Nov. 11, 1989—Berlin, Germany. Thousands of East and West Germans gathered on and around the Berlin Wall to celebrate immediately after the border crossing points that divided Berlin were finally opened. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which separated East Germany from West Germany from 1961 until Nov. 9, 1989. © DPA/ZUMA Press

By Paul L. Liem

As we watched the Berlin Wall tumble down, “we wept from the heartbreak of sorrow mixed with joy,” recalls Jungran Shin, a financial advisor in Los Angeles. Separated from relatives in North Korea, Shin felt a longing to “break down into pieces…the barbed-wire fences that block the 38th parallel.” Rev. Syngman Rhee, co-chair of the National Committee for Peace in Korea, says the fall of the Berlin Wall ignited among Koreans new hope for peace and reconciliation, “even though we fully realized that the German situation was quite different from the Korean situation.”

The division of Germany came about partly as a penalty for Nazi aggression. Korea, however, had been a colony of Japan since 1910 and Korean guerilla units in Manchuria fought against the Japanese during World War II. “I don’t know why Korea was punished,” laments Ik Kil Shin, an activist. Shin (no relation to Jungran Shin), was 10 years old when the war in Korea broke out. “Korea was not the aggressor, but the U.S. treated Korea and Korean people as enemies, and carved up the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel,” he says. “It resulted in war. I survived by running away from machine-gun bullets from the war airplanes.”

Though an armistice was signed in 1953 to pause the fighting, no peace treaty was ever signed. Millions of family members remain separated by the division. “I lost my father due to the war,” explains Ann Rhee Menzie, executive director of the Korean Community Center of the East Bay in Oakland, Calif. “He apparently left my mom and children to go north, thinking that he would return shortly, but he never returned. He never even knew that he had left my mom pregnant with a third child. The pain still hurts my mother, now 85.”

Unlike those interviewed for this article, I was born in the United States as the war raged on in 1952. But at age 37, as I watched pieces of the Berlin Wall lie in rubble on television, the “wall” in Korea remained impenetrable. I wondered if my parents, both born in the North, would live to see Korea reunified. As time would tell, they did not, and on the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the division of Korea appears steadfast as ever.

Still, the reunification of Germany was extremely important not only for Germans, but for Koreans everywhere. “It encouraged me to think that there is always a possibility of change in human history,” the Rev. Rhee says. “There had been some courageous people, in East and West Germany, who worked hard for a vision of one united Germany; their conviction mattered.”

Koreans have taken giant strides toward reunifying their country. The minjok (popular) movements of the 1980s put an end to dictatorship in South Korea, making possible widespread public advocacy for intra-Korean reconciliation. Summit meetings held between the leaders of North and South Korea, in 2000 and 2007, charted out concrete steps toward healing the Cold War wounds that divide the country. But the Cold War in Korea is also an international conflict. The United States and North Korea, as well as North and South Korea, are still technically at war. As long as the standoff remains, so will the division.

To those of the Korean diaspora, Mrs. Shin urges more vocal participation in demanding that the United States changes the Korean War armistice into a peace treaty, normalizes relations, and resolves the nuclear issue with North Korea.

“We have to support our brothers in the North who are struggling with cold and hunger and pain, and we have to help them play a role in international society by offering our hands,” she says. “Now is the time for us to change our fate with our will.”

By Smriti Rao
Photograph by Peter Ash Lee

On Veterans Day, as President Obama laid a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery, he did so with the full knowledge that for Americans serving across the world, the face of war had changed forever.

No longer are our wars overseas fought solely by men—but also, by an increasing number of women.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first conflicts in which tens of thousands of American military women have lived, worked and fought for prolonged periods, cultivating a new breed of female combatants.

Yet a startling congressional report by the Department of Defense (released in March) revealed that one in three female combatants experience rape or attempted rape during their military service. The data indicated that there were 2,923 sexual assaults reported in fiscal 2008—a nearly 8 percent spike over the previous year.

In The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, author Helen Benedict describes sexual assault against female service members in Iraq. As one soldier explains in the book, “There are only three kinds of females the men let you be in the military: a bitch, a ho or a dyke.”

One 21-year-old soldier Benedict profiled took to carrying a knife with her at all times. “The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,” said Spc. Mickiela Montoya, who served in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005. “It was for the guys on my own side,” she told the author, who interviewed more than 20 Iraq veterans for her book.

Staff Sergeant Sandra Lee, who served in Iraq from December 2003 to October 2004, knows exactly what Montoya is talking about.

Raped twice by a fellow soldier during her deployment in Baghdad, Lee, 33, has been drawing attention to the rising cases of sexual assault within the ranks.

Working with Veterans for Peace, a nonprofit organization based in St. Louis, Missouri, Lee kicked off their “Military Awareness” campaign in October by making her first public statement about the assaults.

That statement is documented on YouTube. On October 13, during a march in New York City, Lee said, “How could I let this happen to me? I feel stupid, I feel ashamed, I feel shattered,” she continued, recalling her emotions after getting raped. Her voice trembled as she expressed her shame and her failure to report the crime.

After several years of silence, Lee is determined to help other women cope with sexual assault by talking openly about it.
“This person,” says Lee, referring to her rapist, “was someone I knew and trusted. It was a friend and a trusted relationship.”

***

On a recent evening in Manhattan, Lee, a trained opera singer, jokes that she can hold her high notes just as well as she handles her service weapon.

In New York’s glitzy theater district, she could not be farther away from Iraq’s bombs and mortars, but diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder upon her return, the war still rages in her mind.

Lee, deployed as part of the Civil Affairs brigade in 2003, was one of the thousands of soldiers in Iraq who despite holding non-combat roles, ended up performing dangerous duties, including looking for improvised explosive devices (commonly referred to as IEDs or roadside bombs) and tasked with rebuilding infrastructure in a war zone.

When Lee first heard about her deployment to Baghdad she recalls her jubilant reaction. “My first reaction was ‘Great!’ Iraq was the place to be!” she says. But when her unit landed in the ravaged city, reality hit home. “There can be no training on what to expect [in a war zone],” she says. “It’s so unpredictable. You can’t train for that.”

Lee was overcome with exhaustion, coping not just with the physical toll of being in Iraq, but also with the mental fatigue of being on guard 24/7.

She recalls an atmosphere where inappropriate remarks and unwanted attention from the male soldiers was the norm. “The harassment is shocking!” exclaims Lee. “It is unreal.”

Then one evening in 2004, a male colleague raped her. It was the first of two such incidents. Lee kept her silence.
Lee’s story echoes the findings of an annual Pentagon report to Congress earlier this year, stating 165 instances of reported sexual assault during a six-month period from the Iraq and Afghanistan military campaigns alone; a 26 percent rise over the previous year.

Despite the assaults, Lee, bogged down by shame and a fear of retribution, did not report the incidents to her superiors. “How will they judge me?” she recalls thinking, explaining her reluctance.

Female soldiers can report rape in the military in two ways. “Restricted reporting” allows a victim to report rape anonymously and seek medical and emotional counseling. But restricted reporting does not trigger an official investigation, leaving victims wary that their attackers will find out about the complaint and come after them, analysts say.

Under “unrestricted reporting,” victims can go directly to the commanding officer of their unit and register their complaint. But most of the commanders are male and as a result, notes retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel Ann Wright, less than 8 percent of reported rapes result in prosecution.

“Even when the perpetrators are convicted, they seldom go to jail for rape,” adds Wright, who is a member of Veterans for Peace. “The atmosphere in the military is looking the other way and not forcefully prosecuting. In their eyes, the value of a man’s career is higher than a woman’s.”

Due to shame, fear and low prosecution rates, less than 20 percent of assaulted female soldiers report these crimes.
For victims, however, the trauma barely ends there.

In an institution where esprit de corps and camaraderie are the name of the game, the victim and perpetrator continue to serve side-by-side.

“The difficult thing is to turn around and defend this person,” says Lee, referring to her rapist, with whom she continued to serve in Iraq for an entire year. “I felt awkward, uncomfortable.”

When these victims return home from duty, depression sets in. “They have anger, mistrust, and go into periods of isolation,” says Wright. “They start going down a dangerous spiral.”

Which is exactly what happened to Lee. In October 2004, she returned home, harboring her dark secret. She went back to school in Portland to continue pursuing her degree in international relations.

In class, Lee was angry and irritable. Off campus, she felt agitated, constantly sweeping her eyes to the sides of the road while driving, mentally checking for bombs as she’d done in Iraq. She withdrew completely and didn’t share her anxieties with family or friends.

Lee continued to train as a reservist with her unit in Portland, but it wasn’t until 2007 that her symptoms were recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Lee finally admitted to her doctors that she was raped. All the emotions she’d suppressed over the years came flooding back.

Now, Lee bristles with anger over how the military is “sweeping this issue under the rug.” Though she still has not officially reported her rapist, she is urging victims to speak openly—as she has. As Lee confronts her past, she is also currently engaged in a dispute with the military over disability benefits and worries she might be “other than honorably discharged.”
But she says she has no regrets. “I don’t disdain the military,” says Lee. “My job was fulfilling. I went to Iraq. I was part of history!” she exclaims, even as her eyes well up with tears.

So what can the U.S. military do to prevent these alarming rises in sexual assault?

“There needs to be more than a PowerPoint presentation,” Lee says, referring to the mandatory sexual assault awareness training that many soldiers find tedious.

Wright of Veterans for Peace, meanwhile, calls for greater prosecution.

As more women continue to volunteer for the army, Wright cautions them to be cognizant of what they are signing up for. “Women are not warned that they could be raped in the army,” she says. “Women are being treated improperly by the institution, only because they don’t press charges. It is high time the institution started acting responsibly towards this huge sector of the population.”

Social scientist Dr. Laura Miller of the non-partisan, nonprofit think tank, The Rand Corporation, emphasizes that female soldiers need to talk openly about their assault to break the circle of shame.

“The role has expanded in terms of women who are serving in the military,” she says. “Women are now more integrated; they’re in fighter aircrafts, combat ships. But the military is still disproportionately male.

“Being in a war zone is not like being on a base in the U.S., where you have cameras, lights,” Miller adds. “In a deployed environment, you have a lot of people coming and going, you are exposed to each other 24/7, so it provides opportunities for people with those proclivities.”

Today, there are more than 216,000 women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, making up almost 11.3 percent of the nearly 2 million U.S. active duty and National Guard troops and reservists sent to both war zones.

Many of these mothers, daughters, sisters and wives will eventually return home—some scarred by the violence of war and mutilated bodies. Others, by the trauma of sexual assault.

Some soldiers, like Lee, remain haunted by both.

Ken Jeong in The Hangover.

If to be typically Asian is to be quiet, docile and conventional, then every now and then it may be worth it to surprise us all and go amok.

Sure, it may seem like committing social or political suicide, but won’t it feel good to break down a few stereotypes while you’re at it?

That’s why I’m encouraged by the emergence of a totally amok force that is single-handedly changing the Asian male image in Hollywood.

Without one karate chop in sight.

He’s not the lead, but he’s a scene-stealer, arguably the most memorable guy in any production he’s in. It’s mostly because you don’t expect anything out of him. He’s a normal looking Asian American. And then he does his thing, usually something like a loud crowing “ai-yi-yi-yi” at the top of his lungs, accented with a “muthafu*ka!” thrown in for good measure.
Who he? That’s what most people ask when they see “that Asian guy”—Ken Jeong. A Korean American doctor (so we know he’s smarter than the average bear), Jeong broke the chains of convention and started doing a standup routine that turned the Asian American male stereotype on its head.

Asian doctors, yeah. But why no Asian veterinarians? Jeong’s answer: “They’ll eat all their patients.”

Small-fry stuff. But then he hit the big screen. In Knocked Up, the doctor plays an ob-gyn and delivers a gut-busting soliloquy on the differences in the labor time of white women vs. Asians. And then there’s his “guy in the car trunk” antics in The Hangover, where he is a combination anti-Jackie Chan and a modern day send-up of a Fu-Manchu-less villain. Oh, and did I mention? He’s NAKED. On television, Jeong has a continuing role on NBC’s Community, where he plays a weird fish out of water: The Asian Spanish teacher (hey, shouldn’t that be a Filipino?) But for me, his most memorable TV appearance was on a recent Conan O’Brien spot. Jeong hijacked the show by messing mercilessly with the previous guest, tennis phenom Serena Williams, who didn’t know what hit her. I saw it as sweet revenge for Williams’ tongue lashing of that poor Asian American tennis judge at this year’s U.S. Open. After Jeong’s public teasing, I’m sure Williams had a different sense of Asian Americans.

They’re not so quiet after all.

CREATING NEW STEREOTYPES

The importance of an amok Asian male image on movies and television is significant considering this is where our stereotypes are created and reinforced. Since World War II, the Asian male image in pop culture has suffered mostly due to a residual backlash against foreign Asian male enemies like Emperor Hirohito. The modern day version would be Kim Jong-il. The result has been an inability to embrace the Asian American male in Hollywood’s image machine, which for generations has given us the likes of Warner Oland as Charlie Chan and Mickey Rooney’s bucktooth Asian. What’s more mocking than a white guy in yellow face? It was the comic standard. Asian males were perfect for vilification, emasculation, and overall, denigration. When Shaquille O’Neal starts “ching chonging” like it’s no big deal (remember how he mocked Yao?), we’re in trouble. Of course, we’ve had Bruce Lee and all the martial arts guys to retaliate. But they were imported stars. That makes it positively refreshing to see Jeong infiltrate Hollywood with a modern version of an Asian American male that is loud, obscene, and takes no crap from anybody.

HAROLD AND HUNG
Let us not forget another Korean American, John Cho, who in the Harold and Kumar franchise, has updated the “opium smoking Asian” with the modern “pot smoking Asian” stereotype. Cho’s a good actor, but his acting presence is a more traditional and earnest one. Jeong’s amokness is so surprising, it’s over-the-top funny.

One might ask, “Is that the image we Asian Americans want?” Well, at least they’re laughing with us, and not at us. That’s progress.

The same cannot be said for one William Hung, whose awful singing on American Idol made him an Asian American Stepin Fetchit.

Hung was real, which made him pathetic. Jeong is a real talent, a comic genius.

Certainly, there have been Asian male comic actors before.

But in his films, Jeong is an Asian guy who breaks out of his yellow skin. We aren’t used to seeing that kind of out-of-the-box Asian, the one capable of breaking every tired stereotype, creating a few new ones, and leaving everyone in his wake laughing uncontrollably.

It’s a dangerous new Asian male image. Lethally funny.

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, one-time host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and author of Amok: Essays From An Asian American Perspective. After 14 years at AsianWeek, he was considered the most widely read columnist on Asian American issues in the United States. He blogs at www.amok.com.

Text and Photographs by Arin Yoon

When Koreans immigrate to the United States, they recreate what they know, a sense of home.
They eat the same food they did in Korea, but it never tastes the same. They reconstruct familiar notions of space within the context of a foreign environment. This leads to alienation and nostalgia. “Koreatown” is a project in which I document the lives of immigrants living in the United States. Through careful compositions of my subjects, I blend them into their environments, playing with the notions of adaptation and assimilation. I reveal a new idea of space, incorporating in my images the paradox of closeness and isolation.

Credit for photo above:
Bora Kneeling (Narcissism), 2006
Brooklyn, New York
She knelt on the ground to look at something on the floor.
Suddenly, she resembled Narcissus, the beautiful youth who fell in love with his own reflection.

Ahjussi Playing Piano, 2007
Cliffside Park, New Jersey
I met him around town, and his beauty and grace struck me.
He was once an artist, but now, a tailor.

Young Gathering Leaves, 2006
Leonia, New Jersey
After my parents divorced, my mother inherited all the fatherly chores. I feel simultaneously saddened and amused, watching her rake leaves in a designer skirt and red rubber gloves.

Ahjussi Smoking, 2007
Cliffside Park, New Jersey
As my aunt would say, “He was looking at the far mountains.”

Young in a Yellow Hanbok, 2006
Leonia, New Jersey
She danced and posed as she did as a girl.

Young in the Bathroom Mirror, 2004
Leonia, New Jersey
Passing by, she saw herself.

Young Ironing, 2004
Leonia, New Jersey
In her dry cleaning store.

Arin Yoon is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. Her work has been exhibited at the Visual Arts Theater, Visual Arts Gallery, Open Center and Chicago Humanities Institute.  She emigrated from Korea as a child, and grew up in New Jersey. To view more of her work, visit www.arinyoon.com.

By Sophia Kim
Photograph by Elizabeth Kim

Throngs of giddy fans lined Hollywood Boulevard across from the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Nov. 19, hoping to catch a glimpse, and maybe press the flesh, of the South Korean pop idol, Rain. It was a night that many die-hard Clouds (as Rain fans are called) had been anticipating for months—the Los Angeles premiere of Ninja Assassin, a martial arts action film in which “Bi,” as he is called in Korean, plays the lead role.

Paulina Yeung, one of the artist’s many international fans, said she flew in from Hong Kong just for the premiere. “I want to support Rain, to be here for him,” said Yeung, a retired government worker who wouldn’t give her age, but revealed she has a college-aged daughter. “Him being Asian, I am so proud.”

In Ninja Assassin, Rain plays Raizo, an orphan who is trained by the secret-society Ozunu Clan to become a deadly assassin. He later seeks revenge against the clan when his female friend is executed by the group’s leader, played by legendary martial arts performer Sho Kosugi. Produced by the Wachowski brothers of The Matrix triology and directed by James McTeigue, who directed V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin opened nationwide and around the world on Nov. 25.

Over the holiday weekend, the film—competing against The Twilight Saga: New Moon—ranked in sixth place, earning $13.1 million over three days. Two days later, it‘d brought in a total of $21 million.

The film also features several Korean American actors, including Rick Yune, Sung Kang and Randall Duk Kim.
At Ninja Assassin’s Los Angeles premiere, two long banners congratulating Rain on his first lead role in a Hollywood movie were placed on the sidewalk where fans congregated. One banner from Rain’s South American fans read, “Rain, Your Fans Around the World Are Always With You.”

“Isilbalie,” who asked to be identified by her online screen name because she took a day off of work to attend the premiere, said she brought the banner from Seattle, Washington. “We’d promised the South American fans that we’d carry it to the premiere. We’ll give it to Rain’s company as a gift,” said the white middle-aged woman who became a Rain fan after watching his popular Korean drama, Full House.

At about 6:30 p.m., she and hundreds of other Clouds let out high-pitched screams as Rain stepped out of his car, looking quite debonair in a dark gray pin-striped suit over a black shirt and a solid magenta-colored tie. His short hair stylishly tousled at the top, the superstar took off his shades and broke into a broad smile. Much to the delight of his fans, he walked across the street to shake hands and sign autographs.

Inside the theater, a group of young female fans sitting in the front cried out, “Oppa!” (“big brother”) when he entered. And after the lights went out, female voices let out intermittent “aahs” when Rain bared his chest and performed his acrobatic slice-‘em-dice-‘em stunts with chains, knives, swords, and flying stars.

Jinny Shim, from Los Angeles Koreatown, said Rain’s performance left her “speechless.” Not only were his eyes “very charismatic,” said the 22-year-old, but she loved all the scenes where Rain was shirtless and doing push-ups.

Outside the theater, Kiki Smith, showed off her autographed poster of Rain, calling him “my hero.” The 20-year-old African American woman said she got hooked on Rain’s music and TV dramas, adding, “Rain deserves all the success that this movie will bring him because you could see he worked so hard.”

Rain was granted the lead role in Ninja Assassin after he impressed the Wachowski brothers in his supporting role in their earlier film, Speed Racer. Rain is hoping this latest film could be his Hollywood starmaking vehicle. As of press time, early reviews were mixed. “Implausible on countless levels … thinly plotted,” wrote the Daily Variety’s Rob Nelson. But Kam Williams, a syndicated film critic from New York, wrote that Rain “cuts a very charismatic screen presence” and has “immense crossover appeal.”

Those who worked on the film stand by their man.

“Rain has the potential to become a big star,” said producer Joel Silver, who also worked on Speed Racer, during a media roundtable at Yamashiro Restaurant in Hollywood two days  after the premiere. “Once he gets an audience to know him, Rain can do anything he wants. He has this Clint Eastwood quality about him.”

McTeigue, the movie’s director, noted that Rain’s exceptional dancing ability enabled the martial arts trainers to challenge him to go above and beyond, more so than with other actors. The 27-year-old did 90 percent of his own stunts, learning kung fu, kickboxing, tai chi and fighting with double swords and chains. “I had to make my body fit like Bruce Lee,” Rain said. “I trained for eight months, eight hours a day, five days a week. No sugar or salt. I love kimchi, but I made it—I ate only chicken breasts and vegetables.”

The singer/actor, whose real name is Jeong Ji-Hoon, has seen a meteoric rise to stardom. He struggled for years as a backup dancer before his music career took off in 2000, and then his appearance in Korean dramas transformed him into a bonafide star across Asia. Time magazine called him “the next face of globalism.” The performer has also hit some rough terrain in recent years, such as when a Hawaii federal court ordered him and his manager to pay $8 million to a concert promoter for canceling performances.

But Rain hopes his luck has changed, with the high-profile new film and upcoming Asian concerts, as well as two in Las Vegas on Dec. 24 and 25.

Rain has long said his late mother, who died before witnessing her son’s success, is his motivating force. “I feel as though she is by my side,” he told KoreAm last month. “Because of her, I have bigger dreams and I want to try harder.”

He also said that, as a Hollywood newcomer, he empathizes with Korean immigrants who “must have struggled so hard” to find their place in the United States. When he first came to Hollywood, people just saw him as “another Asian” and downplayed his abilities. If he succeeds in Hollywood, Rain said, not only will “Koreans win,” but more opportunities will open up for Asian actors.

No evidence North Korean leader is dead http://t.co/Wl42cfFN via @CNN

RT @originalspin: Jeremy 10 pts 3 asts. Kobe 6pts 0 asts. Maybe Kobe knows who @JLin7 is now? #saymyname #linsanity

Video Roundup: Jeremy Lin Rap, Hoekstra Ad Parodied, Daniel Radcliffe Speaks Korean http://t.co/oZy9okXn

Believing the Unbelievable: Why Kim Jong Un Death Rumors Won't Die - The Atlantic http://t.co/u3ZxS2bK via @AddThis

Three S. Korean women kidnapped in Egypt's Sinai - Yahoo! News http://t.co/BbJgk4tJ via @YahooNews