Korean Americans in O.C. Add Diverse Portraits to New Book

Brenda Paik Sunoo and her husband Jan Sunoo moved their family from Los Angeles to Irvine after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, convinced they would find a safer environment in which to raise their two sons.

When Sunoo, who had worked for the Korea Times, was asked to contribute to a book about Korean Americans, she readily agreed, after learning the authors’ purpose. Like Sunoo, they were disturbed that one of the most controversial TV images from those riots--Korean Americans with guns on rooftops to protect their businesses from looters--gave Americans the wrong impression of their community.

I met with Sunoo, senior editor at Personnel Journal magazine in Costa Mesa, after coming across the recently published book, “East to America” (subtitled “Korean American Life Stories”). She told me she actually found nothing wrong with that rooftop image, which so many found controversial. “But it’s so one-dimensional,” she said. “There is so much more to Korean Americans than what you saw during the riots.”

The book’s authors, Elaine H. Kim and Eui-Young Yu, say they hope it will help people understand there is great diversity among Korean Americans, that they have great pride in their heritage, and that a good many are third-generation Americans.

Sunoo is in one of the book’s most poignant chapters. She and her husband, a federal mediator, had been concerned about violence in Los Angeles even before the riots. After the riots, she said, they chose Irvine for their new home because it had good schools, and there were a good many other Asian American families living there.

In her chapter, Sunoo mentions her admiration for Korean Americans who are immigrants. She’s concerned that they do a better job than she does of pushing their children in school. “Immigrants come here with a purpose,” she states in an interview for the book.

But Sunoo tells a story within a story. A year and a half after moving to Orange County, the Sunoos’ 16-year-old son, Tommy, died. He collapsed during a basketball game at University High School and never recovered. There’s now a display of Tommy’s magnificent artwork at the school.

Sunoo says in “East to America”: “Since Tommy died, I’ve tried to look back to see what rituals my Korean cultural heritage can offer me. . . . It’s sad that in this country there isn’t really a healthy attitude toward grief and death.”

You can get an idea of how proud Korean Americans are of their culture and heritage today and Sunday, when the 14th annual Korean Festival of Orange County takes place in Garden Grove, near Garden Grove Boulevard and Gilbert Street. The parade at 3 p.m. today will include floats, 15 bands, dancers, and Korean music.

A Different Orange: Other Orange County stories are included in “East to America.” Young Kim, a retired U.S. Army colonel, talks about his mother coming to America early in this century, expecting to further her education in Chicago. Instead, she moved to Orange County with her husband and could only find work shelling walnuts.

Alexander Hull, whose Korean name is Ho Bom-Sok, tells a moving story about running for student body president in the 1970s at Bolsa Grande High in Garden Grove. He dropped out as a candidate after seeing signs that some students would make race an issue. Hull says: “They wanted to isolate me from Alex Hull, the student, to Alex Hull, the Asian minority who wanted to come into an Anglo-Saxon Protestant student body and disturb the institution.”

I know things have changed a great deal, because Orange County schools today have student body leaders from a variety of races. But it’s worth noting that the experience affected Hull’s attitude about living in Orange County.

Hull also talks about facing racism from white customers at his family’s grocery in Sunset Beach. “You ---, go home. You don’t belong here,” Hull heard more than once. “They were ignorant people,” he says in the book. “Still, it hurt. I considered myself an American.”

Hull went on to UC Irvine and later to Harvard. He’s now a small-business owner in Koreatown in Los Angeles.

Come See Us Today: The Times Orange County is holding an open house today. As Bill Clinton used to say about Arkansas: “Come on down.” I’ll be one of the speakers in the big parking lot tent and I’d love to hear your ideas about this column, perhaps issues or people you’d like to see written about.

Open house hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 1375 Sunflower Ave. in Costa Mesa. Just north of the San Diego Freeway at the Harbor Boulevard exit.

Laguna Heart: There’s a party at the former Laguna Art Museum on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach tonight--$50 a person to mingle, see work by local artists, and taste samples from some of the city’s best restaurants.

It’s all for the cause, of course: Helping to raise money to keep the museum operating as a branch of the newly formed Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), following the merger of the Laguna and Newport Harbor museum boards.

If the Laguna Art Museum Heritage Corp., responsible for two-thirds of the branch’s budget, can keep it operating for five years, it may then be able to negotiate a new agreement that would allow Heritage Corp. to take it over from OCMA.

Says spokeswoman Janet Eggers: “This party is an effort to provide the funds to let us make that choice in five years.” The Heritage people consider tonight’s fund-raiser pivotal to showing whether the community really wants to support the museum.

Wrap-Up: While many of the contributors to “East to America” were very positive about the U.S., I was a little taken aback to see some of them, as well as the book’s authors, critical of our country’s role in the Korean War. I’m sure some Americans won’t be too pleased with their assessment that the U.S. and the Soviet Union simply divided the country into occupational zones after World War II.

But Sunoo assures me that most Korean Americans did welcome American help in resisting Communist aggression in Korea in 1950. You have to understand, she said, that many people interviewed in the book are simply trying to express pride in their own heritage, and that includes a lot of reevaluating of what happened in that war.

Kyu Lee, who works for a radio station in Los Angeles, was one whose words will seem harsh to non-Koreans. He was born in Korea, but moved to the U.S. at age 10. “I am not Korean American; I am Korean,” he said in the book. “To me it’s a pride thing. I hate to hear Korean people say ‘I am an American.’ ”

But most of the contributors are not so narrow in considering this country’s virtues. Sunoo, the third generation Californian, is as proud of her Korean heritage as anyone, yet will forthrightly tell you she’s proud to be an American. I suspect many in the book are like Jay Koon Yoo, formerly of Los Angeles and now a talk show host in Seoul, who contributed a wonderful chapter called “Pilgrimage.”

According to Yoo: “When we are in Korea, we long for America. When we are in America, we long for Korea.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com