Clash of Two Worlds Leaves Many in Pain

Andy Herrera was lecturing his second-period history class at Mark Keppel High School on June 4 when he was summoned to the principal’s office for an emergency phone call.

Ki Kang, a 1985 graduate of the Alhambra school and a three-year star on Herrera’s track squad, was on the other end.

“Coach, I just called to say goodby and to thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” she calmly told Herrera. “I’m tired of living. I’m going to kill myself.”

Before Herrera could say a word, Kang hung up the phone.

Broken Relationship

He didn’t know it at the time but Kang was calling from the home of George Vega, a Mark Keppel senior and a member of the track team. Herrera did not know that Vega had recently broken off his nine-month relationship with Kang, that she was emotionally distraught and had gone to Vega’s house that morning seeking a reconciliation.

Sometime after lunch, Kang, 19, took a .22-caliber rifle belonging to Vega’s family, lay on his bed, pulled the covers over her as if she were going to sleep and shot herself with a single bullet in the forehead. She died instantly.

Police say she left behind a short note to Vega that read in part, “If I can’t have your love, then I don’t want to live without you.”

Her suicide, according to the accounts of friends, teachers and police, was not simply the desperate act of an emotionally teetering teen-ager pushed over the edge by unrequited love.

Kang, a native of Korea, had spent her school years struggling and ultimately failing to reconcile the conflicting demands of two worlds--a Korean world that insisted upon respect for her parents and their traditions and a newer one that encouraged individuality and free expression.

Secret From Parents

Much of her life--the track meets out of town, the relationship with Vega and her growing despair--was a secret she kept from her parents.

When they were told that she had killed herself in the bedroom of a young man they did not know, they refused to believe it and insisted that she had been murdered.

“She was a girl who came to this country and was immersed into a culture and value system that was totally different from her own,” Herrera said. “She was doing everything to be an American, to be a success story, to make her parents proud of

her. At different times in her life, everything seemed to work--athletics, school and George.

“But her parents, like a lot of Asian parents, don’t know what their children are facing in this country. They move into their own communities, patronize their own stores, visit with only their own. It’s the kids who end up being exposed, who end up dealing with all this on their own.

“They’re caught in between, trying to figure out how to honor and obey their parents but at the same time find their place in this society with its individual freedoms. Sometimes, like Ki, they end up dying trying to do both.”

Agencies Overwhelmed

The unprecedented influx of Asians in the San Gabriel Valley has overwhelmed local mental health agencies, schools and churches with newcomers struggling to adjust to life in an alien culture. Like Kang’s, their emotional problems typically arise from or are compounded by the social dislocation of being an immigrant or refugee.

The normal tensions between parent and child are magnified when both generations are laboring to come to terms with their own cultural shock, Asian mental health professionals and school authorities say. The existence of a tight-knit ethnic community can ease the alienation for parents, but it is little comfort for the school-age children who must interact daily with the larger society.

While many of the newcomers are excelling in school and business, a growing list of social ills now affect the Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino communities. These problems--mostly affecting the younger generation--include drug abuse, gang violence, teen-age pregnancy, prostitution, wife beating, suicide and growing numbers of high school dropouts and runaways.

“Most of our Asian kids are doing fairly well. They’re going to succeed on one level or another,” said Stephen J. Kornfeld, dean of students at San Gabriel High School, where 29% of the student body is Asian.

“But there is certainly a significant percentage of newcomers who are feeling a lot of pain, who are dropping out of school and being drawn into gangs,” Kornfeld said.

“We’ve had a lot of parents come to school to inquire about a son or daughter who has run away. Last year, one father was at the point of despair where he wanted his daughter back but was prepared to let her go. We eventually found out that she had run away to San Jose and had become a prostitute.”

In some immigrant families such as the Kangs, parents insist on a traditional path for their children without taking into account the assimilation of a second generation. This often leads to resentment and estrangement between parents and child, according to mental health professionals and educators.

In other instances, they say, the locus of power in the family has shifted from parents unable to speak English to children who are well versed in the subtleties of American society. Many parents, suddenly captive to the perceptions and knowledge of their children, find themselves undermined when attempting to exert control over a rebellious teen-ager.

Authorities say such homes are producing an alarming number of Chinese and Vietnamese teen-age runaways.

Last school year, several Chinese girls attending Mark Keppel High School disappeared in the final weeks of the semester. Police and school officials suspect that some of them who were later found living in an area motel had been involved in a prostitution ring.

“The runaway problem is rampant among Chinese and Vietnamese youth,” said George Choi of the Asian/Pacific Family Center in Rosemead. “There’s adjustment problems both to a new country and to a new dynamic between parent and child.

“Parental expectations, which are often very high, collide with peer expectations that are quite different.”

Choi said the family mental health center, with a staff of psychologists, therapists and social workers representing a broad spectrum of Asian languages and cultures, has been “overwhelmed” by more than 300 referrals since it opened early in 1986.

He said a cultural reticence in the Asian community has prevented even more clients from seeking the center’s help. An ancient Chinese expression admonishes family members to “hide the shame and propagate the glory.” Asian parents, accustomed to children venerating elders, occasionally write off a problem child as if the child were dead rather than solicit professional advice.

Hesitant to Open Up

“Our biggest challenge is trying to overcome the natural hesitancy in the Asian community to open up to strangers and professionals,” Choi said. “There’s a real stigma about seeking help, that somehow you’ll lose face.”

Much of the strain in parent-child relationships is rooted in the more liberal sexual attitudes of the West, mental health professionals and educators say. Asian teen-agers who would never have dared to hold hands in their native countries can be seen hugging and kissing in public.

“I’m not a bad girl. I just have a boyfriend,” said Kathy, a 17-year-old Taiwan native and sophomore at San Gabriel High School who asked that her last name not be used. “But my parents would never understand, so I keep it a secret from them.

Loretta Huang, dean of students at Mark Keppel High School, who emigrated from China seven years ago, said Asian parents view teen-age romance with particular dismay.

“In Taiwan, an invitation to tea is significant. And holding hands means the relationship is very close,” Huang said. “So it’s understandable that parents are becoming very alarmed by what they see.”

Problems of Refugees

Mental health professionals and school officials say the psychological adjustments to a strange new culture are perhaps most agonizing for the thousands of Southeast Asian refugees who have resettled in the San Gabriel Valley since the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Unlike the immigrant from Taiwan or Hong Kong, the refugee is a victim of political circumstances with little choice but to leave his country. And once the decision of when to leave is made, there often is very little time to prepare for the move.

Mental health professionals say depression typically sets in once the refugee’s basic needs have been met and the newness and excitement of life here has dissipated. The despair can lead to a variety of social problems ranging from chronic unemployment to domestic violence.

In response to numerous reports of physical abuse from refugee female clients, the International Institute recently produced a film exploring the difficult choices confronting Chinese and Vietnamese battered women.

The institute, a private agency serving refugees and immigrants in Los Angeles County, is showing the film to Chinese and Vietnamese church and community groups throughout the San Gabriel Valley.

Story of Fong Family

The film, which is dubbed in both Mandarin and Vietnamese, depicts the fictional Fongs, a newcomer husband and wife and their two children. The husband has squandered his wife’s savings and must work as a cook. The wife is stifled in her attempts to find a job because she cannot speak English and lacks transportation.

The husband reacts to his job frustration and tight finances by drinking, gambling late into the night and beating his wife. Cultural pressures and the children keep the couple together.

After a particularly serious beating, the film ends with the wife undecided about her future. The audience is then asked to resolve her problem.

“We wanted to send out a message that despite all that he is going through, what he is doing is not OK,” said Agnes Matica, who until recently was director of the International Institute. “We wanted to show that both the victim and the perpetrator have a choice in the matter, that alternatives and resources are available to them.”

Ties to Korea Tenuous

As the youngest of seven children, Ki Kang spent fewer years in South Korea than her siblings. By the time the family had moved to Hawaii and then to Southern California when she was 11, Kang’s ties to her native land already were tenuous.

But her parents, according to friends and teachers, expected Kang to remain as traditional as her older brothers and sisters. And they made few attempts themselves to fit into American society. To this day, they speak no English and their social and business relationships are confined to Koreans, according to one brother. He answered a few questions before denying a request for an interview. Repeated attempts to reach other family members were rebuffed.

In 1980, the Kangs moved from Norwalk to Monterey Park, where they opened a restaurant featuring Korean-style barbecue. The restaurant, like so many other Asian-run businesses in the area, was a small operation that depended on the free labor of family members to make ends meet.

Kang resented having to spend so much time washing dishes and busing tables, friends and teachers said. It became a major source of tension in the family.

She told friends that she yearned to be like the other “American kids,” to date boys and participate in after-school activities. But her father insisted that any dating should wait until after graduation from college. Until then, she should concentrate on studies and the family restaurant.

Kang, through a combination of pluck and deceit, defied her father on both counts. She would tell him that she was with a girlfriend in order to spend time with two boys whom she dated before George.

She joined the school choir and the girl’s track team and would later break school records in the long jump, high jump, triple jump and the 300-yard intermediate high hurdles.

But her father would not allow her to attend weekend track meets out of town. So as a convenient excuse, Kang claimed she was studying at the library.

Walking Home

On the ride back from each meet, Kang would ask Herrera to drop her off a few blocks from her house. She would walk the rest of the way as if she had spent the entire day at the library.

Vera Sun, Kang’s closest friend throughout high school, said the lies eventually caught up with her.

“She didn’t have much trouble coming and going. It was easy to fool her parents because they didn’t speak English and were not really aware of what’s going on out there,” she said.

“But her conscience bothered her a lot. She wanted to go out, to experience the other world, but she felt guilty when she did. Either way, she lost.”

Herrera said that on numerous occasions he offered to speak to Kang’s father to tell him that track was not frivolous but could win her an athletic scholarship to a major college. Each time, she declined, saying that her father would regard her consultations with someone outside the family as an act of defiance.

Outstanding Ability

“She had more potential, ability and motivation than any sophomore I ever saw,” said Herrera, who has coached Mark Keppel’s girls and boys track squads since 1973. “She was 5-foot-7 with powerful but slender legs. But what set her apart was not her physical traits so much as her ability to absorb and learn the techniques.

“But her father never knew how good she was or the importance track meant to her. It was a constant battle between them. He saw it as a waste of time.”

Kang told several teachers and close friends that she despised her father because he constantly denigrated his wife and children. She wondered aloud why Asians never expressed or displayed their affection like Western people. Heir to two contrasting cultures, she told friends that she felt a part of neither.

During her senior year, Kang became increasingly depressed and withdrawn. Herrera first noticed changes in her attitude on the track field, where just a year earlier her performances had won her recognition as the Girl’s Field Athlete of the Year in the Mission Valley League.

Looking Blank

“We had a series of warm-up exercises that she had been doing for three years. But suddenly she began forgetting the sequences and looking up at me with a blank, embarrassed stare,” he said.

Two months into the season, Kang was falling far short of the level of her junior-year performances. At a track meet before Easter, she did so poorly in the long jump that she collapsed on the infield grass and began sobbing uncontrollably.

“She was in a fetal position with her head down,” Herrera said. “I walked over to her and she said, ‘Coach, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just can’t do it anymore.’ ”

Throughout the following week at practice, Herrera said, Kang had the same blank stare. When he approached her to ask what was wrong, she blurted out that she wanted to kill herself.

“I told her, ‘There is no way someone like you should be thinking like that. You’re a winner. You’re a champion. Most of all, you’re a beautiful person.’ She apologized and said she didn’t know what was wrong with her.”

Obsessed With Suicide

But Sun said her best friend became obsessed with the idea of suicide, raising the subject often during conversation. Sun said it seemed less morbid fascination than a sense that this was her fate.

“She was never what you’d call an emotionally strong person,” she said.

At the close of her senior year, Kang still had the chance to attend several colleges on track scholarships. But she told Herrera that her father already had decided that she would attend California State University, Los Angeles, and major in nursing.

Once separated from the high school friends and teachers who had served as her confidants, Kang no longer could keep her life together. She dropped out of college, refused to show up for work at the family restaurant and ran away from home for several weeks at a time.

At one point, she took her brother’s credit cards and flew to Hawaii to see if she could live with old friends there. A week later, she returned.

Blossoming Romance

It was during this time that she became close friends with George Vega, a former teammate who was a year younger than she. Friends said Kang saw a closeness in Vega’s family that was lacking in her own. She would go there each day and cook with Vega’ mother and take his 10-year-old sister out for ice cream. A romance soon blossomed.

For a while, everything seemed better. She enrolled in classes at a computer college, began working at a local Pic’N’ Save store and moved into an apartment with Vega’s older sister.

But Kang became possessive of Vega’s time and his mother thought it best that they break up. Vega reluctantly agreed but Kang refused to accept the decision.

“I kept trying to convince her that it was over, but she wouldn’t believe it,” Vega said. “Three or four days before she died, she told me that she was going to commit suicide but that I shouldn’t blame myself. I didn’t think she was serious.”

On the morning of June 4, Kang went to Vega’s house in San Gabriel to talk with him before he left for school. Vega said he was polite but firm: She could stay in his room and was welcome to anything in the kitchen, but he wanted her to know that he was getting on with his life. He said Kang never once mentioned suicide.

Summoned From Classroom

Third period had begun when Vega was summoned from his classroom by Coach Herrera.

“I told George that Ki had called and I was very worried about her,” Herrera said. “I told him that it was important that I know where she’s at and that she’s all right.

“I gave George the private keys to the gym to make some calls. He came back and said he had talked to Ki. ‘Is everything all right?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Are you certain?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said. He kept saying ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ ”

Vega then told Herrera that he was going home for lunch and would check on Kang personally. Reassured for the moment, Herrera went back to his classroom.

A short while after Vega returned from lunch and told Herrera that all was fine, Kang took a rifle that the Vega family had purchased during the “Night Stalker” terror and killed herself.

Herrera, who had been a witness to much of her growing despair, was stunned when he was told the news the next day.

“It was needless,” he said. “It didn’t have to happen. Maybe it could have been prevented with a little more concern from her friends, teachers and from her family.”

Now, whenever he thinks of Kang, Herrera said, he flashes back to her performances on the athletic field.

“I visited her grave site on Thanksgiving Day. It was perfect day, clear with a slight wind blowing in your face.

“I found myself thinking back to Ki in the invitationals, sprinting down the runway preparing to triple jump. She didn’t have that perfect or graceful style like some other athletes. . . . (Rather,) it was aggressive and swift and fleeting.”