By Kai Ma

It is widely believed that where California goes, so goes the nation.

And so, on Election Day, Americans watched as California voters cast their ballots for Proposition 8, the statewide measure calling to eliminate same-sex marriage. Approved by 52 percent of voters, the amendment to the state’s constitution passed the next day, restoring the definition of marriage as a heterosexual union and thus, repealing the right of gay and lesbian couples to wed. Similar bans also passed in Arizona and Florida.

In the days and weeks following the proposition’s passage, much has been made of the ethnic vote, especially the high African American approval vote (70 percent voted in favor, according to CNN exit polls), sparking a vitriolic gay-black divide, and triggering painful and arguably racist accusations that blacks were to blame for the proposition’s passage. Media commentators found contradiction in the fact that the same people who voted for the progressive-minded Barack Obama also voted for the ban, even though the president-elect has long said he supports partnership rights, but also favors defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

According to an exit poll conducted by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, 54 percent of Asian Americans surveyed in Los Angeles County voted in favor of Proposition 8. The CNN exit poll listed the measure’s Asian American (statewide) support as 49 percent, consistent with the white vote, though the Asian sample size was likely small and weighted towards English-speaking voters.

Although voter breakdowns by ethnicity were not available as of press time, extensive interviews with Korean American Christian leadership as well as activists across Southern California suggest that Korean Americans were in large part supportive of banning same-sex marriage. In fact, months before the election, a number of Korean churches led an organized, efficient campaign that inspired thousands of Koreans not only to vote yes on 8 — but also to vote, period. Even progressive activists reported that many among their constituent base typically in favor of immigrant and minority rights were against allowing gays and lesbians to marry.

Watching from the frontlines was Paul Park, and he was stunned by what he saw. On June 17, Park became one of the first gay men to wed in California after the state Supreme Court legalized such unions. “I didn’t think Prop. 8 had any chance of passing,” he says. “It was a very difficult morning to confront.”

Park admitted he, too, was taken aback by what he called a “very strong” ethnic vote in favor of the ban. He said while reading some Korean blog posts before Election Day, he was hurt by the fear he sensed in the measure’s backers.

But James Pak, the Korean liaison to the Yes on 8 campaign and a member of the Mormon church, was not at all surprised by the level of Korean proponents nor the outcome. “Koreans [are] strong supporters of defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman,” he says. “We are a family-    oriented culture.”

Merging of Church and State

This perceived high level of support for the marriage ban probably says more about these Korean Americans’ identity as Christians than as Koreans, says Ian Kim, a campaign director for the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

After all, for many, marriage is not only a very personal issue, but a religious one. One study estimates that some 80 percent of Korean immigrants attend church, and it’s no secret Proposition 8 was heavily backed by religious organizations. According to the Los Angeles Times, campaign-finance data and public records were used to estimate that members of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints raised more than $20 million in donations for the Yes on 8 campaign. Days before the election, thousands of churchgoers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds flooded Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego for a 12-hour prayer session in support of traditional marriage.

Korean Christians, therefore, were just one fragment of a much-larger crusade. Similarly, eight years ago, when Proposition 22 (the state’s original same-sex marriage ban) was on the ballot, Korean churches circulated petitions in support of the measure. The proposition passed with 61 percent of the vote, but was later overturned by the California Supreme Court.

Kim speculated that the No on 8 campaign did not aggressively pursue minority voters the way supporters of the measure did. “How much time did [the No campaign] spend reaching out explicitly to communities of color?” he asked rhetorically. “People of color are the new majority in California. How much did the No on 8 campaign work with that reality?”

In contrast, as early as August, James Pak began working for the Protect Marriage campaign by sending letters to 800 Korean faith-based leaders in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The correspondence outlined what he believed would result if the measure failed to pass: tarnished family values, confusion among children about sex and gender, and legal problems for ministers who refused to officiate same-sex marriages.

Pak’s efforts helped convince dozens of church leaders to join his campaign, triggering an impression among some churchgoers that voting for Proposition 8 was more crucial than choosing the next commander in chief. After raising $6,000 from individual Korean donors, Pak had 14 Korean-language advertisements run on television and in major daily publications, including the Los Angeles-based Korea Times, the largest Korean newspaper in the country. Korean papers also began running articles written by pastors, urging other churches to start campaigns opposing gay marriage. Rallies and prayer meetings sprouted up. At some churches, Sunday sermons included reminders to vote yes on 8 on Election Day.

Oriental Mission Church, a Los Angeles congregation that boasts 5,000 attendees, usually doesn’t address statewide ballots, “but when there is a proposition of this nature or any kind of political statement in agreement with our biblical beliefs, then the church will get involved,” says the Rev. Matthew Kim, one of OMC’s pastors.

“The bottom line is that God created men to unite with women in marriage. So we had a moral, ethical and spiritual obligation to get the word out.”

There was no official church-wide campaign, but Kim says he did make it clear to his English-speaking college ministry that he was in favor of the ban.

Young Nak Celebration Church, the English-language leg of mega-church Young Nak Presbyterian of Los Angeles, advocated for the proposition, but church officials declined KoreAm’s interview request.

Backlash Swings Both Ways

There was something about the very personal issue embodied by marriage and even the very word that unleashed an emotional reaction and revealed passionate divisions within families and circles of friends.

One 29-year-old Korean American Christian who requested to be identified only as P. Kim said he and about nine close friends had a huge argument via email over the issue. Kim, who opposed the measure, pointed out to his Yes on 8 friends that there is a Bible verse calling for those who commit adultery to be killed, but most Christians don’t advocate killing those who cheat on their spouse. So he questioned, why do people use the Bible to justify keeping same-sex couples from marrying, or even from being?

“People arbitrarily pick and choose what they want to believe and follow, when it comes to the Bible,” Kim wrote his friends.

Notably, several individuals declined to have their names published for this story because of fear of backlash from the opposing side. On the one hand, No on 8 voters don’t want to be labeled as anti-Christian, while the Yes on 8 backers don’t want to be seen as bigots.

“I have gay friends,” says Erin Lee, a Christian and college student in Los Angeles. “I was torn over how to vote. I didn’t know what to do. But the reason I voted yes was because, where do we draw the line? If we allow gay marriages, then what’s next? A man and animal? A man and a child? We have to maintain some sort of conventionalism. I feel horrible. I don’t want it to seem like we’re trying to take away their rights.”

One Orange County resident who asked her name not be printed said she felt conflicted over how to vote all the way up until reaching her polling booth.

“At my church, at the pulpit it was said you must vote yes on 8. There was no question about it,” she says. Her husband agreed and voted in favor of Proposition 8, but her deliberation was not as clear.

“On the no side, was this an issue of civil rights or social affirmation?” she recalls asking herself. “On the yes side, was this a stand on faith or religious intolerance? I went back and forth with these issues.”

The 40-year-old stay-at-home mother who considers herself progressive ended up voting that day, but not on Proposition 8. In her mind, marriage is between a man and a woman, she concluded. “But the word ‘ban’ rang all the bells.”

The Korean American lamented the divide she thinks the issue has unleashed, in particular the “witch hunt” atmosphere, with businesses being boycotted if the owners are revealed to have been donors of the Yes on 8 campaign.

That backlash swings both ways.

Six weeks before Election Day, the Korean Resource Center, a grassroots organization in Los Angeles, released its bilingual voter guide that urged the 35,000 registered voters on its mailing list to oppose Proposition 8 because “everyone has the right to live free of discrimination.”

The move provoked a reaction so strong that a week after the mailing, a deluge of emotionally-charged phone calls came into the office, surprising and even intimidating the staff. One KRC employee, who attends a Korean Christian church in Los Angeles, received harassing calls on her cell phone long into the night by anonymous members demanding that she leave the congregation.

“It was disgusting,” says Dae Joong Yoon, KRC’s executive director. “We got many threatening calls from many angry community members saying, ‘How dare you take on this position? There are no gays and lesbians in the Korean American community; they don’t exist. They are worse than dogs and pigs. Why are you siding with sinners?’

“We began to worry — not if Prop. 8 would pass or not — but how hate was somehow [being] generated by lies and baseless information,” adds Yoon. “Hate against other human beings, and thinking gays and lesbians are worse than animals … that’s something we need to think about. Where is that coming from? And why?”

Weeks earlier, KRC and its sister organization, the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, also became increasingly aware of articles in Korean newspapers written by Proposition 8 supporters.

HyunJoo Lee, the organizing coordinator of NAKASEC recalls an op-ed published in the Korea Daily on Oct. 3 that used an anecdote about a college student getting gang-raped by gay men in his dorm room as a reason why readers should vote yes on 8.

To counter what they saw as increasingly-transparent homophobia in the Korean community, KRC, NAKASEC and API Equality, a Los Angeles coalition that promotes marriage rights, asked Korean faith-based leaders to speak against the measure to the public and Korean press. Among them was Dr. Julius Nam, a professor of religion at Loma Linda University, who sees same-sex marriage as a “fundamental human rights issue.”

“By limiting and eliminating the rights of same-sex couples from marrying,” he says, “Prop. 8 is creating a second-class union of individuals in society.”

His stance against the ban was also based on the principle of the separation of church and state. “It’s a particular group of Christians that is trying to legislate their particular theological understanding of marriage,” he says. “I find that troubling.”

Like the two other church leaders who spoke out against Proposition 8, Nam has since become the target of community criticism, with some Koreans questioning whether he should be a professor of religion. These types of reactions explain why supportive or even sympathetic ministers continue to “remain in the closet” about gay rights, he says.

One Korean minister in California, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity, voted against Proposition 8.

“Korean gays and lesbians are alone, and it’s sad that our community doesn’t want to respect their civil rights,” says the minister. “And I am doubly sad and disappointed that I cannot be courageous enough to openly support gay marriage because of where I stand as a minister.”

‘Change Is Inevitable’

Park recalls his wedding ceremony — a June 17 ritual at West Hollywood Park, during which scores of same-sex couples received marriage licenses for the first time in California history. That year, Park and Dean Larkin had been a couple for 10 years. Right after Japanese American actor George Takei, with husband Brad Altman, became the first to legally wed, Park and Larkin tied the knot — which was covered in both the mainstream and Korean media.

“There is a magical moment that makes marriage different,” says Park, 35. “A moment of truly experiencing that sense of complete equality, being part of a family and having the societal recognition that everyone deserves.

“To be able to call Dean my husband, to not have to explain what it means to have a partner or to live with him, is a freedom.”

Park is also an Episcopalian, a parishioner in good standing at St. Thomas the Apostle in Hollywood. He has been singing in church choirs for 16 years.

It was at a religious conference several years ago, in fact, when he heard someone ask South African apartheid opponent and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu why he fought so hard in the face of adversity. “And he had a grace about it, that ultimately, these are all about human rights,” says Park, trying to hold back tears. “And if we really can learn to love one another, there are no other rights to fight for. It’s this grace that the Korean community is missing. If anything makes me sad, it’s seeing that we haven’t quite gotten there yet.”

It’s still unclear how Proposition 8 will impact the status of the 18,000 same-sex marriages like Park’s that took place in California after the state Supreme Court announced its ruling in May that people have a fundamental right to marry the person of their choice.

During the weeks following the election, multiple lawsuits were filed, challenging Proposition 8, and on Nov. 19, the California Supreme Court announced that it would review the ban’s legality. Gay and lesbian couples will not be permitted to marry until the court has ruled.

Both sides of the Proposition 8 campaign are already looking ahead to 2010, when same-sex marriage could re-visit the California ballot.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the Yes on 8 campaign is that much of what same-sex opponents fear is already happening, perhaps not formally or under the “marriage” banner, but in reality. In the United States, it is estimated there are 594,000 same-sex partner households, with many including biological children, according to the 2000 Census. Nationally, 33 percent of female same-sex households include biological children under 18, while 22 percent of male same-sex households do. Some 38,200 Asian Pacific Islanders identify themselves as living with same-sex partners.

“Change is inevitable,” says Park. “It’s just a question of how much pain and suffering we have to go through to get there.”

Flanked by her mother and make-up artist, Miss Asia USA contestant Diane Yoo prepares for her interview with the judges.

By Kai Ma   Photograph by Eric Sueyoshi

It’s a few minutes before Diane Yoo must appear in front of a panel of judges to display her national costume, and she’s nowhere to be found. The pageant staff is frantically running around, hissing at each other, “Where’s Diane? Where is she?” Suddenly Diane appears, gliding across the room like Korean royalty, the seven silk layers of her ethereal hanbok billowing under, then behind her. As she walks up the stairs to meet the judges, her wig falls apart. “Umma!” she yells, her voice piercing through the room. She runs down the stairs and disappears again. The judges move on to the next contestant.

It’s not an ideal start for Diane, the 26-year-old contestant representing Korea for the 20th annual Miss Asia USA pageant, held in June at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, Calif. The pageant is not until the following night, but this event is equally critical: Ten judges are scoring all 31 contestants in the categories of national costume and personality interview. When the contestants convene for the official pageant, they will exhibit their national costumes again, along with their eveningwear and swimsuits, in front of a packed house.

The Miss Asia USA competition is directed by Virgelia Villegas, who describes her pageant as a modern-day charm school. “I’m very strict with the girls,” says Villegas. “I teach fine dining, posing, etiquette, public speaking, social skills, presentation. I train them the old-school way.” The contestants, also called delegates, represent 23 Asian countries ranging from China to Laos, and are between the ages of 17 and 28.

When Diane re-emerges, she walks in front of the judges, poised and elegant, despite her tardiness. She is dressed in a vibrant modernized hanbok, layered in waves of crimson, royal blue, yellow and pink. A straw headpiece is dramatically tilted over a braided wig. (“I wanted to look like a living doll,” Diane later told me.)

After she describes her costume to the judges, Diane saunters back downstairs to the women’s restroom, which she has transformed into her personal, makeshift dressing room. Inside is her make-up artist Taurus Jerome, and the counters are overrun with rouge, curling irons and brushes galore. “It’s all about making her red-carpet-ready,” Jerome says.

Diane must now prepare to meet with the judges again for a brief, timed interview, and starts by unpeeling the layers of her gown, one at a time. “This is what you call a traditional Korean strip show,” she says, before slipping her svelte 5-foot-9-inch figure into a black Marciano mini-dress. As she perches on the counter to have her make-up reapplied, clear and silver stilettos are dangling from her feet. But inside the bathroom, it’s her mother, Joyce Yoo, who reigns.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she says to Diane in Korean, switching to English to say, “Don’t be late again.” She hovers over Diane and Taurus, saying, “Make-up looks pretty but what about the hair? Do you have time? Ahhh … change clothes, hurry!”

Pageant moms, like soccer moms, will do anything to ensure that their children bring home the gold, and Diane’s mother isn’t the only one who vows to see her progeny crowned. At the theater, they are everywhere — pushy and overbearing matriarchs dousing their daughters in Aqua-Net, while shaking the wrinkles out of the hems of each dress. Joyce, a plump woman with a curly head of hair, rummages through her daughter’s enormous suitcases, and when she can’t find the suit that Diane must wear for her interview, they argue over where it is. Frustrated, her mother tells Diane, “I hate you!” But later during Diane’s interview, she is standing on the sidelines, her hands nervously clasped under her chin.

For her interview, Diane is now smoky-eyed, and dressed in a suit and string of pearls. She nails each question, addressing the judges by name while describing the sushi restaurants she will open in Houston next year.

Another judge asks her, “What is the true definition of beauty?”

“Confidence,” Diane answers.

Which is exactly what distinguishes Diane from the other contestants: her self-assurance and quiet boldness never discloses the frenetic energy in the bathroom downstairs. She never looks or sounds nervous. “Diane stands out,” says Tram Ho, a judge. “She’s focused and fabulous.”

While Diane answers questions, a staff person announces that her time is up. Diane keeps on talking, finishing her sentence without flinching.

It’s as if this abandonment of the rules works for her. She’s late for the judges; she talks past her time limit. Some may call it unprofessional, the actions of a diva. But for Diane, perhaps it’s more about finishing whatever it is she started.

“There’s a big difference between the winners and people who are just doing pageants for the experience,” Diane tells me, back in the bathroom. “Everything has to be balanced emotionally, physically, spiritually. When meeting with women that have won previous titles, you really see why they won. They are fierce.”

***

I first met Diane at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, two weeks before the June 21 pageant. Diane, who lives in Katy, Texas, a town outside of Houston, flies into L.A. (on her own dime) every weekend to rehearse and participate in pageant-related events. Inside her hotel room, a make-up artist is about to meticulously glue false eyelashes to Diane’s lids. “I’m not wearing any make-up yet,” Diane says, apologetically.

Not that there’s a need for it. With or without bronzer, Diane is a beautiful woman with a button nose and the high, curved forehead of a model. When she speaks, her breathy purr carries a slight Southern drawl.

Inside her Louis Vuitton bag, Diane’s pink cell phone rings. It’s her coach, a beauty queen who has previously won Miss Texas, Miss USA and Miss Universe titles. “I talk to [my coach] five times a day,” says Diane. “She calls and texts me like no other.”

Yoo calls pageantry “an extreme sport” that requires intense discipline and focus. For this pageant, preparation began eight months ago. She has trained with more than 10 coaches and six make-up artists, goes to the gym twice a day, and is on a strict diet formulated by a personal trainer: a fiber-heavy breakfast, followed by a protein-oriented lunch and supper. In two months, she has lost 10 pounds. “But I am the worst cheater,” she admits. “This week, I’ve eaten a brownie every single day.”

The next day, I meet Diane at rehearsal in the auditorium of the Glendale Public Library. The room is filled with intense young girls pursuing their dreams, strutting on stage as a choreographer barks off orders. Though the beauty industry worships youth, in the pageant world, it seems as if it can work against you. Many of the Miss Asia USA delegates, some in their teens, appear girlish and inexperienced, like fawn wobbling in six-inch mules encrusted with gems.

“Every girl wants that crown so badly,” says Diane. “These are young girls, and they will break emotionally.”

After rehearsal, Diane and I have lunch at a Japanese restaurant, where she admits to almost breaking down herself. “I cracked a couple weeks ago,” she says. “The endless hours of training and traveling … it’s so insane. I couldn’t catch my breath, and I felt hollow. I even felt an intense pressure to quit. I was asking myself, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And there’s really no answer to that. But I realized that pageantry, for me, puts me out there. It forces me to keep going.”

Sitting in front of me, I realize that Diane is a bit of a chameleon. On stage, she looks the part of a glossy beauty queen with a frozen, artificial smile. But in person, as she admits to her near-breakdown, she looks vulnerable. Other times, she’s charming, spunky. When I ask her if she wants to order a cocktail, she says, “I love to drink, but I can’t right now,” then takes a sip of my cucumber martini anyway. “Cucumber is good for the skin,” she adds, winking.

Like any young, gorgeous starlet dreaming to emerge from suburban obscurity, Diane, breathy voice and all, hopes to break into Hollywood. If she wins the pageant, she will move to L.A. to pursue the entertainment industry, her hopes set on starring in a film or becoming an on-air host or personality. “This is my ticket out,” she says. “Pageantry is also known as a fast track into whatever it is you want to do. If you win a title, your life is set.”

Diane lives with her parents in Katy, and works in a management department at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. When she was in the sixth grade, her father, Jason Yoo, an immigrant hailing from Jeju-do, South Korea, put Diane in modeling school. But Diane, who was a tomboy, wasn’t a fan. “I thought it was retarded,” she recalls, laughing. “We had to bring in this heavy make-up toolbox and learn how to pluck our eyebrows.”

As the only daughter of three, Diane was more interested in tearing up her knees and elbows playing football and basketball. “I’ve done it all, honey,” she says. “I got into fights, got into trouble.” She was suspended in high school after driving her father’s car to campus. “My dad had a gun and prescription pills in the car, and that day the dogs were sniffing the cars in the parking lot. I got a slip from the principal, then I got suspended because they thought I was taking drugs and shooting things. And I was like, ‘No, it’s my dad’s car!’”

Perhaps because she grew up in Texas, a state with a long, proud tradition as a pageant powerhouse, Diane still managed to stumble into her first pageant when she was 18. For the talent portion of Miss American Teen, she played the violin but while on stage, she blanked out. “I was just standing there with my violin, smiling like an idiot.”

She returned to modeling, which took off after she moved to Waco to attend Baylor University, where she studied sociology. “I don’t know how I started out as a model in Waco of all places, but the industry is like a black hole and I kept getting pulled in. Agents would stalk me as I walked around Wal-Mart.”

After she graduated, she entered the Miss Korea Texas pageant, and was crowned the 2006 queen. This allowed her to compete for Miss Korea Universe, and she lived with other contestants for more than a month in Korea, six girls to a room. “There was gossip everywhere, so much drama,” recalls Diane. “But it taught me how to be very competitive. It pushed me out on the edge.” Though she didn’t win, at that point, she was “bitten by the pageant bug.”

But the Miss Asia USA competition, which is Diane’s fourth pageant, will be her last. “I’m getting old,” says Diane. “This industry peaks at a young age, and you won’t see me at those pageants for older, married women. No way.”

The reputation of pageantry in general has long been a sour one, evoking images of the vacuous, waving Barbie doll in blue eye shadow and a gaudy dress. As a previous titleholder, the most common stereotype Diane gets is that she’s beautiful but dense. “That’s the image I challenge passionately,” she says. “I want to see pageantry updated. The [Miss Asia USA pageant] doesn’t have a talent portion, which I applaud because when a girl wins and represents Miss Asia, and she goes out to an event or a gala, she’s not going to go out there and yodel. She’s going to socially interact and network like crazy for her organization. We’re not opera singers. We’re savvy businesswomen and entrepreneurs. We own non-profits. That’s the platform we should be standing on.

“I don’t really love pageantry but I love the opportunities that it brings,” she adds. “Beauty is universally accepted and is a powerful way to bridge communities. We can really use this to even bring war-torn countries together.”

***

The weeks leading up to the beauty pageant contain all the elements for a reality TV hit: stress, expensive clothes, and dozens of girls competing for the coveted crown. On the night of the pageant, the basement of the Alex Theatre is a zoo, each dressing room packed with agitated, half-naked women with rollers in their hair.

When the pageant kicks off, all 31 contestants appear on stage for a choreographed dance in matching Scala eveningwear.

In the auditorium, the judges sit in the front row, and the audience is filled with a mixture of 1,400 family members, screaming friends and gawking men. Contestants introduce themselves in their national costumes, and the stage is now filled with spectacular fabrics, colors, ribbons and bangles: Armenia’s gold-threaded maroon velvet dress, Myanmar’s white feather wings, Japan’s kimono dripping with sparkling floral prints. When Diane appears in her national costume, she is holding two magenta fans, which she unfolds in theatrical fashion. Her dramatic presence inspires different reactions: Some audience members laugh at her, while others groan, “Oh my God, she’s so hot…” The winner for the national costume competition, scored the previous day, is announced. It’s Diane.

Afterwards, the delegates appear in identical bikinis, sashaying slowly across the stage, twirling, then standing in rows at the back of the stage. The last category is eveningwear. When Diane enters, she is in a strapless gown with a sequined turquoise corset and a skirt of feathers that makes her look like a peacock. She turns around, and a detachable train features a mural of mountains, lotus, a tiger and setting sun.

The women are all judged for their appearance, and how they carry their frocks. As the presenters announce the top five contestants, the women stare at the audience, beaming. Diane is smiling serenely, her eyes so widened by false eyelashes and shimmering make-up, that she looks not unlike a deer in headlights. Along with the Philippines, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, Diane is selected as a top contestant. The remaining five are then asked to answer the question: “If your culture [forbade] you from participating in beauty pageants, would  you participate anyway?” Diane is the first to respond.

“I would feel disheartened if I did not represent my culture to the fullest,” she answers.

Each contestant answers the question, some sounding eloquent yet rehearsed. The answers always ignite roars of applause, catcalls and cheers. Then the sashes and crowns come out. One by one, the runner-ups are announced, until Diane is standing next to one other delegate, Brittany Chen of Taiwan.

The crowd makes their voice heard. “Brittany!” “Diane!” “Taiwan!” “Korea!” Others yell out names that have long been eliminated. “China!” “Linda!” “Jordan!!!”

The first runner-up is announced – Brittany. Diane is then crowned Miss Asia USA, and for the first time on stage, her frozen grin melts into something more genuine: a sigh of relief. The audience is noticeably divided – some clapping and whistling, while other parts of the room remain silent, looking surprised.

Diane is now surrounded by presenters and judges. An overflowing bouquet of roses is pressed into her arms by a member of the United States Air Force. A silk sash is draped over her chest by the now-former Miss Asia USA. Diane looks ecstatic, surprised, slightly overwhelmed, but she never cracks or cries, even as a jewel-adorned crown is placed over her flawless head.

“I couldn’t believe it,” says Diane, after the pageant. “I really thought the first runner up was going to win. After I answered my question, my heart immediately sank when I heard all the other girls’ responses. I didn’t think I had a bad answer, but I realized I could’ve been more forceful.”

But when the queen was announced, “everything inside me just dropped,” she says. “Then I went numb. And then I told myself, ‘Act surprised!’”

As the winner, Diane will receive a $16,000 scholarship to James Albert School of Cosmetology, cash prizes, and become an “ambassador of culture and goodwill,” a Miss Asia USA-affiliated role that entails reaching out to various Asian communities to make special appearances, and assist in cultural and fundraising events.

“Diane is an icon now,” says Villegas, the pageant director (and also a judge). “What’s important is your passion. If you believe in the title, you will become a successful queen, understood? Diane is now the queen of all the Asian communities.”

“The judges are so gracious to choose me,” adds Diane. “What I hoped to portray was my heart and compassion. Now, I’m ready to hit the ground running.”

And just like that, Diane flocks off to the groups of judges, reporters and groupies at the VIP party next door to the theater. Her turquoise bodice is glistening, and her tiara is intact. As she meanders through the room, she greets each guest with a nod and a smile, but this time, as a queen.

By Kai Ma

It’s not entirely clear where Steve Morrison was born. His memories, like those of any adult recalling early childhood, are a hodgepodge of impressions and images; for him, it’s the smell of steamed crab, and sometimes, the taste. But nothing links Morrison to his birth because before the age of 5, his parents abandoned him and his younger brother, leaving them to roam the streets of South Korea’s Kangwon Province in search of food and coins.

“Fortunately, we found something every day,” says Morrison, who was then named Choi Suk Choon. “And once in a while, a lady who sold steamed crab would feed us.”

Eventually, the crab peddler offered more. “But she only had room for one boy, so she decided to take in my younger brother,” Morrison recalls. “The last time I saw him, I looked at him with real envy. And then I was left on the street by myself.”

In 1962, when Morrison was 6, he landed in an orphanage near Seoul that housed roughly 700 homeless youth. The Il San orphanage was built and run by Harry Holt, an American farmer who launched a post-Korean War adoption movement that placed thousands of Korean children in homes overseas.

Morrison lived at the orphanage until he was 13, when a Caucasian Baptist couple in Salt Lake City adopted him. That year, South Korean restrictions would have rendered him ineligible for overseas placement once he turned 14. If it weren’t for his timely adoption, it is likely he would have remained an orphan, with few opportunities for an education or social advancement.

Now 52, Morrison has a shock of black hair, crinkly eyes and exudes a quiet confidence as he reflects on the unique, surprising journey that led him to Norwalk, Calif., where he lives with his wife Jody, three daughters and an adopted son from Korea.

“When I left Korea, I wasn’t scared,” he says. “More than the fear and apprehension, there’s the thrill that something new is waiting for you.”

He met his father, John Morrison, at the airport, carrying only a set of playing cards and his journal, which he continued to write in every night before bed. Morrison still has it, though, he adds wryly, “It’s no Diary of Anne Frank.”

In many ways, Morrison’s journal could give testimony to the virtues of international adoption — how fate, hard work and the right people worked to transform a young orphan into a professional engineer with a rewarding life surrounded by family. Which is why he was alarmed when, in 1996, the South Korean government revised its adoption law — which still stands today — to decrease international adoption by 3 to 5 percent annually, with the long-term goal of phasing out the system by 2015.

For nearly half a century, South Korea was the leading supplier of foreign-born adoptees for developed nations, sending an estimated 160,000 children to the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Australia, according to the South Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs. In the last 30 years, due to political pressure, grassroots campaigns and media coverage that branded South Korea as a “baby-exporting nation,” efforts have been made to reduce the number of children sent overseas.

Last year, one group of Korean American adoptees petitioned the Ministry to end overseas adoption and, more recently, some high-profile cases have given observers pause. A Dutch diplomat and his wife unleashed global outrage in 2007 when they essentially gave back their 7-year-old Korean daughter, after seven years as her adoptive parents, citing cultural differences and her emotional detachment. In March of this year, Steven Sueppel murdered his wife and four children — all adoptees from Korea, aged 3, 5, 8 and 10 — in Iowa before taking his own life.

In part to provide a more representative view of overseas adoption, Morrison and a contingent of other Korean American adult adoptees visited South Korea for 11 days in May to support domestic adoption within the nation, but also to urge the government to keep intercountry adoption open so long as there are children who need homes. The group, all part of an advocacy group called Adoptees for Children (A4C), timed the trip so they could recognize Korea’s newly designed National Adoption Day on May 11.

“In South Korea there’s been a very deliberate effort to reduce the number of international adoptions in favor of domestic adoptions, something we’ve all applauded and encouraged,” says Susan Soon-keum Cox, a member of A4C. “The problem is the societal acceptance of adoption has not caught up with the desire to have it happen.”

While meeting with Ministry officials, the group proposed special exemptions that would allow Korean Americans to adopt Korean children. “The goal in Korea, as it should be, is to keep Korean children in Korean families,” says Cox, who also serves as vice president of public policy and external affairs at the Oregon-based Holt International Children’s Services, a leading intercountry adoption agency. “As Korean officials make policy, they should take into account that children who are placed into a Korean family in the United States still meet that goal.”

Their recommendations are being considered, yet Morrison was startled to learn from adoption agency representatives that South Korea now plans to end its international system well before 2015. The new policy has not been announced, Morrison says, but South Korea’s new administration, led by President Lee Myung-bak, is rumored to be taking a hard-line, accelerated approach to eliminating the system in three to five years

“Rather than finding better alternatives to help children grow up with families, the Korean government is more occupied with quickly bringing about closure to foreign adoption,” Morrison says. “The driving motivation is to save face because international adoption is a source of national shame; it’s embarrassing to them.”

Though the South Korean government has made attempts to shut down international adoptions for several decades now, Morrison fears what lies ahead. “The one thing [the government] can’t quite overcome,” he says, “is the fact that children need homes.”

***

Nobel Prize winning author Pearl S. Buck, who dubbed the term “Amerasian,” inspired Americans to open their homes to foreign children when she founded the Welcome House in 1949, an agency for interracial orphans that has placed more than 7,000 adoptions throughout the world. Yet the international adoption boom out of South Korea is most often attributed to Harry Holt and his wife Bertha.

The Holts, a Christian couple from Oregon, adopted eight biracial Korean orphans in 1955, and a year later, established an adoption program in Korea that became officially known as Holt Children’s Services of Korea in the late 1970s. Today, it works in partnership with the Holt International adoption agency in the U.S.

Though Holt rescued many orphans, the large-scale transracial adoption movement he pioneered has a mixed legacy. Due to the sheer numbers of Korean children placed overseas — often in Christian and Caucasian families — critics began to argue that what started as a wartime humanitarian effort was now spiraling out of control.

In 1973, the Pyongyang Times, a North Korean newspaper, issued a statement against South Korea’s adoption policy: “The traitors of South Korea, old hands at treacheries, are selling thousands, tens of thousands of children going ragged and hungry to foreign marauders under the name of ‘adopted children.’”

More than three decades after the Korean War, children continued to leave their birth country in droves; in 1985 alone, 8,837 Koreans children were sent overseas. Then in 1988, South Korea’s international adoption industry faced global scrutiny, due in part to the exposure procured by hosting the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. Media outlets, including NBC and the New York Times covered the adoption phenomenon, citing babies as South Korea’s primary export commodity. In January 1988, the Progressive published an article titled, “Babies for Sale: South Koreans Make Them, Americans Buy Them.”

The headlines disgraced the South Korean government, and protests ensued. But the main reason for the public outcry, Morrison says, was because the South Korean nation was modernizing rapidly and no longer suffering from the post-war displacement and poverty that required foreigners to adopt their youth in the first place.

“What they didn’t realize is that all of this has less to do with money, but mindset,” he says.

As a bloodline-based society with Confucian roots, South Korea lacks a cultural tradition of domestic adoption. Social stigma and shame are attached to infertile couples, divorcees, unwed mothers and homeless children, causing the cultural bias against domestic adoption to be so severe that in many cases, not even the child is aware of his or her adoption.

In 1999, Morrison founded Mission to Promote Adoption (MPAK), an American and South Korean organization committed to creating a pro-adoption culture among Korean families, as well as removing the stigma associated with homeless children and adoptees. For children without a birth or adoptive family within the country, the organization advocates that international adoption should be given priority over long-term foster care.

MPAK has helped solidify what Morrison calls the “transparent adoption movement” in South Korea. (“Transparent adoption” describes a form of adoption that is not practiced in secret.) In 2000, Morrison urged Yun Hee Han, current MPAK Korea president, to broadcast her experience adopting two boys on national television, after which she was inundated with phone calls from couples that wanted to adopt.

“By sharing her beautiful adoption story, it opened up opportunities for many children to have homes of their own,” says Morrison. “That message had never been conveyed in Korea before.”

That year, MPAK families were featured more than 40 times on major Korean networks. The MPAK exposure campaign led to transparent adoptions by 1,000 Korean families and 70 Korean American families, and spurred the creation of 18 regional MPAK chapters in South Korea and four in the United States.

Then in 2007, international adoption out of South Korea reached a crossroads, when domestic placements exceeded international adoptions for the first time. Out of the 2,652 children adopted last year, 52 percent went to Korean homes, according to figures released last month by the Korea National Statistical Office. But according to news reports, the increase is largely the result of new South Korean policies that prioritize placing children with Korean families before sending them overseas, and less to do with the cultural acceptance of domestic adoption.

***

Last April, Adoptee Solidarity Korea (ASK), an organization for adult adoptees, submitted a petition that called for the closure of international adoption. The petition, which is under preliminary review by the Ministry, also urged the development of social welfare structures that would enable Korean families to stay intact.

Su-Yoon Ko, a member of ASK, wrote the petition with other Korean American adoptees living in Seoul who promote alternatives to sending children overseas. Ko believes other programs, including domestic placements and foster care, must first advance before international adoption is shut down, but she is critical of why the 50-year practice is often considered “South Korea’s only alternative.”

“The intercountry adoption program is so systematic — a very well oiled machine that is often seen as ‘the Cadillac of adoption programs,’” says Ko. “What started out as a temporary solution for mixed-raced orphans born during the war has become South Korea’s social welfare system, and they depend on it now. It gets rid of unwanted babies, it solves the problem of single mothers, and it saves the government money it would otherwise have to use to develop its own system. If it’s not broken, why fix it, right?”

Ko moved to Seoul in 2002 after growing up with her adoptive Caucasian family in Minnesota. She is part of the rising number of adult adoptees who have returned to South Korea to seek answers about their country of origin.

By virtue of being a Korean adoptee, Ko inherited the distinct experience of being ethnically Korean without a Korean family, yet not being viewed as “American” in the sense of being Caucasian, despite growing up in a Euro-American household. “Questions about our birth country are always in the back of our heads,” says Ko. “Growing up in mostly white environments and looking completely different, we were told we were Korean, but had no context to put that in. What does it mean to be Korean? We have no idea.”

International adoption has been described by demographers as “the quiet migration.” Among the 2 million Koreans currently living in the United States, 110,000 are believed to have emigrated between 1953 and 2007 as adoptee children. South Koreans represent the largest group of American foreign-born adoptee children, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, and in 2004, the Census reported that South Korea supplied nearly 24 percent of the foreign-born adoptee population, the highest from any country.

Domestic adoptions are steadily increasing, but many in the adoption field insist that this development will only survive if met with proper social welfare systems, and a broader, collective acceptance of what constitutes a family. Similarly in the United States, it was not until the women’s movement in the 1970s, that single American women felt empowered to raise children without a father, rather than give them up for adoption.

These cultural shifts are now evident in South Korea, and will ultimately shape the future of international adoption; infertility and a birth rate that is among the lowest in the world have decreased the number of children born overall, and with the rise of divorce comes the upsurge of single parents. The recent “Miss Mom” phenomenon, which echoes the “Single Mothers By Choice” movement in the United States, suggests that more South Korean women are challenging the stigmas against non-traditional families by choosing to raise a child without a spouse or through artificial insemination.

“International adoption is definitely entangled with women’s rights,” says Hollee McGinnis, policy director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a national policy think tank and educational organization that examines adoption. “If you improve the situation for families and for mothers in particular, you will see a change in terms of international adoption.”

But South Korea, despite its status as the world’s 13th-largest economy, has only recently provided financial support for single unwed mothers, and before two years ago, “there had been no support to help or encourage a single mother to raise her child,” says McGinnis, who is also founder of Also-Known-As, a non-profit adult intercountry adoptee organization. “Where does the money go in Korea’s economy? Is a big bulk of money going to social welfare services? No. Back in the 1970s, if Korea put money where they put their policy about stopping international adoption, and began building social services for domestic families, I think Korea would be in a very different place right now.”

McGinnis was adopted in 1975 at the age of 3. She grew up in the suburbs of New York City as the only Korean in a family of Caucasian parents, and their two biological children. In college, she began exploring what it meant to “fit in as an American with a Korean face, and an Irish dad and a blonde-haired mom,” she says. At the age of 24, she went to Korea and reunited with her birth parents, and others relatives from the paternal side of her family.

More Korean adoptees are searching for, and finding their biological parents, yet McGinnis’ reunion was particularly exceptional: her birth family made the initial contact. When she was starting high school, her paternal grandfather wrote to her American parents, who chose to show their daughter the letter several years later, when she was 19.

“I was utterly surprised,” she recalls. “One hundred percent of adoptees think about the people that gave birth to them. But how do you mourn someone you don’t remember? For the majority of us, birth parents are like figments of our imaginations.”

McGinnis has now been in touch with her birth family for 12 years. She lives in New York City with her husband, and their infant son. She wants her son to have a relationship with his Korean relatives, but admits to the obstacles of straddling two families, especially given the language barrier and the distance that separates them. “It’s hard to build a relationship on that,” she says. “I’m very glad I have it, but it adds a level of complexity that I sometimes wish I didn’t have.”

Discourse surrounding South Korea’s international adoption policy usually involves a triangular tug-of-war between lobbyists, adoption agencies and advocacy groups, but what lies at the center are children in need of homes. Despite the varying and contradicting perspectives, all agree that the welfare of the child must take precedence. For this reason, says McGinnis, she doesn’t want to see an end to international adoption, but believes it could happen in the near future.

“Korea could absolutely close its doors, and it’s happened in other countries with the swipe of a pen,” she says.

At the same time, there is an evident shift in the prevalence of international adoption — and not just in South Korea. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami displaced thousands, the response of most major Western nations was that the children were not to be sent abroad. “In the past five years, there has been a changing tide about thinking critically about when international adoption is appropriate,” says McGinnis. “Many countries now are pulling back their practices, so what we’re seeing right now in Korea is indicative of broader changes.”

“Yet international adoption is an unfortunate necessity,” she adds. “In an ideal world, every child is loved and wanted, but that’s just not the reality. That’s not to say that kids that are adopted aren’t wanted, but what we don’t like to acknowledge is that adoption happens because something couldn’t happen.”

***

In his early 20s, Morrison returned to South Korea for the first time since his adoption, and visited the gravesite of Harry Holt, who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1964.

“It was like meeting an old friend,” he says. “Mr. Holt will always be, in my mind, the man who saved my life.”

When he was buried atop a hill in Il San, 59 steps were constructed leading up to his grave to reflect the age at his death. ““I will never forget that day,” says Morrison, who was 8 when Holt passed. “It rained, and children were hunched over crying and screaming, some clinging to his casket as it lowered.”

When he first met Holt, Morrison admits he was terrified. “He was a scary-looking guy with huge bushy eyebrows.” But Holt’s daunting visage quickly evaporated with a smile, and Morrison instantly regarded the elder as a grandfather figure. “I would see Mr. Holt coming down the hill and he would kneel and open up his arms and I would come to him. He made himself available to all the children, and I truly sensed that he loved us.”

During his Korea trip last month, Morrison returned to the orphanage, which is now a 60-acre center accommodating more than 300 mentally and physically disabled residents. There, he saw a friend he spent his childhood with, playing cards and marbles. The friend, now 52 years old, was born with cerebral palsy and has lived at the orphanage his entire life.

Reunions such as these are bittersweet for Morrison. “Why was I able to leave?” he asks. “Why not him? I felt ashamed that I was chosen to be loved by a great family, yet here he was in his wheelchair, still being cared for by the orphanage.”

“Suk Choon,” the friend said to Morrison, addressing him by his birth name, “I am happy that you have a good life.”

When comparing his life to that of his friend, Morrison believes that international adoption is less a debate and more of an endangered necessity. And while much has changed over the course of South Korea’s history of international adoption, all of which may come to an end as early as 2011, what Morrison saw in his friend still bore resemblance to what Holt saw on the streets of South Korea more than 50 years ago. Which is why he believes he is one of the few Korean American adoptees still working in the spirit of Holt, even as he promotes a culture that will no longer depend on what Holt began.

“The reasons for why children are abandoned have changed, but what has remained the same is that they need and deserve homes,” Morrison says. “So what would be the only logical reason for closure of international adoption? When there are no more children to be sent abroad.”

By Kai Ma

Photograph by Richard Corman

Media buzz for Min Jin Lee’s debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was at its height when we met at her publisher’s Manhattan office in May. As she sunk into a plush couch, she read her latest review by Entertainment Weekly’s Tina Jordan, who described the book as a “big, juicy, commercial Korean-American coming-of-age novel [that] could spawn a satisfying miniseries.” Jordan then rated the tome using the magazine’s signature grading system. “I’m such a model minority,” Lee said with a mock grimace after seeing her mark. “Of course, I’m wondering why I got a B. Why not an A?”

It’s a question Casey Han, the 22-year-old main character in Free Food, might’ve mulled over during college in Lee’s tale about class and identity. Casey is the “unusually tall” first daughter of an immigrant couple from South Korea, who like the 38-year-old Lee, penetrates the Ivy League and Manhattan professional world.

It is the fluidity and rigidity of the U.S. class system that Lee exposes through a series of storylines that echo her own life. Both Lee and her fictional counterpart grew up in Elmhurst, a neighborhood in New York City. Casey’s parents toil in a dry-cleaning franchise in Queens; Lee’s parents owned a wholesale jewelry business in Manhattan. Casey graduates magna cum laude in economics from Princeton; Lee was a history major at Yale, where she was awarded the James Ashmun Veech Prize for Fiction. Lee read George Eliot, Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, Leo Tolstoy. After college, she studied law at Georgetown University, later pulling in six figures as a 25-year old corporate attorney. But in 1995, she fled the legal scene to write novels.

“As a lawyer, I never stopped working, but I didn’t love it enough to not sleep,” says Lee. “But I do love writing enough to not sleep for days. And I really didn’t sleep to write this book.”

From getting kicked out of her father’s house to catching her boyfriend in a ménage à trois, Lee’s protagonist reveals the emotional lives of Korean Americans. “The book is fiction, but it’s an emotionally accurate autobiographical novel,” Lee says. “People always think Asian Americans are so competent and diligent and without feeling. So I made a conscious decision to give my characters all the feelings that I know real Korean Americans experience: shame, lust and being absolutely pissed off.”

These emotion-driven themes, nestled in the context of a Korean American family, even had some media outlets describing the novel as a literary antidote for the cultural anxieties surrounding another high-profile Korean: Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho. Though Lee’s novel on the inner lives of Koreans is unrelated to the psychological questions surrounding Cho, Lee was reportedly “haunted” by the timely release of her May publication. “But I was also enraged with how [Cho] was being portrayed in the media,” she says. “Korean men are always portrayed like machines and inscrutable villains. But human beings can also be passionate and romantic, or they can be gamblers and alcoholics. So can we have range, please? Can we have humanity? This is the problem with racism: You take away people’s humanity.”

Lee lives with her husband and 9-year-old son, Sam, in downtown Manhattan, where she also resided in 2001, the year she began writing Free Food. On Sept. 11, the Twin Towers fell 10 blocks away, and Lee’s family evacuated to her parents’ home in New Jersey. While reading the obituaries of the victims in the New York Times, Lee stumbled upon a photograph of a Korean woman with “a pretty face and gamin, amused expression.”

“She looked like so much fun, like a girlfriend you’d meet up [with] to get Pinkberry,” Lee says. “She was young. Her name was Casey and she died in my neighborhood.”

That was the moment Lee named her novel’s heroine.

Lee’s title, Free Food for Millionaires, is derived from the irony that the rich get richer, and the beautiful get more praise. Yet her message is that “every single person has gifts, whether or not he or she wants to accept them — whether it’s kindness, intelligence or the ability to sing,” she says. “These are all extraordinary forms of wealth.”

“This book is about a city, a village, a tribe,” she adds. “I wanted to write one book that could somehow express the community of my city. Every single person has a storyline and experiences crisis, conflict and change. And each person is a millionaire.”

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