Gift Furthers Study of Koreans and Christianity

For a decade, UCLA officials searched for funds to underwrite a chair for the study of Koreans and Christianity. All their efforts failed.

Then last year someone finally emerged to endow the professorship with a $1-million gift. What some might call simple coincidence is viewed by those involved as providence -- the culmination of a series of events that included an unexpected phone call and an important breakfast meeting at a pancake house.

The quest began in 1995, when Robert Buswell, founder of UCLA’s Korean Studies Center, decided to bolster scholarship centered on Korean Christianity at the university.

UCLA had chairs in Korean Buddhism and Korean Confucianism, and Buswell, who says Christianity spurred the development of democracy and philanthropy on the small peninsula, thought Korean Christianity also merited study.

The spread of Christianity in South Korea is well documented; about 20% of the population is Christian. Studies show that the country sends into the world the second-highest number of missionaries, behind only the United States.

But for various reasons, the fundraising at UCLA never took off.

Meanwhile, two Korean immigrants in Fullerton began discussing their desire to make a lasting contribution to society.

Dong Soon Im and his wife, Mi Ja Im, were grateful to God and to America for their modest but comfortable lives. Dong Soon Im works as a computer programmer for Los Angeles County.

In August 2004, the couple returned home from their routine morning walk to take a phone call from the real estate agent who had sold them an 18-unit Hollywood apartment building 26 years earlier.

The real estate salesman had a potential buyer. Did they want to sell?

The couple interpreted the call “as God’s voice,” said Dong Soon Im, an elder at the downtown Youngnak Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles, one of the nation’s largest Korean churches. “We told her to go ahead and do it.”

The Ims walked away with $1.27 million after the sale in January 2005. As Christians, they wanted to donate some of their windfall. But how much? And to what cause?

The couple, both 64, approached their pastor, the Rev. Hyung-Cheon Rim, for guidance after praying for months about the decision.

More than a year earlier, a visiting scholar at UCLA -- also a Korean pastor -- had approached Rim to see if the church could fund the chair. Rim had regretfully declined. Gaining the approval of various church committees for the project might take too much time, he said, suggesting that it might be faster to find a private donor. This abortive attempt continued UCLA’s long string of failed fundraising efforts.

The university’s representatives had approached mega-churches and corporations in South Korea to no avail.

A lack of personal connections presented an obstacle, as did the country’s system of ranking universities.

“A state university like UCLA doesn’t have that same kind of cachet in Korea, so it’s been difficult for us to raise that kind of money,” said Buswell’s successor, John Duncan, who noted that his Harvard and Stanford counterparts had landed gifts from major South Korean corporations.

The fundraising efforts also met with tepid reaction locally.

Although UCLA has the nation’s largest Korean studies program, Duncan said, USC has had more success in securing funds for its Korean studies program.

UCLA’s efforts to fund the professorship came to mind when Rim was approached by the Ims for guidance on donating their real estate proceeds.

He set up a meeting between the couple and UCLA scholar Sung-Deuk Oak, who had told Rim about the proposed professorship. Oak was an adjunct assistant professor in Korean Christianity.

After listening to Oak over a pancake breakfast, the Ims decided they had found their cause.

“I love this country, I love our fatherland, and I also want to glorify God,” said Im, who immigrated in 1970 with $200.

“This is the perfect, perfect situation. Who’s going to give us this kind of opportunity again?” Im added.

The Ims gave UCLA a $100,000 check at their first meeting with university officials in June, thinking they might donate $400,000 more and find a matching partner. Months of unsuccessful searching led them to think God wanted them to donate the entire sum.

The final nudge: A UCLA fundraiser mentioned a provision in the Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act of 2005 that allowed certain donors for a brief time to deduct 100% rather than 50% of their charitable donations.

On Dec. 29, two days before the cutoff point, the Ims wrote a $790,000 check to UCLA.

Also, $60,000 was donated by their children: Susie, a pharmacist at UCLA; and Larry, a manager with Broadcom. The Ims plan to give the final $50,000 this year.

UCLA officials acknowledge that the size of the couple’s gift pales in comparison with some others. But they said Im’s county job -- and his lack of a strong connection to UCLA -- make it remarkable.

“Developers, university administrators, the director of the Asia Institute -- we were all talking about this,” UCLA’s Duncan said. “To realize these are just kind of ordinary people who were giving us their nest egg -- it was a very moving thing.”

The Ims’ story captivated Koreans here and abroad. Several Korean newspapers ran stories on their donation, sparking admiring letters from strangers and phone calls from long-lost friends.

“It’s very interesting and touching at the same time, huh?” said Yoon Cho, managing editor of the Korea Times’ Los Angeles edition, which ran a front-page story on the Ims.

University officials said the Korean Christianity chair will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and will be particularly well-suited to UCLA.

The Los Angeles area is home to the largest population of ethnic Koreans in an urban region outside the Korean peninsula, experts say.

Its demographics help too. With 3,500 students of Korean heritage, the Westwood campus has the biggest ethnic Korean enrollment of any American university.

Although UCLA has not yet determined the chair’s departmental designation -- which depends partly on UCLA’s choice to fill it -- Duncan said the scholar might teach the history or sociology of Christianity in Korea.

Today’s emphasis on specialization makes such narrowly defined chairs typical, he said.

As far as the Ims are concerned, the donation was not the result of happenstance.

“Coincidence is God’s guidance,” Im said. “God guided us to do this.”

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By the numbers

Most Christians in South Korea are Protestants. A government survey found that most of them belong to six denominations.

* Presbyterian: 56.4%

* Methodists: 15%

* Pentecostal: 11.9%

* Holiness Church: 8.2%

* Baptist: 7.4%

* Salvation Army: 1.1%

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Source: Sung-Deuk Oak, UCLA adjunct assistant professor in Korean Christianity