Dale Lee

Dale is a second-generation Korean American living in Koreatown. He is a high school senior and plans on majoring in engineering once he starts college. Dale enjoys cooking for his family, going on nightly walks with them, and participating in Korean traditions together. He speaks Korean at home and does his best to stay connected to his culture. In his spare time, he likes watching YouTube videos, walking his dog in the park, and traveling with his family.

Meals, Memories, and Traditions in K-Town

 Interview by Emily Morales - November 27, 2022

Is Koreatown your hometown?

Yes, I consider Koreatown my hometown. I was born in La Crescenta, California, and lived there for about five years. All of that memory is pretty much, you know, I don’t remember anything. I was 5 when I came to Los Angeles, and that was when I entered the first grade. That’s when all the memories started coming in, so I consider K-Town my hometown.

Do you still attend school in K-Town?

I’ve attended the same school in Koreatown since the first grade. It is a [K-12 school].

I’ve kind of gone through the same thing. What are your thoughts on Koreatown and your school?

I’d say Koreatown is in the center of Los Angeles, so everyone comes down here to do all the fun things, eat, and meet with friends. It’s always been cool to be in the middle of all that. There are a lot of fun things to do that have always been easily accessible to me. My school is also in K-Town, like a five-minute drive from my house. It’s been easy for me to explore after school and hang out with friends.

Do you like your school campus and the area it’s in? What grade are you in?

I’m currently a senior. [I’ve been at] that school for 12 years. It’s a small private Christian school. It’s so small — I can’t emphasize this enough. There are like 12 kids per class and 200 kids [in total] at the school. We are using an old church [as the campus]. It’s a school I’ve been going to for so long that I’m used to it. I also enjoy math. It’s my favorite subject.

Do you have a favorite place in Koreatown?

My favorite place in K-Town would probably be one of the markets I go to with my mom. It would either be H Mart or Gaju Market (가주 마켓), which is also called California Market. I go there frequently, probably two or three times a week, with my mom because she’s a big marketgoer. I always follow along to pick up the ingredients I want, and I go there to carry all the bags for her. That would be my most frequently visited and favorite place.

Since you go there a lot, what is something you usually buy?

Yeah, [we go] all the time. There are three [main] things. I am an avid mushroom fan, so I’m always running out of mushrooms at my house. My hands just go to the mushrooms every time.  I have to pack lunch for my family. That’s a big thing I do. I always reach for a protein source to work with. So, either chicken, beef, or anything of that sort. That’s one of my favorite things.

I am actually not a big chip eater. A lot of my friends always reach for chips. That’s one of their favorite things to get at markets, but I’m not a chip fan. I am, however, a big ice cream fan. I love this Korean ice cream called Together (투게더). It’s just straight vanilla ice cream, but it’s more milky, if that makes sense. That is always a must-grab item on my trips.

I always have ice cream in my freezer. Do you have a favorite memory of Koreatown?

One of my favorite memories is school-related since we are in K-Town. [My school] goes on a lot of field trips. That was when I was younger, but we went on a lot of field trips around L.A. My favorite memory would be walking through K-Town [and riding] the subway because our school took the subway. As a little kid, it was so fun to walk around, take the subway, and go to the zoo, museums, LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and some other cool spots [near] K-Town. That is worth remembering.

Is there a park or anywhere you like to go in Koreatown, like a place where you can just go and chill?

There is a park near my house that I frequent with my dog. I have a little dog, so I have to walk her, and the park is a few blocks away. I go there, walk my dog, and hang out there a bit. But if we’re talking about non-parks, I go to Madang regularly because it’s like the K-Town hangout spot and is close to my house. Plus, the market is there. There are a lot of cool restaurants, good bakeries, and little shops that I enjoy.

I know you mentioned this earlier, but did you say you packed lunch for your family?

Yes, I like cooking, so cooking has been a big part [of my life]. I make dinner sometimes when my mom isn’t in the mood. I pack lunches because my sister works at Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools (RFK), and she’s like a [teacher’s assistant] or something, so she brings a lunch. I pack a lunch for my dad, who goes to work, and for me for school lunch because I bring my own. That’s always a big thing I have to do. It’s fun but also stressful and sort of tiresome to do every day, but it’s a way for me to get my mind off school. It’s therapeutic, in a sense. I enjoy doing that for my family.

How and when did this start?

I think it started in my freshman year. My school lunches started to get really bad. There was a daily occurrence of this soggy pasta for this Korean Chinese dish called jjajangmyeon (짜장면 — noodles in a black bean sauce). The school gave us that sometimes, but they’d use spaghetti noodles, so it didn’t work at all. After that, I was just like, I’m going to make my own lunch. I learned a lot about cooking from my mom, so that’s when it started. I started packing my lunches, and my sister and my dad were like, ’Pack ours too.’ It’s a whole thing where I make everyone’s lunch now.

Do you make new dishes every day?

Yes, but a lot of stuff is repeated. One of my favorite pastimes is watching cooking videos on YouTube, where they make a bunch of stuff. I’ve recently been into those travel videos where they film the whole food thing in a different place or try different foods. I’ve been experimenting a lot and getting inspiration from that, so it’s like a connection of seeing something and actually doing it myself. That’s been a change in the boring daily lunch aspect and what’s been keeping me going recently.

Tell me about you and your family and the things you guys do.

My family is really traditional in the sense of the old Korean tradition of spending a lot of time together as a family. One of the big things is that we always eat together. We have dinner together at a certain time, and everyone else [has to] be at the table, or my mom or I get mad because I made the food and don’t want it to get cold. 

I don’t see a lot of my friends doing that; they eat scattered or at night, which is kind of bad. But that’s something I do with my family. Afterward, we always go on neighborhood walks to help the food settle. That’s how I spend a lot of time with them. We walk around the neighborhood for an hour or so, which has been a daily occurrence since last year.

What’s your favorite thing to do during your free time?

Oh, man. Okay, one of my favorite things to do right now is watch funny fish-cutting videos on YouTube with my friends. They’re like the travel vlogs, but they always make fish-cutting videos. They have the fish, cut it, and do the whole fishing process. My friend got me into that, and that’s been a big thing. I’ve spent hours on [YouTube]. That has been one of my favorites.

That sounds interesting. I’ve never heard anyone say they like watching fishing videos. What do you usually do over breaks, like Thanksgiving and Christmas break?

I’m not the biggest going-out person. Most of the time, I stay home and watch YouTube, play video games, and do things like online calls with friends. But my family does enjoy going on weekend or vacation trips, so I’ll follow along most of the time. They enjoy going to different beaches and mountains. California is such a cool [place] to travel around, so I’ve recently been doing a lot of that with my family.

What is your favorite place that you’ve traveled to?

My favorite place, like semi-close to K-Town, is the beach — the really rich area. Everything’s so nice and fancy, and the views are great. I think it’s also one of my dad’s favorites. He always goes there with our family. He’s been too lazy to drive lately, so he makes me drive, and I’ve been able to experience the whole driving along the coastline thing.

That sounds fun. I didn’t know that you could drive.

I got my license last year, and it was a whole process. But yeah, that’s for a later discussion.

Tell me about your family again. I know I asked about them previously, but could you go into more depth about culture? Are you first-gen?

I am a second-gen. I was born here, but my parents immigrated from South Korea. They were both born there and came here in their mid-20s. Actually, they first went to Colorado, where my aunt lives, but then moved to California. That’s how I am here. My family is my mom and my dad. I have a sister in her late 20s and a dog. [Our dog] is a little mix of something. Her name is Ibbeuni (이쁜이 — “cutie” or “sweetie”) in Korean.

My family is very culturally focused. I speak Korean [at home], and we pretty much only eat Korean food for dinner because that’s the only thing my parents can eat without getting an upset stomach. I was sent to a Korean-language school every Saturday for eight years, which I hated, but I am in touch with my culture. Whenever I go to Korea — which was four years back — I understand [Korean] but not like a [native speaker]. I speak it well and understand the whole culture; it’s something that I want to experience more of by going to Korea more often.

When you went to Korea, was there any place you went to or anything you did that stuck with you?

The biggest thing that stuck out to me was [how much] family [I have] there. My mom and my dad are the only ones in the United States other than my aunt. Meeting a lot of my relatives was the biggest thing I experienced because [I have] so many relatives for some reason. I was also able to eat a lot of Korean food there. I was literally waking up to my grandma making food. She would wake me up, and there’d be a plate of food by my bed. Those are the biggest things: family and trying a lot of new food.

What’s your favorite food?

Okay, I have a top-three list going by types of ethnic diet. The first would be Korean food, and specifically, I really like kimchi stew (김치찌개 — kimchi-jjigae). My mom puts pork in it. I like that and tofu bits. That’s number one. I’ve recently been into kebabs, so that’s my number two. That’s been a big family thing. We go to this kebab spot every weekend. The Armenian lady who works there knows us and knows our order, which is funny. The third spot is a tie between Mexican and Italian food. That is my top three list, technically top four.

Have you ever experienced culture shock?

I don’t think I’ve ever had culture shock because my parents made that a big part of my life. Well, I can think of one culture shock: I went to a friend’s house, and they didn’t take their shoes off inside. That was scary. I was really shocked by that. Yeah, that’s number one.

I know what you mean. Even though my apartment is small, just trying to keep it clean, like not wearing your shoes, is something that I prioritize, which isn’t something they usually do in my culture. I remember I took my shoes off once [in Guatemala], and [my family] asked why. Houses in Guatemala are usually made out of this weird cement, especially if they’re new, so your clothes get stained, and you have to wear shoes. Anyway, do you feel accepted [in the United States]? I know that’s a hard question to answer, but do you feel accepted here?

I think I am [accepted] in K-Town because there are so many Korean people here. I’ve never really been out of K-Town into less minority-packed areas. Thinking about it, I’ve never really faced any hardship, racism, or anything like that. My school is also mainly Korean kids because it’s in the middle of K-Town. I’ve never felt out of place.

In the last interview, you mentioned dumplings. Could you describe your family’s tradition?

In the past, we had a tradition of making tteokguk (떡국), which is rice cake soup, and it’s a big Korean thing to make. You put little dumplings in it. We used to make the dumplings, like the filling and the dough. They’re [shaped like] little circles, and you put the filling in and then crimp it. Everyone had their jobs. But I guess everyone’s been busy recently, so we just buy dumplings from a store, put them in the soup, and then eat.


That [tradition] kind of died out, but it’s one of the fun things to do with family. During holidays, that was always fun for me and something I looked forward to. We still cook other food; we’d cook for gatherings, but most of the time, it’s just my family and me. That also makes it more special. Recently, the task of cooking has been pushed to me. I’ve been incorporating more Thanksgiving or Christmas meals, if you want to put it that way. But I always try to keep a lot of that Korean culture.

Do you guys still have traditions?

Yes, on birthdays, we eat miyeokguk (미역국), which is seaweed soup. My mom is still an avid fan of doing that, so that is one thing that remains.

Oh, I’ve heard of that. My friend bought it for me once on my birthday. It was really good. Do you have any family bonding moments, whether [they’re traditions] or not?

Most of the time, I bond with my family during dinner or the walks we go on. But my parents FaceTime my grandma and grandpa on both sides a lot. That’s a big thing. Sometimes, we have a “call night,” if that makes sense. We call my grandma and grandpa and talk with them. Just spending time with my family is such a big part — the bonding and coming together. It’s not like we don’t talk over stuff or about deep stuff and have conversations, but just being there is the [most significant] part for me.

Is there anything going on right now that’s important to you?

I should say this is obvious, but it’s college — applying to college. It’s kind of stressful since it’s such a big jump and the next thing after high school.

What colleges are you applying to? Do you have a dream school?

Regarding my major, I would like to study engineering. I like math, and engineering has a lot of that. I would like to stay in-state because of the family thing. I feel like I’ll miss them a lot. It’d be way easier than going out of state and living in a dorm. I used to have a USC poster, so USC [is my dream school].

Well, I hope you get in and become a successful engineer. Is that all for school? How’s the whole process going? Has it been difficult?

My parents [have been] on my butt about college since last year, during my senior summer. I spent my time wisely. That’s something that my friends say I do pretty well: time management. Nothing’s been too stressful for me. I guess that’s the whole big burden of this being a thing. It’s still there, but timewise, I’ve been able to manage it well, unlike some of my other friends. I’m not in this cramming state, and I’m thankful for that. This sounds weird, but I’m not too stressed out.