Written

The first thing that jumped out at me when I met her was her physical weakness. Her hands felt small, thinned with age, soft, and leathery when I took them in mine. She was in a wheelchair, and she wore a patterned pink shirt that fit loosely on her tiny frame. 

“You came all this way to see me?” She asked.

“Yes,” we responded, “we flew from America to see you.” She looked us directly in the eyes and said, pointing to herself, 

“Okay. Well look at me. This is what I look like.” I knelt beside her wheelchair and was suddenly struck, not by her frailty but by her strength. She turned her head to face me.

“Who are you?” She asked, with an expression of fierceness on her face. Her forcefulness terrified me, despite her being not at all physically imposing. I became afraid that she was going to scold me and I, unable to speak Korean, would not know how to respond. 

“What are you doing in my house?” I imagined her yelling. 

“He’s your great-grandson. Chongkeo’s child.” My relatives told her, and instead of scolding me, she reached out her hand. I didn’t understand what was happening at first, but I soon realized she was reaching for my hand, and so I took her hand in mine. My great-grandmother, or jeungjo-halmeoni, is 104 years old, struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. She has lived through the Japanese occupation of Korea, World War 2, the Korean War, and the brutal suppression of the Gwangju uprising. She has watched the birth of two Korean nations and the rapid industrialization of one. She gave birth to six sons and a daughter. She endured the loss of one son in his infancy and her house to her husband’s gambling addiction. She watched her firstborn son move across the world to South America and then New York for a better life, and she waited for him to come back to be with her in his 70s. With all of that taken into account, her hands seem small but forceful, her shoulders not diminished but broad, and her hair, gray and curly, appears more like woven strands of iron. 

She reminds me of a white pine tree I saw at Jogyesa, a Buddhist temple in Seoul. Brought to the temple by Chinese missionaries 500 years ago, the tree outlasted the Joseon dynasty and survived the Later Jin, Qing, and Japanese invasions of Korea. It saw through the end of the Japanese occupation, during which Jogyesa had served as a hotbed of resistance against Japanese attempts to crush Korean Buddhism. The pine is not a super tall tree, standing at around 10 meters, nor does it have any flowers. However, its branches are broad, its needles are thin, but forceful, and its shocking white bark resembles iron.

In April of this year, my father, Dr. Byoung G. Choh, passed peacefully in his sleep after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He survived the Japanese occupation, escaped North Korea during the Korean War, and immigrated to Ohio in 1972 with his wife and three children. When thinking about his remarkable life, I’m so thankful we were able to capture his stories through KoreanAmericanStory.org’s Legacy Project and will cherish and preserve his video for our family’s history.

Five-year-old me was addicted to Barbie. I watched the movies. I memorized the songs. I pranced around my basement in full fairy-princess costume, twirling a wand and going on imaginary girl-power adventures. I collected dolls– mostly blonde with shimmery pink dresses, or brunettes with light eyes and kind smiles, but there was one doll that always stood out to me the most.

Storytelling is a powerful too. It helps us fight prejudices and biases by connecting each and everyone of us through our shared humanity.

We are thrilled to announce our winners from our first sticker contest! Thank you to everyone who submitted and shared with us their Korean American story. It was amazing to see the different things that inspired you and to have them interpreted into a sticker.

KoreanAmericanStory.org will be recording its second installment of our miniseries Legacy Project: #MeToo, featuring the powerful and unheard stories of Korean American survivors of sexual assault and/or harassment.

Beginning each morning by writing a to-do list, I feel immense satisfaction whenever I cross things off. It signals that I finished this, that I made something of my day. This compulsion for constant productivity, I am sure it stems from the way I was raised. Famously coined by legal scholar and writer Amy Chua, the term “tiger mom” refers to a parental figure with an incredibly authoritative child-rearing style—in other words, my parents. Like many other Korean parents, my mother and father were tiger parents for sure. Never accepting anything less than the best (my best was not enough, for I had to be the best out of everyone else as well), I strived to live up to their expectations.

I should be writing a personal statement for a doctoral program I’m applying to. I should be writing a one-page fluff essay talking about how much my dreams are important to me, how I’d be a good fit for the doctoral cohort, and how much I want to pursue an advanced degree.

During my freshman year, on weekends, I would take the subway from Morningside Heights, looping around 42nd Street and back up to the Upper East Side to work at a newspaper and magazine store owned by the Chois.

Today, my mother taught me how to make doenjang jjigae. I had asked her to show me, since I’m moving into an apartment-style at school in August and I won’t have a meal plan. Besides, I’m not sure if a life without jjigae is a life at all. I sat at the wooden island in our little kitchen as she boiled the broth, added the meat, the vegetables. The doenjang paste.

I have monolids. Mono as in “one”. One-lid. No crease.

Eye-shape seems to be a resurrectable conversation topic with my Asian friends. Which of us have been “blessed by the heavens above” with that little fold in their eyelid– which of us “unfortunate souls” have been cursed to bear the weight of hooded eyes.

I had never really attempted to express what it means to be Korean American in words until this internship. I feel like I’ve always taken my Korean American identity for granted. It has always been this intangible idea floating in the back of my mind, a mingle of different moments– the sensation of tasting my grandmother’s fresh kimchi, writing my Korean name, Korean words woven into English sentences.

I rarely felt beautiful growing up. Maybe it was because of the painful red bumps that would erupt on my face overnight. Or the clunky metal braces stamped onto my teeth.

May 3rd was the day my family immigrated to the US, now twenty-four years ago. It’s also the day the last little flame of the riots of 92 went out, now twenty-eight years ago. Time is weird, isn’t it?

When Anne Frank was about my age, she documented her life hiding in her attic from 1942 to 1944 in her diary. During the horrific World War II time, she was not only confined to a small space but lived in fear. Getting flour for a birthday cake was a luxury and she had limited supplies of everything.

Umma asked me what I needed as a wedding gift. I said we didn’t need anything. She was offended.

I immigrated from Seoul to St. Louis at the age of 4 in 1982. My first language was Korean and I slowly learned my third language, English. I quickly learned my second language, baseball.

Staggering through the front door, the soft touch of my bed fills my mind. Six straight hours of classes had turned my brain into soup, threatening to drip out of my ears if my blankets didn’t cover them first.

This acclaimed debut novel deserves all the great attention and accolades it’s received. Both a turn-the-page thriller and a literary investigation of a family’s survival from trauma, both recent and decades old, the writing elevates the story into deeper understandings of the nuances in family relationships and how they seep into every act of living.

In her startling debut novel, Jimin Han captures several genres at once—a terrifying thriller, a coming-of-age story of first love, a historical novel of 1980s Korea and Korean Americans, and a work of literature with an interesting structure and use of point-of-view that only ramps up the tension.

The accolades for this fine, epic novel are deserved. In her second novel, author Min Jin Lee follows members of a family (and many equally fascinating ancillary characters) from the Japanese Occupation era in Korea, to the Korean diaspora in Japan, up to 1989.

Get to know more about our sticker contest’s 1st place winner, Shashi Arnold! Interviewed by our intern, Emma Park.

It happened to me on a day in early July 1950. I was a student in the first grade of Bosung Middle School located in Hyaewha Dong, Seoul, Korea. At this point, I will explain Korean political and military situations.Korea was emancipated on August 15, 1945, out of Japanese occupation for 35 years since August 29, 1910. Korea has been divided between South and North Koreas soon after the Japanese Surrender on August 15, 1945, and South Korea established the Democratic Government on May 10, 1948, under the leadership of President Syngman Rhee. There was the complete and permanent division of the Korean Peninsula across the latitude of the 38th Parallel North and hostilities between these two divided Countries including the frequent military clashes.

It happened in the year of 1950 during the summer, possibly in late July. My mother, sister, and I were treading in a lonely country road heading to the village of Yongmun, Gyeonggi-do, where my sister and her family were living.

When Ilse Marques Kim, a former model from Brazil, was laid off from Korea Air’s cargo department at LAX, she struggled to find work for over a year.

When asked how it makes her feel to be known as the “Original Dreamer” she responded, “I’m not sure it matters… some undocumented immigrants today are saying that they think the Dreamer rhetoric is something that throws our parents under the bus because it’s exclusive to a certain number of immigrants. We have to fight this one thing at a time and eventually we will fight for comprehensive immigration reform because that’s what this country really needs.”

This past July, Karen was elected President of KALAGNY. In her short time in the position, Karen has already brought a renewed energy and vision to the over 30 year old association.

As the parent of an Asian American child, do you brace yourself for that moment? Or what about as the parent of a Black child in America?

Scenario one: Young boy’s mother dies of a long drawn out illness; just a few months later, his father also dies of a sudden and quick illness.

Why is it that every time a racist act or gesture is made against an Asian person we feel the need to excuse or give the benefit of the doubt to the transgressor?