Koreans Get Lessons on Life in U.S. : Torrance: The YWCA offers classes for recent immigrants in aerobics, Oriental art, flower arranging, parenting education. But this program also teaches them American culture.

Although Monica Yoon of Torrance moved to the United States from her native Korea 20 years ago, she has yet to understand Americans, especially her 11-year-old son.

“I ask him to do something, and he says, ‘I’ll do it later,’ ” said Yoon, adding that in Korea, “children respect their elders.”

“This is very strange to us,” Yoon said.

Yoon’s remarks elicited knowing nods from more than a dozen women, all Korean immigrants, who had gathered recently at the Torrance YWCA for a weekly parenting class.

For Yoon and her classmates, America is both a wonderful and baffling land, full of strange customs like delegating trash duty to men, rather than women, and allowing teen-agers to date. To help Korean women make sense of such Americanisms, while maintaining their own cultural heritage, the Torrance YWCA this spring started its Korean Women’s Program.

The program, developed by a Gardena woman, is a collection of classes not unlike those found in an adult school catalogue: aerobics, Oriental art, flower arranging, parenting education.

But there’s a twist, program director Domina Yangsoon Kim said.

“While we’re teaching these subjects, we are also talking about what it’s like to live in America,” said Kim, who immigrated from Seoul in 1970 to finish her education.

In the parenting education class, taught by Yeong Hee Kim, a graduate student at the University of Florida, a group of 15 well-dressed women took notes as she explained, in Korean, how to negotiate with children.

Noting that American psychologists tell parents not to pressure their children, she urged her students to “negotiate with your kids. You have to realize that this culture is different from the one you grew up in.”

Yoon said that before she started taking the YWCA class, she used to yell at her adolescent son, telling him not to talk back. But Yoon said it didn’t help. His grades continued to drop, and he was getting more stubborn, she said.

But since she enrolled in the parenting class, Yoon said, she has noticed a change in her son and herself: “I’m much calmer now.”

When she stopped yelling at her son, she said, he became less obstinate, and tension between them eased.

Other women in the class agreed that understanding American culture has helped them communicate better with their children, many of whom were born in this country.

“My children tell me, ‘This is a different country than Korea. This is my life,’ ” said Shin Kim of Rancho Palos Verdes, who has been in the United States for 15 years. “They are right.”

Program director Kim said the YWCA courses have struck a responsive chord in the South Bay Korean community. Classes, which began in April and run through the end of this month, have been packed.

“There’s a real need out there,” said Kim, who also operates a telephone counseling service every weekday at the YWCA from 10 a.m. to noon.

The calls she gets are often heartbreaking. A widow called to talk about her husband’s recent death. Another woman, who didn’t speak English, called in a panic after a family member accidentally ate poisonous mushrooms.

“Sometimes, they don’t know who else to call,” Kim said.

Kim, who is a volunteer, hopes to expand the program in the fall, offering classes for single women and those dealing with menopause.

“This is just a seed,” said YWCA Executive Director Nancy Fernas, adding that she wants to offer similar programs for Latina and Japanese women. “We want to bring these cultures together.”

Although exact figures from the 1990 Census aren’t available yet, The Korean Community News, a Korean-language newspaper, estimates that 30,000 Koreans live in the South Bay area. Publisher Jung Ryu said that figure, based on a two-inch-thick Korean business directory and the proliferation of 40 Korean churches in the South Bay, represents a substantial increase during the last decade.

Koreans are relatively new immigrants to America, said Eui-Young Yu, Cal State L.A. sociology professor and director of the Institute for Asian American and Pacific Asian Studies. Korean women, married to American GIs, first came to the United States in large numbers after the Korean War ended in 1953. But the largest wave of Korean immigrants didn’t arrive until the 1970s, he said.

“They come with the same dream as the Europeans: They want to improve their lives,” said Yu, who immigrated from Korea in 1963 to attend college.

Koreans who reside in the South Bay tend to be professionals--doctors, engineers and business owners, said program director Kim, explaining that blue-collar workers are priced out of the area.

South Bay Koreans also tend to be traditional, especially when it comes to women’s roles, she said. The women usually don’t go to work. “They stay at home and raise their children and never get a chance to mix with other people.”

Young Jhang is an example. The Rancho Palos Verdes resident came to the United States 20 years ago to be with her brother. She met her husband, had three children and stayed home to raise them. Jhang said the YWCA flower-arranging class is the first time since arriving here that she’s been able to socialize with Korean women, aside from church.

“It took courage to come,” said Jhang, who never spoke a word throughout the two-hour class. “I was nervous. I don’t know why.”

Jhang is the kind of woman Kim hopes to attract.

“They have adapted their lives around work, if they work, and their families, but they haven’t ventured from their own secure lives,” Kim said. “But we are in America now. We have a multicultural society. Here, everyone is supposed to participate.”

It took a YWCA flower-arranging class to get Oksoon Pak and her three daughters, Michelle Ahm, Julie Coser and Jenny Pak, to finally participate in an activity away from home and work.

Sorting through a pile of damp leather ferns and red carnations, Oksoon Pak said she never imagined 20 years ago when she immigrated to this country that she and her daughters would be together taking a class. She said she had to leave her children in Korea until she could establish herself.

“My mother cried every day until we were all together,” said Coser, explaining that her mother, who was widowed, worked in a restaurant and eventually saved enough to buy a business of her own. As the Long Beach restaurant got more popular, Pak, who didn’t speak English or drive a car, was able to save up enough bring all six children to America.

Coser said her mother always wanted to socialize with other Korean women, but “there was never enough time.”

Spinning a red carnation, instructor Joohee Lee explained to the class that red is the color of victory.

Turn the flowers up, she said, demonstrating. “See, it’s happy.”

Repositioning her carnation, Oksoon Pak beamed and looked at her daughters.

“My mother says to tell you that she’s happy too,” Coser said. “She’s grateful to be in America.”