Q+A With Shashi Arnold
Get to know more about our sticker contest’s 1st place winner, Shashi Arnold! Interviewed by our intern, Emma Park.
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.
You may wonder why the date for Korea’s New Year’s Day changes every year and falls in January or February, making it confusing for some who try to keep track with America’s standard Gregorian calendar. This is due to Korea’s use of the lunisolar calendar (different from the lunar calendar) that tracks both the moon and the sun. Depending on the position of the sun and also the phases of the moon, the number of days and months in a year will vary. Sometimes there are 12 months, sometimes 13!
The first — and only — Korean American to serve in Congress was Republican Jay Kim in 1999. Almost 20 years later, five Korean American candidates have the chance of running for the House. Three out of the five candidates also have the opportunity to make history as the first female Korean American in Congress.
Much like the Korean American community as a whole, the candidates that made it to this year’s Nov. 6th election come from diverse background experiences and represent a range of political stances. Meet the five candidates and explore their key issues:
Meet John Cho and Director Aneesh Chaganty in the AAIFF41 opening screening of SEARCHING!
With the opening of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in February of 2018, the second such event in Korea after the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, it would be timely to remember the very first Korean to win an Olympic medal.
Persian or Arabian merchants in China became aware of the Kingdom of Goryeo sometime after the foundation of the dynasty (918) and spread the name of the place across Eurasia in the distorted form of Corea or Korea. By the seventeenth century, Europeans were aware of the place that was east of China and in the vicinity of Japan, but there was so little information about the place that some sixteenth and seventeenth century maps show Korea as an island.2
It was in the same year that Simplicissimus was published that the very first European book on Korea that provided detailed information on the country by an actual traveler there appeared. The Dutchman Hendrick Hamel’s (1630-1692) Journal of the Unfortunate Voyage of the Spewer, is an account of how he and his shipmates were held captive in Joseon dynasty Korea from 1653 to 1666.3 The Dutch text was published in a French translation in 1670 and in English in 1704.
For Korean Americans who are pondering the land of their ancestors, perhaps with a mind to writing about their heritage, one complexity they may face immediately is the confusing number of names for the country.
This past September in Berkeley, California, I opened the doors to the David Brower Center, slightly nervous and excited, I stepped into a room filled with mixed-race Korean Americans attending the one-day Koreans and Camptowns Conference. Even though I grew up with my biological parents, I still carry the scars—physical and emotional—from being ostracized and bullied for looking different from the other children in my bucolic California communities. Many of the people attending the conference were Korean adoptees (KADs) who had even more reason to search through crowds to find someone who resembled them. Not only were most KADs raised in places with no other KADs or Koreans, but they also didn’t look anything like their adoptive parents and other family members.