A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES : Second Opinion / COMMENTARY FROM OTHER MEDIA : KOREA TIMES : Korean-Americans Are No Longer Sojourners or Guests

May 2, the day after three days of burning and looting, was our finest moment.

While the buildings along the streets were still smoldering, a sea of more than 30,000 Korean-Americans, young and old with their children, held the largest Asian-American demonstration of peace in the nation’s history.

Young and old alike, with Anglo, African-American and Latino supporters, marched while chanting for peace and racial harmony.

It was our glorious Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And we shall overcome hatred and fear, the mother of all violence. It was the day the torch also was passed to our American-born, English-speaking children, our second generation.

Korean-Americans are no longer here as sojourners or guests. We are here to live and die in the urban trenches because we have given so much of ourselves to gain so much freedom in return.

This is our last home on Earth.

On a final and very personal note, may I add that I believe in the resurrection of the City of Angels.

(I am a) living and breathing example of the miracles performed quietly in this so-called never-never land of murder, mayhem and madness. I am recovering from a recent liver transplant operation at the UCLA Medical Center, where hundreds of health care people of all colors are bound together to save fragile human lives from terminal diseases with transplants.

My new liver may have belonged to an African-American or a Latino or Anglo. What does it matter? We are all entangled in an unbroken human chain of interdependence and mutual survival. What really matters is that we all belong to each other during our earthly passage.

Adapted from a speech this month by K.W. Lee, editor of the Korea Times English Edition, after receiving the John Anson Ford Award for promoting intergroup relations through journalism and community involvement. Reprinted from the weekly Korea Times English Edition, which publishes on Mondays.