Tag: Korean-Americans

This will probably make for a good reelection campaign ad for the assemblyman who also fights crime in his neighborhood:

Purse snatchers of New York, watch out for your district assemblyman — Ron Kim (D-Flushing), the state legislature’s first-ever Korean American member, chased and caught a thief on the streets of downtown Flushing last week.

The assemblyman reportedly tackled a 25-year-old man, Daniel Fish, to the ground after hearing the young man snatched a purse from walking mother with a stroller around 1 p.m., according to the New York Police Department.

A good Samaritan got the bag back from Fish, but he fled after.

That’s when Kim — walking to his office near Main Street and 38th Street — saw the Samaritan chasing after Fish. He joined the chase, all the while calling 911.

Kim and the Samaritan had lost Fish when someone shouted, “That’s him!”

Kim tackled Fish to the ground after another foot pursuit and held him there until police got to the scene. Kim’s glasses were reportedly broken in the process.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this blog posting from a Korean-American adoptee who was born in Korea and abandoned by his mother on the streets of Busan before being sent to an orphanage.  He was adopted by an American family, but now needs help locating his sister:

I have tried before to locate my sister. I have failed. Part of me wants to never try again. A lot of me hates that part of me. I will try again because there is always a chance she might see this. One can hope.

My name is Jason Chandler Cushman and I was born in Pusan, South Korea in 1981. I have a sister who is a few years older me. I believe she is probably 37 now and her name was Ahn Jung Hee, my birth mother’s name is Kim Ie Soo. Our mother left us on a street when we were young. I was 2 years old and my sister was 5 I believe. We were taken to an orphanage and my mother later returned for only my sister. That was the last time I saw her. I found this out when I returned to Korea in 2000 during a Holt International Motherland tour. I was 18 years old at the time.

In 2002 I pulled a prodigal son and asked my father for the rest of my college tuition so that I could return to Korea to find the rest of the answers from my 2000 trip. I was determined to not return until I found them. I did not find my family, but I found an answer. A simple one from my birth mother. “Stop trying to see us and do not try to find your sister. She is still with me.” My sister was probably 23 at the time.

I am now 34 years old and have long since given up most hope of seeing them. But then I began this blog in 2013 and created a realistic way of reaching them. If they care to be found and if anyone cares to share my story so that my sister might see it. My blog has been viewed over 300,000 times from South Korea alone. I pray that maybe one of those people can share my story in such a manner that it might be seen by the one I seek. [An Opinionated Man]

You can read more at the link to include additional photos in an effort to help contact his sister.

Here is a feel good story about a Korean adoptee and US soldier stationed at Camp Casey who found her biological family in South Korea:

Sgt. Faith Vazquez calls Defiance, Ohio, home, but she also lived in Hawaii and other duty stations with her mother and Navy father. Her then-childless parents adopted her through a Seoul agency when she was 4 months old.

“I never grew up feeling adopted,” said Vazquez, 23, American Forces Network detachment commander at Camp Casey.

She joined the Army after high school graduation. Her first assignment was a one-year tour at South Korea’s Yongsan Garrison.

Vazquez yearned to know more about her heritage but let her tour pass without searching for her origins. “I was 18, and I didn’t feel mentally ready,” she said.

She then set off for three years at Fort Riley, Kan., where her husband now serves in the Army.

She returned to South Korea for a one-year unaccompanied tour in October, conflicted over whether to seek her birth family. She didn’t want to slight her adoptive parents.

But with an adopted co-worker’s encouragement, she contacted the Seoul agency that processed her adoption. Within weeks, the agency phoned: “Faith, we’ve found your family.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

Protestors, including Korean-American groups, demand in New York on Aug. 28, 2015, that Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush apologize for accusing Asian people of abusing the birthright citizenship law. (Yonhap)

It will be interesting to see how this federal lawsuit plays out because right now universities are allowed to discriminate against another minority Asian-Americans because they are too smart:

The Education Department on Tuesday dismissed a complaint against Harvard University by some Asian American groups who say the university uses racial quotas to keep out high-scoring Asians.

The complaint was filed in May with the department’s civil rights office by more than 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups. Education officials said the complaint was dismissed because similar concerns were the focus of a federal lawsuit.

The complaining groups said they were “very disappointed.”

Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were sued last year by some rejected applicants who want affirmative action policies banned. The Harvard lawsuit also contends the university specifically limits the number of Asian-Americans it admits.

Harvard said its admission policies have been found to be “fully compliant with federal law” and said it “has demonstrated a strong record of recruiting and admitting Asian-American students.  [Korea Times]

According to the KoreAm Journal they are hoping that the recent Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage across the US will help change the opinions that supposedly many in the Korean-American community have about gays:

As much as Friday’s ruling resonated around the country, some advocacy groups are urging greater acceptance within the greater Korean American community of LGBTQ individuals—an issue touched on by KoreAm in this June 2013 feature story about the community’s attitudes towards same-sex marriage.

“We’re thrilled by the national progress on LGBTQ equality, but deeply disappointed by the hostility we and our families continue to face in Korean American communities,” The Dari Project, an LGBTQ Korean American organization based in New York City, said in a statement. “There’s no way to sugarcoat it: homophobia and transphobia are still incredibly serious problems in Korean American communities and cause very real harm to LGBTQ Korean Americans.

“We urge Korean American allies to not be silent when they witness homophobia and transphobia in Korean American communities and to use today’s court decision to start conversations in their families, churches and other Korean American community spaces that will help Korean American communities recognize the humanity of LGBTQ people just as the Supreme Court did today,” added the organization. [KoreAm Journal]

You can read more at the link, but considering how churches are such an integral part of many Korean-American communities it may take a while for opinions to change, but I think they eventually will.

I have not even heard of this company before, but its Korean-American owner was featured in Forbes as one of the most successful self made women:

Thai Lee, a 56-year-old Korean-American businesswoman, has one of the largest female-owned businesses in the U.S., Forbes reported Wednesday.

Lee was featured in the first ever list of America’s “top 50 most successful, self-made women.”

Lee is CEO of Software House International, an unlisted company specializing in software sales and services.

Headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey, SHI operates about 30 branches in Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, and the U.K., as well as in the U.S. With 3,000 staff and 17,500 clients, it had sales of US$6 billion last year, making it one of the top three minority-owned businesses in the U.S.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but good on her for making her company into the billion dollar business it is today.

Via a reader tip comes this CNN report about a Korean family in Baltimore that lost their business due to the criminals that some in the media like to make excuses for by calling them protesters or rioters:

You can read the rest at the link, but I always find it interesting how people who can even speak the language can come to this country, open a business, make a living, and be productive citizens while many American born here cannot.

Despite people doing damage and theft like this we are not supposed to call them thugs?  What else should this behavior be called?:

Richard Sung Kang’s American dream shattered along with his liquor store’s window during the Baltimore riots earlier this week.

The 49-year-old Korean immigrant saw his liquor store and bar, the Oxford Tavern, wrecked by a group of violent rioters following the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died of a spinal injury he apparently received while in police custody. Despite Sung closing the front door, the looters smashed the window and plundered the establishment. Even the store’s ATM was torn out, leaving a gaping hole in the exterior wall of the building.

“This is America. I wanted to follow my dream and wanted to make something for myself,” Kang told the Associated Press. He added that it was only his first year of owning the business and was unsure of reopening the store, as it could mean taking on more debt and paying higher insurance premiums.

“The most important thing is, I have to move on,” Kang said as his locksmiths worked on his doors. “But is it better to rebuild and start again or give up and find some other place? I don’t know.”  [KoreAm Journal]

You can read the rest at the link, but according to the article 200 small businesses were unable to open after the riots with 40 Korean-American owned businesses among them. If many of these businesses do not re-open than that will just further cause economic problems in area already economically depressed in the first place.

With stories like this I can understand special legislation to deal with these situations on a case by case basis, but it does not require mass amnesty for illegal immigrants sweeping across the border to address this:

The pending deportation of Adam Thomas Crapser, an undocumented Korean American adoptee and survivor of severe child abuse, has sparked a dialogue on a major loophole in immigration law, according to NBC News.

When Adam first arrived in the U.S. in 1979 as a Korean adoptee, his childhood quickly turned into a nightmare. He and his biological sister were adopted by the Wright family in Michigan, where he suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse. In 1986, the Wrights relinquished their parental rights to Child Services without completing Adam’s naturalization paperwork. As wards of the state, Adam and his sister became separated from each other. After living in a group home for a year, Adam was formally adopted by Thomas and Dolly-Jean Crapser in Oregon.

The Crapsers, along with their biological sons, subjected Adam and seven other foster children to years of heinous abuse and torture. In an interview with Gazillion Strong, Adam revealed that he would get choked, beaten or burnt on a daily basis during the five years he lived with his abusive adoptive family. In 1991, the Crapsers were arrested and convicted of multiple counts of child abuse, child sexual abuse and child rape.

Adam, now a husband and father of three children, faces possible deportation because both sets of adoptive parents failed to complete his naturalization process and refused to provide him with his adoption papers, according to the blog Reappropriate. As an undocumented American, Adam has struggled to attend school or find work for most of his adult life. If deported, he will be sent to a country where he does not even speak the language.  [KoreAm Journal]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully this gets worked out for Adam Crapser, especially since the US government is to blame for his situation considering they allowed him to be adopted without naturalization paperwork and then not once, but twice put him in abusive homes.