By K.W. Lee, with Dr. Luke and Grace Kim

 

More in sorrow than dismay, the late historian Bong Youn Choy often spoke of the utter disconnect of the early immigrants’ American-born children from their Korean community over the century-old Diaspora.

First, he reasoned, their parents had paid too much attention to their survival and Korean independence causes but too little to their children’s alienation. Constant feuding, feudal Confucian customs, and anti-Asian discrimination also turned the English-speaking generation away from their parents’ isolated enclave.

“They have high education, but they stayed away from their community,” he would lament. “It’s sad. This I don’t understand.”

Despite this wretched disconnect, while working as editor of Koreatown Weekly (1979-1982) and Korea Times Weekly (1990-1992), I came to witness a handful of American-born grandchildren of the first wave reaching out to the struggling and stumbling second wave of newcomers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

They were among the vanguard of the rising Asian American movement in the flaming 1970s.

In late 1978, I first ran into school teacher activist Gail Whang in the cramped Korean Community Service Center on Fulton Street, founded by the late Tom Kim and his cohorts, the late Frank Yoon, Steve Shon, Tom Surh, Chris Chow and a few others.

Jose Sanchez Pak of Mexico City handling henequen plant.

She was there to learn more about the Chol Soo Lee case. She went on to organize the traveling defense committee, first composed of Korean Americans only. The rest is history.

Early on, I sensed a fearless quality in this tenacious advocate for the marginal immigrant folks.

In retrospect, it may be her cultural DNA running in her pioneering family. Gail, 51, was born and bred in the lofty tradition of the three legendary Whang siblings: Whang Sa-Yong, liberator of Korean slaves in Mexico’s Yucatan; Whang Sa-Sun, great patriot and pastor of the first Korean church in the U.S.; and Whang Ha-Soo, educator and protector of lowly picture brides in Hawaii.

And it must have been karma that would send this third-generation Korean American to the Yucatan Peninsula in 1973 to encounter and interview a former slave in that harsh land, where her great uncle had undertaken his underground rescue work.

During her 30-year career as a teacher, Gail demonstrated sustained commitment to improving quality of education among the nation’s most disadvantaged school districts.

At the Oakland Unified School District, where blacks, Latinos and Asians make up the vast majority, she is the executive director of the department of student, family and community service. A trail-blazing go-getter, she has helped build multicultural curriculum for students of all colors reflecting their lives and heritage.

Pak with two descendants of Korean slaves.

In sum, she is an authentic heir to the magnificent Whang legacy, deeply rooted in the Koreans-never-die spirit her grandfather had dedicated his life to preserve in the New World.