Can you start by telling us your name, age, and where you were born?

My name is Billy Yoon. I am 68 years old. I was born at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood, California.

Do you have a Korean name?

I do not have an official Korean name. But my paternal grandmother, Rosa, gave me a Korean name, which is Sung Jin.

Does it have a meaning?

I don’t know what it means. My sister used to joke that her Korean name meant “a beautiful meadow full of flowers,” and my Korean name meant “cow pasture.” So I’m sure that is not correct.

How do you identify?

I am a third-generation American Korean. Weirdly enough, I tend to use the word “American” first. I’ve always found it weird that we use the divisive term first and the uniting term second, so I tend to refer to myself as an American Korean. I cannot [read or write] Hangul (한글 — the Korean alphabet). I am third-generation; I think it’s called “samse” (삼세). The only time my parents actually [spoke Korean] was when one of the kids was in trouble and did not want us to know what they were talking about. So I know words and phrases in Korean, but for my life, I could not complete a sentence. The one thing in Korean that really loses me is the levels because it depends on [whether] you’re talking down to someone, across to your equal, or up to your superior.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Mid-City L.A. In the old days, we used to call it Midtown. It is southwest of Koreatown. It will probably be part of Koreatown in about three to five years. Most of the people moving into my neighborhood right now are Korean, so it’s much, much different. I live in the house my parents bought in 1954. That was about as far north as Koreans could buy land [at the time].

You could not buy land in Hancock Park, Beverly Hills, Westwood, or West L.A. That is why the Korean community, when they left Riverside, originally settled down on Western and [45th Street]. That is why the Korean Presbyterian Church is on Jefferson, east of Normandy. It was [within] walking distance for most of the Korean community living in Los Angeles.

Do you mind sharing a little bit about how your family came to the States and how you all ended up in Los Angeles?

My grandfather Chung from my mom’s side — the Park side — left Korea in 1904, fleeing the Japanese occupation. My mom said the village elders told him to leave, saying, ‘You have no future as long as the Japanese army is in Korea.’ A Presbyterian minister recruited him, went to Hawaii, and worked on the plantations there. Then he was contacted by Dosan Ahn Chang Ho, who apparently knew who my grandfather was, or at least knew his family. [He] sent him a letter and said, ‘Come to Riverside. There are other Koreans here.’ He helped my grandfather find his first job and his first place to live. He basically got him situated in the community.

My grandfather eventually saved his money, moved to Riverside, and started a little produce stand that became a produce store. He used to drive his little Model T pickup truck from Riverside into the downtown Los Angeles produce market in the middle of the night, pick up fresh produce, and drive back. He would sell to the community and also to other little stores and restaurants in Riverside.

My grandmother, Chungkyung Lee, and my grandfather were in an arranged marriage. Their [marriage] was kind of unusual because, usually, the girl was older than the guy in the [time period] of arranged marriages. My grandfather was 10 years older. When he left Korea, he promised her they would be together again someday. Around 1914, he [brought] my grandmother over to the United States. He was also able to bring his brother, Young Seop; his sister, Ai-Ja; and his mother, Shang-Hoon. I think his mother is one of the few from her generation to have ever made it to the United States. My great-grandmother was born before the Civil War started, in the 1850s. She is one of the very few from that generation ever to make it to the United States.

On my father’s side, my grandfather was Kyung Hakyoon. He was enormous — 6 feet tall, 180 pounds, extremely strong. All my aunts and uncles used to tell me stories about how strong he was. He came in through San Francisco and from there moved to the Sacramento area, [where he] worked in the rice fields because his family were rice merchants in Korea. Eventually, he moved to Central California to an area called Reedley, between Bakersfield and Fresno. He got into the peach-packing and -picking business. My dad learned to drive a truck when he was 13, driving around the orchards.

My grandmother on my dad’s side was named Rosa Cho. Her father was on what we call “the lost boat.” The boat was supposed to go from Korea to Hawaii but instead went to Mexico because the Chinese shipowner sold the Koreans [on board] to the Mexican government as indentured servants. They basically went to the west coast of Mexico, dumped them, and left. Somehow, a lot of them [the Korean passengers] wound up on the east coast of Mexico. [They ended up] in a little town called Merida on the Yucatán Peninsula.

I’m not sure how it is they went all the way across Mexico to the other side, but there are still descendants of Koreans living [there]. I actually found out I have a cousin in Merida [whom] I never knew about. Her father passed away in Mexico. But he wanted to go back to Korea to fight the Japanese, and he put out a notice to the Koreans in the United States who were aware that there were Koreans in Mexico. 

[Someone] put out a notice to Koreans in the United States saying [he had a daughter for marriage]. My grandfather went to Mexico, met my grandmother, and got married. [They] showed up at the border with my grandmother and her little sister Maria. My grandmother was like 15 or 16, and her sister was about 8. They told the border guards that Maria was their daughter, and they let them through. As far as I know, my aunt Maria was technically an illegal immigrant for like 90 years. My grandmother settled in the Reedley area and was involved in the March 1 [uprising]. My dad was born in 1917, so he might have been a little junior high kid walking in the parade.

Tell me about your childhood and what language your family spoke at home.

I never went to a Korean language school, and I was kind of glad because all my Japanese friends had to go to J School on Saturdays. Like I said, my parents only spoke Korean when one of us was in trouble and they did not want us to know what they were talking about. If I heard a bunch of Korean and “Billy,” that’s when I [understood] it was time for me to [leave the room].

My grandfather, Kyung Ha, never thought Korea would be free. He told the family, ‘We are in America now. We are Americans now. We will speak English.’ So my father could speak and understand Korean but could not read or write it. My mother could read and write Korean very well, although she says all modern Korean is not true Korean — the inflections and intonations are different. She says it is not the language she learned from her father.

What type of food did you have at home?

My mom was considered one of the best cooks in the entire early Korean community. Her grandmother, ChungKyung, apparently was trained to cook in the royal courts of Korea. We would have huge picnics for the Korean Presbyterian Church and the American Korean Civic Organization. My mom would make mung bean muk (녹두묵 — mug bean jelly) — an incredibly arduous task that takes days. Everybody loved her muk. 

I remember one Thanksgiving, my Uncle Johnny had a plate full of nothing but muk covered with yangnyeom sauce (양념 — a sweet, spicy sauce). When I asked if he was not going to eat turkey and stuffing, he said, ‘I can get turkey and stuffing any day of the year. This is the only time I can get your mother’s muk.’ My mom would always make extra so that everybody could take [some] home.

Our food was a mix of American and Korean. My mom would make cheonggukjang (청국장 — a traditional Korean fermented soybean paste used for stews), kalbi (갈비 — marinated ribs), and mandu (만두 — dumplings). I remember grinding the meat for the mandu and stirring the pot. At Easter, we had ham; at Thanksgiving, we had turkey; and at Christmas, we had roast beef. We ate Korean food the rest of the time. My mom made her own kimchi, oi kimchi (오이소박이 — cucumber kimchi), mu kimchi (무김치 — radish kimchi), and jeon (전 — Korean pancakes). Instead of frying one big piece of squash for the jeon, she would grate it, mix it, and make little patties.

My mom says that all modern kalbi is Japanese. It is not supposed to be sweet. I have my grandmother’s original yangnyeom recipe. There is no sugar in it at all, no honey, nothing sweet. Number two, you get a flat steak with three bones on the bottom. That is totally wrong. The first time I saw that in a Korean restaurant, I said, “What the heck is this? This is not kalbi.”

My mom made what is called royal-style Korean kalbi. You start with a block of kalbi, then cut it down by half an inch in one direction and by half an inch in the other. This creates little fingers of meat hanging on the bone. You marinate it for 15 to 20 minutes, or it gets too salty. The marinade penetrates five out of the six sides of each finger. When you cook it, you grab them, spread them out from the center, and place them face down on the grill.

Where did you go to school?

I went to Alta Loma Elementary School in Midtown, and I went to Mount Vernon Junior High, which is now known as [Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Middle School]. Mount Vernon was so bad that it got taken over by the state government, and they fired the entire administrative staff. Then I went to Los Angeles High, so I am a Roman.

What was high school like?

Los Angeles High had about 2,200 students. Four hundred [or so] were Japanese Americans — about 15% to 20% of the school. I was [one of the only Koreans]. There [were two] other American-born Koreans. There were three white kids in the entire school, and there weren’t very many Hispanics at the time. The school was 75% Black.

Being Asian, you are always put in advanced math and science classes. Because I was in those classes, 90% of the kids were Japanese American. I had my Black friends from the neighborhood, but most of my friends were Japanese American. When I was in high school, I might have known more conversational Japanese than Korean. I picked up Japanese by reading the book “Shogun.”

Where did you go for college?

I went to UCLA. I am a Bruin. Should we do an “Eight-Clap”? But when I was in elementary school, they skipped me one whole year. We had the A2B2 system so that you could start school in January. I skipped the A2, did one semester in second grade, and was thrown into third grade. When I got to sixth grade, LAUSD was going to get rid of the A2B2 system, so they told my parents they could keep me in elementary school but had nothing left to teach me, or they could send me to junior high. My parents said to send me to junior high. That was the biggest mistake of my life, because now I was a year younger and smaller than everyone else. All the girls were older than me. I honestly think that was the biggest mistake my parents made.