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By Soo Youn

It’s Friday night on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, famous for its trendy restaurants, clubs and legendary hotels where celebrities go to party — think Chateau Marmont and the nightclub Hyde — a technicolor US Weekly backdrop. But a small crowd of hipster literary types has gathered at Book Soup to hear Ed Park read a couple excerpts from Personal Days, his observant, satirical debut novel about the unfortunately familiar terrain of an office in limbo.

“George looks like he’s just come back from vacation and is about to go on another  year old, donning khakis, a dark short-sleeve collared shirt and rectangular glasses, describing a lawyer leading a seminar at the fictional office. “His relaxed manner is exhausting to contemplate. All of us secretly wonder why we didn’t go to law school, and also whether it’s too late.”

Park pauses.

“It is.”

Several people laugh, probably having had similar thoughts earlier in their careers, possibly earlier in their days. The passages are funny, hitting true notes about the banalities of an office where the workers’ true talents (whatever they may be) are underutilized and inexplicable firings pick off one character at a time. The novel, which Newsweek calls “a lyrical and often piercing look at daily life,” explores the personal relationships and coping mechanisms formed as characters try to survive impending layoffs.

A few people in the audience actually used to work with Park, who was an editor at the alt-newsweekly Village Voice, which, like the novel’s unnamed company, was bought out by a larger corporate entity. After Phoenix-based New Times acquired the Voice in 2005, Park was one of the staffers ushered out the following year. Before his firing though, he had started the manuscript that turned into Personal Days.

“The genesis of this book was a response to things that were happening in real life,” Park tells me over the phone from his home in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife Sandra, a psychiatrist, and their baby. “I’d write in the morning, and I’d go in work and more people would be fired and then after I was fired, I revised it. If I hadn’t been fired, would I have finished it? In a weird way, it all worked out.”

Since his Village Voice days, Park has used his reprieve from office life to remarkable productivity, as a blogger, an editor of the literary magazine The Believer (which he co-founded in 2003), and an editor at the Poetry Foundation, constantly adding new literary venues and voices to a modern canon in flux. Park also publishes “The New-York Ghost,” a newsletter, writes “Astral Weeks,” a science-fiction column, for the Los Angeles Times, teaches at New York University and will teach at Columbia in the fall.  And yet, Park’s diction both in conversation and as an author is so precise, so constantly curated, and his demeanor so calm, that it is seemingly impossible that all these tasks can be completed daily by such an unrushed persona.

Though it’s his official literary coming-out, Personal Days is not Park’s first novel. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, he says he knew from a young age that he wanted to write and create stories. “I thought, Oh, I’ll write all these books when I grow up,” he says. Park’s father is a psychiatrist, with a keen interest in literature, Korean calligraphy and the writings of P.G. Wodehouse, and his mother was an English major in college, so the fact that he ended up a writer “isn’t too much of a stretch,” he says.

Later, educated at Yale and armed with a master’s of fine arts in creative writing from Columbia University, Park penned two novels while working as a writer and editor in New York.  Despite publishing some shorter fiction, the two novels never sold.

Enter Personal Days, which Park says is a marked departure from his two unpublished books. Several people who have known Park for a long time have commented on the book’s surprising humor. “I’ve known Ed since we were at Columbia together in the mid-‘90s, and even back then, I remember thinking he was an amazing writer. When I read a manuscript of Personal Days, I was immediately struck by how funny and full of social commentary it was — not easy things to achieve,” says Vendela Vida, Believer co-founder and author.

Told through an omniscient collective voice, the first two sections are titled with Microsoft Word commands, “Can’t Undo” and “Replace All,” which both evoke a sense of foreboding. In the second section, substance succumbs to form, as the developments are relayed in outline form. The third and final section, “Revert to Saved,” taunts the reader with some relief from the barely constrained anxiety of the earlier sections, yet constantly breeds new questions in a first-person e-mail from one of the central characters. Personal Days presents a fractured picture of muted lives, distorted by the hyper self-aware voices of a generation that is missing The Big Picture, only to reveal it was all manipulated anyway.

But don’t expect a roman à clef skewing thinly disguised real-life co-workers. “It’s not like I worked for Anna Wintour  — most of my co-workers were not well-known,” Park says, explaining that the characters are, for the most part, completely imagined.

The other thing that Personal Days is refreshingly not is an ethno-centric anthem. When I joke that the most Korean thing about the novel is the opening epigraph — lyrics from a New Order song — Park doesn’t disagree, explaining that he felt that the book needed a modern, pop reference. But my point launches a conversation about race taking a back seat in this work, remaining one of many things we don’t know about our main characters or our narrators.

“This book was really about this atmosphere of a company crumbling and downsizing and dealing with firings and the psychology of how the characters interact … in a sense, race didn’t even function as a major theme,” says Park.

All this may change, of course, with Park’s next work.  He is considering a novel with “some connection to Korea and Korean American stuff,” but he says, “The idea is much more out there.”

Personal Maze

It’s a little difficult to keep track of the characters in the novel, partly because so many of them have names that start with J. To further your reading experience, we came up with a handy cribsheet:

The Sprout: The boss, Russell. (Explainer: Russell ’ Brussels ’ brussel sprouts ’ The Sprout.) Likes corporate speak.

Maxine: Comely supervisor whose full authority remains a mystery, wears alluring clothes.

Pru: Has a master’s in history or art history, likes to knit.

Jack II: Replaced Original Jack, who was fired. Likes to give backrubs, or “jackrubs.”

Crease: Former school teacher whose real name is Chris. “Crease” is the pronunciation of an enamored European former student.

Lizzie: “The nicest of us,” hopes to marry a Swedish baron or win the lottery.

Jonah: Aloof worker who may or may not be bisexual, keeps a Mexican de-stress frog from a supposed vacation to Mexico on his desk.

Laars: Floppy-haired worker who is the only one to have upper body strength. Googles his numerous former flames, due to his frequent vows of chastity.

Jenny: Keeps getting “deported,” absorbs the responsibilities of former colleagues as they get fired.

Jill: Painfully shy worker who is sent to work in “Siberia.”

Jules: Fired worker who opens a restaurant.

—Soo Youn

Korean American students of the Susie Kim Dancesports studio in L.A. strut their stuff at this year’s Summer Ball.

Story and photographs by Bill Stephens

When you think about pasttimes most identified with middle- and senior-aged Korean Americans, golf and karaoke immediately come to mind. But in recent years, ajushis and ajumas have been dancing to a new tune, literally, cha-chaing their stresses away and waltzing to strengthen their bodies and marriages.

Mirroring national and international trends, more and more Koreans are embracing ballroom dancing.

According to USA Dance Association’s Peter Pover, America’s Dancing with the Stars on ABC, which was modeled after an equally popular British TV show, has helped revive DanceSport, as it is sometimes called.

Lucy Long, a folklorist and ethnomusicologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, believes that ballroom dance has also gained popularity in recent years because people are exercising more and looking for new ways to spend quality time with their partners. They are realizing that adults need to play, too.

But an activity characterized by spins, dips and, at times, hip-shaking seems a particularly surprising choice for a generation known for toiling as immigrants in a new country and devoting most of their waking hours to a small business to support their family. Who had time for a hobby aside from the occasional golf outing?

Some observers schooled in Korean culture say ballroom dance is a good match for a people sometimes known for their flare for the dramatics.

“Koreans are sociable, exuberant and feel intensely,” says Long, who lived in Korea for eight years. “Ballroom dance fits [them] because it’s expressive.”

***

“1-2-3. 1-2-3,” calls out Susie Kim, as her students attempt to move their feet in tempo to the waltz. The athletic instructor then demostrates.

People giggle at their mistakes. One woman, not laughing, walks away from her husband and sits down.

Kim coaxes her back to the dance floor.

A former professional ballroom dancer herself, Kim has been teaching international style and the slower-tempo American social style ballroom method at the Susie Kim Dancesports studio in Los Angeles since 1989. Before that, she was involved with running a dance studio at a different Koreatown location with her ex-husband, also a competitive ballroom dancer, since the mid-‘80s.

“When I began competing in ballroom dancing, I found the atmosphere of competition so gorgeous — the costumes, the lighting and the music,” recalls Kim, who has always been athletic. “It was so attractive to me and moved me.

“Because I’m a competitive person, I also enjoyed that aspect.”

Dancing began as a hobby for Kim after she immigrated to the U.S. from Korea in 1979, but then she fell hard for what she calls the “artistic sport,” studying in New York with top American and British coaches. She met her ex-husband who would become her dance partner while in New York, and they competed professionally in the U.S. and Korea before opening their L.A. dance studio.

They wanted to attract a Korean clientele, but interest back then was low. “It was hard,” says Kim, who had to take a second job to stay afloat. “[Korean] people were busy running businesses.”

Around the mid-1990s, Kim noticed her business started to pick up and there was a growing interest among Koreans. Just in the last 10 years, she estimates the number of Korean ballroom dance instructors in Southern California has more than doubled from just a handful.

Most of her students — about half of whom are married couples and the rest singles  — dance for fun, not competition.

She believes the aging of the immigrant generation has something to do with the growing number of Korean ballroom aficionados. Her clients tend to be more established financially, their children are grown, and they have more leisure time.

She thinks middle-aged Koreans have become more health conscious and consider ballroom dancing a good form of exercise.

In fact, many ballroom dance practitioners have lost weight from the activity, which is often perceived as a hobby but can be quite a rigorous sport. There have also been studies suggesting that older persons who practice ballroom dancing lower their risk of dementia because of the mental exercise of learning steps.

Since Peter and Anna Park started dancing two years ago, Peter has lost 20 pounds. The 55-year-old businessman and his 53-year-old realtor wife, who are intermediate-level dancers, practice at Susie Kim’s Dancesports studio three times a week.

Anna thinks there has been a change in lifestyle with her middle-class, middle-aged peer group: Before, their lives were defined by work, work, work. “Now you can enjoy life more,” she says.

Sean Chung, who teaches at the Westmor Dance Studios in Los Angeles with his wife Evelyn, says ballroom dancing has helped several of their students overcome health problems. “One man went from a 40 to a 34 waist,” he says.

On a recent Monday, the Chungs are teaching rumba to mostly middle-aged Korean beginners in a small first-floor ballroom.

“You’re doing well!” Sean, a lanky retired engineer, calls out to one student. “Miss Oh, it’s easy, yes?”

Sean came to Los Angeles in 1966, Evelyn in 1959. They met at a church and considered dancing a fun hobby. As they got better at it, they competed as amateurs and began teaching Koreans international style ballroom at Westmor 10 years ago.

“We didn’t know if there was interest,” Sean recalls. “But 24 Koreans showed up (to the first class).“

“When Korean couples reach 50 and kids are grown, they often develop separate hobbies,” Sean observes. “But ballroom dance is the only hobby or sport couples can do together.”

Notably, Korean society historically frowned upon ballroom dancing, which was considered the kind of activity practiced by cheating housewives and their slick younger male partners in smoky cabarets. It was even once thought to be a threat to the family. When the younger generation picked up ballroom dancing abroad and reintroduced it in Korea in the late 1990s, DanceSport got a new lease on life and is now just as popular in Korea as it is worldwide.

How ironic that an activity once thought to be a threat to the institution of the family is now contributing to strengthening Korean marriages, according to several couples.

“Korean American couples over 50 don’t touch or hold hands in public,” says Sun Lee, a 55-year-old nurse. She and husband Michael are advanced students at Westmor. “But touching makes you close,” she says. “Because we dance, twice a week we hug and hold hands.”

Sokwang and Helen Cho have been dancing at the L.A. studio for 10 years.

“Dancing keeps you young,” says Sokwang, 70. “We’ve made friends here, people we travel with on cruises.”

Three nights a week, Julie and Andrew Paek, who live in suburban Fullerton and have two grown children, dine in Koreatown and then fox trot, swing and tango at Susie Kim’s Dancesports studio afterwards. It’s like having weekly dates.

Julie admits, though, she initially hesitated when her husband suggested they take up ballroom dancing. “I didn’t want to [try it] because it had a negative image in Korea,” says Julie. “But then I saw it’s wholesome.”

The Paeks, both engineers, are now advanced students and occasionally attend dance parties and balls, where they get to dress up in a tux and gown.

“We feel like a prince and princess,” Julie says playfully.

There is more interest in ballroom dancing among Koreans than ever before, according to Heung Kim, who studied international ballroom in England and has been teaching dance in the U.S. for 22 years.

“Koreans are more established. They’re thinking of life quality, their marriage and a hobby,” says Kim, whose studio is in Orange County’s Westminster. “Often the man is forced by his wife to join her for lessons. (But) then it becomes their hobby.”

Because ballroom dance involves partnership, it encourages couples to work with and help each other, Kim says. He adds philsophically: “Dancing’s like life.”

Steve Sung, 23   Location: Tustin, Calif.   Total winnings: $1,436,681

By Kai Ma

Steve Sung is so serious about poker that he and his friends rent houses outside the Las Vegas strip, two enormous dual-level abodes that sit in a neighborhood of suburban yuppies. For two months, this is home for Sung, 23, and his young, single, poker-playing comrades, all of whom roll out of bed for one reason only: to call bluffs at a nearby casino.

Both houses have a transitory feel; furniture and décor are sparse, but the tables and floors are cluttered with packaged food, bottles of Gatorade, laptops and video games. While roommates, donning streetgear and diamond earrings, gather in the kitchen to exchange poker tips, Sung, a boyish and soft-spoken South Korean native, remains outside in the 103-degree swelter, watching even more roommates maneuver a remote-controlled airplane over their luxury SUVs.

If they sound like spoiled rich kids unrestrained by parents, debt or rules, it’s because they are. But Sung, Nam Le (“The Man”), Quinn Do (“The Mighty”) and J.C. Tran aren’t blowing away an inheritance or trust fund. Rather, they’re professional pokers players who’ve earned millions off their wins. Sure, as full-time gamblers, they don’t have to clock into a 9-to-5 like most Americans, but they still need to be somewhere every day, whether it’s at the Rio in Vegas or the Venetian in Macau.

In early June, Sung arrived in Las Vegas to compete in the 2008 World Series of Poker, held from May to July at the Rio Hotel and Casino (with a final event slated for November). He’d just returned from the Asian Poker Tour in the Philippines — a competition that also makes stops in China, Singapore and South Korea — and when he isn’t jet-setting to tournaments, he’s at home in Tustin, Calif., playing online poker eight hours a day (going by the poker screen name MuGGyLiCiOuS).

Sung, who grew up with a gambler father, was exposed to the game as a child. During his rookie years, he practiced at casinos illegally and set a goal to win $100 per day. “But that escalated to $10,000,” he says. “When I started, I would lose hundreds, thousands,” adding sheepishly, “then hundreds of thousands. A million. I’ve gambled more than what a person makes in a lifetime.”

By the time he was 18, he’d gone pro. As of this year, Sung has earned more than $1.4 million, and is known in the poker world for an “ultra-aggressive” technique that’s resulted in wins — and losses — amounting to a million dollars in one day.

“I’m not just a high roller,” Sung says. “I’m the highest.”

The World Series of Poker, held annually since 1970, is arguably how poker transformed from a seedy, smoke-filled distraction into a legitimate and thriving spectator sport. As one of the best Korean American players out there, Sung perhaps exemplifies what the new face of poker is all about: young, successful and filthy rich. In joining the rapidly-growing population of celebrity pros, he hopes to stimulate a positive image of the still-stigmatized sport. “I want poker to get bigger, to get nationalized,” he says. “To help people see that it’s more than a gambling game, but a game that requires skill. When it comes down to it, poker isn’t about luck at all.”

Still, Sung rolled his eyes earlier in the day when he realized he was joining 256 players in the first portion of a three-day heads up no-limit hold ’em tournament — on Friday the 13th. Players from around the world, each assigned to an oval-shaped table, gathered in a large conference room as the sound of clacking chips on green felt permeated throughout the room. As his dealer shuffled and distributed the cards, Sung had a black hoodie pulled low over his shaved head, his fair, handsome poker face partially obscured by Yves Saint Laurent sunglasses. White iPod headphones were plugged into his ears.

“Poker can be really boring so I always listen to my own music,” he says in a deep voice that’s prone to mumbling. “Most of the time, I don’t even want to play, but I have to make a living somehow.”

Despite his tedious task, Sung’s face was flushed with relief after winning the first portion of the tournament, allowing him to advance to the next round.

“People think that poker is so easy; they see people winning all the time,” says Sung. “What they don’t see is how often we’re losing. I still go back and forth. In the beginning [of my career], I was like, man, what am I doing?” he mutters, with a nervous chuckle. “Could I do this as a living? Like, this can’t really be good, you know?”

Risky business

In 1998, John Dahl’s film Rounders exposed the world of high-stakes poker, becoming a cult classic among Texas hold ’em enthusiasts and igniting a revamped interest in betting on cards.

“Poker is not a fad anymore,” says Bernard Lee, poker pro and author of The Final Table, a compilation of poker columns. “It’s part of not only pop culture, but a part of Americana.”

But the big boom is often credited to Chris Moneymaker, an amateur who nonetheless won the 2003 World Series of Poker title by knocking out legendary pros such as Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey, walking away with $2.5 million. Says Lee, “All of a sudden, the world went, ‘Holy Christ, I can do that!’ After that, the finals went from 839 players to 8,700 in three years. Tack on ESPN’s coverage of all of this, put it all together: Poker just exploded.”

More Korean Americans are rising to prominence in the poker domain, pulling in serious cash, receiving sponsorships and enjoying their unique status as “sports celebrities” despite never having to hit the gym. Douglas “Technologic” Kim, 24, earned $2.4 million after coming in seventh place in the 2006 World Series main event, and the year before, Lee, 38, rose to prominence after finishing 13th, winning $400,000.

“When I was young,” recalls Lee, “my father and his brothers would come over, and they would be downstairs screaming at each other, saying, ‘I won, you idiot!’ I would sit at the top of the stairs, thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is so cool. If this is what it’s like to be a Korean man, sign me up.’”

Yet as poker is becoming increasingly legitimate, widespread and celebrated, there is a growing anxiety among mental health and substance abuse providers over the fate of gamblers in Asian American communities.

To be fair, poker is unlike blackjack, craps or the lottery in that it’s a game more based on skill and acuity than pure, dumb luck. But for Dr. Timothy Fong, co-director of UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program, poker is problematic — and dangerous — if the desire to play compromises or disrupts the basic needs and functions of an individual. “I know poker players that I don’t see as gamblers,” he says. “I see them as businessmen. But if they live in a flophouse, are in debt, don’t talk to friends and family or don’t have relationships, that’s different. The question is: How much impact does the gambling have on a person’s behavior? Does it add to life, or take away?”

The American Psychiatric Association defines pathological gambling as a mental illness, an impulse control disorder that can result in unemployment, bankruptcy, criminal activity, divorce, suicide — even murder.

In the recent past, violent deaths have been linked to gambling addictions among Korean American fathers. In 2006, Dae Kwon Yun of Los Angeles, who reportedly gambled, was charged with murder after locking himself and his two children in his SUV and setting it on fire. The same week, Bong Joo Lee of Fontana fatally shot his daughter with a 9-millimeter handgun before taking his own life. According to police, Lee was distraught over a gambling debt of $200,000.

“Many of these cases are not traced back to the root cause, which is gambling addiction,” Fong says.

In 2005, the Korea Daily reported that roughly 7 percent of South Koreans are addicted to online gambling, and according to a 2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, recent surveys have suggested that 20 percent of South Korean adults are problem or pathological gamblers. Data remains scarce and inconsistent, and there’s even less on the rates of gambling disorders among Asian Americans.

“There aren’t any statistics because gambling is private and there is a stigma against counseling,” says Hyun Hwang of the Asian Counseling Services in Tacoma. “But I would say 4 to 5 percent [of the Korean population] has a problem in the United States, and 10 to 20 percent have a problem in South Korea.”

The most commonly-cited numbers for Asians in the United States is a decade-old study conducted in San Francisco’s Chinatown by the NICOS Chinese Gambling Project, which revealed that 70 percent of 1,808 respondents placed gambling as the community’s primary problem. Fong replicated the study in Los Angeles, and found that the majority of Asians were aware that gambling could lead to addiction, but didn’t know where to seek help or found the problem untreatable. A common belief, says Fong, is that gamblers are predestined to lose and should not be helped.

“There hasn’t been a pull to get rid of [gambling],” says Fong. “Koreans, for the most part, are suffering quietly or saying, ‘We accept it.’ But this an unrecognized, undertreated and underdiagnosed condition. We know that treatment works. There’s just a lack of it.”

Which is why Tony L., a 50-year-old recovering gambler who asked his last name not be published, helps run a Korean-language intervention program in Atlanta, Ga. During college, L. visited Atlantic City and got hooked on blackjack, but is now in recovery.

“Gambling was like cancer to me,” he says in Korean. “It’s an invisible addiction, unlike drugs and alcohol. You keep trying to borrow money from everyone around you, making up any and every lie you can. And you always promise to pay them back, but you never do.”

World Series finalist Douglas Kim, who bets only within a “margin of safety,” doesn’t worry about addiction, but admits to feeling conflicted about his profession. “Poker is a zero-sum game,” he says. “People have to lose for others to win. I’ve heard stories of guys chasing losses, losing four, five thousand and trying to rob a bank [to pay off their debt]. A part of me thinks about that from time to time.”

After Kim, a devout Christian, won $2.4 million in the 2006 World Series, he donated a chunk to various churches, including his own, Remnant Westside Church in Manhattan.

But, “my church didn’t take the money,” he says. “The pastor said he wouldn’t feel comfortable using it.”

Sin City

Las Vegas, as one of the most visited places on Earth, is a city of contradictions, a sprawling desert sliced by a strip of manufactured gloss. There is little refuge from the perennial ding of slot machines, or the gaudy, crystal chandeliers that bloom like jellyfish. Aptly known as “Lost Wages,” it’s a place that draws the rich and the wretched, the glamorous and the tawdry, where freakishly tall sequined-and-feathered strippers roam with suburban grandmas in fanny packs.

Everything, from the frat boys roaring around a roulette table, to the old ladies hypnotized by spinning numbers, exposes all that is enticing and wrong about American extravagance.

Even the floor of the McCarran International Airport is speckled with bleeping engines beckoning players as soon as they tumble out from their planes. On the second floor, Senior Pastor Paul Chong of the Las Vegas Presbyterian Church emerges, a composed minority in Sin City’s sea of sun-kissed tourists and party animals.

On this June afternoon, he is picking up Elizabeth Bae, a former pathological gambler who is flying in from Los Angeles to help launch a support program for Korean problem gamblers in the area.

“Gambling is a problem for Koreans in all parts of America,” says Chong. “Immigrants have an American Dream. They want to succeed, and they think that the jackpot will change everything. But gamblers will lose everything. They will even lose their lives.”

Yet as a pastor in Las Vegas, Chong finds himself re-evaluating much of what he’s learned about Christian theology, particularly how it pertains to the $90 billion gaming industry. More than half of his Korean-language congregation are employed as dealers for casinos such as the MGM Grand and Caesar’s Palace, and also partake in gambling while off the clock. “Is gambling a sin? Yes and no. As a pastor, should I say to my members that it is a sin, so they must change their jobs? Or not? I don’t know. It’s really hard to define so-called Christian ethics here in Las Vegas.”

Chong began a ministry-based recovery program, modeled after Gamblers Anonymous, as part of a broader shoestring network of recovery programs for Korean gamblers nationwide. In the past three years, Korean churches have hosted meetings in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Atlanta. To help with the Las Vegas arm, Chong enlisted Bae earlier this year, and later in the day, the two will conduct their first meeting.

When Bae arrives, the 78-year-old embraces the pastor, her wild, curly hair billowing from behind an enormous visor. She is dressed in a bright canary blazer, white pants and sneaker sandals, and on her finger is an emerald ring the size of a radish.

In the past decade, casinos and card rooms have multiplied in the West Coast, paving the way for more senior citizens to socialize through gambling. On any weekend, popular Korean-language tour buses can transport California-based elders to Las Vegas, Reno and Palm Springs, unleashing them in casinos for 24 hours plus. Does Bae ever feel the urge?

“No,” she says, with unapologetic frankness. “I don’t gamble, not even the $1 lottery. No more. Because I am going to lose. I know that now. I don’t gamble nothing.”

Bae gambled for nearly two decades, and her toxic past still haunts her. “It was killing me so good,” she says, her face crinkling up with disgust. “I felt numb. I spent days gambling, without sleeping. I was that compulsive.”

At 39, she started gambling while living in South Korea, playing cards with other wives and neighbors. This quickly morphed into obsessions with baccarat, blackjack, sic bo, pai gow, and poker. “I gambled everywhere,” she says. “I lost about 10 apartments in Korea. I cannot count how much cash I lost. I didn’t have any hope [of actually quitting]. I thought I had to kill myself in order to stop; I had to die. I desperately asked God to kill me, or to help me. I was out of my mind already at that time.”

For years, Bae reluctantly accepted her costly routine, due to what she describes as the Korean cultural attitude that gamblers are doomed. “Koreans believe there’s no way for gamblers to stop, that we are gamblers until we die.” When she began gambling, her mother urged Bae to throw herself into the Han River [in Seoul]. “My mother told me, ‘Kill yourself; whatever it takes.’ She didn’t live long enough to see me stop. That is the most painful.”

Bae moved to the United States in 1979, and hit rock bottom in Atlantic City’s Atlantic Palace Hotel. After gambling for days, she lost $16,000.

“I’d lost everything,” she recalls, sighing loudly. “All my money was gone, and I was so desperate that I wanted to kill myself, for real. This is the gambler’s life. Miserable.”

By chance, a security guard at her bank recognized that she had a problem, and passed along a Gamblers Anonymous hotline. In 1986, Bae placed her last bet and made the call. She is now a secretary for an Anaheim chapter for Koreans. “I am living proof that even Korean people can stop gambling,” she says. Bae credits her family as her saving grace, and when she says, “They respect me now,” she proudly opens her wallet, smiling down at a photograph of her daughter, now 40, and her husband of 50 years.

All or nothing

On a Saturday morning, Steve Sung is in the pit of the Bellagio, the iconic Las Vegas hotel and casino known for its dancing fountains and rippling, turquoise pond. Near his table, French doors open to a view of the sparkling Planet Hollywood, a faux (and much shorter) Eiffel Tower, and in the distance, a row of mountains parched by sun.

Sung has a room at the hotel, even though his house is a 10-minute drive away. “I’m just spoiled that way,” he says. He sits alone at a blackjack table, watching his dealer’s fingers fly over a deck of cards like butterflies.

When Sung started gambling, he often fell into the pit, chasing losses and blowing thousands. “That really messed me up,” he recalls. “I’d lose $2,000 in poker, and I’d be pissed off, so I’d try to make it back real fast, and lose more and more and more.”

Despite his success in years past, he still can’t resist his card-counting pastime.

“It calms me,” he says, though his actions suggest otherwise. Multicolored, speckled chips — each worth thousands — click under his nervous, frenetic fingertips, some resting under the small tattoo on his wrist. In minutes, he loses $60,000 at the table, only to seize more chips from a nearby friend playing craps. “This is crazy,” Sung mutters, walking straight to another table.

Sung does not believe he’s addicted to poker though admits to a different type of compulsion. “I’m addicted to making money,” he says.

When asked if he’s worried about losing it all, he shakes his head. “I don’t have fear, whatsoever,” he says. Later he admits to knowing poker players who’ve wiped out their savings. “Most of the poker world is broke.”

By next week, Sung will cash in for the first time since the series started, collecting $46,001 and $30,738 in two separate tournaments. But today, he remains in the pit, looking fidgety and anxious. He’s hungover, and hasn’t eaten all day. His knee is bouncing, and he barks at the cocktail waitress for fresh-squeezed orange juice, rolling his eyes because his dealer is too slow.

“Faster, faster,” he snaps at her. “Just take my money, take it quick.”

“I’m getting crushed,” he says, glaring at his chips. “I’m pretty sick in the head to be doing what I do.”

Additional reporting by Lola Pak.

Finishing The Game

On July 15, Korean American professional poker players Kelly Kim and David “Chino” Rheem topped off as two of the nine finalists of the 2008 World Series main event, receiving $900,670 each and earning a seat at the closing table this November. “No matter what happens [in November], I’m here and it’s great,” says Kim, 31, from his home in Whittier, Calif. “I have everything to gain and nothing to lose.” The 11-hour game concluded with Rheem, 26, holding 10.2 million chips, and Kim trailing behind with 2.6 million. The “final nine” have three months to bag their chips before returning to the Rio Hotel and Casino to compete for the renowned championship title and a hefty $9.12 million prize.

—Kai Ma

Buying vegetables in Monze’s outdoor produce market, 28 kilometers from Kazungula Village, where I lived for two years.

By Andrew Jo

“You. How is Hong Kong?’

In many ways this question, posed to me at Lusaka’s Inner City Bus Terminal, followed by my reaction, illustrates my cultural experiences as an Asian American in Zambia.

For some, such a racial assumption might provoke anger. I look at it as a chance to educate those with limited exposure to Asian faces. I laugh and explain: I am Korean by blood and American everything else.

For the past 30 months, I have served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa, bordered by eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north; Tanzania to the northeast; Malawi to the east; Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south; and Angola to the west. As with the majority of sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV and AIDS epidemic is widespread here; its 15 to 34 percent adult prevalence has contributed greatly to child mortality rates and the decimation of the working class. Once the product of a booming copper industry, Zambia today stands as one of the world’s poorest countries.

But for me, Zambia is not properly captured in its statistics or geography. Zambia is simply home.

My experiences living and working in Kazungula Village in the Southern Province of Zambia have made it so. Lying beneath the country’s Central and Lusaka Provinces, the Southern Province illustrates every nature enthusiast’s quintessential Africa, with its Baobab trees, fields of long brown grass, seemingly endless flatlands and grazing cows. It is against this backdrop that I worked on an education project that aimed to teach rural students — most of whom could not physically get to schools — English, math, science, and life skills through nationally broadcasted lessons. For two years my job was to help make sure those who wanted access to this service knew how to get it and to provide training and support for their teachers.

I knew as far back as high school that community service was rewarding, but never imagined that this mindset would lead me to live and work in Africa. That began to shift in 2002 when my mother took me to Kenya as part of a two-week mission trip with her church. By the end of 2005, one semester away from obtaining a journalism degree, I was confused and uncertain about my life’s intended path. Then I began reading about the Peace Corps. On my mind were its benefits, possible countries of service, access to health care, as well as how this organization would prepare me, physically and professionally, not only in the developing world, but for life post-service.

I only researched these surface-level issues, never delving as deeply into how racial components would factor into the experience. When the time came to interview with a recruiter, I told him that I wanted to be as much of a minority as possible, that I didn’t want to serve in Asia.

Before arriving in Zambia, I was a 25-year-old baseball fanatic from South Pasadena, Calif., and all I had to prepare myself were the few courses in African/Black Studies I took at San Francisco State University and the Welcome to Zambia booklet sent to me by the Peace Corps. But, in a sense, I’m not sure what kind of training could have prepared me for an experience that has altered my perceptions of race and redefined the meanings of the words accomplishment, home and comfort.

In a way, it is the challenges of everyday living that I have come to love the most about life here: getting water from a pump, eating rice and soy every day, scrubbing my dirty laundry by hand, relieving myself in a grass-thatched pit latrine. And then there are those intangible things that I will always have with me, even after I resume a life of convenience in the United States: the courteous nature of the Zambian people, and their deep respect of and care for the elders in their community.

Obviously, as an Asian American, I tend to stand out here. But surprisingly, being such a noticeable minority has not made me focus so much on how people treat my culture, but more on how I treat others. My experience has reversed the cultural microscope: I now find myself looking up at the eye rather than down at the specimen.

In distinguishing these vantage points, I have recognized my most significant growth. As a 16-year-old, I remember laughing at jokes about an African transfer student who joined our high school class. His dark skin and distinct facial features were foreign to a student body comprised primarily of Caucasian, Asian and Latino backgrounds. Comments like “the water hole is that way,” or the clicking of our tongues in mocking fashion permeated the group of friends I associated with.

What did I know about Africa? My exposure to the continent hadn’t gone further than a bushman and his Coke bottle — an image from the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. It is only now that I understand what this student had gone through. His journey and isolation. His response … nothing.

Perhaps that is why I choose not to respond with anger toward villagers who assume being Asian equals Chinese and having a vast knowledge of the martial arts. Instead, I explain that China is not the only country in Asia, just as Zambia is not the only country in Africa. That the United States is made up of people and cultures from all over the world, even from Zambia.

Sensitizing people in my village is rewarding, but I notice that I have failed to take the same approach in town, where I am more likely to encounter Zambians with greater exposure to foreigners. Instead, I am more likely to respond as my African classmate did: with pacificism, or passivity.

For some reason, I had unjustly determined that cultural insensitivity was something that came more commonly from black Zambians and not from other mizungus, as most non-black Zambians are commonly referred to. I was reminded of just how false this belief was as I was waiting for a woman to finish her transaction at an ATM machine in Livingstone, one of Zambia’s more heavily populated urban areas and its tourist capital.

After I had finished, this woman, who was white, approached me and asked if I had copied her pin number. I didn’t know whether she was serious, so I laughed a bit and told her that that was not the case. She looked relieved and told me she was worried about a recent identity theft scam, adding that she knew “people from your country are really good with electronics.”

I didn’t completely absorb what had been said to me until the woman had walked away. I was too rehearsed in brushing comments aside that by the time I put it all together, she was out of sight. It was one of those days that made me wonder what I was doing here.

This encounter made me realize that cultural ignorance does not have racial or color barriers. I thought about my friends and I clicking our tongues while talking to that African student.

Today, everything about life in Zambia seems natural to me, like home. I am used to meetings being scheduled and rescheduled due to a lack of communication; the long, bumpy transportation; the baby crying at the sight of me, an exotic Asian face. Zambian pop music sounds great to me, and nothing brings me more joy than seeing a Zambian athlete succeed.

Still, I know my time here is temporary and that reaching everybody with a message is impossible. That idealism, after all, is not why I came to Zambia. Reaching those I have spent my time with — those are the lives I have enlightened, and theirs have enlightened mine. That was the goal. That I can take back with me as an accomplishment.

I can also take back what stands out as my most memorable day here. Because HIV and AIDS have taken such a significant hold on the country, every Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, regardless of his or her project, is trained to work on these issues in some capacity. As a volunteer of the education project, I decided to try to get as many Zambian teachers tested for the virus as possible. Many teachers said they would get tested, but in the end, I sensed most were too scared to go through with it.

I, however, did accompany one teacher, my closest friend in Kazungula Village, to get tested. As a Peace Corps volunteer in projects that preach sustainability, I was taught not to focus on the visible impact I was making, but more on the transfer of skills throughout a community. But this day showed me something visible: someone’s life had changed before my eyes. This teacher greets each day knowing now he is HIV negative.

As my time in Zambia comes to an end, I find myself in the same position I was in when I departed for this country. Questions of what I will miss about the U.S. are replaced with what I will miss about Zambia.

Many Peace Corps volunteers say that returning home is much harder than leaving. The incoming transition much tougher than the out. I will not come to realize this sensation until I have actually parted ways with Zambia.

All I know now is that leaving home was hard in 2006. As with any place you call home, leaving, again, will be the hardest part.