My Entire Life in Koreatown

Interview by Abbi-Hope Park and Joseph Jae In Kim

Where is your hometown?
I would definitely say my hometown is Koreatown. But if you look at Google Maps, Koreatown is this square. There’s a boundary line, but actually, I live right outside of that line. It’s like a two- or three-minute drive into Koreatown, so I could pretty much say that I live there. I actually did live in the middle of Koreatown, and then I moved out to go to a different school when I was in kindergarten. Here, you don’t find as many Korean people. I want to say it’s a suburban area because a couple blocks away there’s a big road. It is a residential area and a lot quieter than Koreatown.

What are your thoughts on Koreatown? What is your favorite place in Koreatown?
I love Koreatown. It’s where I grew up. My school is in Koreatown and it’s really small and has a bunch of Korean kids. All of my friends live in Koreatown. I’ve spent my entire life here. Everything I do, from getting my haircut to buying groceries, is in Koreatown. I would say it’s my home. I love it; it’s full of rich culture, not only Korean culture, but also Latinx culture. As you live in Koreatown, you meet different people and experience a lot of different things. I think it’s cool.

My favorite place in Koreatown is not a certain place but a three- or four-block radius around Solair Condos and Madang Courtyard. It’s around 7th Street and Arlington. Back when I was in 10th grade, most of my friends lived there. They lived super close within that area.

I would go to my friend’s house in the morning to hang out, and then we would go somewhere. On the way, we would stop by a few friends’ houses since they are right next to each other, and then we would call them and be like, “Hey, come down,” and they would come down. Then we would go to somebody else’s house and call them to come down, and we would just walk around that area collecting friends and hanging out. Koreatown has pretty much anything. Anything you want, you can find it. We ate tteokbokki (떡볶이 — Korean spicy rice cakes) a lot. We would also go to the noraebang (노래방 — Korean karaoke rooms) and hang out there. I remember having a lot of fun with my friends walking around in Koreatown every weekend or after school. Oh, and in that area there are around three or four Japanese ramen shops. We’ve sort of taken a liking to them, so we go to the ramen shops a lot.

You mentioned that you go to a small school. How are you involved in your high school?
I would say I’m pretty involved in terms of activities and stuff. My school is from first grade to 12th grade. I started going to my school in first grade, so it’s been almost 11 years. That has its flaws and benefits, but as a result, I’m pretty involved at school. Since it’s a small school, we don’t have a lot of clubs. I made a journalism club. I write for the yearbook and am also a [member] of the student council. Before COVID, I used to tutor kids in our after-school program.

What was the hardest thing about starting up a new journalism club?
It was really difficult because the people I started it with had no experience in journalism. At first, we argued about how many pages it should be, how it should be formatted, what paper we should use to print it on, things like that. We were considering only the smallest details. Eventually, we ended up not printing it at all due to COVID. We had to take nothing and make it into something, so it was difficult to put it all together. Now, we’re getting it out every month.

Our club is completely student-run. There’s pretty much no teacher involvement. Admins do look over it at the end to make sure that there’s nothing insensitive or something that doesn’t reflect our school values. But other than that, from start to finish, we basically run, schedule, and put out everything. I think in total we have around 20 people — photographers, designers, editors, and writers. We have around six writers, so we tend to write around six articles. Sometimes if there’s a special event that we need to cover, like the Black Lives Matter protests, we’ll have somebody write more than one article because it’s an important event. It really depends on what’s going on that month.

How’d you find out about KSP?
I’m in the journalism club at my school. One of our administrators — I think he’s in contact with [Katherine Kim], who runs the program — sent out an email asking us if we wanted an extra journalism opportunity. I saw it with my friends and we took the opportunity.

If you become a journalist in the future, do you think you’ll focus more on Koreatown or other places?
I definitely want to branch out. I love Koreatown — I was born here and have lived here my whole life. I feel like I want to experience different things and experience more of the world in general. Journalism is like writing about what’s going on in the world. Of course, it’s your opinion, but I also feel like I should experience more. I don’t want to settle down, stay in one place, and do my job in that one place. I want to get out and go places.

How has quarantine changed you?
It’s changed me in two main ways. The first way is that I’ve turned from an introvert into an extrovert. Before quarantine started, I hung out with my friends a lot, but being around people would still drain me, and then I would want to be alone. But a few months after quarantine started and we stopped going to school, I wasn’t able to see any of my friends. Now it’s been almost a year since we’ve been in quarantine. I think my personality has sort of done a 180 in terms of how I’ll jump at any chance to go out.

I really have no occasion to go out other than to the market. The other day I had to beg my parents to take me to the beach because I wanted to see the ocean. If I didn’t do that, then I wouldn’t be able to go out at all. I miss my friends a lot, and I really want to be back at school in person. That’s one way that this experience has changed me.

Another way it has changed me, and this is probably more obviously related to COVID-19, is that I’ve become a lot more careful of how clean I’m being, like washing and sanitizing my hands. Whenever I go somewhere, I remember to have my mask on, not touch anything, and not get too close to other people. I think it’s kind of sad that we have to live our lives minding things like that for the next couple of years. But that’s just how life is now. That’s how this whole experience has changed me.

What have you learned from this experience overall?
From this experience, I’ve learned to treasure what I have and not take it for granted because COVID has obviously taken away a lot of things from many people. Personally, I would say that I’m one of the more fortunate people. I haven’t directly lost any family members or friends to the virus.

An experience that I’ve had is that my grandpa passed away, but I wasn’t able to attend the funeral because it was in Korea. In order to attend, I would need to have Korean citizenship, but I don’t, so I wasn’t able to go. That was a little bit disappointing because the last time I saw him was in January 2020.

In conclusion, I’ve learned not to take things for granted and to treasure what I have, even if it’s just going to school in person, hanging out with friends, and seeing my family members healthy.

Has the fact that you’ve recognized these hardships changed your motivations to help the community in some way?
I think so. In a way, I’ve gotten better at thinking about other people and the community. Recently, there have been anti-Asian attacks going around because of COVID. I don’t think there’s anything I can do, but my mindset has changed, and I want to reach out to those people and help them. It’s sad that stuff like that is happening. When the Black Lives Matter protests were happening, I realized how much I didn’t know about the world, the justice system, and everything in general that was going on outside of my little bubble.

I learned a lot and remember being very angry. I remember wanting to do something. It’s also another reason why I joined this program. It’s an oral history program to help preserve the stories of elders, especially the elders in Koreatown. I feel like doing that is my part to help the community in the small way that I can.