When I look at our world, I feel my grandfather, the late Korean independence leader Dosan Ahn Chang Ho, would be appalled by many things if he were alive today. Dosan’s story is about a wise patriotic man with honorable goals. He placed Korea — and fighting for its independence from Japanese rule, even in the face of imprisonment and torture — above his own family and made the ultimate sacrifice of giving his life for his country. Having good character is at the core of Dosan’s teachings, a timeless lesson especially relevant today and especially important for our community to heed.
It’s necessary for Dosan’s legacy to be preserved and protected. He made too many sacrifices and worked too hard his whole life for his experiences and teachings to go to waste. In recent years, I have taken on the role of safeguarding that legacy. It is a duty I take to heart as his grandson who never had a chance to meet him, but has spent much of his adult life studying his life and ideals.
Understandably, over the years, Korean Americans have put the very worthy Dosan (which incidentally was a pen name he chose for himself after seeing Hawaii from a ship for the first time; the name means “Island Mountain”) on a public pedestal and honored him with a statue, a post office station, a freeway interchange, a foundation, the list goes on. But, unfortunately, not all organizations or people that use his name for these seemingly honorable purposes are honorable themselves. Many may pretend to know Dosan’s story, take leadership roles in organizations using his name and collect funds in his name, but they are neither honest nor sincere. They are opportunists taking advantage of Dosan’s name to promote their own egos and advance their own ambitions.
It concerns me greatly when people who use Dosan’s name to elevate their position in the community don’t follow his teachings. Because I am not afraid of confronting people I believe are wrong, regardless of their titles, I have become an unpopular figure in certain circles and, at times, even within my own family.
A particularly egregious example occurred in the mid-1990s when L.A.-based attorney Erica Kim served as president of the Dosan Ahn Chang Ho Foundation in Los Angeles. I grew suspicious of her after observing her during a 1994 educational seminar on Dosan. Some volunteers for the event had told me that the money they were raising for the event seemed inconsistent with the numbers registered in the accounting books.
I raised hell, even going up against my own family members, to get her fired from the foundation because I felt she did not model Dosan’s principles of honesty and integrity. I felt she was just using Dosan’s name to get ahead. Finally, when my family refused to act, I went to the press and publicly demanded her resignation in 1995. She resigned after the press had some queries of their own about some questionable community activities.
Kim and her brother, Kyung Joon Kim, made headlines last year in the BBK embezzlement scandal. Her brother was convicted of fraud and embezzlement in Korea. Erica Kim pleaded guilty to money laundering and false tax reporting in the U.S. in 2007. She is no longer eligible to practice law because of her criminal activity.
