Forget Black Day (South Korea’s April holiday for singles). Who can wait a whole two months after having your heart crushed by your unresponsive, unrequited jjak-sarang (one-sided love)? Eat jjajangmyeon now. Just be sure to consume the noodles in the privacy of your home. Salty tears and black bean sauce do not mix. ($1; www.hmart.com)

The Olympic Flame is Ablaze, making its way to Vancouver, Canada, where the 2010 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXI Olympic Winter Games, will kick off February 12. here, some of the Koreans and Asian Americans who will grace the world’s most inspiring athletic stage.

For more information, visit www.vancouver2010.com

by Andrew Jo

illustration by Eric Sueyoshi

Simon Cho
Short Track Speed Skating, U.S.A.

The youngest member of the U.S. short track team, Cho, 18, is competing in his first Olympics. Awarded a spot after winning the 500m race at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Cho, who was born in Seoul, began skating when he was 3 years old. Cho qualified for his first World Cup team in 2006-2007, and began his training as a pacer for the U.S. national women’s team.

J.R. Celski
Short Track Speed Skating, U.S.A.

Celski, a five-time medalist at the 2009 World Championships in Vienna, is also a two-time overall title winner at the U.S. Junior Championships (2007, 2008). Missing the age requirement at the Turin Olympics by 17 days, Celski, 19, is confident he will be able to participate in his first Olympic Games, despite suffering a leg injury in the 500m quarterfinals at the U.S. Olympic trials.

Julie Chu
Hockey, U.S.A.

As a collegiate athlete, Chu was a three-time All-American at Harvard and is the NCAA career record holder for points (284). The first Asian American member of the U.S. national team, Chu has been a part of a winning tradition, taking the world titles in 2005, 2008 and 2009, and world silver medals in 2001, 2004 and 2007. The 2010 U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey Team, announced on Dec. 17, includes six Olympians and 10 World Champions.

Sho Kashima
Freestyle Skiing, U.S.A.

A two-time U.S. Champion in the dual moguls (2006, 2009), Kashima, 23, who placed seventh in the dual moguls and 30th in the  moguls at the 2007 World Championships, will be competing in his first Olympic Games. Born in Texas and raised in California, Kashima began skiing at the age of 4 after his family relocated to South Lake Tahoe.

Lee Sang-Hwa
Long Track Speed Skating, South Korea

A bronze medalist in the 500m at the 2009 Vancouver World Championships, Lee Sang-Hwa, 20, will be competing in her second Olympics. Entering international competition at the age of 14, Lee, who specializes in sprint distances, will be competing in the 500m and 1000m distances in Vancouver.

Lee Ho-Suk
Short Track Speed Skating, South Korea

Competing in his second Olympics, Lee Ho-Suk, 23, is already one of South Korea’s most decorated winter athletes. Capturing silver medals in the 1000m and 1500m, and a gold in the 5000m relay at the 2006 Games, Lee, the reigning World Champion in the 1000m, 1500m and overall competition, is a favorite in all short track speed skating distances.

Mirai Nagasu
Figure Skating, U.S.A.

The second youngest winner of the U.S. senior ladies’ title, Nagasu, 16, was the 2008 U.S. National Champion and a two-time World Junior Medalist. Unable to accept her bid to the 2008 World Figure Skating Championships on account of her age, Nagasu was assigned to the 2008 World Junior Figure Skating Championships, where she won the bronze.

Lee Kang-Seok
Long Track Speed Skating, South Korea

The reigning World Champion in the 500m and bronze medal winner at the 2006 Winter Games, Lee Kang-Seok, 24, enters his second Olympic Games with high expectations. Lee set a world record in the 500m in 2007 with a 34.25-second time, but it has since been eclipsed by Canadian Jeremy Wotherspoon, Lee’s top competition in the event heading to Vancouver.

Lee Kyou-Hyuk
Long Track Speed Skating, South Korea

The elder statesman on the South Korean speed skating team, Lee Kyou-Hyuk will be competing in his fifth Olympic Games. Finishing fourth in the 1000m at the 2006 Games, Lee, 31, who comes from a family of winter athletes, won a silver medal at the 2009 World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships in the 500m.

Apolo Ohno
Short Track Speed Skating, U.S.A.

Appearing in his third Olympic Games, Ohno has won at least one medal in each short track speed skating distance. With his gold in the 500m, silver and bronze in the 1000m, gold in the 1500m, and bronze in the 5000m relay, Ohno, 27, is tied with Eric Heiden as the most decorated U.S. male winter athlete. Along with his Olympic prowess, in 2007 Ohno partnered with Julianne Hough and won the Dancing with the Stars competition.

Caroline Zhang
Figure Skating, U.S.A.

The 2007 World Junior Champion and 2009 U.S. Bronze Medalist, Zhang, 16, has won three consecutive medals at the World Junior Championships. Competing in her first Olympic Games, Zhang made her senior ISU Championships debut finishing fourth at the 2009 Four Continents Championships.

By Andrew Jo

With a breathtaking combination of grace, beauty and sensuality, Kim Yu-Na, 19, heads to her first Olympic competition like few before her have. Hailed as a figure skating prodigy, the first such title bestowed upon a Korean figure skater, Kim will have lofty expectations as she takes the ice at Pacific Coliseum next month during the XXI Winter Olympic Games.

While pressure and spotlight are two things often associated with star athletes, judging upon her past performances, one could never imagine the two affecting Kim on the ice. With her almost effortless combination of spins, jumps and footwork, the skating phenom has dazzled crowds since her first international competition at the 2002 Triglav Trophy held in Jesenice, Slovenia, where at the age of 11, she took home gold in the novice competition. The following year, Kim would become the youngest South Korean Figure Skating Champion and a rising international star.

Born in 1990 in Bucheon, South Korea, Kim began skating at age 6. While honing her skill as a junior competitor, Kim finished first in 11 competitions, from 2001 to 2006, five of which occurred in the 2005-2006 season. It was also as a junior competitor that Kim formed a fierce yet friendly rivalry with fellow skater and peer Mao Asada of Japan. Finishing behind Asada in two of her three second place finishes in the 2004-2005 season, Kim, just 20 days Asada’s senior, has shared nearly the same course to Vancouver as her rival.

Following their promotion to senior competition, it was Asada that led the early medal count. Yet Kim, who in 2006 would begin training in Canada with Brian Orser, a two-time Olympic silver medalist, would finish with a flurry with seven first-place finishes from 2008 into the beginning of the 2009-2010 season.

Widely regarded as one of the top figure skaters of his generation, Orser won the silver medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, and again at the 1988 Games in Calgary. The 48-year old coach will now try to live an Olympic dream vicariously through his gifted pupil, as the Olympics return to Canada for the first time since Orser’s heartbreaking silver medal finish in Calgary.

“He really knows what I feel in the competitions because there was Brian-Brian and I am doing that now,” said Kim to The Associated Press, following her record-breaking performance at the 2009 World Figure Skating Championships.  The quote was in reference to Orser’s involvement in the “Battle of the Brians” during the 1988 Olympics in which his adversary, American Brian Boitano, would win Olympic gold, and its similarity to her ongoing rivalry with Asada.

“Rivalry is good for the sport, but I like to keep it friendly because that’s how I was with Brian [Boitano],” Orser told The New York Times prior to the 2009 World Figure Skating Championships. “When a rivalry becomes bitter, it’s a problem, so I tell that to Yu-Na. She feels a huge responsibility to win, and that includes beating Mao. She is aware of what people expect of her.”

Kim, who, like her coach in 1988, will head to the Olympic rink as the reigning World Champion, has set the standard for ladies’ figure skating under the International Skating Union scoring system, earning 76.28 points through a short program (2009 Skate America), 133.95 through a free skate (2009 Trophée Eric Bompard), and a 210.03 combined total (2009 Trophée Eric Bompard). She remains the only female skater to surpass the 200-point total, doing so twice.

As of December 14, 2009, Kim is ranked the top international skater, according to the Ladies’ International Skating Union World Standings for Figure Skating and Ice Dance. Italy’s Carolina Kostner is ranked second, followed by Asada.

A national celebrity known as the overwhelming Olympic favorite, Kim is the first Korean to win a World Figure Skating Championship, and bears the hope of the nation in becoming its first Olympic gold medalist in her sport. With that national hope enters her coach’s dream.

“Yes, it would,” interrupts Orser in an interview with USA Today, when asked if a gold medal would make up for his past Olympic shortcomings. “Make up for Calgary? Sure. I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t.”

Kim, who has told KoreAm that her role model is American skater Michelle Kwan, also told The Korea Times that the “Olympics are the stage which not only figure skaters but also all athletes have dreamed of participating in. Since watching Michelle Kwan perform at the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998, I have wanted to become a skater.”

And now, she added, “I am thrilled to compete in the event. I want to perform my best routine at the best stage.”

By Emil Guillermo

I had an affair with Tiger Woods. (I know, take a number).

I thought it was more than just casual, but now I know, I wasn’t the only one. (What are we up to? Eight? 14? Aren’t there 18 holes in golf?)

Maybe I was the only non-blonde, but then you can’t tell hair color from a text message.

Oh, my affair wasn’t sexual, but it felt like true love. After my first viewing of Tiger showing off his putter, I was smitten. He was the Michael Jackson of golf! And to think the world’s top golfer was the offspring of an African American father and an Asian mother.

He was like me: An Asian American! But not like me. And that was our hope.

When the Thanksgiving story broke, it began as a suspicious car accident.

But when it all turned sexual, an African American friend of mine said, “There’s the black side of him.”

I was offended because Asian American males are certainly quite capable of debauchery and serial infidelity! “What’s the Asian side of the story?” I asked. “The bad driving?”

Asian American males have always admired and appreciated Tiger. He was a godsend for our self- image. No more of that karate kicking, school book schlepping, bowl-cut image for us Asian guys. Tiger had big teeth, but not too big. Short? Tiger was buffed out like mama’s mahogany cabinet, and just as tall. And sex? We are not sexless. But who really knew until now.

Still, with Tiger, it has always been about golf. And at golf, there was no one—no one—better.

When Tiger won the Masters in 1997, his half-Asian roots still shocked some. On the Masters TV broadcast, Jim Nantz stumbled as he added “first Asian American” in his description of Tiger. (How empathetic will Nantz be after undergoing his own messy divorce due to an affair with a younger woman? But who cares about Nantz. He’s no Tiger).

In retrospect, a column I once wrote on Tiger was really a love letter that dubbed him “diversity’s champ.” He was our symbol of hope. Before Obama, there was Tiger, our wholesome American Dream success story. And like any good capitalist, he traded in his aura of goodness like a one-man milk campaign. Got Tiger?

We all did. And that’s where the betrayal comes in.

Tiger’s tramping has dissolved all trust. What is infidelity but the act of lying in bed?

The aura gone, the endorsements are falling.

If there’s a silver lining for the Asian American male in all this, it may be that Tiger proved that we could be as virile and amoral as the next guy. But didn’t we know that already? Did our hero have to disappoint?

In a text message to Jaimee Grubbs, a 24-year-old cocktail waitress and alleged mistress, Tiger referred to his ethnicity in a new way. He didn’t call himself African American or Asian American. Rather, in his “sext,” in response to Grubb’s questioning of “why I keep falling more and more for u,” Tiger responded with: It’s “because I’m blasian.”

Blasian?

Is that the modern anti-Asian American male stereotype buster we need?

Geeky, but trustworthy never seemed more appealing.

TIGER’S PENANCE

Staying away from the public eye can help Tiger. At the time of this writing, he is still incogtigro.

In many ways, it’s a bit unfair. Basketball phenom Wilt Chamberlain bragged of bedding hundreds of women. No fallout. But Wilt wasn’t selling his good guy smile. Kobe Bryant was, and when he was accused of raping a woman in Colorado, he lost endorsements. But over time, the episode was forgotten.

It doesn’t always work out that way. For example, I used to be a big fan of Woody Allen. But after he cheated on Mia Farrow with his stepdaughter, I couldn’t watch any of his films without cringing.

Tiger’s infidelity may be hard to forgive for some. But he’ll survive if he can provide us with a public show of penance.

To get his mojo back, he should proceed like he’s rebuilding his golf swing.

He should rebuild himself as a man. Perhaps, that means getting in touch with his spiritual side.

Let’s just hope he’s not holed up with a cocktail waitress, but with a few books and mentors. Maybe he’ll get in touch with his Eastern values by reading the Tao.

That’s the kind of work Tiger should do. Certainly, he can work with orphanages in Tibet, feed the hungry in Korea. But he needs to start with himself first.

From all reports, his wife is close to filing for divorce. The world awaits the first public statements from Tiger. If he answers like a real human being, and not like Tiger, Inc., then there is hope for redemption. And the disgraced hero could re-emerge from the carnage a new man.

By Jimmy Lee     Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi

Twas fifteen nights before Christmas, and all throughout buildings in downtown, the creatures of L.A.’s nightlife were stirring, perhaps even the mice. Some 50 people carrying boomboxes blaring composer Phil Kline’s “Unsilent Night” strolled down the avenues, like a moving sound sculpture. Women danced in a vacant storefront at 5th and Spring, their colorful costumes illuminated as if beacons. At the Hive Gallery, a go-go dancer perched on a ledge shimmied to a deejay’s throbbing musical mixes, as people below jostled to get a better view of the paintings, photographs and other art forms lining the walls.

These were a few scenes from last month’s Downtown Art Walk, a popular event taking place mostly along Main and Spring streets, the primary arteries of what’s became known as Gallery Row. After four years, this assemblage of art and activity has helped to revitalize a section of downtown that was formerly part of skid row.

One of the community activists behind this dramatic transformation is Nic Cha Kim. He, along with co-founders Kjell Hagen, Kimba Rogers and Cheyanne Sauter, had a dream in 2004 to have several blocks of downtown designated “Gallery Row,” even though only three galleries stood there at the time. Give a vision a name and work to realize it—that would be their approach.

“It’s a difficult thing to convince people to risk their shirts in an area synonymous with skid row,” said Kim, 35, of those early days. “But if the circumstances and the price are right, then anything is possible. We met with building owners, gave tours to prospective creative business owners and produced art and cultural events throughout the year.”

By the end of the first year, three galleries became nine. Now there are more than 30. The event with the biggest impact has been the monthly Downtown Art Walk, started nine months after Gallery Row was established. While the inaugural gathering may have attracted only a few hundred walkers, Kim estimated, an average of 10,000 people now stop in to the neighborhood’s galleries, shops and restaurants on the second Thursday of every month.

“Now it’s just out of control,” said a very pleased Nathan Cartwright, who opened Hive Gallery on Spring Street more than four years ago.

“I really mean it when I say thank you. [Downtown Art Walk] is probably the best thing going on in the city,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, at a Dec. 10 ceremony to celebrate Gallery Row’s fifth anniversary. Perry was instrumental in passing the legislation to designate the area, which is located in her district.

On this special day, Kim, a playwright who has a day job as an assistant at the Walt Disney Co., cheerfully escorted a few friends around, despite the threat of heavy rain. After a short rest at Kim’s own gallery, Niche, he was soon buying more artwork to help cover the walls of his apartment, as well as introducing his guests to an artist who combines Disney characters with bawdy cartoons from old Playboy magazines. Emily Robertson, a teenager from Australia visiting family, bought a few pieces.

Throughout the night, locals approached Kim and congratulated him.

“[Kim and the Gallery Row founders] are the lifeblood of this stuff,” said Tom Gilmore, a real estate developer largely responsible for the revival of loft housing downtown. “I mean developers can’t do this. You can’t invent creativity.”

The consequences of success, however, can be even broader, especially for local stakeholders. For Gilmore, Gallery Row has made downtown a place where people want to live—just what the owner of several residential buildings could want. And Councilwoman Perry can take credit for cleaning up this area of skid row, especially if she runs for mayor in 2013, as some media outlets have speculated.

But the growth has not come without its share of problems. The growing fleet of food trucks in Los Angeles are staking out more and more sidewalk space on art walk nights. That’s taking business away from restaurants, whose owners are not happy. Those initially apprehensive about the row’s development include low-income housing advocates, who feared that the gentrification occurring with loft conversions would worsen. Instead, Kim said Gallery Row has led to unexpected new opportunities, citing Michael Blaze and the Skid Row Photo Club.

“Blaze procures donated digital cameras, distributes them to skid row residents, leads free weekly photography classes and arranges for printing and framing [prints], which all culminates into an art show for everybody,” Kim described. “If you can activate skid row residents to appreciate and participate in art by giving them a camera, imagine what is possible if you gave them a job. I know it’s not that simple, but you can’t tell me we made it worse.”

He added, “The thing about community activism is you never stop getting criticized. When Gallery Row first emerged, it was, ‘How is it a row? There are only three galleries.’ Now we have 35, but now people complain it’s too crowded.”

Kim does not let the criticism faze him, and instead focuses on making downtown a more vibrant neighborhood through the arts. It’s a vision he shares with others. “The art walk and the galleries … here are engines for creativity,” said Gilmore. “And finally the city gets to be a city, a real city, where it’s incredibly diverse in terms of the demographics and the people who come here, and that live and work here.”