Chung Won’t Blend Into Melting Pot

Ho Chung personifies diversity and entrepreneurship. That probably explains why Gov. Pete Wilson tapped the 62-year-old Garden Grove resident to represent the 46th Congressional District at this week’s Republican convention in San Diego.

The South Korea native, who came to the United States 35 years ago, runs his own insurance agency and was elected to the City Council in 1992. Two of his four college-educated daughters are married to the descendants of Portuguese and Japanese immigrants.

To Chung, a onetime Democratic Party activist, the Republican Party, which he joined in the late-1980s, now offers the best vision for the future. “I have never been an employee; always I have been an entrepreneur,” he said, seated at a desk in his crowded insurance agency in a Korean American section of Garden Grove Boulevard. “When you do something for your own business, you want less government intrusion. That is why I stay with the Republican Party.”

But while Chung’s views on entrepreneurship may be in tune with those of a majority of the delegates, his take on the battle over immigration is not likely to strike such a sweet chord.

Chung, who believes strongly in self-reliance and success through education and hard work, takes a dim view of efforts to deny citizenship or educational benefits to the children of illegal immigrants. He called the GOP plan to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents “bad law.”

“We cannot punish children for their parents who come to this country without [citizenship] status,” he said. “I am strongly against that. If we bar these children from public education, what are they going to do--become a gang member?”

A onetime backer of Proposition 187, which would have barred educational and social services to illegal immigrants and their children, Chung today says he was torn in 1994 over supporting the measure. He said he is very comfortable with a federal court’s decision to block enforcement of the initiative, which was approved overwhelmingly by voters.

He recognizes that some in the party are quite hostile to new immigrants, legal or not, but praises America’s polyglot makeup.

“I view diversity as a strength, not a weakness,” he said. “We need to create harmony like a symphony orchestra, with each member contributing even though each retains his own heritage.”

Chung came to the attention of local and county leaders for his role in creating “living room” forums for members of the community in the 1980s to defuse friction between white and Asian residents. He also served on the Orange County Human Relations Commission from 1989 to 1993.

He persuaded fellow council members this year to have Garden Grove sponsor a pilot program in community forums led by Orange County Together. The program will expand to other cities in the coming year.

Pat Callahan, executive director of Orange County Together, described Chung’s help as invaluable. “When you get a councilman to get his peers to take on diversity, it really sets a tone in the city about the kind of community they are trying to have,” she said. “We need more leadership like that from our political folks.”

In 1992, Chung ran for City Council and finished a surprising first with 8,432 votes in a field of 12 candidates, becoming the first Korean American elected to local office in Southern California, according to GOP officials. Chung’s success was attributed to shoe leather, with Chung mounting a vigorous door-to-door campaign that brought him to 7,000 homes in the city.

Though Garden Grove has a growing Korean population, even today there are fewer than 1,000 Korean American registered voters; four years ago, Chung estimates, there were only 250 on the voter rolls.

“I won because my opponents ignored me and I am a hard worker,” he said. “I also built up good relations in the city and have a good many policyholders.”

A church-goer and founder of the Orange Korean Church in Fullerton, Chung is also an elder at the Crystal Cathedral, which he began attending after becoming a council member in 1992. He joined the congregation in part to better understand the mainstream culture and to help him emerge from what he described as “a Korean cocoon.”

“I intentionally tried to contact with people in the mainstream and to move in a different network,” he said. “It was a paradigm shift that helped me be more successful at home, in my business and in politics.”

Chung opposes abortion, saying he comes to the issue from “a biblical” perspective. While he would like to see a law that would severely restrict abortions, he opposes pushing the issue so strongly that it would alienate abortion rights advocates.

“Politics is the art of compromise. It is not religion,” said the former political science teacher from Seoul.

Chung’s cluttered business office is decorated with dozens of plaques and numerous photographs of him with politicians, from Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) to Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas). A longtime Gramm fan, Chung served as one of Gramm’s national finance officials earlier this year when the Texas senator made a bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

Chung agrees with Gramm’s views on the economy and his open attitude toward new immigrants. He notes that Gramm’s wife, Wendy, is a Korean American and a member of the board of State Farm Insurance, whose policies Chung sells.

County GOP Party Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes describes Chung as “one of the most active Asian Republican leaders” in the county.

“Chung was an enthusiastic Phil Gramm supporter and raised thousands of dollars for Sen. Gramm’s campaign,” Fuentes said. “He has elevated himself to presidential-level national political involvement.”

Originally an alternate delegate, Chung became a delegate early last week when state Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove) decided he could not attend the entire convention. Chung, one of seven Korean American delegates and alternates from the state, gratefully accepted.

“I am not sure why I was picked,” he said. “I suppose Republican officials are looking for someone who can address the interests of the Asian community.”