Date: November 11, 2005 Time: 12:00PM to 6:00PM<
Place: Skylight Room, CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan (Corner of 34th Street)
Professor Pyong Gap Min: We have to finish it, so will you please sit down. Before we start the final session, I want to ask you to fill out the conference evaluation form, inserted in your program. So, Dr. Tan wants to get your responses back so please fill out your form. This final part on Korean community organization, Dr. Cho will preside over the session. He’s teaching at Queen’s College. He’s teaching sociology, and he finished his Ph.D. program from the CUNY Sociology Department.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Hi, nice to see you. This is going to be the last portion of today’s gathering, and I believe this will be the most exciting and interesting part, because it is about our town and what is happening underground. And we are going to listen to the talks from what I would call the foot soldiers, workers, or activists from a variety of Korean American social services organizations. So and because we are to be late and I think you are pretty much tired, I want to directly get into the business. On the program we have only five panelists, but we actually have six panelists today. John Cho as a panelist is added to the original list of the panelists. Let’s start with Mr. Kim Sunghoon who is a sergeant of the NYPD, former president of the Korean American Officers Association.
Sunghoon Kim: Thank you, okay I’m going to make it very short and try to make it exciting. Someone asked to speak about myself and my involvement with the organization called the Korean American Officers Association within the NYPD, and I wasn’t too sure, and I asked him though, “What’s the breakdown of audience?” He just told me to just come up here and talk about yourself and talk about the organization, so that’s what I’m going to do. Hopefully it will be exciting and interesting too. As I was introduced, my name is Sunghoon Kim, I’m a sergeant with the New York City Police Department. I’ve been a police officer for about ten years, and I’ve served in various different units from precincts to specialized units. I am currently assigned to a unit which deals with prostitution, gambling, illegal liquor, cigarettes, and stuff like that. Before I start, I would like to introduce another member of the organization. He is the current president of the organization, Jae Sook Kim, the detective assigned to [inaudible].
I don’t know if a lot of you heard or know about the Korean American Officers’ Association. It started out with thirteen officers who are with Korean descent. Sometimes people used to call us angry, dirty Koreans, because we were somewhat disgruntled with the NYPD. When I became a cop, this is what I saw. We have something called roll call. Every morning or at the beginning of every tour, officers would line up and someone standing superior would give out the assignments. Officer K would get sector 12 at meal time (meal time is at 12 o’clock). As I was standing in the roll call one day, I realized that black officers were standing on the left hand side, and white officers were standing on the right hand side, Hispanics were standing in the back, and I was standing right in the middle. I noticed that within couple of weeks I was assigned to the previous line. And I asked myself, ‘Wow, this is something new, and this is somewhat of a culture shock.’
Coming into the United States, all that we talked about or heard about was about prejudiced nations and prejudiced segregation and stuff like that. Becoming a New York City officer, wearing a blue uniform, I thought that New York was united as one. Yes, there were times that we were committed one with the blue uniformed officers, but a lot of times I saw a lot of officers who distinguished themselves as Italian, Irish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and so on. Hispanics not only standard, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan, Jamaican, you name it. As I spent more time, I realized that there were no one who was going to talk about Koreans, Korean Americans, and the Korean community within New York City. Before we started this organization, we used to call up the Asian Jade Society—not to put down and not to say anything bad about the organization, but we Korean officers felt that Asian Jade Society did not properly represent us because it was traditionally formed by Chinese American officers and their interest was somehow mostly the Chinese American community, which I feel is fine.
So a group of 13 officers started our organization called the Korean American Officers’ Association, nicknamed ‘Thirteen Angry Korean Officers.’ We felt a lot of pressure from Asian Jade society and we felt a lot of pressure from other ethnic organizations. There were about I believe twenty six ethnic internal organizations officially recognized by the NYPD, which means that they can go out saying, (like what I am saying) “I represent the Korean American Officers’ Association of the New York City Police Department. People will say I represent the Asian Jade Society of the New York City Police Department. Unless you are officially recognized you cannot go around saying ‘I’m part of the NYPD.’ There are about twenty-six organizations officially recognized.
They go out and speak to high ranking officers, they will speak to politicians, they will speak to community groups, they will speak to many various types of people to represent the NYPD or also their background. So going back, a group of us decided that we needed to start an organization that properly represented us and the Korean community within New York City. That is how we started, under a lot of pressure, in 1997, and we continued to gather and have more meetings to talk about different ways to officially organize this group. And finally in 2003, we were officially recognized by the NYPD. That was the groundbreaking point, and after that people started to shake our hands. People started to talk to us. Before people didn’t really want anything to do with us, because they saw us as an outcast, as people who try to break away from what has be formed and well-organized.
So that there was a breaking point and we started to do different things with the NYPD. Today we annually publish a calendar: an official calendar every year. Now we have Korean Independence Day posted, August 15th, we have the Korean Day Parade posted on that calendar, and we also have different types of events posted on the calendar. People looking at the calendar, people will know the police officers and detectives and sergeants and chiefs will unconsciously know, ‘Oh, August 15, Korean Independence Day.’ Not big deal, but nobody knew anything about it before. So we felt that something like that, small stuff like that was very important to bring awareness to the police officers who are working in the city, who serve the people in the city who are Koreans, Chinese, or Irish, and Italians, you name it.
Now we stand, we have about one hundred and thirty officers. When we started in 1997, we started with about 13 people, but now I want to say that somewhat it was our organization that brought people to the job. We say that we are Korean officers, we are Korean Americans working in the NYPD, it’s not a bad job, come on over. We helped them out. When I came on the job it was a pure luck—this does not relate to me. The system was set up where that you needed to make a phone call from your aunt, you needed a phone call from your uncle who was a chief, or detective. It was a very, very closed type of organization. Us, me myself to teach you to become a police officer was a very, very much in luck; it was a lot of luck to become a cop. But now, after we started our organization and became an officially recognized NYPD organization, we were able to go out and represent the NYPD. We were able to recruit people to our organization, and our members extended to about one hundred thirty people, and we also have a charter in New Jersey. There were a bunch of Korean American officers in New Jersey, Fort Lee, Bergen County, Edison County.
Our mission there was to reach out to a lot of federal workers and officers who were of Korean American descent. So we started to build up this record within our organization. We all knew that there was a front door way and a back door way. A lot of the times, the backdoor way is a lot faster, quicker, and you get things done really quickly. So we started to do our stuff like, ‘I’m looking at this guy, can you help us out?’ So what it did for some of us was that we were able to do a lot of things without putting stuff in paperwork. Something that would take about a year or two years, the Korean officers were about to get this done in about six months, maybe less than six months. So people really started to recognize us. That’s the aspect of the job organization: we get the job done.
Meanwhile to the Korean community, there used to be a lot of NYPD related Korean community organizations, and it took us many years to really let people know that we are police officers in that community. We are police officers, we are current police officers. When I come out to speak to people in Korean, they always thought that I am just some businessman who works for one of the community based organization. After speaking to these people, I realized that there are a lot of things we can do to help the Korean community, to assist them. When we were individuals we couldn’t really do much. You can’t do community affairs if you weren’t in that precinct. One person can only do so much, but there is always the issue, as Korean Americans within the NYPD who are able to help the Korean American community organizations and also little things that we do that brings awareness to people, such as crime related subjects and also the youth related subjects.
This was the reason that I jumped in and really felt strong about this organization was that I felt that, although we all identify ourselves as Americans, we all know that we cannot limit this our true identity. I understand my people. When I say my people not the coworkers, but people I work with, the Koreans and people I meet on the job. We all have something to do, so what? You know what, so what are you going to do about it? I feel that having true identity, having the Korean American Officers’ Association at my back, now I can go far with in my job and far into the community so I can bring the NYPD and the community together. Thank you
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Thank you Sunghoon Kim. Our next speaker will be Ms. Kong Joanne. She is the director of Korean programs of the YWCA and the topic of her talk will be “Women Empowering Women.”
Joanne Kong: Hello everyone, I know the topic is “Women Empowering Women,” I was actually asked to fill in at the last moment, so it will be a little different, if that’s all right. I want to say that the YWCA is not to be confused with the YMCA, which many people are, unfortunately. It is an organization started 27 years ago by nine Korean housewives all living in the Queens community. They felt that there wasn’t a place where they could get the services or the Korean community could get the services that they felt they needed, so they established this organization. When they first tried to become a part of the YWCA, they went to the YWCA in Brooklyn and asked if they could be affiliated for them, and they said no. So they had to look around, and they went to the YWCA of New York City. They said sure why not, what could it really hurt. And for 26 years they were affiliated with them. They are a branch YWCA of New York City and are known as the YWCA Flushing Branch. About a year ago, they decided that they wanted to seek some kind of independence. And so they got it, they got permission to start their own actual charter, now known as the YWCA in Queens.
Today, we have thirty board members and all thirty board members are Korean American professionals and a lot of them are very, very involved with the organization. For example, tomorrow we are having our annual bazaar, which has been a custom for 27 years. We gather goods from local merchants, all new. They have food. These women come out—they are just board members—but they come out early in the morning, and they help us move boxes, which are not light at all, and you have thirty women running around carrying fifty pound boxes, trying to organize the place. So these women are very involved, very giving, wanting to help the Korean community.
The YWCA in Queens is known for their very broad services for the Korean community. Its location is on Parsons Boulevard, and it is a very residential area. It is surrounded by a lot of houses and not many businesses so a lot of community members know us. In the Queens area where we are located, our zip code is 11355. I just wanted to share the statistics with you regarding that area from the 2000 census. In an area alone we have 49,917 Asian members within the community, compared to 38,864 members of every other race, including White, Hispanic, Native American, Hawaiian everything else that could be lumped in there for the rest of the community. From that neighborhood, 56,135 members are foreign born, 67% of people living in that zip code alone are foreign born. And 42,984 members have a high school education or higher.
That’s a huge discrepancy if you total up the numbers and count the number of people living in that zip code. So basically, the YWCA really tries to reach out, not to just the Korean American individuals that live in the neighborhood, but all immigrants that come from wherever or whatever culture or ethnicity that they may be. And it’s actually I think kind of funny because the YWCA in Queens is very known in the Korean community. Most of our members, I would say, about 85%, of our members are part of the Korean American community, but we are trying to expand it outwards to other immigrant communities, such as Hispanic, Native American, anyone in the area.
So the programs that YWCA are known for are first the youth programs of which I have the honor to be in charge of, and one of the biggest, I think, programs done in that department is the GED program. I don’t know if people know the drop out rate in New York City, but the Board of Education does a four year longitudinal report, designating four years. So in the expected graduation year 2004, 10,922 students dropped out. So that is 16.3%. When you include everyone in that study, 83% of those people were minorities, 12.7% were English language learners, and 19.8% were recent immigrants, and 44% of that number came to the United States when they were in the 7th or 8th grade. So when the Board of Education says that we have 16.3% drop out rate, what they don’t include are people who take GED courses.
So this is a huge part of the community that the Board of Education can’t really reach, and other organizations have trouble reaching, and we’re here in the community trying to promote that. Our GED program started with a very small number of children, maybe seven, because their parents came to us and asked if we had a GED program because their kids were going to school and they wanted them to have something. And so we actually got the funding and tried to start it up with seven; our course shot up through the map and now and it has grown to having 37 kids in a classroom and always, always more on the waiting list. So I think that is very important.
The reason that children drop out of high school is very vast. A lot of immigrant children feel like they can’t incorporate into this American culture. A lot of the foreign students tend to hang out with people from the same ethnicity, from the same culture. If you go into Flushing High School you see a lot of the Korean kids hanging together, they speak Korean, and they kind of stick with each other and do not mingle. And for that reason it is very difficult for them to associate into this American culture. After a while when you attend class and you see everyone else, you find it very difficult to say, “Yes I am an American. Everyday I have to go to these classes and teachers don’t really understand me because they don’t really know my culture.” The classrooms have 30 kids, 35 children, and it is very difficult for these instructors to pay so much attention to these immigrant children, that need the care that they need. So a lot of children drop out, more than 16.3%, because these are the children that they don’t have on their books, that they don’t know about.
Another program that the YWCA also does to promote youth is they are part of the Universal pre-Kindergarten Program, which is run by the Board of Education as well. This is kind of like a head-start program for children who are four years old. It is very important for communities with a huge immigration population for these programs to actually exist, because it does help them actually get started before they actually enter into the system. It gives them time to meet other people of other cultures, because we promote that. We want them to know that we are Korean Americans and, yes, we should be proud, but we live in a country where there are so many more ethnic races and cultures that we must all understand. So we have four-year old kids with Hispanic, black, and white kids and they all play together. We felt that that will help acclimate them before they actually start their school year.
Along with that we have an after school program, which on the dime, we just want to give these immigrant children who have difficulty speaking English—and they are pretty much elementary school (kindergarten through eighth grade)—assistance with their homework, and kind of developing their creative side as well because we know that kids can’t focus for a really long time on academics. Our after school program also helps immigrant parents. They work long hours, they are often independent business people and they don’t have time or they cannot afford to get daycare or nannies. This is a place where they can leave their children and know that they will be safe, know that there will be someone looking after them, and know that we will provide the care that they would provide.
Along with that, we have a program for seniors, it’s called The Evergreen School, and this program is also important within the community because we have a lot of immigrant elderly Korean Americans and whatever other race you may have here living in the community but not having really anywhere to go. They spend a lot of their time homebound or not having anything to do, and this gives them a place where they can meet other people and do things. We have trips for them to go see the leaves change colors during the fall. Every summer we have a senior tournament, where we encourage seniors within their community to participate and run obstacle courses. Basically, interesting games to keep them active and vital because that’s what they really need to stay strong and have longevity in their lives.
We know that our programming in the YWCA really extends from pre-kindergarten to the elderly population, servicing the entire population, which our organization is known to do. We just have so much always going on that sometimes we can’t even keep it straight. But it’s because it’s needed. It’s needed because you see it out there. You see children drop out of school. You see elderly homebound. You see them on the street. You see elementary school kids not actually getting their work done, which creates more problems in the future when they go into higher education. What ends up happening is, yes, they drop out of school. So here we go again, back in that same cycle. Our organization really fighting towards stopping that cycle, stopping that cycle where immigrants feel like they have to or can’t get anywhere. We try to promote, yes, even though you dropped out of school at sixteen you can do something with your life. We find that teaching them this is very important, because not only do they learn that they get an education out of it, but these are children that are willing to take responsibility for their lives and their mistakes, which so often in our society, I think that we tend to shift blame. But these kids aren’t doing that. They are enrolled in these classes, they are taking initiative, and they want to make something of themselves, and we support them one hundred percent. Thank you.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: I think that we have a time problem. We have four panelists that are remaining. We have only 55 minutes to go. Would 10 minutes be awfully bad? Please keep that time when you speak. Our next speaker will be Daniel Baek again. He presided over an earlier portion of this meeting. He is the program director of the Korean Voters Council, and he is talking of how to maximize our resources.
Daniel Baek: Thank you for staying. Be grateful though. I actually timed my presentation, which should be no more than five minutes. Let me start by repeating the one sentence introduction of our association. The Korean Americans’ Voters’ Council was established in 1996 in order to empower the Korean American community by registering, educating, and mobilizing the voters of the Korean American community. The reason why we have worked so hard to increase the Korean American Community vote is not to look good to the politicians, but to get them to look faster to the Korean American Community. Do you remember the L.A. riots on April 29, 1992? We were the victims of the riot, and because they concluded that there was no responsible party, we didn’t receive any compensation. At that time no one politician stepped forward to help us out. In response to that, the Korean Americans’ Voters’ Council was established and started to register voters at fast speed and widely campaigned to get out the vote so we can vote for the right politicians who are willing to hear our voice and understand the issues that are unique to the Korean American community.
Because the Korean community has shown a high percentage of voter turn out, we can forge bonds with the politicians, and now politicians are calling us to participate in Korean events, such as Korean Thanksgiving events. So we are making progress. I’ve been working in the Korean community for about three years, and I’m here today to share my personal experiences working in the Korean American community, and these are my opinions. The Korean American community is very small, one percent of the city o f New York, according to the 2000 census. That means we have limited resources such as human labor, real estate, money, money, and money.
There have been big Korean churches, and you know, they are big. About 80% of the Korean community goes to church. I think 20% Catholic and 60% Protestant. So about 80% of the Korean community goes to church and they do offerings. I go to church and I do offerings. No doubt, there are churches out there that help us out, help the Korean American community; however, I believe if churches become more active in the Korean American community, and leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. set forth and start mobilizing that 80% of Korean Americans, then the Korean community can achieve goals like more Korean community centers, more Korean politicians, and improvement of the U.S. and Korean relation. In 2005 we need a Martin Luther Kim, Martin Luther Park, or Martin Luther Lee. Thank you.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Thank you Mr. Baek, The next speaker will be Mr. Shin Don, Program Associate of Young Korean American Service and Education Center, and he will be talking about empowering the Korean American community.
Don Shin: Hi my name is Don Shin, I am the program associate at the YKASEC, the Young Korean American Service and Education Center. I just wanted to thank the organizers of this work that invited us to talk a little bit about our organization. Our organization was established in 1984 to meet the needs of the Korean American community for programming in education, civil rights, and social services. The focus and emphasis of these programs have been on the marginalized segments of our community, including recent immigrants, people who are limited English proficient, the elderly, and the youth. Our programs to serve and to empower the community annually serve over 20,000 community members through many of our programs, including youth empowerment courses over the summer. We visit elderly centers before their luncheon just to tell them how to vote and that there are elections going on. We have clinics for income tax, job training, and other programs to serve the community.
I just want to briefly talk about two recent projects in particular that our recent focuses have been to advance immigrant rights through a state of participation. The first program we had over this past summer, which was a national ad campaign for components of immigration reform. Basically, twenty-six initiating organizations decided that we needed to lobby Congress and let the country know that our immigration reform needed to be changed and build a base for undocumented immigrants needed to be legalized. We ended up having a total of two hundred sixty wide endorsing organizations across the country. In nine weeks over the summer we raised over $73,000 dollars to run two quarter paged ads in the seventh page in the Washington Post, and one full page ad in the New York Times. Two of these ads were run in October, basically to let Congress, The White House, and the rest of the country know how immigrant communities, not just Korean American communities but all immigrant communities across the country are suffering because of the current laws.
The purpose of the campaign was to lobby Congress, but it was also to empower communities and let community members know that they can make a difference. This was highlighted by our dollar-person drive. YKASEC and its affiliates hit the streets of L.A. and Chicago and New York City. We went to Korean Grocery markets. We went to intersections of Korea Towns in Manhattan and Flushing. We just engaged Korean community members and we got an overwhelming response. Over $14,000 of the $73,000 was raised by individuals contributed just one dollar and that let the organization know and Congress know that there was a real grassroots support for the reform of immigration. We feel that the campaign was successful in not only putting up the ads. There’s one more ad that we are going to run at a later date. But we also feel that it was successful in engaging the community and getting a pretty positive feedback. We got letters. The Korean Press covered this campaign and we got letters from all over the country just saying personal stories about people suffering under the current immigration laws and the green card processing. We feel like there was a sense of empowerment in the community as a result of this campaign.
The other thing we did. We’ve done recently is that we’ve complied a Korean voter database in the past two or three years, basically we got the list of New York City registered voters and we identified Korean last names like Lee and Park and we matched them with obvious Korean first names like Soonhong. But if there was like Peter Lee, that individual may or may not have been Korean but was not included in our database.
Basically, we complied this; it took staff and volunteers who spent many, many hours putting together a database of over 20,000 Korean American voters. We are using this database to send out a whole bunch of materials before the election, and to call Korean American registered voters before the election, just to say, “Hey next weeks election, it’s just a primary election, a general election, please go out an vote.” And we also broke it down by borough, by gender, and party affiliation, and with them we approached our election work in a more strategic than analytical way. The ad campaign and the voter advocacy were two of our recent efforts in empowering the community and mobilizing community members around the issue of immigrant rights and to increase voter participation. Thank you.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Our next panelist is Kim Ron, and who is the director of KoFro.
Ron Kim: Thank you very much. I forgot to write down this deadline for my updated bio and the topic of discussion, so I want to take a brief moment to formally introduce myself and perhaps get into culture for a little bit. My name is Ron Kim, and I am currently a program manager at Platform Learning Incorporated. It is a nation-wide company that caters to at risk, urban, public school students in Title I schools. What I do is execute supplementary educational packages for after school for critical age groups. I have an undergraduate degree from Huntington College. It’s in New York, and recently graduated from Baruch College with an MPH as a National Fellow. I spent over three years in the community working as a public servant at the local, state, and federal level and then at various non-profits, such as AK Progress, Korean American Democrats of New York, and a couple of initiatives that I started (like KoFro) and others. Having said that, I’m going to talk more about the challenges today behind organizations and getting empowered.
My main problem has actually been getting organized and getting empowered. That’s what organizations essentially are. It’s a step to getting more organized. Before we do that, I think it is very important to look at the history of Korean Americans, Asian Americans, and immigrants, and trends that everybody goes through so we can learn from the lessons of previous people like groups of immigrants that came here before us. I’m going to briefly talk about Korean Americans and characteristics of the last couple hundred years. I believe that Korean Americans have what I call a fight-the-agony kind of attitude, which comes from 150 years of hegemonic oppression going back to China and Japan and have this feeling of isolation and a will to better. This is what we have concentrated on for many years.
During the early 20th century, the quickest way to get there and obtain tangent power was through education. The first wave of Korean Americans came in the 1920s and had the highest literacy rate of all Asian Americans, it was like 96% while white Americans were at 98%. In 1960s they passed the Hart-Celler Act, which allowed a larger number of Asian Americans to come to the United States. During that time, Korean Americans came to the United States in large numbers. After they came, they also realized that they needed to find another quick way to gain more tangent power, and at the time, even now, they realized that small businesses were the quickest path to those goals. Right now in New York City, more than 75% of liquor stores are owned by Korean Americans, resulting in over $500 million of capital for New York City. So the main theme, the main challenge, as I see it now for Korean Americans is getting organized and getting power.
So what’s the main challenge? I believe that the big challenge is dealing with the collectivism versus individualism. Like I said, individuals tried to use education for small businesses to gain that tangent power; but now in order for us to organize empowerment and step out of that collectively, what it really means to do community work. You cannot have community without unity. That’s a lot of struggle by Korean American immigrants. There is a lot of conflict and lack of collaboration. If we cannot be united with our own community, how can we unite with other groups? So I think that’s the main challenge we need to focus on for years to come.
So culturally, I believe that Korean Americans have to work at negotiating, and the goal is to compromise, and the goal is to walk in other people’s shoes—and that’s a huge issue. We need to sit down with all groups of people and rationalize situations before jumping to conclusions. It is a very simple thing to say. Culturally, I feel like this is all right there in my family and community; Koreans are a very, very emotional—for lack of a better word—group of people; that’s a common trait of Korean Americans.
In order for us to be more collective minded, I believe that we should extend our innate sense of family relations or what I call family values. Korean Americans have very strong family values, since we are in a small circle, in a circle of people that are very well-tuned, they collaborate very well. But in order for us to progress, we’d need to expand that circle and become civic minded. That’s not going to happen overnight, but I believe it is a sequence of events and outputs so that we can get to that.
So I am just going to finish off with KoFro. It is a program initiative that I’ve created with my partner Njemile Davis, who is an African American, to create a program to concentrate on cross-cultural or cross relations between Korean Americans and Asian Americans, and African Americans and Hispanic Americans. We have a history of fighting with the LA riots, direct clashes. Groups of people and cultural programs have evolved to really tackle those kinds of problems. And that’s all I’d like to talk about today.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Thank you Mr. Kim, and all of our panelists, who have adjusted to this program pace. John Cho works in New York City Council as associate director to Councilman John C. Liu and has done a lot of services for the Korean American community.
John Cho: Thank you. I want to say first off that [inaudible] First, I want to say Happy Remembrance Day. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s really a very nice day. Unfortunately, the state decides about that [inaudible]. Fortunately I work in City Hall, so I actually have a day off.
There are not too many Asians in city government. It is strange because New York City is one of the largest governments in the United States, four to five districts. By budget, we have a 50 million dollar budget; so right after the federal government is California, then it is the city of New York. Now with hundred of countries in the third world yet there are few Asian Americans aside our ranks, and the Korean Americans on the city council you can count them on one hand, very few. Council Liu, he represents the district in Flushing. Many of you know that Flushing was one of the first settlements in the New World, it’s almost 350 years old. It is a symbol religious freedom and tolerance, and it’s really very symbolic for Koreans and other Asians to settle in Flushing because I believe we represent the next wave of civil rights and humans rights that’s going to change this country.
I want to seek out for Korean Americans to bridge general issues not only internally, but also bridge them with mainstream society and also with other people’s color and working class communities. Many people don’t realize that, especially after 1997, the IMF crisis, many of the immigrants from Korea are working class, still labor, and that has many impacts on our community here. For example, there is a critical need for educational support services for youth; there are a great deal of healthcare issues that really need to be resolved. Many of our panelists here talked about working with young people, because a lot of the youth I’ve worked with are dropping from their class because their parents are working obscene hours in stores, nail salons, very marginal industries that aren’t regulated by government.
I want to step back and talk about how do we reach these generations and how do we connect with mainstream society in their communities. I feel like there is a trend in South Korea, in terms of the democracy movement that I feel is an inspiration for what we can do here. One of the things that has been instrumental in some of the changes recently has been opening up the society, a general truth telling—always tell the truth—and to expose, for example, collaboratives that work for Japanese. Many of these elite families acquire US education. Once the US replaced the Japanese in Korean exit, there was a kind of thing that we need to do here. We had to, in our own community, democratize leadership, make the positions in our community more inclusive in terms general issues, including gender. And as you can see, while many of the people I work with in the community are women, they are not represented necessarily in these kinds of discussions. Sexual orientation, ideology and creed, I believe were very discriminating in terms of allowing people to express themselves. This will come out through the marginalization that debating of activists in the Korean American community through American civil leadership, even through the South Korean Consulate and its agents, who until recently, had part of the surveillance activists in the United States.
I think these are all very important things we need to talk about to open up our own. There is so much progress in South Korea, we really need to be inspired by what is going on there. And why are politics important? Why do we want to encourage young people to get into politics? When I talk to people, I say one word: survival. Politics is about survival. If you look at certain events like [inaudible] or Katrina, you can see the impact of being at the table. If you’re not represented, your community needs a representative. I always say there should be a warning for people coming to this country, “Avoid politics at your own risk”. There should be a little clock at JFK as they get off the planes.
I just want to talk about some of the needs that we need to do to move this forward. I think we need to be more critical of our parents’ generation. Many of our parents pushed us into high paying professions, which has really pushed us away from the community and disconnected us from the roots of what we need to do. They have rapidly adopted the US norms, language, civilization, and consumer patterns. I think these are also factors in the dissolution of the community here. You see many people moving to suburbs, and I think that is going to affect local industries, stores, and newspapers, their ability to actually have a community. I think we need to encourage young people to speak up, lend their support, diversity of ideas and ways of doing things. We need to support independent youth led organizations and cultural activities. I think that’s really important to young people, their own space, and not to be told, “This is what you have to do. This is what it means to be Korean, and therefore you have to do it our way.” I think we really need to give the funding and support to allow young people to be very creative.
Lastly, I think we need to make international and transcultural connections. We need to better understand the community, how events like the 1997 IMF crisis will affect us. What is going to happen when there is an implication of North and South Korea? Are there going to be more refugees coming after the US Congress passes a North Korean Human Rights Act? These are all things we need to have a better understanding of because they impact us, when people immigrate into our community. We also need to understand how US intervention overseas impacts our community too. I worked in city government. The past two fiscal years, we’ve had, a 10 billion dollar deficit. And that means 10 billion dollars worth of schools, police officers, educational facilities, were not built for two years, while at the same time we’re spending 6 billion dollars per month fighting a war in Iraq. So I think that’s a connection that we can make, a connection like to what happened in Vietnam. Me and you know that the South Korean military were mercenaries through the Vietnam War, and they were also exposed to Agent Orange. Many of the people I know who were in the South Korean military have health problems and have not been adequately redressed or taken care of by the US government even though US soldiers here have been compensated. South Korean and Vietnamese people have not been compensated for what happened during the Vietnam War.
I have a flyer on the table for an event that’s coming up Wednesday. We’re going to be having some Vietnamese people who were victims, or family members of victims, and people go there because this is a big event not only for the Vietnamese community, but also for the Korean community as we are also part of what happened. Thank you very much.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Okay so we have twenty more minutes for a question and answer session. So please raise your hand to ask your question.
Audience Member: My question is are people voting when they get here? I think that also the people registered to vote, they do not choose to vote. That is very problematic, because I guess they want to go for prayer or they are working. They cannot vote or understand why to do this civic duty. I think that this young people cross ratio sees that young people are not voting. What is being done to help young people to encourage them to vote, to encourage them to do politics?
Daniel Baek: I think you have several points, so I guess I will first answer your first question. With respect to not voting, maybe they’re not voting, but maybe they don’t want to vote. About 30% of Korean voters do vote. The people that didn’t register to vote never vote—about 30%.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Say you have non-American voters.
Daniel Baek: Excuse me?
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Say you have not American voters.
Don Shin: Not American voters? Fully American, really….
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Only 6% of non Korean voters did not vote in this country.
Daniel Baek: Are you asking me? Or are you telling me?
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: I’m just giving information.
Daniel Baek: Right, right. I’m talking about Korean Americans, I don’t know about Chinese Americans. I talked to them, and they gave me—I don’t want to say excuses because I want to see things from their perspective—and they give me reasons like: “Who is going to take care of my children?”; “I can’t walk out in the middle of work”; “Then after work my parents and children come late”. They just don’t want to vote—and they just can’t vote. We with YKASEC, encourage voters to vote, in order to remain involved politically, etc. etc., but that 30%, that number never changes.
Your second point, if I remember correctly, what are we doing to encourage the second generation of Korean Americans to vote. How are we encouraging them to vote? I will leave that up to the Board of Education actually. I think it should be the teacher’s job to teach their students the importance of voting. I shouldn’t be the one to say “Vote! You just have to vote.” I think it’s a given. If you are a US citizen, you have to vote. Voting is voice, voice is power.
Professor Pyong Gap Min: What organizations have been doing that?
Daniel Baek: About encouraging second generation?
Professor Pyong Gap Min: No, the immigrant Korean community.
Daniel Baek: Okay…so many points you’re asking. As I mentioned before, 80% of the Korean American community go to church. So every Sunday, the members of Korean American Voters’ Council must visit a different church and talk to the pastor and allow us to speak, and we register voters to vote. That is one. Second, was YKASEC and other Korean organizations, we get them together. Basically, we lay out the reasons why we must vote. Have we mentioned LA riots? Please vote. We put it in the newspaper every day. That’s what we’ve been doing. With respect to the second generation Korean Americans, I’m just assuming that they’re voting. I don’t want to be pessimistic.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: The unwillingness to vote among American voters is indeed a big problem. Personally, I think different, as some skewed infrastructure of this system.
You raised your hand first.
Audience Member: Thank you my name is [name inaudible], I go to Queensborough Community College. The organizers Professor Min and also [name inaudible], I found it very informative. I have been to all the talks and I learned a lot. But I have two questions. Number one, is the organization is contributing a lot to serve the community? Do you interact with each other or are you on your own territory doing your own thing? And number two, I have been a little [inaudible]. I do outreach for a lot of Asian American communities. I find it difficult sometimes to outreach many people who are Asian heritage [inaudible] who are used to it in my college. And second, a way of an activity of getting into what is organizing activities for women’s issues, cultural issues, and other issues. How to [inaudible]? Anyone can answer.
Don Shin: So just the first question. There are a number of Korean American coalitions that many Korean American organizations are part of. We are involved with several coalitions with the Voters Council and Christian Korean American organizations. All of these very various organizations have been pretty close.
And I just want to address the crime question real quick. The Korean American Open Forum Network, organized mayor [inaudible] type of forum earlier this summer. Basically inviting Mayor [name inaudible] specifically for the Korean American community, just to address different issues. We also send out questionnaires to different candidates for how voters will react. These aren’t things that target the second generation, but these are things that are addressing the community in general and try to get the candidates to talk about issues that are important to the Korean American community. It is letting them know why mayorial politics, why national politics, why politics are even better today. So I think besides just getting better or getting a fire on the streets, they can go to a forum where they can talk about issues that are important to the Korean American community can increase voter participation and increase active political involvement.
Ron Kim: Does that answer your second question? To streamline the resources for Asian American organizations, the Asian American Federation of New York did a great job getting all the resources together, and you can find the website at ainy.org.
Dr. Betty Lee Sung: This question is directed toward Ron Kim. I’m sorry…did you want to ask something?
John Cho: Could I just answer something real quick? I second what Ron said about how Asian Americans very much need education and brought to speed on the importance of economic trends in the Asian American community; it is a really valuable resource. Also, we touched upon voter participation. In my experience, in New York City politics, the risk factor for increasing voter participation is having someone who looks like [inaudible]. I will challenge anyone in this room and anyone outside this room who wants to run for office and mobilize the issues of the Korean American community. We have to get our parents to start their children, encourage them to be politicians, instead of talking about doctors and lawyers.
Dr. Betty Lee Sung: Can I ask my question? You’re with the KoFro organization…anyway, what are you doing? Can I have a specific example of how you’re using the tension between Korean Americans and Afro Americans? And I just want to respond also. This morning, Professor Min said that Koreans tend to go into minority areas like Hispanic areas to operate their greengroceries and dry cleaning stores. Why would they choose those areas? Why wouldn’t they go into other communities and neighborhoods? Is it because rent is cheaper or it is easier to operate? Or is it they can make more money in those minority communities?
Ron Kim: Culture, like I said, this is involved in these projects, it is not an organization but there is a website for this program. What we are doing now is we have to start to think. The founders are myself and an African woman, and it has the name KoFro—that’s what you think with a Korean and an Afro together. Yes you think it’s very funny. But that is my initial plan, to slow down, to converse, to encourage the youth to sit down and learn about the cultures that were before we came here, such as the African American communities. So learning is the number one objective.
Professor Pyong Gap Min: Let me answer your question. Usually in the 1960s, many Jewish owned stores treated us, so when second and third generation moved into the mainstream economy, they retired. Blacks did not own their own stores so someone else had to do it. A lot of immigrants, like Koreans started. And I said to them to buy, buy, buy large corporations from black neighborhoods. Vandalism and lower spending complexity, so they don’t want to invest in black neighborhoods, so Koreans took advantage. I can say why Koreans rather than immigrants; Korean are kind of economically aggressive. A lot of their crime is dangerous, many Koreans get murdered, but they want to take the risk. Many of them served in the military. They are risk-prone, so in that sense they are different from other immigrant groups.
Audience Member: [inaudible], but that’s huge factor of how Korean Americans were able to catalyze on businesses. And Korean banks gave out loans to Korean Americans here, and they were able to own small businesses even when they just arrived.
Professor Joong Hwan Oh: My question is directed to John Cho. So you talk about content of health issues of Korean soldiers in Vietnam. But one of my new students picked himself out from Korean American [inaudible]. Actually Professor Min talked about a lot of these issues. Even though there have to be a lot of economic and cultural situations. But first issue, one of the main issues, a high proportion of Americans are still working in the service sectors. As you know, we have less than—I mean I’m not what the statistical numbers are—less than 50% of Korean Americans have no drivers insurance given the expense. So what do you think about this? What is the fiscal agenda to resolve these people, the Korean Americans still working in this sector?
John Cho: I think the health issue in the Korean community is tied to the larger issue of increasing healthcare in the US. Not only is healthcare very expensive, but many Korean Americans also have to struggle with the fact that we never really had human rights climates, that our rights have been taken away from us, that the message of unity is going back. Between 1996 and 2000, one hundred people in one thousand Koreans were detained and deported in this country. We have people going into very dangerous work situations. For example, the nail salon industry is probably one of the most dangerous industries in the United States because you are directly exposed to dangerous chemicals, you are sitting on that hot strip, and it is a totally unregulated industry. My mother recently got ovarian cancer; she worked in a nail salon and she has to bear past that by herself. There are Korean organizations working on these healthcare issues for immigrants, especially on the undocumented workers in this country.
Professor Pyong Gap Min: Can we introduce that program that tried to get underpaid and unpaid workers compensated for Korean and Latin Americans? How much can you do to help moderate the exploitation of Latino and Korean workers?
Don Shin: We have a Korean Workers Rights project. It is a joint project, in contact with Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. With all the various trinities in New York City that work on numerous issues, so we work closely with them to represent Korean American and other employees that want to have grievances against employers. A lot of the cases are unpaid wages, or unpaid overtime wages. A lot of employers are breaking laws on overtime policy in New York City. We also have represented Chinese and Korean workers who were not paid by their Korean employers.
Dr. Dong Ho Cho: Any other questions? Okay I think this it. I would like to thank you, especially the panelists, and the audience for your great questions.
