North Koreans pose for photos in front of the newly unveiled statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il at the Mansudae Grand Monument in Pyongyang.
Photojournalist Mark Edward Harris captures scenes from North Korea’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the nation’s late founder.
story and photographs by MARK EDWARD HARRIS
On April 13, the North Koreans launched a three-stage rocket. Seconds later, it exploded. The launch was no doubt timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of the nation’s late founder, Kim Il-sung—an occasion also marked by a series of major celebratory activities, including a simultaneous, multicity fireworks display and grand military parade.
News of the failed launch was unusual in that it was broadcast to the people of North Korea without the usual spin—no scapegoating or attaching blame on those south of the 38th parallel or Washington. Is this a signal of the leadership style of new, third-generation leader Kim Jong-un?
I wanted to travel for the eighth time to North Korea to see the country for the first time since the passing of Kim Jong-il, son of Kim Il-sung, last December. I arrived April 14 at Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport, where I had first set foot in the reclusive country seven years earlier. I have witnessed a sea change since 2005—including scenes like this one: an Italian restaurant complete with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and Italian clothing-garbed women tossing pizzas; a Helmut Sachers Austrian coffee house; and a Paradise microbrewery.
Thousands of cars now travel on the once-barren streets. This is, of course, in Pyongyang, which is the showcase city of the North. But having ventured throughout the country on numerous occasions, I am witness to historic changes that cannot simply be passed off as propaganda created for foreign eyes. Continue Reading »
Posted: May 14th, 2012
Filed Under: Back Issues , BLOG , FEATURED ARTICLE , May 2012
Byrne, Baby, Byrne
For years, Steve Byrne has lit up the stage at comedy clubs, bars and late-night talks shows, earning a reputation as one of the hardest-working stand-up comedians in the biz. Now he’s getting the chance to enjoy the fruits of that intense labor as the star and co-writer of his own sitcom, Sullivan & Son, to premiere on TBS this summer.
story by Oliver Saria
photographs by Yann Bean
The premiere of comedian Steve Byrne’s sitcom Sullivan & Son on TBS is only about three months away when I interview him, and he’s still settling into his production office at the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif. The place looks like a teenage boy had decorated it. The walls are plastered with NHL and movie posters—the Chicago Blackhawks and the Pittsburgh Penguins (his two favorite teams) and all things Marvel Comics. Other framed memorabilia is stacked against the wall, still in bubble wrap, and a tabletop hockey game sits in the middle of the room, waiting to be assembled.
It’s the quiet before the storm. Full-on production mode for the 10-episode season begins in earnest by early May, right after his wife of one year, Jessica, is due to give birth to their first child, a girl. Byrne has every reason to be frantic, but the relaxed vibe of his office décor extends to his demeanor. It’s a good thing I caught him before he is completely stressed out and sleepless.
For a guy with a reputation of being obsessed with work, he doesn’t come off as blindly ambitious or self-obsessed—driven instead by the love of his craft, which he first developed after stumbling upon a job answering phones at Caroline’s Comedy Club in New York City in the late ’90s. For the theater major from Kent State, the original plan was to move to California, but after catching the stand-up bug, Byrne spent the next 15 years tirelessly plying his trade. During that span, he has made the rounds of the late-night talk shows; won the MySpace Standup or Sitdown Comedy Challenge; toured nationally with The Jameson Comedy Tour, The Kims of Comedy and Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Tour; headlined numerous USO tours (his brother is in the Army, and he is a huge supporter of U.S. troops); appeared in the films The Dilemma, Couples Retreat and Four Christmases; and aired two well-received hour-long specials on Comedy Central, Steve Byrne: Happy Hour and The Byrne Identity. Continue Reading »
Photo by Eugene Yi
How K-Town Lost, and Won
Politics is dirty. Local politics is dirtier, and redistricting is as dirty as it gets. This spring, Koreatown fought back. The neighborhood will never be the same.
by EUGENE YI
The disbanding of an ad hoc political commission is a bit like the end of camp. Take the case of the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission. For its three-month existence, the 21 appointees of the commission spent hours together, often late into the night, poring over maps, gutting through accusatory public testimony and bickering, as they redrew the boundaries of the 15 council districts in the City of Angels. On Feb. 29, 2012, after they’d voted to approve the map that would be the fruit of their labor, each commissioner was given two minutes for some final thoughts. The arch-top windows lining the sides of the chamber had long gone dark, and nostalgia emerged as the commissioners reflected on the process.
“Hearing from … the Koreatown neighborhood council, I’m never going to forget that. Never going to forget everyone standing up at the same time in solidarity. That’s an image that’s going to be burned in my mind,” said commissioner Antonio Sanchez.
“I can still see, in my eyes at night, everyone sitting there with the white sashes across their chest,” said commissioner Ken Sampson, sounding haunted by the beauty-pageant-style protest sashes worn by hundreds of Koreatown protestors as they delivered their message: keep the neighborhood whole, and put it in a district where they could potentially elect a Korean American to the City Council.
Instead, the commission’s final map would leave the neighborhood’s political power split, as it has been for decades. For most, it wasn’t a surprise. There are few parts of American democracy as nakedly political as redistricting, the decennial process that redraws electoral districts to reflect the latest census data. The term gerrymandering has been around for 200 years, and incumbents have long used redistricting to fortify their access to money and votes. There are winners, there are losers, and often, there are lawsuits. This year, Koreatown lost, and Koreatown is talking lawsuit. Continue Reading »
Posted: April 29th, 2012
Filed Under: April 2012 , Back Issues , BLOG , FEATURED ARTICLE
A view of Vermont Avenue in Koreatown, with smoke clouds in the background. ©HYUNGWON KANG
SAIGU: AN ORAL HISTORY
KoreAm retraces the days and nights of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a defining event in Korean America’s collective history.
by EUGENE YI
additional interviews by K.W. Lee, Julie Ha, John H. Lee, Paula Daniels, Alex Ko, Katherine Yungmee Kim, Sophia Kim and Emily Kim
The events of April 29, 1992, have been referred to as a riot, a rebellion, an uprising, a civil unrest. For many Koreans, it’s always been 4.29, following the standard cultural shorthand for the dates of historic tragedies. Yet over the past 20 years, the primary narrative of 4.29 has rarely included Korean American perspectives beyond stereotyped notions of victims or vigilantes. This oral history seeks to rectify that in some small measure, and to give those who didn’t witness the traumatic days and nights of fires, chaos and violence a sense of what Korean Americans went through. The events, after all, have been referred to by some as the birth of Korean America, a characterization that isn’t far off.
In the period leading up to 4.29, the mainstream media had fed the public a series of stories on the rising tensions in South Central Los Angeles between African American residents and the Korean merchant class that had become a fixture there. Then, in March 1991, Soon Ja Du, a Korean immigrant storeowner, shot and killed Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old African American customer, following a violent scuffle between the two at Du’s South Central liquor store, worsening an already strained situation. Just 13 days earlier, the brutal beating of African American motorist Rodney King by four white Los Angeles Police Department officers vividly demonstrated the iron-fisted tactics under then-Chief Daryl Gates. The social, economic and political structures seemed aligned to oppress, and the city waited uneasily on April 29, 1992, for the verdict in the excessive force case against the police officers who beat King. Continue Reading »
Posted: April 28th, 2012
Filed Under: April 2012 , Back Issues , BLOG , FEATURED ARTICLE
Photo credit: Hyungwon Kang
Reflections, 20 Years Out
Views on what’s changed in the past two decades and what hasn’t.
Raising Consciousness
“I think the most important lesson is the system took advantage of the fact that we didn’t have an articulate voice to speak out against the scapegoating going on. Because of that, it seemed like the media was basically allowing the Korean community to take the blame for all the injustice happening to blacks. The message today is: When we’re being targeted or scapegoated for something that isn’t right, we need to speak up for ourselves, band together. You see that happening already. When the Jeremy Lin thing happened, with the “chink in the armor” [headline], the guy who wrote that got fired. You see the power of the Internet really carrying the power of the Asian American voice now. That’s something we didn’t have 20 years ago.
—Sonny Kang, actor and mixed martial arts instructor for inner city youth
Los Angeles’ Korean community, as we know it, started in the mid-1960s. And after about 30 years of that community, they were still living as Koreans in America. [The first generation] didn’t care about America. They thought of themselves as Koreans, not Americans. But after the L.A. riots, after that, people started thinking if they want to survive in America, we can’t just live as Koreans. We have to become Korean Americans. So after the riots, there was a lot of bad, but this was one good thing.
—Richard Choi, vice president of Radio Korea Continue Reading »
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Featured Event
One of the the biggest Asian cinema events to hit Southern California opens on May 10. The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications, features the latest works by established and emerging filmmakers, along with seminars, panel discussions and symposiums on topics relevant to Asian Pacific cinema.
Opening Night features “Shanghai Calling,” directed by Daniel Hsia and starring Korean American Daniel Henney, who plays a Chinese American expat lawyer navigating his way through the mean streets of Shanghai (the picture above also indicates he is a raisin smuggler). But does he take off his shirt? Go watch the movie to find out! read more
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