Jeff Kim (left) and Curtis Chin, pictured on vacation in San Francisco, have been in a de facto marriage for many years, but now just want to make it legal.
By Corina Knoll
Jeff Kim and Curtis Chin say they’ve never really thought about what their own wedding would be like, though they’ve attended dozens of such ceremonies for friends and family members over the 14 years they’ve been together.
They haven’t had a commitment ceremony like other gay couples have, but did toy with the idea of throwing themselves a 10th anniversary party.
“We were gonna ask people to make up for all the weddings,” quips Kim.
“Yeah, for all the gifts we bought!” adds Chin. “The big joke is, we used to just say, on a pure financial level, it’s just not fair. We spend thousands of dollars on weddings, and we’re never gonna get that back!”
While it makes for a good punchline, the sentiment is an honest reflection of one of the nuances faced by committed same-sex partners who want to marry, but cannot in every state in the nation but Massachusetts.
Kim and Chin, residents of Los Angeles, feel like they have missed out on a social milestone that brings with it validation of their union, along with an outpouring of love and support.
“It’s societal, it’s traditional, it’s historical, it shows something’s beginning,” says Kim of marriage.
“You get hurt on a very personal level because you know that it’s something you’ll never be a part of,” says Chin.
Well, never say never. Pending before the California Supreme Court are four lawsuits — three filed by 23 same-sex couples and the fourth by the city of San Francisco — challenging the state’s current ban of same-sex marriage that resulted from Proposition 22. The 2000 ballot initiative, passed by 62 percent of the state’s voters at the time, defines marriage as a contract between a man and a woman.
But California’s high court, which has until June 2 to issue its rulings, may just overrule that and grant full marriage rights to gays and lesbians, say advocates. If that happens, supporters of same-sex marriage hope similar decisions in other states will follow.
Their high hopes are hinged in large part on the fact that this wouldn’t be the first time the state’s Supreme Court reversed statutes that permitted marriage discrimination. In fact, California has a unique history in this sense. It’s a history that has particular resonance for Asians in America because, like same-sex couples today, they were once denied the freedom to marry the person of their choice, if that person was of a different race.
Anti-miscegenation laws, which banned interracial unions, were in place until the California Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional in 1948 in Perez vs. Sharp. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court followed suit, ruling in Loving vs. Virginia that no state could prohibit marriage between persons of different races and referred to marriage as one of the fundamental rights of a person.
“We were one of the first states to outlaw the interracial marriage ban,” says Alma Soongi Beck, a Korean American attorney based in San Francisco and advocate of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. “We have court precedent for talking about the fundamental right to marry, and that makes us unique. So I think we have a really good chance.”
Last September more than 60 Asian American organizations signed on to file an amicus brief with the California Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage. The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) based in Los Angeles led the effort.
“The Legal Center looked at this as a civil rights issue, especially one where there were some parallels with our communities’ own struggles around race,” says APALC vice president Karin Wang.
The brief argues that, like past laws that banned interracial marriage, current ones preventing same-sex unions work to keep these groups from fully integrating into society. “In particular, for both groups, government policies that mark the group as different and less worthy of marriage than the majority population have seemed to give tacit approval to other forms of public and private discrimination,” reads the brief, which is meant to appeal to Justices Joyce Kennard and Ming Chin, two of the seven California Supreme Court justices who identify as Asian American.
The fact that so many Asian American groups chose to back the same-sex marriage legal case may surprise some. But Wang says, based on polling done by APALC in 2000 and then 2006, there has been a slight shift toward support of same-sex marriage among APAs.
However, that may not hold true for the Korean American community, specifically, which seems to be still having trouble accepting the same-sex part, let alone the marriage piece.
“The Korean community is probably the hardest nut to crack of the large communities here,” notes Wang. “I think we’ve made stronger forays with the Chinese and Filipinos in particular. I’m not sure they’re necessarily more liberal communities — there’s a heavy church presence in both — but there have been more visibly active people [from those groups] talking about the issue.”
Finding gay and lesbian Korean Americans willing to be identified in this article presented a challenge of its own. One Korean American lesbian who fiercely believes in same-sex marriage rights didn’t want her name revealed because she feared it would upset her parents who don’t discuss her sexual orientation with their friends. Another lesbian couple worried about the effects speaking publicly could have on their daughter.
“There are unique aspects of the Korean American community that make speaking out about these issues somewhat more difficult,” says Stephen Kang, co-founder of the Dari Project, an all-volunteer effort started in 2005 to provide a support network and web-based resources for LGBT Korean Americans.
Kang, 29, attributes this reticence in part to the culture’s emphasis on respect for family. While he has been out to his friends, co-workers and immediate family for more than seven years, he has not said anything to his extended family.
“That is a choice I made because I feel like that’s more my parents’ decision than my decision. Because they would be more directly impacted by my outing myself than I would,” says Kang.
He adds that the heavy influence of the Christian church in the Korean American community also plays a silencing role. “Even for folks who wouldn’t necessarily identify themselves as very religious, the church is a key factor in their lives, culturally,” he says.
The Church Factor
In fact, discourse on subjects like homosexuality in the Korean community is often overpowered by the church, which plays not only a spiritual role in people’s lives, but also a social one for this still relatively young immigrant population.
“The Korean churches that are most dominant tend to be more [of an] evangelical, kind of orthodox, conservative type of Christianity,” says Angie Chung, author of Legacies of Struggle: Conflict and Cooperation in Korean American Politics. “And they don’t tend to be very politically involved. It’s kind of shocking, but the first time they ever politically organized was on the same-sex marriage issue because they felt this involved a church matter where they interpret the Bible to state that homosexuality is sinful.”
In 2000, several Korean American ministers in Los Angeles and members of their congregations circulated a petition within the community in support of Proposition 22 and took out an ad in a newspaper decrying gay marriage. There was some dissent within the community, including from an organization known as Korean Americans for Civil Rights, but taking a progressive stand may have felt futile in a community that Chung says is “dominated by more conservative voices or people who try to stay neutral.”
Eight years later and the topic may still feel off-limits to some organizations. “Same-sex marriage is a very controversial topic,” says Hyepin Im, president and CEO of Korean Churches for Community Development, a nonprofit faith-based organization that offers couples counseling and various “healthy marriage” initiatives. “I could see that that might not be something where our agency would want to make a public statement for or against.”
That may be because the Christian church is overwhelmingly against gay marriage. The general consensus within Korean churches is that marriage, according to the Bible, is between a man and a woman.
“It’s very clear in the Scripture: Genesis 2, where God creates man and a woman to have them come together to be in a marriage. Ephesians, chapter 5, starting at verse 22, speaks about wives and husbands and their roles in the marriage and that’s very clear,” says the Rev. Ryan Kim of Korean Central Presbyterian Church in Daly City, a suburb of San Francisco.
“When he created man and woman, one of God’s commands was to go forth and multiply. I know we use scientific methods now, but naturally that’s impossible for a same-sex marriage. It just doesn’t align itself with God’s command for us.”
But while Kim believes being gay or lesbian is a sin and is similar to a sickness, like many other second-generation pastors, he doesn’t believe in signing petitions or proactively opposing gay marriage like his first-generation counterparts. Which may be a sign that while its interpretation of the Bible still sways traditionalist, the Korean church may be moving away from the religious right in how it responds to the issue.
The Rev. Jin Bae of Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church of Rowland Heights, Calif., will even admit that some churches’ views on the matter boil down to plain old prejudice.
“Korean society shuns homosexuality as a whole and so when people say they’re just promoting Bible mandate, if we’re really being honest, I think it’s more than the Bible,” says Bae. “It’s our cultural bias reading into it.”
Ending ‘Separate But Equal’
Briefly, in February and March of 2004, it seemed the tide was turning for California same-sex couples when 4,000 of them were issued marriage licenses in San Francisco under the order of Mayor Gavin Newsom. By August that same year, the licenses were invalidated by the California Supreme Court who said Newsom didn’t have the authority to make that directive. Subsequent gay marriage bills have been vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
While same-sex marriage is legal in Canada, Belgium, South Africa, Spain and the Netherlands, gay and lesbian Americans’ only option is to marry in Massachusetts. However, thanks to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed by President Clinton in 1996, those unions do not have to be recognized by other states nor the federal government. DOMA clearly asserts “no state need treat a relationship between persons of the same sex as a marriage, even if the relationship is considered a marriage in another state” and “the federal government may not treat same-sex relationships as marriages for any purpose.”
What figures from the 2000 Census indicate, though, is that no amount of federal and state legislation can keep gay couples from falling in love and forming families.
The U.S. has 594,000 same-sex unmarried-partner households, compared with 4.9 million households of unmarried opposite sex couples, according to the 2000 Census. Nationally, 33 percent of female same-sex households and 22 percent of male same-sex households include biological children under 18. California has the most same-sex households, with 92,000.
A research study by the Williams Project at the UCLA School of Law revealed that 13,000 Asian Pacific Islanders were living with same-sex partners in California during the 2000 Census. They comprise more than a third of the roughly 40,000 APIs in same-sex relationships in the United States.
One should not assume all of those people will go out and marry, should that right be granted to gay and lesbian couples, according to Ju Hui Judy Han. “I worry that marriage, even same-sex marriage, is intrinsically conservative,” says Han, 36, who is a doctoral candidate in geography. “It’s like people have forgotten about the feminist critique of marriage. Marriage is built on idealized notions of the traditional family, and it’s connected to problematic ideas around ‘family values.’“
Still, she adds she is not against same-sex marriage, but she and her Korean American girlfriend do not plan to take part in that institution, though they moved from San Francisco to Vancouver, Canada, where ironically they could marry.
But many other couples who say they’re already emotionally married do plan to make their union legal if the California law is overturned. Curtis Chin and Jeff Kim say they’ll have a ceremony and see an immediate change in their rights and benefits. Kim, 42, a program director for the California Wellness Foundation, will no longer be taxed for having Chin, a writer and producer, on his employer’s health insurance, something that doesn’t happen to his straight colleagues. And Chin won’t have to worry that Kim’s parents have more legal rights than he does.
“I don’t feel protected in the sense that if something were to happen to Jeff, I would not be surprised if his parents cut me out in the sense of being able to see him at the hospital,” says Chin, whose own Chinese American family has been warm and accepting of the couple.
First-generation immigrants, Kim’s parents still struggle with their only son’s sexual orientation and acknowledging his relationship with another man.
“Embarrassment is a huge factor in the Korean community,” says Kim, who does note that his sister is extremely supportive. “[Being gay] would fit in the category of ‘Oh my god, you brought shame to our family.’ That is kind of a way that people and communities control their populace: the shame and embarrassment factor.”
If there is a wedding, he doesn’t think his parents will show up. But, he understands.
“Having grown up in a Christian Korean environment I know where they’re coming from,” says Kim. “There are evil homophobic people — [my parents] aren’t evil. It’s more about ignorance and not wanting to leave their comfort zone than it is about hate.”
While emotions about homosexuality in the Korean community differ, for some, the fight for same-sex marriage is surprisingly less about feelings — as committed gay couples say they’ve already demonstrated their devotion to each other — and more about legal rights and benefits. Marriage — an institution which incidentally has never been administered by the church in the U.S. — is, legally speaking, a civil contract administered by the state.
“From a legal perspective, to truly protect the rights of peo ple, marriage is really the only way to go,” says attorney Alma Soongi Beck, who works on a lot of sticky cases involving estate planning and taxes for unmarried and same-sex couples.
“There are huge tax assumptions that the IRS allows married people that are completely inapplicable to same-sex couples,” she says.
While some states allow gay couples to get a civil union or register as domestic partners, both of which would afford them more benefits, Beck likens the idea to the landmark decision of Brown vs. Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared separate public schools for black and white students did not mean equal opportunity.
“You try to do ‘separate but equal,’ but you can’t,” says Beck. “So you might as well make it equal, because if you’re really wanting to give people equal rights, give them full equal rights.”
Marriage and Family
As the current laws stand, gay parents are in a particularly precarious situation in the United States. That’s why Will Halm says the legalese of marriage benefits make up about 75 percent of why he wants to marry Marcellin Simard, his partner of 22 years.
“As parents you’re even more keenly aware of the kinds of legal rights we don’t have that married couples do,” says Halm, who has three children (all born by surrogate) with Simard.
Registered as domestic partners in California, Halm and his family moved to Santa Fe, N.M., 18 months ago when Simard, a cardiologist, was offered a high-powered job. New Mexico, however, does not have domestic partnership laws to help protect their rights as parents. (Halm and Simard each only have parentage rights over the child that is biologically his.)
“There are no judgments you can get for gay couples to declare that they’re the legal parents of their children,” says Halm. “If something were to happen to one of us, we wouldn’t want the children to go to anyone other than the other partner.”
The 56-year-old family law attorney has since thought about obtaining marriage licenses in Massachusetts and Canada, where Simard was born. Although he knows neither would actually give the couple any more legal rights in New Mexico.
“It’s really just trying to build up legal protection as much as you can, just hoping that if you collect enough marriage licenses in your drawer that that would be a powerful thing to present to a court if there should ever be any kind of custody litigation over the kids, if for example one of us were to die or become incapacitated or something like that,” Halm says.
“You can name your partner in a will for example as a legal guardian, but a family law judge doesn’t have to respect what’s in a will if the grandparents come in and decide they want to contest that.”
For the most part, Halm’s family has come to embrace his partner and children, something he recognizes as an anomaly and attributes to the fact that he is third-generation. When he was growing up, Halm went to several Korean American summer camps where he was told there were no gays in Korea, an attitude that caused him to keep his distance from the community. Today, Halm’s not sure that line of thinking has changed a whole lot. “The Korean American community has a ways to go before they’re feeling comfortable about gay and lesbian subjects,” he says.
While his mother would welcome a wedding, Halm says his personal reason for getting married would be to show his commitment to Simard, whom he met through mutual friends in Los Angeles when they were both running art galleries in addition to their day jobs. And also to indulge their 12-year-old daughter who’s been begging to be the flower girl.
But even the question of why Halm wants to get married, he says, is itself an example of how gay couples have to prove their unions to be just as legitimate as heterosexual ones.
“Not ‘when,’ but ‘why?’” he says, making note of how the marriage question is often phrased to him.
“Well, the same reason you do.”
Same-sex Partner Households
Stats from the 2000 Census
- The U.S. has 594,000 same-sex unmarried-partner households, compared with 4.9 million households of unmarried opposite-sex couples
- Nationally, 33% of female same-sex households and 22% of male same-sex households include biological children under 18
- 13,000 Asian Pacific Islanders identify themselves as living with same-sex partners in California, making up more than one-third of the 38,200 APIs in same-sex households in the U.S.
- California, the largest state, has the most same-sex households, with 92,000
- San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley are first, fourth and fifth among U.S. cities with the most same-sex households
“I’m going to make a future out of this. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll create one. I definitely have a calling.”
By Ellyn Pak
Photograph by Eric Sueyoshi
Two young artists do a double-take when a familiar face approaches the graffiti wall in Venice Beach. The teenagers eventually put down their spray cans and introduce themselves to the newly famous Ben Chung.
Chung — who is more widely recognized for donning a blank-face mask — looks like an Average Guy, rockin’ cherry Pumas, a black, pit-bull-print T-shirt and baggy jeans. But the graffers’ inkling is correct: They’ve just met the Korean American member of JabbaWockeeZ, the group who weeks prior was crowned “America’s Best Dance Crew” on national television.
The young guys are atwitter about their encounter with Chung. “They came on and I was like, oh my God, they were the best by far,” says Lanny Markasy, an 18-year-old Santa Cruz native who once took classes with a member of the group.
Chung, a 26-year-old Los Angeles native, doesn’t quite yet know what to make of the sudden fame. At times, he says, the attention has been in your face. Just a week after their first-place victory on the MTV hit reality competition, produced by Randy Jackson, JabbaWockeeZ members were mobbed by fans at a McDonald’s in New York City.
“It really hasn’t set in,” Chung says. “I was just a kid who liked to dance, and now I’m kinda in a certain light when sometimes I’m walking down the street, and people will ask me for my autograph,” he says. “It’s crazy. … I’m just like, how do you even know who I am?”
Still, earning the title was a confirmation that Chung and other aspiring dancers could pursue their dreams, make a living and gain street-cred by doing what they love to do.
Chung grew up surrounded by hip-hop and was immersed in the culture, but didn’t get involved in dance until late in high school. Surprisingly, most of the moves he learned as a nascent b-boy came from studying Korean pop videos during the heyday of groups such as H.O.T.
“Man, this sounds kinda corny, but they could dance,” he says. “It was dope. I would try to emulate the moves and stuff like that in my own bedroom.”
At church, Chung became friends with a fellow breaker, and they swapped sweet moves drawn from music videos. Later, another dancer they met through a Korean church network was looking to create a team. Eventually, the group, dubbed Uniq, performed for a church talent show, then entered a Korean music festival competition at Cal State Northridge in the late ’90s.
Better than they thought, Uniq won the contest, and later earned top-billing at a Radio Korea-sponsored beach festival. Soon after, they helped put together the first-ever Kollaboration, a showcase of young Asian American talent that debuted in 2000.
Chung explored the hip-hop dance circuit by joining a team at UCLA. That’s when he was first exposed to Culture Shock, a community dance troupe that was home to members of what would become JabbaWockeeZ. Chung was overwhelmed by the cutting-edge, nonconformist approach of the group.
In 2004, Chung transferred to the University of California, Irvine from a community college, and made it into Kaba Modern, the school’s lauded hip-hop dance troupe. He danced with the crew until he graduated in 2005. Afterward, his mother badgered him. Why not keep dance as a hobby and pursue a master’s degree?
“This is something I love to do,” Chung told his mom. “I’m going to make a future out of this. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll create one. I definitely have a calling to do this.”
After finishing school, Chung honed his skills, taking technique classes and sessioning with friends. In 2006, Chung taught a master class at a studio in San Diego where Kevin Brewer, a dance veteran and member of JabbaWockeeZ, visited.
Days later, Chung tried out for Super Galactic Beat Manipulators, a group Brewer was assembling. Brewer then invited him to join JabbaWockeeZ, a crew Chung had long admired since he first caught wind of them at a showcase in San Diego in 2003.
Chung’s induction to the group had a certain “randomness” to it. In April 2007, JabbaWockeeZ members dance-battled with Chung in a garage. After nine rounds, Chung was official – the crew’s newest member.
“He’s real chill,” Kevin Brewer says. “A really good guy. He has a good heart. He’s down with the crew. He says I’m one of his inspirations, but he’s an inspiration to me.”
JabbaWockeeZ, comprised of members scattered throughout California, Arizona and Las Vegas, is based in San Diego primarily because of its Culture Shock roots. The name comes from Jabberwocky, a nonsensical poem by Lewis Carroll.
Outside of the crew, members pursue separate endeavors, including other dance troupes and industry work. In recent years, Chung has been hired as a back-up dancer for recording artist Omarion’s live shows, and has appeared in various music videos.
In 2007, the crew participated in the show “America’s Got Talent,” but was cut shortly after making it through the audition. Late last year, a casting director from “America’s Best Dance Crew” attended a JabbaWockeeZ performance and encouraged the group to audition.
Initially the members hesitated, but decided to try out for the show, largely inspired by the memory of Gary Kendall — a longtime member of the group who died of meningitis before the auditions. During performances on ABDC, Chung and the other members of JabbaWockeeZ sported white wristbands and pointed skyward again and again in tribute to Kendall.
The group’s popularity rose with each performance. More and more fans arrived at the show bearing rally signs, and calling out support. Party City stores throughout the region experienced a run on the white mime-like masks that the dancers wore exclusively during performances.
“So far it’s been an exciting, stressful, crazy and bittersweet kind of a situation,” Brewer says. “For all of us, it’s strange. In a matter of two months, we’re like the new ’N Sync, and we don’t even sing.”
Still, the group couldn’t predict their victory. For weeks, the competing crews (which included Kaba Modern) remained in separate bubbles, creating original interpretations of dance styles. When JabbaWockeeZ won, and the response from their fan base unfolded, Chung was floored by the love.
“I really feel like God gave me the gift of dance for a reason,” Chung says. “I’ve been able to see how that leads to me being able to talk to certain people I wouldn’t be able to if I wasn’t a dancer.”
The best message, Chung says, has been in the experience.
“Being able to share my life story,” he says, describing what he’d like to do with his gift. “And have people inspired by that.”
By Christine Pae
Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi
A standard pot of juk is ordinary and rather plain fare for what it is: short-grain rice simmered in water until it becomes an opaque and glutinous porridge. Its flavor mirrors its lackluster appearance. All that stands out is a faint sweetness reminiscent of the sweetness of white bread.
But one restaurant franchise is knocking down what shortcomings there are in the bland-but-beloved porridge dish.
Bonjuk, located in Los Angeles’ eatery-packed Koreatown, recognizes the value of serving juk exclusively. What was commonly known as “get-well” food has been redefined as a tasty, comforting dish laced with nostalgia for a mother’s love, making it worthy enough for folks to travel to a restaurant to get it.
Its success, says owner and manager Hyun Sook Kim, lies in its fresh and careful preparation. Each bowl of juk is prepared individually, never dished out from a vat, and enhanced with additional ingredients.
“A long time ago, juk was simple, with not as many ingredients and it wasn’t considered a healthful food,” Kim says. “But now, it’s better for your diet because of all the extra ingredients.”
The franchise boasts 700 locations in Korea, a couple in Japan and one that recently opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2006, Bonjuk expanded overseas, making its first U.S. appearance in Los Angeles. Other locations in Garden Grove, Calif., Flushing, N.Y., and Las Vegas followed soon after.
Kim, 49, took over the Los Angeles branch in May 2007 and commutes from her home in Diamond Bar, Calif. every morning to help serve juk to what is becoming a diverse group of customers, 10 percent of whom are non-Korean, according to Kim.
“They order in Korean and converse in English,” says Kim of the younger Korean American customers.
But a bowl of hearty juk from a restaurant comes with a price — a rather steep one, according to some online community restaurant reviewers who are fans of the place but admit that paying almost $30 for Bonjuk’s premium abalone juk is rather much. Lower-priced juk varieties range from $8 to $12.
“Bonjuk is not the place to go if you’re looking for culinary mastery or a bang-for-your-buck experience,” says Angela Taninies, a social worker from Torrance, Calif., who reviewed the restaurant on online city guide Yelp.com. “That being said, when it’s cold and rainy or I’m just feeling in dire need of comfort food, I know Bonjuk will offer me quality ingredients.”
The fresh ingredients are apparent in Bonjuk’s 17 varieties of juk, which include vegetable, beef and mushroom, ginseng chicken and sweet pumpkin. The dishes are topped with flavorful garnishes such as chopped scallions, carrots, ground sesame seeds and dried seaweed. Bonjuk’s most popular dish is the traditional abalone juk ($16) which adheres to juk’s standard simplicity made special with generous chunks of the shellfish.
Many customers are also attracted to Bonjuk for its distinctly Korean-style ambience and the appealing manner in which the juk is served, says Kim. The restaurant’s interior is clean and bright and follows a Korea-style décor. Dark wood accents contrast against pale, cream walls, shoes clack against a wooden floor.
When served, the juk arrives on individual black trays that also carry small dishes of kimchi, garlicky red chili sauce and jangjorreem, the shredded beef marinated in soy sauce and typically added in juk for flavor. The tray also comes with an extra bowl and a mini ladle to control helpings, while also adding a home-style touch.
Juk is just one of several renditions of rice porridge eaten in Asia, such as Japanese Okayu and Chinese congee, which unlike juk, is eaten usually at breakfast or for a late-night snack. One Bonjuk customer whose hometown is in Jakarta, Indonesia, says juk reminds her of bubur, an Indonesian version of rice porridge.
“We like all different kinds of porridge,” says Rosa Suprapto, a Cal State Northridge student studying finance. “[Bonjuk’s] has more ingredients and it’s more like comfort food.”
It all hits the spot for juk fans, who may or may not be fighting a cold or nursing a toothache.
“I have been guilty of nonsensical profligate spending on porridge,” Taninies says. “Yet I still refuse to do the same with something as simple as, say, a BLT.”
Stir Some Up
At Home!
A recipe for abalone juk
Ingredients:
• 1-1/2 cups rice
• 1/2 cup pine nuts
• 6 cups water for soaking
• 1 can abalone (15 oz./425g), coarsely chopped, reserving the liquid for soup
• 5-1/2 cups water
• 1 piece leek, 2 inches long
Separately, soak the rice in 4-1/2 cups water and the pine nuts in 1-1/2 cups water for more than 2 hours, then drain. In a food processor, puree abalone liquid with the pine nuts. In a saucepan, bring rice and 5-1/2 cups water to a boil, then add the leek, abalone and the pine nut puree, and boil again for 3 minutes. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes.
Bonjuk locations
Los Angeles
3551 Wilshire Blvd.
(213) 380-2248
Orange County
10122 Garden Grove Blvd.
Garden Grove
(714) 534-0113
New York City
152-26 Northern Blvd.
(718) 939-5868
Photos courtesy of Discovery Communications, Inc.
By Michelle Woo
“Come heeere!” Kate Gosselin squeals giddily, as the tiny feet of a toddler scamper toward the spectacle du jour. “Is that your poopie right there? Oh my goodness. Sit there. I’m gonna go get the camera.”
It’s a day of intensive potty training at the Gosselin home and TV production crewmembers are there to capture what turned out to be an unexpected milestone. They’ve been documenting the daily happenings of this young family in Central Pennsylvania, which have included visiting the zoo, taking formal portraits, and in this smile-inducing episode, lauding little Alexis’ entrance into a diaper-free world.
It’s ordinary stuff that normally might not make for good TV, but as fans across the country know, this is no ordinary family.
Sitting side-by-side on a couch in the small set built into a corner of their basement, Kate and her husband Jon review the events of the day in an intimate, “Real World”-esque interview session. When prompted, Kate defends her eagerness for getting that “first poop” snapshot, citing what seems to be a household tradition: “I got Cara sitting by her potty. I got Leah and (now) Alexis. I’ve missed Hannah and Mady so far, but don’t worry — I’ll get all the boys.”
Jon’s take? “I think it’s gross,” he scoffs.
Jon and Kate are the stars of TLC’s hit reality series “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” which provides an uncensored, barely scripted glimpse into their lives with eight children. Yes, there are eight Gosselin offspring. One set of 7-year-old twin girls and a set of sextuplets — three boys and three girls — who turn 4 on May 10. And with Jon being of Korean and French/Welsh descent (his mom is Korean), the clan is also probably the most recognizable multiracial Asian American family on prime time TV.
How they wound up with eight is summed up in the cheery introduction of every episode: “It all started with the two of us. Then we had our beautiful twin girls, Cara and Madelyn. We were so thrilled, we decided to try for just one more and ended up with six.” Now, viewers get to watch — in awe, in amusement, in pity — as this parental duo sets out to create a sense of order amid the never-ending chaos. From the look of things, they’re doing just fine.
KoreAm had the opportunity to chat with Jon and Kate separately over the phone (during naptime) about their romance, their views on family, and how they manage a very full house.
“Hold on. I’m trying to do Jell-O math,” says Kate in the middle of the interview. “OK. Sorry.”
Meet Kate. She’s known for her short blonde ’do, Type A personality and self-diagnosed “germaphobia.” The 33-year-old, stay-at-home supermom does up to five loads of laundry and rips through two rolls of paper towels each day.
“I liked kids,” says Jon, 31. “I loved being around them. I loved hanging out and stuff like that. I just never dreamed of having eight kids.”
That’s Jon. He loves to snowboard and travel, and he’s undeniably more laidback than his wife. He recently started working at home as a web developer.
Both Pennsylvania natives, Jon and Kate met in 1997 at a picnic hosted by the hotel where Jon was working. Kate was tagging along with a friend. The two exchanged glances all afternoon until someone finally introduced them. “Where I lived was a small area, so I was like, I never saw her before,” Jon recalls. In one episode, Kate admits that she’s always been attracted to Asian guys.
“We hit it off really well,” Jon says. “She was older than I was, so I really thought I had no chance because of the age gap. I just thought we’d see how it goes.”
Soon, they were in relationship bliss. “We used to make people sick,” Kate says. “People were, like, you two are disgusting. We were ridiculously adorable.”
After marrying in 1999, Kate wanted to try for a baby right away as she always had a “nagging feeling” that she’d have trouble getting pregnant. Hospital tests confirmed her hunch and she was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which prevented her from ovulating on her own. So she turned to fertility treatments, which worked almost instantly.
In 2000, Madelyn (“Mady”) and Cara were born. Jon says life was challenging — he was holding down multiple retail/service jobs, while Kate worked as a pediatric nurse — but filled with love and joy.
“Everything was Mady and Cara. Mady and Cary this, twins that. We just did normal family things. Went on vacations. Went to the beach a lot. We were basically living the American Dream,” Jon recalls.
Then Kate wanted one more.
“She had this burning desire,” Jon describes. “She always said she wanted to know what it was like to be pregnant with one baby. When she gets on a roll with something, you never hear the end of it. For a long time, I was, like, no, a family of four is perfect. The world is designed for four people — cars, everything. But I just really felt like she wanted to have a baby really badly. I basically gave in.”
They went back for another round of fertility treatments, but this time, they got more than they bargained for. An ultrasound revealed Kate was pregnant with seven. When doctors showed them the screen, Kate sobbed. Jon started shaking and had to turn away.
Though reduction was out of the question. “We don’t believe in — you know,” Jon says. “We believe in life.”
That weekend, they cried for all their unanswered questions. How would the babies affect the lives of Mady and Cara? How would they pay for this? Why did this happen?
But when the news spread throughout their church community, they experienced an outpouring of support with dozens of friends and strangers offering help once the babies arrived. Over time, their sorrow turned to hope.
After a closely-monitored pregnancy, the big day had finally come. On May 10, 2005, Kate gave birth to six small (the biggest weighed 3.05 ounces), but healthy, babies: Alexis, Hannah, Aaden, Collin, Leah and Joel. Delivered by a team of more than 75 at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center, the Gosselin bunch became the second set of sextuplets born in Pennsylvania and among fewer than 30 sets born worldwide. Jon and Kate were thrilled. Local media had a field day.
But when the babies came home, the real chaos began. Volunteers worked around the clock in shifts. Jon says he didn’t sleep for four months straight. Kate once recapped the rigid schedule of those early months like this: “We got them up in the morning, changed them, fed them, played, changed them, fed them, played, nap, changed them, fed them, played, changed them, bed.”
One day, Kate received an e-mail saying that the folks at Discovery Health were interested in filming their daily lives for a documentary. The couple was hesitant at first, wary of letting a big media outlet magnify and chisel their interactions for television, but Jon says they both felt a “real good connection” with the producers after speaking with them. Plus, the insanity of parenting eight kids left no time to whip out a video camera. It’d be great if someone else could capture these memories for them, they thought.
In 2006, the network aired the one-hour special, “Surviving Sextuplets and Twins.” Viewers loved it. So did Jon and Kate, who let the crew continue filming the family for a follow-up special to air the next year. When that became a hit, Discovery Health proposed the idea for a full-fledged series. To Jon and Kate, the thought of it seemed rather natural. This would be a chance to show the world how ordinary, yet extraordinary their world really is.
To prepare for filming, their home was installed with permanent light fixtures, so the kids wouldn’t trip on stands or cables. Filming would take place three days a week (“It’s not ‘Big Brother,’” Jon explains), with one day reserved for the Jon-and-Kate interview session.
The show, which debuted in April 2007 on Discovery Health and later moved to TLC, documents the good, bad and ugly of life with multiples. Jon says a typical day for him usually starts at 6:30 a.m. when he wakes up, gets the twins ready for school, makes coffee for Kate, and lays out outfits for the six little ones. “You’ll hear us say stuff like, ‘Where’s Aadan? Where are the boys? Where are the girls? Who do we have?’” he says.
The household runs on a system of strict rules and extreme organization. Think buddy systems, color-coded bibs, sippy cups. Potty training, which began for the little ones last year during Season 1, involved charts, stickers and lots of M&M rewards.
Still, disasters can arise at any moment: a flood in the laundry room, gum stuck on teddy bears, destructive behavior and, yes, lots of screaming, crying and fighting — by kids and grownups. It’s not glamorous, Kate says, but always real.
“What you see is what you get,” says Kate. “And yeah, there are days when I’m extra grouchy and I’ll think, oh crap, now I’m going to have to see this — and so is everybody else. But we’re very honest, almost to a fault. We’ve got nothing to hide.”
From the time the sextuplets were born, the couple has been the center of much controversy: for pushing for Medicaid assistance beyond the government-granted limits, for the show’s use of product placement, for the dynamics of their relationship (remarks made by Kate to, or about, her husband include: “He takes longer than I do and that’s really irritating.” “He’s frustrated with himself because he’s so disorganized.” “Can you please help me instead of playing with toys?”). In online communities, Kate’s parenting and marital tactics are dissected so intensely you’d think she was running for president.
“You just get to the point where you don’t pay attention,” Kate says. “You don’t read, you don’t watch, you don’t care, really. We did get upset at first, saying, ‘If you had to walk in our shoes.’ Now I don’t really care. Those people are never going to walk in our shoes. You can try to imagine it and say, well, I would do this or that, but the truth is you’ve never had a shot at it, let alone day after day where you’re exhausted and you have to do it the next day, and do it again and again and again.”
But for many watchers, Kate is a modern-day heroine of sorts, a bearer of hope for any mom or dad who’s ever felt overwhelmed. Fans watch and think, hey, if she can do it with eight, I can surely do it with one or two or three.
Kim Lee, 30, of Reston, Va., was first intrigued by the racial background of Jon and the children — her two daughters are “three-quarters” Korean. “My toddler used to see the
little girls on the ‘Jon & Kate’ commercials and tell me that she’s on TV,” Lee says.
Lee is now a devoted follower of the show: “Seeing a fellow stay-at-home mom handle the typical day-to-day issues of raising kids in a very human way keeps me tuning in. I see our own battles, milestones and developments mirrored in Kate’s interactions with her sextuplets. I watch in awe as Jon and Kate navigate the difficult, but rewarding waters of parenting multiple multiples.”
Jon has received e-mails from fans saying that he’s a role model for Asian American dads, who aren’t well-represented in the media. He says a key to good parenting is teamwork, and that he and Kate work in ways that compliment each other. “Since my wife is the Type A personality, it’s easier for me to just follow her schedule. If we were both Type A personalities, we wouldn’t be on TLC. We’d be on, like, FX.”
Kate adds, “[Jon] is the fun parent. I’m definitely more of the disciplinarian. Cara and Mady will actually say that. He’s the fun parent and I am the boring parent. I’m the one who’s always thinking to the future as to how this will affect them. Jon thinks about now. If we’re having fun now, then everything’s good. But he’s also very helpful. He loves being with the children. I couldn’t do it without him, without a doubt. And a lot of the reason why I do what I do is because he’s here.”
Although the show isn’t scripted, series producer Jen Stocks works closely with Jon and Kate in deciding the themes and events for each episode, which have included visiting the dentist, hiring a nanny, carpeting the house and taking a family vacation to Park City, Utah. Over the years they’ve been doing the show, Jon and Kate say the production crew has become part of the family.
“Jon and Kate do not hide a thing,” Stocks says. “That still amazes me. For a lot of people, their natural instinct would be to present something they think everyone wants to see, and want to hear. That’s not the case with them. They never tried to paint a pretty picture of their lives. They show that their situation is not always easy, but it’s something that’s always worth the struggle.”
As for their rising celebrity status, Kate says the little kids don’t understand that they’re on television and the twins don’t mind the circumstances so much, although Mady sometimes complains when the kids talk about the show at school. “Just like with everything else, she’s either hot or she’s cold,” Kate says.
One of the most challenging aspects of raising multiples is making sure each kid gets enough attention and knows he or she is loved. (“There are days when I’m like, wait, did I even hug Aaden today?” Kate says on the show.) In Season 3, the show introduced “special days,” where each kid got to spend a whole day with just Mom and/or Dad.
Mady got her ears pierced. Cara went to the roller skating rink. Alexis visited a reptile museum. Aaden got a tour of a dairy farm.
“[The special days] have really been great for me and Kate because now we’re getting to know our children as individuals,” Jon says. “They have so much to say when they’re by themselves. I want to know my kids. I want them to be able to come to me with anything.”
As for the show, Jon and Kate say they’ll continue as long as it remains healthy for the family. They’ve been offered a new season, but haven’t officially signed on. During their time away from the show, the couple does speaking engagements at churches across the country. Kate also finished writing a book with her friend, Beth Carson, titled Multiple Blessings: Surviving to Thriving With Twins and Sextuplets, which will be released in November. “It’s about us learning that our lives are not in our hands, but in God’s hands,” Kate says.
She adds the show has an underlying message: “It brings hope to families who thought, hey, when the going gets tough, I’ll split. I’ll be out of here. But that’s not always the answer.”
Each week, viewers become a part of the Gosselin’s ongoing journey.
“Today, I can very well lose my mind,” Kate says in the show’s intro. “And although the stress of having two sets of multiples may not bring out the best in us, we’re a family.
“And we’re in this together.”
Top Row: TK Chun, Dr. Wonhee Sull, Yani Tseng, Grace Park, Soo Yun Kang, Jin Joo Hong, H.J. Choi, Birdie Kim, Meena Lee, Young Kim, Eun-Hee Ji, Na-Yeon Choi, Hana Kim, David Oh, Toby Dawson Bottom Row: C.S. Lee, Angela Park, Il Mi Chung, Su A Kim, Hee Young Park, Kyeong Bae, Seo-Jae Lee, In-Bee Park, Dr. Mike Hong, James Ryu
By Christine Pae
Photos by Chiuling Chen and Eric Sueyoshi
No one had a case of the Mondays.
On the morning of April 7, dozens of men and women ditched the office and headed to the Pacific Palms Resort in the City of Industry, Calif., which overlooked home-studded hills misty with haze. Clad in bright polo shirts and crisp visors, they were ready to play golf.
It was all for KoreAm’s 2008 Pro-Am, a golf tournament that brought together Korean LPGA members, special guests and community members for a friendly day on the greens.
The KoreAm Pro-Am benefits The LPGA Foundation by integrating its Korean players with local sponsors and introducing them to the Korean American community. Even after playing a major LPGA tournament like the Kraft-Nabisco, the players wanted to contribute to the event, says Sean Pyun, LPGA manager of international member services.
“It’s not about the money, it’s not about the endorsements,” Pyun says. “They wanted to give back to the Korean American community, particularly in the L.A. market.”
Prior to the game, a pairings party at Opus Restaurant in Los Angeles’ Koreatown linked pro players with amateurs as they mingled over an upscale buffet dinner and toasted the event with Michelob Ultra and Ultra Amber and Crown Royal Cask 16.
Hardly any of the amateurs flinched at the idea of playing with some of the LPGA’s top Korean and Korean American players, thanks to a scramble format that divided the 100 amateur players into teams of four, each which was graced with a pro player to guide the way.
Bruce Rothman of Solair, one of the event’s sponsors, liked the idea of playing side by side with a pro without being under the scrutiny of an audience.
“A lot of times in a Pro-Am, it’s at a tournament where there are a lot of people watching you,” Rothman says. “This isn’t the case here. It’s just you and the professional.”
The 25 LPGA players who participated included Grace Park, Angela Park, Birdie Kim, Hee Young Park and Shi Hyun Ahn. Olympic skier Toby Dawson and “Dexter” star C.S. Lee also came out and played.
“I’m not nervous,” says Lee, an avid golfer who plays nearly five days a week. “I’m more anxious and interested to see these pro players. I have never seen pro players hit balls before.”
Team members from Dura Coat Products Inc., the event’s title sponsor, played with Grace Park, who was happy to participate in the event.
“You get to meet a lot of Korean Americans who live here in California,” Grace Park says. “Their support is always appreciated and it’s time to give my appreciation. It is very exciting.”
Dr. Mike Hong, president of Dura Coat, believed the tournament was a great way to unite the Korean LPGA players with the KA community.
“Everybody enjoyed it thoroughly,” Hong says. “[The Dura Coat team players] didn’t expect that type of Pro-Am and were surprised to find out how wonderful the event was. They asked me to invite them again next year.”
The tournament signed off after an awards dinner. Champions Soo Yun Kang and the Michelob Ultra team took home Helio Mysto devices, Versus drivers and other prizes.
Though no one snagged either of the coveted hole-in-one prizes, which included a new Hyundai Genesis car, and a Helio Mysto device with unlimited Helio service for one year.
They’ll just have to try again next year.
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It’s the new year, and Yim Jae Beum is coming to town! After a sold-out show in Los Angeles last October, he is coming back to hold two U.S. concerts for the 2012 Lunar New Year. Everyone already knows this man can sing! He’s got an impressive resume, debuting as a rock singer back in 1986, releasing Korean classics, such as “For You,” and most recently, joining and winning first place twice on the MBC show, “I am a Singer.”
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