By Ki-Min Sung

> Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi

Yul Kwon holds court over dim sum in Los Angeles three weeks after winning the physically and mentally grueling CBS reality show “Survivor.” Anything cooked and served on a plate tastes much better than the coconuts and raw fish he subsisted on for 39 days on the Cook Islands in the South Pacific.

Sitting around the family-sized table is a bevy of fans, among them an actress, a TV producer, three former beauty pageant contestants, a big-time movie producer, a network television executive, and two Smashbox cosmetics developers, one with her sister, having lunch before trying on wedding dresses. Yul spends time with everyone, learning about their interests as he crouches next to their seats or chats across the table. As he socializes, he gets pulled away from the table, twice, by acquaintances from his past, and goes through another round of introductions.

It’s just another one of the meet-and-greets Yul has had since he and his abs spent about three months in American homes nationwide.

He’s one million dollars richer, that much sexier, and has shattered stereotypes about Asian American men in the media. Yet he’s still a decent guy looking for a higher purpose in life.

“I’m pretty sure of what kind of person I am,” Yul says, “and I don’t think this whole thing is going to change me in terms of my values and the way I treat people, and my goals in life.”

Yul wasn’t one of the thousands of applicants who submitted videotapes of themselves for the “Survivor” tryouts. He and his Korean American ally, Becky Lee, were recruited when “Survivor” producers turned the game into racial Darwinism. Four teams grouped as Asians, Latinos, African Americans and Caucasians started the contest in separate tribes.

Yul says that producers couldn’t find enough Asian Americans for this 13th edition of the show, and that’s when a friend referred Yul and his abs to the casting agent. He says the participants weren’t told that they would be separated by ethnicity until the day before landing on the island, although the conveniently even number of players spread across the racial divide was suspect. However, instead of walking away in disgust, Yul saw an opportunity.

“I’ve always felt that we were underrepresented on TV to the extent that we were represented in a very negative light,” Yul says. “I felt like it was such a golden opportunity to change things a little bit.”

Yul wanted to change the stereotype of the Asian American man in the media, so often depicted as socially inept nerds or kung fu masters. Breaking the stereotype is a message he repeats often in public.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like myself, who I could really emulate as someone who was very socially adept, successful and looked upon by people in different communities, not just his own, as being strong and articulate and a leader,” Yul says.

Yul just might be the person he longed for growing up.

***

The 39 days of “Survivor” concluded with a tribal council vote that came down to brains versus brawn. No contestant could match the physical prowess of Oscar “Ozzy” Lusth, described by fellow “Survivor” Candice Woodcock, as “half animal, half man, part fish, part monkey, part lord knows what.” Yul played the mental and social game so well that he was dubbed by the castaways as the “Godfather” and the “Puppet master.” Using his communication and strategy skills, Yul was able to sway people on all sides to vote his way.

“I tried to convince them that I wasn’t being the Godfather,” Yul says. “I wasn’t telling people what to do, and I wasn’t a dictator. But they didn’t believe it, and the more I tried to tell them that I wasn’t the Godfather, the more they thought I was lying.”

His strategy was so well-played, cast mates who were eliminated, some in part by Yul, and joined the final tribal council voted for him to win in the end.

But the path to victory was never easy. Yul faced elimination on a number of occasions because he was viewed as a threat. And then, halfway through the season, the odds were stacked two to one against his team following a mutiny. After the four racially based tribes (which lasted only two episodes) had been dispersed into two, the castaways were given the option to switch sides. Two of Yul’s white Aitu teammates chose to join the six on the Raro tribe (which included some of their former Caucasian brethren), leaving behind Yul, Becky, Sundra Oakley, who is African American, and Ozzy, who is Mexican American.

Dubbed the “Aitu Four” and vowing to be honest and to play an ethical game, Yul and his team began to win every challenge, picking off all eight Raro tribe members one by one. A noticeable pattern within Raro was that four of the eight who were minorities were eliminated first. Then, the Aitu Four’s cohesion was tested when they were up against one another. In a rare moment in reality television, and perhaps human nature, the Aitu Four opted for a skill-based tiebreaker instead of ganging up on any one member and voting that person out. Sundra lost the final challenge of starting a fire to Becky. Ozzy, Becky and Yul moved forward to the final tribal council to vie for the million dollars. Yul won, in a 5-4-0 vote, with Ozzy garnering the four.

In the finale, host Jeff Probst said the question he gets asked the most by fans is, what’s up with Yul and Becky? Their close alliance had viewers speculating over any love connections. The two insist that they are just friends and that living conditions on the island, where the opportunity to bathe is a prize, were not hospitable to any kind of romance.

“The idea of hooking up with someone was repulsive because we’re so gross and we’re so nasty, and I didn’t even want to touch myself,” Yul says.

It’s not unusual, however, for castaways to start physical relationships on the waterfront, as they spend days and nights together, their hard bodies barely covered. Candice Woodcock and Adam Gentry had their intimate onscreen moments. And, if Yul had hooked up with Becky on television, or any other cast mate, he would have broken another stereotype (Asian American men as eunuchs) by exerting his sexuality.

“I didn’t want to complicate my game by hooking up,” Yul says. “I mean, my parents are watching. All of my friends are watching, and if I were to get into some sort of gratuitous hook-up with some woman, I didn’t see how that would really further my own goals or interests within the game. I thought the best way I could change the image [of Asian American men] is to do well in the game.”

Needless to say, Candice and Adam didn’t make it to the final round.

However, Yul does admit one moment when he got intimate with another castaway.

“The closest I got to hooking up on the island was one night when I was really cold and my hands were shaking, Jonathan Penner, who was lying next to me, said, ‘Hey Yulie, uh, if you want, you can stick your hands in my armpits,’” Yul says. Jonathan explained that the warmest parts of the human body are the armpits and the groin.

“I shoved my hands in his armpits, and I was so happy,” Yul says. “It was a little slice of heaven.”

***

Off of the island, Yul and his abs get plenty of attention from the ladies. It doesn’t hurt that he was named one of the sexiest men alive by People magazine, just like that other marooned Korean American guy on TV with the abs, Daniel Dae Kim. But fame hasn’t driven Yul to become an Asian American Lothario. Instead of taking advantage of the newfound notoriety, he has managed to start a relationship with a 28-year-old woman named Sophie.

“I was always like, in the beginning, ‘If you want to be single, I completely understand. It doesn’t make sense for you to be tied down right now,’” says Sophie, who declined to provide her last name. “But I don’t think it rang a bell for him. So it was kind of neat.” The couple met through another Cook Islander, Brad Virata, who is friends with Sophie, and they began dating one week before the “Survivor” finale.

It’s been a hectic time for Yul, who juggles numerous photo shoots and interviews; even traveling to the Sundance Film Festival to speak on a panel on Asian American representation in the media.

“I just have to put aside what I know is the normal process of starting a relationship,” says Sophie.

But Yul also takes every measure to make Sophie feel as comfortable as possible. At a recent birthday party for Yul’s friend, Sophie was embraced by his circle of friends. And at a Sikh temple, where Yul gave a speech for a bone marrow drive, she was part of the conversation.

Former college housemate Anthony Lim, 29, says Yul is extraordinarily inclusive and kind.

“I thought Yul and I were best friends, but what I didn’t realize is that he has 50 best friends,” Lim says. “He clearly puts priority on friendship over anything else.”

On paper, Yul has formidable accomplishments: high school valedictorian, Stanford undergrad, Yale Law School, former consultant at McKinsey, policy analyst for Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), and a consultant for Google. He and his abs also participated in the physically challenging U.S. Marine Corps Officer Training camp during college — without joining the Marines — just to see if he could do it.

What doesn’t appear on his résumé, according to Lim, is the devotion he shows to his friends. Lim recalls late-night study sessions when Yul would bring Lim his favorite snack from Juice Club. And then there were those long talks. “He’s a really insightful person and a really sensitive person,” Lim says. “I just found that the conversations we got into were really stimulating. He just got to the heart of what was going on, good and bad.”

In college, back in 1995, during the early days of the Asian American Bone Marrow Registry, Yul’s longtime friend, Evan Chen, was diagnosed with leukemia and could not find a match for a life-saving bone marrow transplant. Yul, with the help of his fraternity brothers at Lambda Phi Epsilon, headed what was the biggest Asian bone-marrow drive in the country at the time.

“We had exams, we had classes, and Yul just dropped everything,” says Lim, who was housemates with Chen and Yul. “He became all consumed, and it was very simple for him — ‘My friend, he’s sick and he needs my help.’ I think he just had this single-minded determination to run this bone marrow registry and get as many people involved in the movement.”

Chen eventually found a match and had the transplant. Friends and family thought he was going to improve, but his health took a turn for the worse, and he died in 1996.

Yul continues his involvement with the registry. In January, wearing a head cover and an honorary scarf, he gave a speech in a Sikh temple in Fremont, Calif., to encourage bone marrow registration. Yul was asked to appear at the temple by a Christian couple who flew out from their home in Kansas to find an Asian bone marrow match. Their toddler son, Rohan, who has a rare immune deficiency syndrome, needs a transplant right away.

“Yul, you’re so nice to do this,” said Carol Karer, Rohan’s mother, as she gave him a hug outside of the temple.

“I know what it feels like to be in the situation,” said Yul.

***

Away from the crowds, at his brother’s home in Danville, Calif., another side of Yul appears — that of a loving son. Yul has a photo shoot, this time for KoreAm. He has already posed for countless photos, so he knows the camera and knows which muscles to flex. But no one makes him crack a smile like his mother.

“Hellooo?” Clara Kwon says, holding an angel Christmas ornament, trying to make him smile for the camera.

He smiles and shows teeth.

“Aigoo!” she says, as she makes the angel hop in the air, closer and closer to Yul.

He bursts out in laughter and smiles.

“If you become a model, I think you will be the best model!” Clara says.

“I only have one fan,” he says.

Despite his newfound celebrity and love from the camera, Yul says he has no intentions of going Hollywood, a path not unheard of for many former “Survivors.” He wants to use his 15 minutes of fame to raise awareness for causes he cares about. His options are wide open right now. Although he now has $1 million, he’s technically unemployed. His prowess on “Survivor” excites many who envision a political career for the so-called Godfather. Politics is something he’s considering — Yul has been involved with campaigns for political candidates — in addition to going back to the corporate world. But he has a strong interest in nonprofit work, and believes his heightened profile can help bring awareness to issues important to him.

“He’s not just one of those people who’s very smart so he does what he wants to do to be successful,” says former college girlfriend Yidrienne Lai, who is also a close friend. “I think he has an emotional depth that makes him very special. He wants to do the right thing.”

****

Under  Her Own Light

Rebekah “Becky” Lee, arguably, garnered one of the worst reputations on “Survivor.” Viewers saw an Asian American woman clinging to the “Godfather,” Yul Kwon, and benefiting from his every move. They saw a quiet Asian American woman who didn’t win challenges. They saw the Asian American woman who had Yul’s immunity idol in her back pocket, even though she didn’t find it. The biggest injustice was that Becky made it past all of the elimination rounds to become one of the final three contestants, positioned to win $1 million. Cast mates called her a “coattailer.” In the final round of “Survivor,” she remained in the shadows of two dominant men, failing to get even one vote.

What viewers didn’t see is a woman driven to succeed, who also uses her humanity as a domestic violence worker to bring people together. They didn’t see the friendship and kindness she offered to her cast mates. And, that she is hardly a quiet Asian woman.

“I’m such a focused person,” Becky says. “I’m even watching what I say in confessionals because I’m afraid one little word and one little phrase can be twisted. That’s television — they’re going to use anything juicy.”

In the penultimate episode, either Becky or Sundra Oakley was going to be kicked off the island. And the members of the “Aitu Four” said they would vote for a tiebreaker challenge to decide whom. But Becky kept a contentious secret: She could go on to the finale because Yul had offered to her the immunity idol soon after he found it. But when host Jeff Probst asked Becky if she had the idol, she replied no. Back stabbing is par for the course on “Survivor.” It wasn’t something Becky wanted to resort to.

“If I accepted the idol, how would Americans feel?” she says. “I said, ‘Yul, if I take this, not only are people in our alliance going to hate us, I can’t go to work and do women’s rights work and face my family and my friends as this idealistic person who wants change.’ It’s not who I am.”

Instead of taking the easy way out, Becky faced Sundra in a final challenge. In a scene that will be remembered by “Survivor” fans for its futility, Becky and Sundra had to start a fire using a flint, coconut husk and wood. An intense contest turned into a long waiting game, as neither contestant could generate enough sparks from her flint to alight their coconut husks. Then, they were given a box of matches, still to no immediate results. Everyone else watched as minutes turned into hours. Sweat beaded on both women’s faces and bodies while the tribal council and Probst yawned between frustrated and glazed expressions. Sundra ran out of matches and Becky ended up winning the contest. But what the editing room left out was that when Sundra ran out of coconut husk, Becky gave Sundra some of hers. And that, when Sundra ran out of matches, and hope, she cheered on Becky.

Becky may be known by the public as the “coattailer” who took hours to start a fire, but she sees herself as someone who became a role model. She was recruited to join “Survivor” three weeks before the show began. She underwent intense training during that short period by memorizing pressure points to quell hunger and pain, working with a military trainer and bulking up. She played an ethical game.

Becky wanted to raise awareness about domestic violence and use the money to help women. And, along with Yul, “Survivor” became an opportunity to show teamwork and community cohesion among Asian Americans.

“We represented our Korean community well, as two Asian Americans purposely helping each other so they can get this far together,” Becky says.

***

There were hardly any Asians in the communities where she grew up. Becky was born in New York, but moved to Pittsburgh as a child. She graduated from the University of Michigan and then from law school in Pittsburgh. Her Korean community was at church, where she taught Bible study and went on missions. Growing up, she felt that young Korean Americans were so driven to succeed, they lost sight of the bigger picture.

“We talk about our parents coming over here because they wanted to provide a better life for their kids and work hard as individuals,” Becky says. “But at the same time, we’ve lost that community. Why can’t we do it together?”

Today, she lives out the ideas of community and helping others living and working as an attorney in Washington, D.C. She didn’t win $1 million, but walked away with $85,000 for finishing in third place. She is using her winnings to start the Becky Lee Women’s Support Fund, a nonprofit organization to help victims of domestic violence. She says that the Asian Americans are often misunderstood by the mainstream domestic violence community because it doesn’t adequately address cultural barriers, such as the old world patriarchal pecking order and immigrant issues. She says those inadequacies are why she works to address domestic violence among immigrant women.

But Becky also says Asians can do more to address the problem amongst themselves.

“We have a lot of pride in our community, and we don’t like to talk about things,” Becky says.

As for probing questions about her and Yul? Becky says they are just friends.

“I don’t know what the future holds, but we both were in it to win the game,” Becky says. “It never crossed my mind at the time because it was a game. When you meet someone who has great intentions or has a good heart, having that kind of relationship where you trust someone at face point, is very nice. And it usually takes years to cultivate that, and I hold it very valuable.”

 By Soo Youn 

We are eating typical Korean-buffet fare — galbi, sushi rolls and the standard panchan side dishes — at a restaurant in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., on Friday, Dec. 1, 2006. Though my meal is somewhat typical, my dining companions are not. I am having lunch — all-you-can-eat, no less — with four former citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a.k.a. North Korea. Our fellow diners — their hosts at the nearby Korean church — can’t help but ask their guests, two women and two men, if they have tried the dishes before. “Is this your first time eating sushi?” One of the women lived close to the East Sea, so she has had raw fish. The other woman tries an avocado for the first time and makes a face. It’s too fatty for her palate.

As the conversation continues, it ranges from the mundane — like comparisons between South Korea and the United States (“Do American women get as much plastic surgery as South Korean women?”) — to differences in language (a lot of South Korean vocabulary differs from North Korean). 

When one of our hosts reaches for a toothpick on the table, the North Koreans don’t know what it is. When they learn the Korean word for “the thing to pick meat out of your teeth,” they consider it distinctly South Korean. At first I think it’s just regional slang, but then I realize why they didn’t know the word for toothpick. They don’t need it — the word or the toothpick — because in North Korea you don’t eat meat, much less worry about having food in your teeth. 

I want to ask them what they used to eat in North Korea, but I don’t want to be presumptuous or make them feel provincial. So instead I ask them how North Korean seasoning differs from South Korean. They laugh at me. There goes my cover, so I might as well be direct: “What did you eat in North Korea?” All four of them give me the same answer: grass.

The four defectors are touring the United States with Phillip Buck, a missionary and aid worker on the Underground Railroad bringing North Koreans to South Korea. Over lunch, and later in the basement of Hana Presbyterian Church, the former North Koreans talk about their experiences in North Korea and China. Because they fear for their relatives still in North Korea, they use assumed names. They wear sunglasses in the rain and cover their faces so that identifying details will not be published. 

They are, after a lifetime of training, paranoid, even though they are thousands of miles away from Kim Jong-il’s regime.

These are their stories:

OK SOON KIM

AGE: 59

LEFT NORTH KOREA IN: 1997

WITH: Her husband and one of her daughters

ARRIVED IN SOUTH KOREA IN: 2002

In 1997, Kim’s youngest son was in the North Korean Army and one daughter had married, but there still wasn’t enough food to feed the family. For years they had eaten a diet of grass and leaves mixed with the occasional corn powder or noodles. They sold everything they owned to the Chinese that passed through their town for food: their TV, blankets and clothes. Some of her relatives started selling opium. But in the winter, there was nothing to harvest. 

One day, her other son didn’t come home. Her husband found him lying near a stream, weak from malnutrition. They scrambled and sold whatever was left for goat milk to make juk (porridge) for him. She remembers she went out to look for roots to feed him and got caught in a thunderstorm. But when she returned it was too late — he was already dead.

“How do you imagine that your son is going to die?” she asks. She manages to hold off her tears until she says, “The only thing I ever heard anymore in our town was that someone died. What had happened to our country?”

Then her 25-year-old daughter, who hadn’t menstruated in over a year, fell ill, throwing up blood for days, accompanied by a spiking fever and nosebleeds. When she eventually improved, she had lost her hearing. Her mother fretted that she would never get married.

After losing one child and then almost another, Kim and her husband decided to flee to China with their single daughter. When they started to eat better in China, her daughter’s hearing came back, as did her periods.

Kim never expected to go to South Korea. With another daughter and son still in North Korea, she wanted to stay close in China. But her daughter eventually married another North Korean in China. And her family was caught at a Bible study twice, and repatriated twice. After that, Kim decided that the family should try to get to South Korea.

RAN HEE KIM

AGE: 57

LEFT NORTH KOREA IN: 1999

WITH: Came by herself

ARRIVED IN SOUTH KOREA IN: 2004

Hers is a story of the lengths she went through to eat, and how she was punished for it. In 1994, Kim started selling copper when the food rations stopped. Through a contact, she hoarded and bought the scrap metal and sold it to the Chinese who often passed through her border town. After two years, she was caught and sent to jail for making extra money to buy food, which is illegal in North Korea. Two years into a three-year sentence on a work farm, she was released early for good behavior. Longing to see her son, she went home, only to find he wasn’t there.

Kim, 57, breaks down and cries throughout her interview, as she remembers that her son starved to death while she was in jail, and that there was nothing she could have done about it.

While Kim was in jail, her husband sent her divorce papers through her sister. “He married some other woman while I was in jail. Because of my son I worked so hard and did everything I could to survive,” she says, and then pauses to cry again. Her former husband had left their son behind.

On the work farm, they were hungry. Their rations were cakes made of pressed corn and beans. “But it wasn’t enough. We were so hungry we went out in the fields. We captured frogs and ate them raw with a little bit of salt. At first I didn’t want to eat it, but I had to to survive. And we ate grasshoppers.”

At this point, the others ask how she could have eaten the bugs.

“You close your eyes and swallow. I was so weak, so I ate the frog, and in the fall we ate grasshoppers. You catch them and hide them in your sock to eat,” she says. “After a few days of eating it, it starts to taste good. At first I couldn’t stand it because the grasshopper’s belly would pop in my mouth.”

She finally escaped to China by herself in 1999, but was caught and repatriated back to North Korea — not before being beaten by her Chinese jailers. When a woman who shared her cell escaped, the guards beat Kim. Then they ordered the other women, many of whom were North Koreans from Kim’s hometown, to beat her as well. She remembers that they cried as they attacked her. She could barely move, and her back was so injured she was almost paralyzed. 

“I thought I was going to keep these secrets until I died.” 

But Yung Chul Kim urges her, “No, you have to tell the world what it’s like.”

YUNG CHUL KIM

AGE: 43

LEFT NORTH KOREA IN: 1999

WITH: His wife, their son and his younger sister

ARRIVED IN SOUTH KOREA IN: 2002

Kim arrived in South Korea in 2002 after both of his parents starved to death in the late ’90s. His mother-in-law also starved to death. After his father-in-law died, he realized, “I can’t stay. I have to go to China,” he says. 

Kim looks much younger than he is. In his 40s, he has smooth skin and a boyish face and a way of looking off as if he’s bored, even when he talks of such serious things. Dressed, like the other North Koreans, in black, he manages to make a joke once in a while. He hates thinking about the past. 

Kim escaped to China with his wife, their son and his younger sister by wading across the Tumen River, each holding the other’s hand, into China. When he got to China, he was amazed by the food. “The first time I saw fruit was in China. Maybe it was a grape or a persimmon,” Kim says. “The food was so surprising. We didn’t really know the value of money or how to use it, but food we know. Every house had bags of rice and corn. Even if you receive a salary in North Korea, you can’t buy 10 pounds of rice. The Chinese were so rich.”

After a few months hiding in China, Kim and his family were captured by the Chinese military and sent back to North Korea, where he was tortured in a political prison. “I almost died.” In jail, Kim was deprived of sleep and interrogated constantly: Did you meet South Korean people? Did you meet any Christians?

“If I acknowledged that I did that, at that point I would’ve been killed, executed with a gun,” he says. “At that time they kill you for meeting a South Korean or a Christian. I would’ve been gagged and blindfolded and three people would’ve shot me three times.” Kim was tortured nearly every day for the first month he was there, after which he was sent to work.

“They burn you with a lighter and cut your flesh. They tie you to a chair and burn wood on your knees. The most difficult one is the water one. You are tired, and they try to force-feed you mop water. But even that kind of water you drink because you are so thirsty.

“Another prisoner slept next to me. He had stolen a cow and started talking badly about the government. Because of that he was tortured. He got up at 6 a.m., and he was already almost dead. The guard said, ‘Let’s just do it,’ and they buried him alive.”

After three months in the gulag, Kim was released when he said he was “close to death.” He was sent to a local jail in his hometown. When his wife came to pick him up, she walked right past him without recognizing him. A few months later, Kim and his family risked everything again and crossed the Tumen back into China, where he quickly met up with Phillip Buck. After two years in Yengji, China, they were eventually brought to South Korea. They have since had another boy.

MYUNG SOO KANG

AGE: 51

LEFT NORTH KOREA IN: 1989

WITH: His mother, one brother and two sisters

ARRIVED IN SOUTH KOREA IN: 2003

Kang is believed to be one of the earliest defectors from North Korea. A remarkably handsome man, also dressed in all black, he doesn’t want to talk about his hardships in North Korea; rather, he reads from a letter he prepared. “I came here to tell everyone North Korean refugees do not commit crimes. We are regular people who have a heart for family, country and our hometowns. We will do anything to protect our family and country like you. But just because we came to China, we look like we betrayed our country,” he reads. 

I interrupt after 30 minutes of hearing him rehash what I feel is a given: There are no human rights in North Korea, there is not enough to eat, and it is the fault of Kim Jong-il.

He gets agitated, and tries to convince me the defectors have done nothing wrong, and that they were forced to leave to save their families and themselves. The whole group then gets excited, and one of the women pulls out a copy of a major South Korean newspaper whose front-page, above-the-fold headline reads, “No human right abuses in North Korea.” The story quotes an official with the South Korean Foreign Ministry denying, basically, everything these North Koreans had just spent hours telling me.

And then I realize what is going on. Since the current political climate in South Korea is pushing for engagement with Pyongyang, Seoul discourages negative talk about North Korea as it pursues rapprochement through joint economic ventures. The official party line in many South Korean universities and government halls denies the existence of political concentration camps, starvation and repression.

These four have not grasped what I feel the average American, for all his or her ignorance about the Korean Peninsula, basically knows about North Korea. They came to convince me, and the others they would speak to, that the wrong was not in leaving North Korea, but not having enough food to eat, or the freedom to sell their belongings to feed themselves without being thrown into jail.

And Kang explains to me that it was groundbreaking that he blamed it on Kim Jong-il. “No defector has ever said this before. It’s Kim Jong-il’s fault. They are too scared.”

I realizes that, despite the fact that he left North Korea in 1989, he still is by no means free.

***

The appearances of these four belie their ages and their hardships. Their clothes hide their scars from torture, bodies punished by malnutrition and illness.

These four, who have spent so much time in hiding, shielding their identities, that they are at this point almost anonymous. Yet they have these histories, and they are willing to share and relive the past so that those they left behind are not forgotten.

  By Jeff Sanico             Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi

Buying a pair of jeans today is an arduous task. Unless you’re a diehard consumer of one particular brand and style, you might end up a frustrated mess in some isolated dressing room, drowning in a pool of designer boot-cut, hip-slung 12-ouncers. David Lim, who owns the high-end denim label Kasil (pronounced “castle”), is figuring out how to stay afloat in this ocean of durable cotton. He shouldn’t have a problem, though. Lim was born into this.

Lim, 35, is the son of Richard Lim, owner of High Society Custom Tailoring in Los Angeles. For the past 30 years, the elder Lim has been a tailor to the stars, custom-making suits for the likes of Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and Keanu Reeves, as well as designing dapper duds for movies like “Ocean’s Eleven.” Following in Dad’s footsteps, Lim’s line is also a favorite with celebrities. “Brad Pitt really loves our jeans, and so does Jennifer Aniston,” Lim says of his famous clientele. “So maybe our jeans can reunite them.”

The soft-spoken clothier comes off more artsy outsider than ruthless denim CEO. With a background in fine arts and painting, Lim never had aspirations of being involved in fashion. “It’s funny,” he says, sitting inside the huge loft of Kasil headquarters, just north of Los Angeles’ historic Chinatown district, “my original interest in denim wasn’t really the pants. I was more interested in using it as a canvas that I could paint on.”

Having dabbled in the movie industry as an assistant costume designer and illustrator after attending the Academy of Arts in San Francisco, Lim found himself bored and uninspired. “I realized I didn’t like that industry very much,” he says. “At that point I had nothing else to do.” After some experimental painting on scraps of denim he found in his dad’s store, Lim “slowly started to love the fabric and wanted to understand more about it.” He crafted his first dungarees shortly after that.

“I was sort of just playing around, trying to have fun and do whatever. I took some old jeans of mine and figured out how to make them. My dad has a pattern maker and sample sewers in the back and [I] just started from there.”

With his new interest, Lim acquired a job in brand development for a start-up denim line. At first focusing on the aesthetics, Lim eventually came up with the name and concept for the company. He ended up being offered a chance to invest money and become an owner. After witnessing Lim’s dedication and drive, his parents were willing to help him make the investment. Then tensions arose among the shareholders.

“They actually wanted to make [our product] lower-end and I was more geared towards the higher-end,” Lim says of the dispute. “[I was] lucky enough that they said, ‘Go ahead and take it.’ I took the name, the pattern and sample makers, and left.”

After developing the label out of his own home, Lim introduced Kasil for the first time at the Magic trade show in Las Vegas in 2002. He quickly became hooked on the instant gratification of filled-out sales orders. “I fell in love with the excitement of going to a show,” he says. “It’s taking all your hard work and displaying it for people to either love or hate.

“What’s even a better feeling is not when people order it, it’s when they re-order it. That means that consumers are actually buying it.”

With a list of Kasil retailers a mile long, there’s no doubt that people are buying it. The question is, what makes these jeans so special? According to Lim, the majority of denim brands out there boast of the best fit, finish and fabric. “Here, we don’t follow the three F’s,” he says. Instead Lim goes by the double D’s — details and design.

“I really look at detail. For me, it’s everything,” he says with certainty. “I’m a minimalist. I’m not into grabbing all the attention with fancy embroidery and jewels and gems flashing everywhere. I’m more about balance. I like to create clean lines and keep it simple and timeless.”

Starting at around 200 bucks a pair, timeless is a good thing. Especially when designer jean labels seem to endlessly pop up in the “denim capital of the world,” as Lim calls it.

“There’s so many brands coming out of L.A.,” he says. “The funny thing is that the majority of the people actually making these jeans are all Korean — 60 to 70 percent of the brands that are out there. It’s insane how many Koreans are out there making jeans.”

The garment industry isn’t all love, though. “There’s a lot of people in the Korean community that don’t help each other out,” says Lim, who envisions a united stance of Koreans working together to eliminate their stereotype of offering bootleg products and shoddy workmanship. “We’re really the ones who are making these premium jeans in Los Angeles. We could actually put our names out there and produce high-end product.”

Until then, the young denim guru relies heavily on his own close-knit staff. “It’s a very young, small company and it’s growing very fast,” says Lucy Melton, 25, Lim’s prized assistant designer who admits to wearing Kasil jeans six and a half days a week. She and Lim go shopping once a month to check out the scene. “When it comes to premium jeans, you have to know your competition. It’s a matter of being familiar with the market, not necessarily a matter of studying another brand’s jeans,” Melton explains. “At home I have one drawer for Kasil denim and one drawer for competing denim. I don’t mix my denim.”

In the future, Lim plans on expanding Kasil into a lifestyle brand by constantly evolving the identity of its main ingredient. “It makes sense for me to start making other things [out of denim], like nice tailored jackets because of my dad’s background. It’s just an easy transition,” says Lim. For now, it’s all about the jeans and Lim’s passion for designing them. “Everybody in the United States wears jeans,” he says excitedly. “Everybody wears jeans everywhere. It’s something that will never die.”

 By Michelle Woo

It was an appetite emergency, recalls Peter Pomponi of Grants Pass, Ore.

The 35-year-old engineering sales representative came home from work one evening and had an overwhelming craving for kimchi.

The only problem? He would have to drive more than 30 miles to get to the nearest Asian market, which is mostly stocked with Vietnamese food. 

Frustrated with what was in the fridge, Pomponi hopped online and did a quick Google search. He came across KoaMart.com, an online Korean grocer, where he discovered an entire section dedicated to the tangy, fermented side dish. There, on his computer screen, were vibrant photos of aged kimchi, fried kimchi, sesame leaf kimchi, ponytailed radish kimchi — all for less than 10 bucks per bag.

With a few clicks and a credit card number, he could have a box delivered to his doorstep.

“It’s comfort food,” says Pomponi, who is of Korean and Italian descent and lived much of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Korean ingredients are abundant. “Kimchi is one of those things you can’t make overnight.”

For Korean Americans living where Asian food is scarce, the rituals are all too common. They cram their suitcases with instant curry and spicy ramen noodles from their parents’ pantry, rationing until their next visit home. They empty their wallets for the handful of Korean snacks nestled in their neighborhood markets, which are often overpriced and stale. Some, like Pomponi, arrange for monthly shipments from mom. 

Jonathan Kim can relate. While attending college in Tucson, Ariz., he hankered for Korean home cooking. Several years later, while working at an Internet company in Los Angeles, he also noticed a lack of Korean food online. He and his partner, Gun Kim, decided to launch KGrocer.com and KoaMart.com, two Web sites specializing in authentic Korean food products.    

“We just kind of fell into it,” says Jonathan Kim. “There are many people who don’t have access to Korean food or who crave a greater variety.”

Three-year-old KoaMart.com offers more than a thousand items, from rice porridge in a bag to seasoned seaweed snacks. In addition to Korean goods, there are items from all parts of Asia and the Pacific Islands, including Japanese udon noodles, Vietnamese spring roll skins and Thai chili paste. There are refrigerated and pickled items, which are shipped in special temperature-sealed boxes, along with fish-based side dishes, packaged in air-tight storage bags. 

Though the prices are reasonable, comparable to those at Korean chain markets such as H Mart, shipping can be steep. It would cost about $9 to ship five packages of ramen noodles to Phoenix, Ariz., and about $39 for overnight service.

For some Korean shoppers, it isn’t worth it.

While living in Detroit for a college internship, Catherine Jun, would drive 30 miles to Troy, Mich., to visit the city’s handful of small Asian markets. Even though the Korean products were limited and expensive, she said she wouldn’t have opted for the Internet as a shortcut.

“Shopping for food is an experience that you shouldn’t be so far removed from,” says Jun, 25. “Asian food can be so sketchy. You have to touch it and smell it. Why would I trust someone else to pick my food out for me?”

In reality, Koreans only make up about 30 percent of KoaMart.com’s customer base, up from about 10 percent three years ago.

The site caters to Western crowds. Each product has a short history and description. Underneath photos of the instant ramen packages there are step-by-step cooking instructions.

For those unfamiliar with Korean cuisine, navigating through such online grocers can be easier than thumbing through aisles of fish heads, baby octopuses and spices with names they can’t read.

“We are a small force spreading Korean culture and history,” says Jonathan Kim, who describes business as “not booming, per se.”

Thank goodness for those loyal customers with emergency kimchi cravings.

Got a hankering for some ddeokbokgi or doenjang jigae? Check out these online Korean and Asian grocers.

n www.koamart.com

Easy-to-navigate Los Angeles-based site offering more than 1,000 high-quality Asian products. There are even pages of kitchenware, Korean movies and cosmetics.

n www.kgrocer.com

Sister site to KoaMart.com, offering only dried and instant food.  

n www.asianfoodgrocer.com

San Francisco-based Asian grocer featuring basic Korean products and ingredients such as instant noodles, dried seaweed and soup stock.

n www.asiafoods.com

Large Asian retail and wholesale grocer offering more than 600 products. Includes lots of recipes and a glossary of Asian ingredients. Free shipping on all orders over $75.

n www.ikoreaplaza.com

Launched in 2000, ikoreaplaza.com was the first online Korean grocer. The Oakland, Calif., company carries authentic, hard-to-find products at reasonable prices.

 By Sean Kim              Illustration by Sukho Lee

How does one deal with it, the Blonde? Where lies the mystique?

We often hear the familiar clinical refrain that it’s a fetish, an illogical fixation on an object or body part made sexually potent. Feet, legs, stockings, panties, those little anime-girl statuettes, and the other strange collectibles where the focus of sexual energy gets pinpointed and shot into it like a laser. And we’ve all known that one white dude who always lusted after the Oriental Girl, driven by a desire to possess a demure yet sexually charged little exotic with the silky black hair. 

But as it is true with the Oriental Girl, so it is with the Blonde, who exerts a clear sexual force of her own. Go to Japan and you can see her at work on the minds of men. She lurks somewhere in the dark recesses, amid the muck and swamp of the Asian male psyche, suddenly skipping into the light like a gold-prize dream. The white-skinned hotty-totty in a spring mini, with bouncing boobs, flicking that long mane of hair, and the ever-terrible quip, “Omigod!”

Once, a friend and I were on the bus and our eyes simultaneously caught sight of the one blonde walking on the sidewalk amid a crowd. We never saw her face, just the back of her head and the length of hair swaying with each stride. After watching a minute of this, my friend said, “I don’t care how great any girlfriend is. If she’s not a blonde like that one, in the back of your mind, you’ll always want one.” Facetiousness aside, there was something true about that.

So what is she then, the Blonde? Why the fuss? Why all the bottle-blond Asian girls for that matter? Or even the unkinked, blond-haired black girls? Is it about making yourself more white? Or is it about looking good, using hair color like a visual pheromone? Consider also that the Blonde is everywhere — on TV, in movies, lounging on Sunset Beach, littered across advertising, not to mention the porn world. Add to that a culture saturated with the Tease — where hemlines go just barely … and the limitless variety of bikinis … and again the porn. And what varieties there are: the shapes, the sizes, the thousand cultural manifestations. Where does one begin? Reese Witherspoon, Lisa Kudrow, Barbie, Marilyn Monroe, Debbie Harry, Cinderella, Blonde Dagwood, Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sailor Moon. It’s endless. They are endless.

So depending on how you look at it, it’s either great to be a guy, or a most insufferably painful existence living with a constant barrage of Tease. Either way, the Blonde remains both anomaly and prize out together. Because, let’s be honest, we’ve all wanted one, if even as a distant curiosity. And we’ve had crushes on one at some time in the past, usually left brokenhearted, by my guess, and it may be that deep down we still desire her, or it, the Blonde. They are, if anything, fascinating creatures, like things from the deep, or beings from the far side of the planet, a complete other on the dividing ethnic line, an entirely other reality! Oh my god, the Blonde!

But there is no “who” being addressed here, only the “what,” the “it.” Just like Frankenstein and Dracula are imagined creatures, so is the Blonde. Take “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,” a movie that makes some kind of feminist statement about the spurned woman, yet the movie is also an expression of what the Blonde truly is: a giant monster. (I say this knowing actress Allison Hayes was a brunette; I always get her mixed up with the remake starring Daryl Hannah.) Here we have the image of a giant woman grasping poor little man like King Kong did Faye Wray. It’s a classic reversal, and as a metaphor, so very true. The Blonde as an idea can take a life of its own and sometimes wreak havoc on a guy’s life. For example, take Rene Gallimard, the hero of David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly.” He was so possessed by the idea of his Oriental Girl that he didn’t realize until the end that she was really a he. And in the final scene of the play, he was left a dupe, a fool, a mockery of French high society, and basically turned into a whimpering little girl. Maybe this accounts for the fascination with prostitutes and drag queens, since what they present to us is the idea, the illusion of the woman, which always escapes reality. The virgin whore, the chaste good girl who likes it nasty, the sweet innocent turned naughty after dark, the hot bombshell blonde without an ounce of thought in her head — all of them ideas.

To throw in a little social critique, this might reflect a fear of women. That we need to cover them up in the clothes of our fantasies and make them fit those measurements. And it also says something about the time, where movies, the Internet and video games have so saturated our lives that the fantasy has not only challenged reality but it has actually become reality, to quote Jean Baudrillard.

That may be, but here’s what I really think. 

Sure, yes, if your life is nothing but a mediation through images, then your relationship with people, with the real world, is stunted, and this isn’t healthy. But then what are you when the fantasy is totally eradicated? Honestly, you’re not much of a person at all. In fact, you’re less of a human being for it. People imagine that the ridding of obsession is the cure-all for male psychology, but it’s not. What is a man, if not riddled with guilt and obsession? So to rid these through therapy is an absolute good? If so, how boring would the world, if not the woman, be without them? You got jungle fever? Good for you. You have dreams of a little taste of Lolita? Who hasn’t? There’s even that rice queen thing with gay men. So big whoop, everyone, or at least every guy, has got some kind of fetish. It sounds shallow, but a little illusion and surface never hurt. If anything, it adds a little spice to life.

In my case, there’s only one blonde that I need mention: Nicole, from fourth grade. Blond curls and a sweet smile, very toothy, and blue-eyed as ever. She helped me up once when I fell on my bike. I’ll never forget her for it, and I’ve loved her ever since. She was sort of a 9-year-old version of Michelle Pfeiffer, that other devastating blonde I could not get over for years. So there you have it, the blonde standard has been set, and what a sad and disgusting and pathetic thing it is. 

It’s no wonder white women still mess me up, and no wonder they remain at such a distance. I don’t know them at all, even when I talk to them and get to know them, and even become their friend. I wish I would learn my lesson and move on, but she’s still there, the lumbering beast of blond hotness way back in my head, or my groin. Shall I fight it, or give in? Well, in the past, it’s been my experience the more you fight against an impulse, the stronger it gets, until it eventually takes over. Instead, I’ll let it be; I’ll let it reign over once in a while to bounce around freely so it doesn’t wreak havoc from being caged up all the time. And maybe, one day, I’ll finally put away the XBox, lose a few pounds, shave and get out there to actually talk to some real, bona fide blond chicks.

Sean Kim is a writer and painter living in San Francisco, with short stories published in FaultLine and Dark Horses. He is currently working on a novel.

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