Though he enjoyed his time in culinary school, he says that it wasn’t necessary for him; the food he creates today, he says, is a mashup of what he learned in the kitchens with his own added flair. During the onset of the pandemic, he and his partners were furloughed, and so they set about starting their own food businesses: one of his partners started a meal prep company, while he and another partner together launched a dry aging meat company; everything, he says, was ecommerce. Soon, he opened “Hanchic,” which to his surprise was picked up by outlets such as Eater, Thrillist, and The Infatuation: what began as an ecommerce business soon turned into an outdoor patio, which then transitioned indoors. He owes the success of his enterprises to his community, which he tries to serve by introducing Korean flavors beyond the typical kbbq or kimbap that many are already familiar with. In acting as a middleman of sorts, he hopes more people will become comfortable ordering food from the “OG mom and pop” restaurants in L.A.’s Koreatown.