Contents
1. Transcript
1.1. Session 1 (November 2, 2007)
-
Cline
- Today is Friday, November 2, 2007. This is Alex Cline interviewing John
Lim at his office in downtown Los Angeles. This is our first session.
-
Cline
- Good morning.
-
Lim
- Good morning.
-
Cline
- Thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk about your life. It took
a little while to get it to finally happen, but I'm looking forward to
this talk. We always predictably start at the beginning, so I'm going to
ask you a simple question, which is where and when were you born?
-
Lim
- Born in Seoul, Korea, 1957, September 22.
-
Cline
- Who were your parents?
-
Lim
- My father's name is Dong Sun Lim, D-o-n-g, S-u-n, L-i-m. He was, at the
time of my birth, the chaplain of the Korean Air Force, South Korean Air
Force. I believe that he was the first chaplain ever of the Korean
history.
-
Lim
- My mother was a homemaker. She was formerly a teacher. At the time I was
born, she was already a homemaker. She actually passed away this year,
August. So just a couple months back.
-
Cline
- What do you know, starting with your father, what do you know about his
family background; your grandparents, what they did, where they were
from?
-
Lim
- My father's father, my grandfather, was a farmer at an island called
Daebu, which is, as I understand it, on the west gulf of the Korean Sea.
His father was a scholar/mayor, he was very politically active, and as I
understand it, they were from a very prominent family. They had
significant wealth. But my father's father, my grandfather's brother,
apparently, had an interesting life and some of the wealth had
dissipated. All I know is that it never got to me, that's for sure.
[laughs]
-
Cline
- Well, you'd know, wouldn't you? What about your mother's side of the
family?
-
Lim
- My maternal grandfather was a merchant, I understand, and he was quite
successful at one time. But like many folks of that era, they lost a lot
of their wealth during the Japanese occupation. I know that they did a
lot of traveling to Manchuria. But my mother was, nevertheless, well
provided for, in that she was given educational opportunity, which was
very, very rare at the time in that country. So she went to a prominent
high school and she actually graduated from college. She would have gone
to school in the forties.
-
Cline
- Dou know where she went to college?
-
Lim
- Seoul Theological Seminary.
-
Cline
- Do you know how your parents met?
-
Lim
- At the dorm. [laughs]
-
Cline
- When you said Theological Seminary, I had to ask, because I figured there
had to be a connection there. Wow, okay. Do you know how old they were
when they got married?
-
Lim
- I'm not sure, but I think they were in their mid-twenties.
-
Cline
- So they waited a little while. What about siblings? Do you have any
siblings?
-
Lim
- I am the youngest of four children. The oldest is my brother Peter [Lim],
and then I have two older sisters between myself and my older brother,
Rebecca and Debbie.
-
Cline
- They have western names. So you all came over here at some--?
-
Lim
- We basically adopted a western name when we came here because our Korean
name was extremely difficult to pronounce. If we had the easier Korean
name, easier to pronounce, that is, I think we may have just kept the
Korean name.
-
Cline
- So what was your Korean name?
-
Lim
- It's Sun Chun, but I have yet to hear a non-Korean pronounce that
correctly.
-
Cline
- Really?
-
Lim
- Yes. Sun Chun. You want to try that?
-
Cline
- Sun Chun.
-
Lim
- Pretty close. I'd give you a B-minus. [laughs]
-
Cline
- Okay. So you're listening for something that I'm not attuned to.
-
Cline
- So let's talk about what Seoul was like when you were young. First of
all, what do you remember about your family life? How would you
characterize your relationship with your parents and your siblings when
you were a youngster? You could include the kinds of things you liked to
do or chores you had to do, things that characterized your home life
when you were a child.
-
Lim
- Well, Seoul, I was living in Korea from '57 to '67, that would have been
a few years after the end of the Korean War, so it was in a recovery
mode and they did recover, but it was still a very poor country in
relative terms. Nevertheless, given my father's position, I didn't have
a real deprived life. I would say I probably had a middle-class
lifestyle in Korea, which would have been close to poverty. [recorder off]
-
Cline
- Okay, we're back. I had just asked you about the nature of your home life
when you were a child, the kind of activities you were doing. You were
describing that Seoul was in its recovery period right after the war,
and it's now a divided country.
-
Lim
- Right. I think I also mentioned that because of my father's position I
think I had a middle-class lifestyle in terms of economic position. But
looking back, I realize that we were awfully, awfully poor. I remember
the house being a pretty comfortable, nice house, but when I went back
many years later I realized it was a little shack. So it's interesting
how when you're in a certain mode and you are content with that, you
don't really see the constraints and limitations that are with that.
-
Cline
- Right, and in a context where maybe relative to other things it was
really nice.
-
Lim
- Absolutely. So I was going to school. I went to kindergarten in Seoul,
Korea, and I went to an elementary school up to about fourth grade and
then that's when we immigrated to the United States. It was a very--I
just have these memories of having a lot of fun and enjoying my life in
Korea. I didn't have to go through the stress of rigorous educational
preparation for middle school or high school exam, because I knew I was
coming to the United States, whereas my siblings did go through those
rigorous preparation process and it gave them a lot of pain and stress,
as I understand it.
-
Lim
- As for the chores, we didn't have much, because even at our home we did
have some help. I think we had a--I guess back then they called them,
like, maid service or maid support for my mom.
-
Cline
- How would you describe your relationship with your parents? How would you
describe their parenting, looking back on it?
-
Lim
- My father was a very progressive man. I think he was very conservative on
moral issues, but on other things I think he was very liberal. So he
always challenged us and let us pretty much do what we wanted to do.
Although I know he had high expectations, he rarely vocalized them. My
mother was a much more hands-on mother. I guess that's more typical with
the Asian parents, if I may stereotype them.
-
Cline
- And being the youngest, what was the dynamic like with your siblings and
how do you think that maybe affected you growing up?
-
Lim
- Well, I think if you ask my siblings about the same question, they may
have a totally different view, but I think that I had to learn to
survive with my siblings by being a good negotiator and being a good
compromiser. But my siblings would probably say that I had the best of
both worlds because my parents were more lenient with me and they were
always looked upon to be kind and generous and gentle with the youngest.
-
Cline
- And they'd already learned from all the ones before you, too, so
sometimes they're more relaxed.
-
Cline
- What were you interested in when you were a child in Korea? What kind of
things captivated your interest?
-
Lim
- Well, I can recall this one experience where my mother had a good friend
who was a very prominent lawyer in Korea. He later on became a senator
in Korea, but at the time he was a very prominent lawyer. He was the
only lawyer that I knew of in Korea. I remember my mother taking me to
visit him when I was a child; I forget exactly what age, but obviously I
was under ten, and going to his home and just seeing the environment and
the ambiance and the lifestyle that his family had really, really
impressed me. I remember my mother speaking really highly of the man as
somebody who is a crusader for the underprivileged and so forth. So I
think that experience, coupled with other things that happened in my
life in the United States, motivated me to become a lawyer and pursue a
legal career.
-
Cline
- Interesting. What about friends and things? What were your friends like
growing up? Did they live right in the same neighborhood? Did you go to
the same school, or did you have friends in--I'm getting also to the
church question, because I have to assume that you were--
-
Lim
- Because, obviously, we didn't have Internet and we didn't have cell
phones, friends were the friends that you could see and touch. So they
were all from the neighborhood, yes. I've kept contacts with a couple of
them for many, many years, and I still have contacts with one of them
that I still see when I'm in Korea, after forty-some years.
-
Cline
- Wow, amazing. Describe, if you can, your neighborhood in Seoul, just
physically what was it like, what kind of buildings or businesses or
different kinds of people were there in the neighborhood.
-
Cline
- Again, this is only a few years after the war, so I don't think any of
the buildings would make it to the Architectural Digest. Really, the
homes were all very small and they were just barely providing shelter, I
think. But what was interesting from just observing from back then and
even now when I go back, even though we were all in the neighborhood
called the Hwayang-dong, there was the wealthier portion of the
Hwayang-dong and there were the not-so-wealthy portion. There was no
clear demarcation line, but you could sort of walk through the town and
you can sort of sense where the line is. It's an invisible line, but
from this point forward the homes are a little bit wealthier. I
shouldn't say homes; the families are, and the homes look nicer. We were
in the nicer area, but as I said, even then by comparison it's not a
very nice neighborhood.
-
Cline
- Do you remember the kinds of jobs that some of your friends' parents had,
what their employment was that had them in that bracket in your area?
-
Lim
- Yes. I think because I was so young I don't think I paid a whole lot of
attention to the jobs my friends' parents had, but I know that some of
the more prominent ones, I remember the family immediately to the south
of our home was a colonel from the Korean Army. So they were pretty well
off. A few homes down from there was a vice president of the largest
soda company in Korea, which is still around, by the way; it's Chu Song
Sai Da [possibly referring to Chilsung Cider].
-
Cline
- What about things like businesses? How did you get your goods? How did
you get your food? Where did you have to go? How was that set up in your
neighborhood?
-
Lim
- Grocery shopping was just basically walking down the street, down the
hills, for more of the daily consumption stuff, but the heavy-duty
shopping, there was a market called Nam Dya Mun, which I guess looked
more like a mercado in Mexico, but maybe even more primitive than
mercado today. But, again, this is back in the sixties, early sixties
and late fifties, so the markets--there were no pushcarts in the aisle.
[laughs] These are just people bringing their stuff from the farm and
laying them on the ground with a sort of a cloth over the box that they
put on it.
-
Cline
- Growing up in your area during those years, do you have any memories of
seeing any foreigners, non-Asians, in the area?
-
Lim
- Oh, absolutely, because our neighborhood was in pretty close proximity to
the U.S.--I think they called it Ni Pai Gun. So it would have been, the
English translation of that would be the U.S. Army base. So there were
soldiers all the time, the G.I.'s in the neighborhood.
-
Cline
- What was your feeling about that? Any interest there?
-
Lim
- Well, we were taught from early on that they were friends of the country
and that their presence was important to the country's defense. So by
and large, I think the feelings were positive towards them. I know in
more recent years there has been a lot of anti-American sentiment, but
as I recall at the time I think the reception was there; it was a
positive reception.
-
Cline
- Consequently, did you have any interaction with these people or were you
exposed to any--
-
Lim
- Very, very limited. Like showing off one word that you know in English,
"hello." I think I knew two words: hello and thank you. So you practiced
them whenever you'd see these guys.
-
Cline
- What kind of exposure, if any, did you have to what we can put under this
giant general category of western culture, music or anything like that
that may have been broadcast?
-
Lim
- I would say really none. You know, back then some homes had
black-and-white TV. We didn't, but I remember one of our neighbors did.
When there was a major news event, we would go to our neighbor's house
and everybody would crowd in that small room with one small tiny TV and
we would watch them. Then that was probably extent of the exposure that
we had to western culture.
-
Cline
- What about the atmosphere at the time in terms of the fact that you were
in a now divided country and near a military base and probably, I would
imagine, a certain amount of suspicion and concern at that time, what do
you remember, if anything, about that?
-
Lim
- I do remember having a lot of drills that were like what they called bomb
wave drills. It was turn on the siren, and we would all look for places
to--like the kind of earthquake drills that we have in Southern
California. We had a lot of those. There would be at times these
propaganda messages that were printed on small pieces of paper that were
dropped from an airplane, and they would be North Korean airplanes that
would come by. I'm sure the South Koreans did the same thing to the
North. But it was one of those things where you pick up as a kid and you
read and the parents would be mad at you because you read Communist
propaganda material.
-
Cline
- Right. Do you remember the kinds of things it might have said?
-
Lim
- I don't remember the details, but I'm sure it had to do with praising Kim
Il-sung.
-
Cline
- Of course. What about, now, your father's a chaplain, and obviously
you're a Christian family, how did the religious practice play out in
your family life when you were young? Did you go regularly to a church
in the neighborhood or what denomination was it, do you remember?
-
Lim
- We did go to church regularly, although I remember, as a child, my sister
and I, whenever we had the chance, we would try to find a way to ditch a
church service to go to a cartoon shop. In Korea there was a--it was
called a Manhwa store. Manhwa, it means cartoon. But there would be
extensive cartoon books, a series of books, you know, from Volume 1 to
50, and once you get hooked on the first one, you've got to finish all
the way to the fiftieth volume. And these things cost money to rent
them. So what we would do is, instead of letting them bring them home,
because my mom would be upset, we would go to these shops and use the
money that our mom gave us to go and make the offering to the church at
the cartoon shop and read the cartoons. But that was sort of an
occasional thing; it was not our regular thing.
-
Lim
- But to answer your question, we did go to church, of course. This is at a
young age, so we didn't really think about the issues and analyzed or
challenged those religious issues. We just went as a matter of practice.
And that kind of carried us all the way through--even that came with us
when we immigrated to the United States.
-
Cline
- Did you go to Sunday school?
-
Lim
- Yes. Did you?
-
Cline
- No, I didn't. I didn't grow up religiously at all.
-
Lim
- Oh, I see.
-
Cline
- Was the church very close to where you lived?
-
Lim
- Yes.
-
Cline
- Do you remember the denomination?
-
Lim
- I don't remember the denomination, but yes.
-
Cline
- It was Protestant, obviously.
-
Lim
- I wouldn't even necessarily say that. Yes, I don't really remember, but
it was a church around the neighborhood.
-
Cline
- What do you remember about people in the neighborhood who may have been
other than Christian and what your interaction was like with them? Or do
you remember any at all?
-
Lim
- Well, away from the church we don't even get into the religious issues,
so we don't really know who was a church-goer or who was not and what
denomination they might be in. I should note that even though my father
was a minister and a chaplain at the Korean Air Force, the church that
we attended is not where he served. He actually didn't serve any
particular church, but he was so well known and so much in demand, that
he would travel to different churches in the country to be a guest
speaker. I also remember that he was the personal pastor to the first
president of Korea, which was Syungman Rhee, and he was his spiritual
advisor. Sort of like Billy Graham.
-
Cline
- Like Billy Graham.
-
Lim
- Yes, exactly. And a lot of people do compare him to Billy Graham.
-
Cline
- Wow. Okay. You mentioned that you would go to this cartoon shop with your
sister. Is this the sister who's the next youngest?
-
Lim
- Yes, that's correct. Right.
-
Cline
- How many years apart in age were you?
-
Lim
- We're less than two years apart.
-
Cline
- So were you pretty close then?
-
Lim
- Yes, we were childhood friends, I guess.
-
Cline
- What about your relationship with your other siblings? And in talking
about that, maybe you can explain the age difference, kind of what the
spread is like in terms of from the oldest down to you, many years
apart.
-
Lim
- Okay. My brother Peter is seven years older than me. He is essentially
now retired, but he was an engineer at one point in his life and a
businessman after that. He was raised in Korea. Actually, he completed
high school in Korea, so he's very much cultured as a Korean, whereas I
came here when I was ten. That difference is just unbelievably a huge
gap culturally speaking, even though they're a mere seven years' gap.
But I think a lot is absorbed between the age of ten and eighteen.
-
Cline
- Evidently. Wow, interesting.
-
Lim
- Yes. So I think he thinks more like a Korean, he acts like a Korean. Even
though he's lived in this country for forty years, he's very
traditional.
-
Lim
- My sister Becky, I think she is probably more bicultural, much more
balanced than my brother is. She is fluent in both languages, whereas my
brother, his written English is fine. I think his spoken English is a
bit more of a challenge for him. So it's interesting that Becky, who
came here when she was fifteen, adapted much better to the U.S.
environment than my brother, who came here when he was eighteen. He came
a year after we did, because my mom--
-
Cline
- So they're three years apart?
-
Lim
- No, they're only two years apart, but my mom wanted my brother to finish
his high school education in Korea, because he went to an elite high
school, and at the time there was this real, I would say somewhat
unfounded mistaken notion that if you have a diploma from one of these
elite high schools, that he's going to be benefiting from this
credential, which in reality didn't mean anything. So yes, they're only
two years apart, but he came a year later.
-
Lim
- So, going back to Becky, I think she adjusted to the U.S. culture and
learned English much faster than my brother did. By the way, both of
them graduated from UCLA.
-
Lim
- Debbie, who also graduated from UCLA, came here when she was almost
twelve, not quite, and, of course she's much more Americanized than the
other two.
-
Cline
- So there's a pretty even age spread between all of the children.
-
Lim
- Yes, yes. So it's pretty amazing what a difference one or two years make
in terms of the ability to adapt into a different culture and country.
The younger the faster, but I think the ease is probably exponentially
greater at a younger age, if that makes sense.
-
Cline
- It does make sense.
-
Cline
- So during those years when you were young and you're doing these sort of
take-cover drills and things, and having propaganda dropped on you from
planes, what do you remember, if anything, about just concern or fear on
your part, growing up in that kind of environment? Any at all?
-
Lim
- No, I don't think I really had any fear. I just assumed that that was
just a drill that was part of our lives at that time. You know, you have
them in school, you had them at home. I don't think any of us really
feared that the North Koreans would come down, marching down, especially
we were so close to the U.S. Army base.
-
Cline
- You knew all those soldiers. [laughs]
-
Cline
- So what's the genesis of the notion to leave Korea for the United States?
How did that start to happen?
-
Lim
- My father, who had two bachelor's degrees in Korea from two different
universities, was very education-hungry, and he, as I said earlier, was
a very progressive man. He felt at the time--this is back in the early
sixties--that the Korean education had limitations in what it could
offer, and for him to be more effective and be more forceful in his
ministry, he felt that he could benefit from U.S. education. He came to
the U.S. in 1965, two years before we immigrated, to get further
education, and upon arriving, he not only pursued his education, but he
rapidly came to the realization that this would be a wonderful country
to raise children and give them an opportunity to get an education in
the United States. So at the time I think that it was easier to petition
for resident alien status, totally the opposite of what it is today.
-
Cline
- This is '65, did you say?
-
Lim
- Yes, '65.
-
Cline
- Right. That's when the anti-Asian--the laws were abolished in that year,
so, yes, good timing.
-
Lim
- Right. So he apparently petitioned for it and our whole family immigrated
two years after that. According to my parents, it was never really the
goal to become U.S. citizens and live here forever. The idea was to get
educated from the father all the way down to the youngest child and then
return to Korea. But I think in the process of just being assimilated to
society, it became apparent to all of us that the opportunities and the
freedom that we enjoy here were just too precious to give up, so we all
became naturalized.
-
Cline
- What were those two years like when your dad was gone?
-
Lim
- Well, it wasn't that much different for me, because my dad was just a
busy person when he was in Korea, that we didn't see a whole lot of him
anyway, but I did miss him. I remember writing to him a lot. I remember
telling him that, "Look, Dad, you've got to send some money, because
we've got some economic hardships here," which was not entirely true. I
was probably just putting a guilt trip on my father. [laughter]
-
Cline
- Did your father know English?
-
Lim
- Well, apparently he did. It's hard to imagine that, because the way he
speaks English now, I can't imagine how he got his education here, but
he must have, because he got his master's degree here. Then he got his
Ph.D. and doctorate degrees here. He got a lot of degrees over his
lifetime.
-
Cline
- Wow. And what kind of preparation, if any, did you children have for the
language situation?
-
Lim
- None whatsoever. [laughs] I do recall my mom sitting me down and trying
to teach me the alphabet-trying--because I had no interest in it
whatsoever. I wasn't really a studious type when I was a kid. So, yes,
when we came to this country, we didn't really know any English and not
much preparation was done for it anyway.
-
Cline
- That seems to be the largest single obstacle, I think, facing anybody
coming in that situation. What was your feeling about this idea about
relocating to a country far away?
-
Lim
- Well, I had mixed feelings. I remember being very excited, on one hand,
because I'm going to see my father and live in the country that, at the
time, it was called the thing closest to heaven on earth. That was sort
of the general perception that was prevalent among the Koreans in Korea.
-
Cline
- That was my next question.
-
Lim
- On the other hand, I was saddened because I was leaving my home country,
my friends and my teachers, my relatives. So I had very mixed feelings
about it. I remember getting on the airplane. At the time there were no
Korean airliners, so it was Japan Airlines, JAL, and it was one of those
airplanes that had these propellers in the front. They were not
G.E.-powered turbine jets. And I remember getting in that airplane and
sitting down, and when the door closed, I remember just crying like
crazy. I remember crying and feeling, I guess this is really goodbye to
my homeland, thinking at the time, because I was such a young kid, not
realizing that I could come back, I thought this was it, I would never
be able to come back again. Well, that proved to be wrong, because I
went back to Korea countless times.
-
Cline
- Wow. And you had a lot of relatives then that you left behind?
-
Lim
- Yes, back then.
-
Cline
- Did you have any relatives that anyone knew of in the North?
-
Lim
- No, both of my parents were from the South.
-
Cline
- What do you remember about their feeling of you all leaving? What was it
like for the people left behind? Your friends, too.
-
Lim
- I'm sure they had mixed feelings like I did. They were happy for us,
because they felt that we were--they saw it as a progression, pursuing
opportunities, and they were sad for us because they knew that we would
miss the homeland. We all thought that once we got to the States that we
wouldn't be able to eat Korean food forever.
-
Cline
- Yes, I was going to ask about that, too. Did you know anyone else who had
left Korea for the United States, or anybody in your family?
-
Lim
- At the time?
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- No.
-
Cline
- No, nothing. Wow.
-
Lim
- No. No, so we didn't really have any reference point.
-
Cline
- And beyond this sort of "the heaven on earth" description, what awareness
did you have or knowledge did you have of what the United States was
like, specifically Los Angeles? Anything?
-
Lim
- I had no specific knowledge of Los Angeles other than the fact that I
knew that it was home to my father, but as far as the U.S. as a country
goes, the understanding that I had was that it was a very powerful
nation with a powerful army, because it was able to lend help to other
nations, and that it was not a Communist country, and that was the
important thing. It was a nation that was founded by what we were told
as Christians, Pilgrims. So my father sort of hammered away with that.
He said, "Well, this country, the reason it's blessed is because it was
founded by God-loving, abiding people," which is the same group that
enslaved millions of people from Africa, but at the time we were just
told that.
-
Cline
- Sure. Yes, a lot of people still are hammering that one right now.
-
Cline
- Had you ever been on an airplane before?
-
Lim
- No, that was the first time in the airplane. And there was no way you
could have a direct flight back then, obviously.
-
Cline
- Yes, I was going to ask, what was this flight like? It must have been
very long, I would think.
-
Lim
- Yes, it went from Seoul, Kimpo Airport, to Tokyo. I remember, because my
mother had relatives in Japan. Two of her four younger brothers had
lived in Japan at the time. A lot of Korean families immigrated to Japan
during the Japanese occupation era. They settled down like the Korean
Americans did; they were the Korean Japanese.
-
Cline
- Right, the Zainichi.
-
Lim
- Yes. So we stayed over at Tokyo and Yokohama for a few days, I remember,
before we came to the States. Then from Tokyo we went to Honolulu.
That's probably for a refill. Of course, my stay in Hawai'i was very
short because it was just sitting in the airport. It would have been
nice if I went out surfing back then, but never got a chance. Then we
came to Los Angeles.
-
Cline
- What do you remember, if anything, about your impressions of Japan when
you were there for a few days? What was that like?
-
Lim
- We weren't a war-torn country, so their infrastructure were much more
improved. It was a cleaner country because their government has been in
order for a long time. Clearly it was a wealthier nation. But I didn't
particularly enjoy my stay there because there was a strong
anti-Japanese sentiment that was within us, so that we were brainwashed
with it as a kid going to school in Korea. And to a certain extent it's
still there after fifty-some years. What am I saying? 1945, so after
sixty-two years.
-
Cline
- Right. Yes, and vice versa.
-
Lim
- Yes.
-
Cline
- They're not too keen on Koreans either still.
-
Lim
- No, no, actually that has changed a lot. They embrace the Korean
entertainers. The Korean entertainers are more popular than the Japanese
entertainers in Japan. They embrace Korean food.
-
Cline
- Well, I know they're starting to integrate a lot of Korean--
-
Lim
- Yes, so I don't think the prejudice and the discrimination is as
prevalent. I'm sure it's still there with the old-timers, but--
-
Cline
- Well, I know that still it's very difficult if you're an ethnic Korean in
Japan to--
-
Lim
- Yes, they have this ridiculous law that unless you denounce your
heritage, you can't be a Japanese. It's like me saying I can't be
naturalized in the U.S. unless I say I'm not Korean anymore.
-
Cline
- Right. Right. Yes. Oh, well, it's a point of view, you know.
-
Lim
- Sure, but I'm being honest. I think that will change one of these days. I
hope so.
-
Cline
- That would be good.
-
Cline
- So you survived this incredibly long, arduous flight on this prop plane.
What were your feelings upon touching down finally in Los Angeles, and
what do you remember about your first visions of where you were now
going to settle down?
-
Lim
- Well, I was awed by the number of cars, even back then.
-
Cline
- What year is this, '67?
-
Lim
- '67. You know, all the yellow lights and red lights on the freeway really
shocked me. The size of the infrastructures were just amazing. I
remember our dad driving us back to his place, which became our
temporary home, and it was a small rental unit here on Olympic
[Boulevard] and Burlington [Avenue], but it was still much bigger than
the home that we'd lived in. Then he took us to a supermarket--I believe
it was a Boys Market--and I was just really amazed by the brightness and
the cleanliness and the organized shelves stocked with food, and the
cart that rolled to put what you bought in the cart. The whole system,
the checkout system, the counter system, and refrigeration, all of that
was just very, very amazing to me. At the time I remember telling my
dad, "Yeah, Dad, this is heaven," of course not knowing that you have to
pay for all that. [laugh] I'm kidding. I actually knew about it.
-
Cline
- Details. [laughs] Where was your father studying? Where did he get his
degree when he came here? I don't remember if you mentioned it.
-
Lim
- It was the--god, the name escapes me. I'll have to ask him about that. It
was some theological seminary, but I can't seem to remember the exact
name.
-
Cline
- Here in L.A. or in Pasadena?
-
Lim
- Yes. I know eventually he obtained a Ph.D. at that same seminary and then
he went and got another doctorate degree at Fuller [Theological]
Seminary.
-
Cline
- I was thinking Fuller [Theological Seminary], so you read my mind.
-
Lim
- Right.
-
Cline
- I, of course, hope to interview your father, as well, but from what
knowledge you may have, how much awareness do you think your father had
of what the nature of the Korean community in Los Angeles was like
before he got here? Do you think he knew there was a fair number of
Koreans already here?
-
Lim
- Before he got here?
-
Cline
- Before he got here. Do you think he knew anything about it?
-
Lim
- Oh, he probably wouldn't know.
-
Cline
- Really?
-
Lim
- No, we never really talked about that, so that would be strictly a
speculation about his knowledge. But I can tell you that when we got
here in 1967, there weren't that many Koreans in Los Angeles.
-
Cline
- Right. We're going to get very into that. So you settled into this rental
unit. How long were you there?
-
Lim
- A very short period of time, because the rental unit was the upper-level
flat of this two-story house, and my being young, I must have bounced
around quite a bit, and the landlady who lived on the lower level, I
think eventually told my father that we need to relocate because I was
making too much noise. I remember being admonished for making too much
noise on the upper level, jumping around a lot, because I needed to
tiptoe around. I think my mom said, "That's no way to live for a young
child." So we relocated to a home in Pasadena, Highland Park area, and
we rented the house. It was a house, not an apartment. And that was a
great life because I didn't have to worry about the landlady underneath
getting upset about my walking around with too much noise.
-
Cline
- So did all of you now come together then? You came with your mother and
all your siblings?
-
Lim
- Yes, all of us except my brother. He came a year later.
-
Cline
- Do you have any memories of your mother's and/or your two sisters'
feelings about this trip and arriving here in this foreign place?
-
Lim
- My memory of my mom's perception at that time was that she was really
excited about the opportunity that her children would get an education
in the United States. I think she was also very, very apprehensive about
us lagging at the school, because we were handicapped from a language
and culture standpoint. She was also very concerned about the economic
affairs, because my father, being a student and being a minister, he
generally has not had a good track record in terms of giving confidence
to his wife about the economic conditions of the family. He's one of
those husbands who really always, "Oh, things will work out. Don't
worry." That type of attitude. So my mother actually, I remember her
being very, very concerned about those two things, education and
economics.
-
Cline
- Well, you walked right into my next question, which was, what was your
father doing for income at this point to support--
-
Lim
- Well, while he was going to school, he was serving as an assistant pastor
to a local church called the Korean American Baptist Church of Los
Angeles. That's on Berendo [Street]. So he was getting probably a very
small stipend from there. He was also working as a truck driver for a
company called Parker and Son, which I later learned, when I became a
lawyer, that Parker and Son, among other things, makes directory books
for lawyers. So that was the source of his income, which was limited. So
my mother was the main breadwinner.
-
Cline
- What was she doing then?
-
Lim
- She took on a job as a seamstress, which she had never done before. I
mean, she came from a pretty well-to-do family and she was highly
educated in Korea, and she never had to do any kind of labor. As a
former schoolteacher in Korea, I'm sure it must have been very hard, but
she undertook that job and she did it very well, because she provided
for a good chunk of the family living expense.
-
Cline
- What memory, if any, do you have of her feelings about that? Any
complaints, any bitterness? Or did you just never hear anything?
-
Lim
- I wouldn't say that she was ever bitter about it, but I would say that
she did have a significant physical challenge. I remember she was tired
and she was aching here and there because she was doing more than the
regular time. Whenever there was an overtime opportunity, she went for
it because she knew it was a chance to make more money.
-
Cline
- Do you think there was any expectation on her part that your dad should
be doing something to make more money, or was it just assumed that by
being a minister that this was sort of reality?
-
Lim
- Yes, my mother was very unique and different, I would say, in that
regard. Her priorities or values in life were such that she preferred
that my father pursue his education and not be the breadwinner if it
meant that it would get him the education and get the prominence that he
needed to be more persuasive and effective in his ministry. She was all
about empowering him, I thought.
-
Cline
- At this point then, where were you going to church?
-
Lim
- The Baptist Ministry. I'm sorry, the Baptist Church.
-
Cline
- That same one that your--
-
Lim
- Right. But even though it's called that, it was not the traditional
Baptist Church that you envision.
-
Cline
- Well, we think of Southern Baptist.
-
Lim
- Yes, exactly. It was nothing like that. It was just like any other
Presbyterian church here. I think it's because the minister comes from a
Baptist background, but he certainly didn't run the church like a
Baptist church. It was not a charismatic, evangelical church at all. It
was quite normal.
-
Cline
- How many Koreans were in the denomination, or was this a totally Korean
denomination?
-
Lim
- Yes, it was largely Korean. I would say 95 percent or more were Koreans.
I don't have any idea how many, but at the time, if I had to take a wild
guess, I mean, it was about a hundred or so people.
-
Cline
- What percentage would you say was--was that your interaction with other
Koreans in Los Angeles at that point?
-
Lim
- Pretty much. The church was it. The church was it, because you go to
school and there were just only a handful of Korean kids.
-
Cline
- Did your family become friends with any other Korean families from the
church? What kind of interaction was there with other Korean members?
-
Lim
- Sure, of course. I made a lot of friends from church, and because of my
parents' position at the church, we obviously had a lot of opportunities
to interaction with other families.
-
Cline
- You had to drive there, though, from where you were living, I guess.
-
Lim
- I remember it's usually them coming over to our house, yes, because
eventually we relocated from Highland, Pasadena to Koreatown, and that's
a story by itself. I still remember it's 926 South Irolo [Street]. We
moved there, I believe it was 1969, so '68 or '69, and it was the first
home that we bought. It's actually a real estate that my parents bought
and it was a nice, big home. Of course, it was a fixer-upper, but it was
a nice, pretty sizeable home in the heart of K-town. The purchase price
was $25,000, but of course my parents had no money for a down payment,
but there was a real estate broker who was a Korean American gentleman,
his name was George Chey. So Mr. Chey apparently loaned my parents the
down-payment money and we bought the home and we paid back Mr. Chey and
paid the mortgage. So it worked out. Mr. Chey eventually became a very
prominent real estate person in L.A. He also is one of the founding
members of Hanmi Bank. So there's some history there.
-
Cline
- Wow. Yes, indeed.
-
Lim
- So the few Koreans that were around, Korean Americans, whose immigration
preceded ours were pretty well settled in into their own businesses, and
some of them were very prominent real estate brokers, and they knew
about getting the immigrants assimilated into this country because they
were the ones that knew how to place to the kids in schools and get the
utility bills paid and so forth.
-
Cline
- This was one of my upcoming questions. How did people sort of learn the
ropes? I know the church was frequently--
-
Lim
- The church was very instrumental generally
-
Cline
- But you're saying there are also these other--
-
Lim
- Right, and there were these people who, I guess you would call them
earlier immigrants that helped out the later immigrants, and to a large
extent that practice is still prevalent today.
-
Cline
- Where did you go to school during that brief period when you were over
near Highland Park area?
-
Lim
- I went to an elementary school called--I believe it's called Monte Vista
Elementary School, for a short period of time. Then when our family
moved to K-town, I went to Hobart Elementary School. So now I
remember--I stand to correct myself on this--we must have bought the
home on Irolo Street, the 926 Irolo Street, in '68, not '69, because I
went to Hobart Elementary School.
-
Cline
- So you were at the other one very briefly?
-
Lim
- Yes.
-
Cline
- How would you describe your first experience going to a school in Los
Angeles, clearly not being fluent in the language yet, for one thing,
and probably, I'm guessing, over in Highland Park not around too many
other Koreans?
-
Lim
- Yes, it was very different. The school in Highland Park, at the time it
was just predominantly a white school, so I think I was the only other
Asian kid in the entire school, or in my class, I should say. But when I
relocated to Hobart, interestingly enough, I felt more at home. Most
kids were minorities, blacks and Latin Americans.
-
Cline
- How were you starting to deal with the language issue then?
-
Lim
- Just by going to school and listening and learning words. I think at a
young age it's much easier to pick up the language. So I don't recall
making any special effort, but just over time. By the time I was in
sixth grade I don't think I was having any difficulty communicating or
understanding.
-
Cline
- There were so ESL [English as a Second Language] classes or anything like
that?
-
Lim
- No, at the time there were no ESL programs.
-
Cline
- I want to come back to the issue of food. Now you're here. What was it
like encountering not only the challenge perhaps of maintaining the kind
of food that you were used to eating in your family, but encountering
what at that point we would probably call American food? How did that
play out in your youth once you got here? What do you remember about
that?
-
Lim
- It was very easy for me because, again, I was young enough to adapt to,
quote, unquote, "American food." So I remember, because my mom was a
working mom and the school got off before my mom came home, you know, I
guess nowadays you call that latchkey kids.
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- I remember going home and just cooking things for myself, and the easiest
thing to cook was a hot dog. You put a wiener on the pan and you grill
it a little bit and then you get a bun and you put the wiener between
the bun and then you're set, right, with mustard. So a hot dog was sort
of a quick fix. But we'd take jelly--what do they call it? Peanut
butter, jelly sandwiches and what have you, but I remember doing a lot
of preparation on my own, but they were all American food. They were
easier. Korean food is much more difficult to make.
-
Cline
- But were you still getting some Korean food made?
-
Lim
- At home?
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- When my mom came home, yes, sure, absolutely.
-
Cline
- She was able to get the ingredients at that point?
-
Lim
- Yes. By early, I would say, late sixties and early seventies, as soon
after we immigrated, the Korean market started to pop up, which was a
good indication that the population was getting stronger.
-
Cline
- Right. Right, for sure. Now that you're going to school and encountering
different kinds of children, different kinds of food, what do you
remember about--I mean particularly I know you're young, but we're
talking about the late sixties here. What do you remember about American
culture or popular culture at that time, if you had any awareness of it
at all, hearing music, the kind of clothes people were wearing, the
kinds of things that people were interested in?
-
Lim
- Oh, sure. Not so much when I was going to elementary school, but when I
started attending middle school. By the way, I was bused for three years
from the L.A. ghetto school to a suburb in a predominantly a white
school called Walter Reed Junior High School in North Hollywood. It was
part of the integration plan that L.A. Unified School District adopted,
and that was some experience, but we can come back to that if you want
to.
-
Cline
- Yes, we'll get there.
-
Lim
- But just to respond to your question, I was beginning to learn about what
we call it as hippie culture, you know, jeans and white shirts and
colorful things, headbands, and long hair. I got into Beatles and
Rolling Stones. Like yourself, I got crazy in music and for a while I
wanted to pursue that as a career. Thank God I didn't, because I didn't
have the talent for it. [laughs]
-
Cline
- Sometimes that doesn't matter so much.
-
Lim
- So we used to play the Creedence Clearwater Revival music. I was the bass
guitar player for many years, for many years.
-
Cline
- So this was later, though, right?
-
Lim
- Middle school and high school.
-
Cline
- Not too much later. By now you have a TV. How's that working?
-
Lim
- I think, yes, we must have gotten one of those old TVs that some family
wanted to throw away; we probably took that.
-
Cline
- What do you remember, if anything, about American television as a youth?
-
Lim
- I remember two of my favorite shows were Twilight Zone and Father Knows
Best. I don't know, that's really corny, now that I think about it, but
at the time I enjoyed it, probably because I didn't have the opportunity
to interact with my dad a whole lot, even when I came here, because he
was always so busy, and just the notion of a family with father being
the guidance and the supportive father that appeared on the TV was
really appealing to me.
-
Cline
- Yes. So the situation in your family now is really quite different. Your
mother's gone a lot, your father's gone a lot. You described yourself as
sort of a latchkey kid cooking hot dogs for yourself. What about your
siblings and the whole dynamic now within the family? What was the
feeling like within the family in this new situation, new location, new
culture, and new family situation? How did it feel, do you remember?
-
Lim
- My recollection of that is that they were all very studious, they worked
hard. We all had some sort of a job to sort of pitch in in the family's
financial endeavors. They were pretty hardworking. They were older, so I
think they probably imposed a greater degree of responsibility for
themselves than I did, even though I had some jobs here and there, too.
I mean, I remember I delivered [Los Angeles] Herald Examiner papers when
I was eleven years old, on a bicycle. My brother, I think he worked at a
carwash and my sister had some other job, and my two sisters, they all
had jobs. We were a working immigrant family.
-
Cline
- Now, your brother came over a year after you all did and clearly was
more, as you said, culturally Korean. What do you remember about what it
was like for him coming over here and having to adjust to this
situation? You said he was working in a carwash, for example, after
being in this elite high school.
-
Lim
- Right. Even with his high school degree, he went back to high school to,
quote, unquote, "learn English," which I think was, looking back, was
probably a mistake. He could have simply gone to a city college and
transferred to a major university, because he's a very bright guy. But
there was a mistaken notion that your English had to be near perfect to
succeed in college, which is not true. Then after L.A. High School--he
went to L.A. High School for, I think, a very short period of time,
maybe a year or a half a year, he went off to a city college.
-
Cline
- L.A. [Los Angeles] City College?
-
Lim
- I think so. Yes. He actually enlisted thereafter and he went to the
Vietnam War.
-
Cline
- Well, again you walked right into my next question, which was about the
Vietnam War.
-
Lim
- Yes, he served the country as a U.S. solider, as an enlisted man. He came
back and then he attended UCLA, graduated with an engineering degree.
-
Cline
- So he actually saw action in Vietnam?
-
Lim
- Yes, although I don't think he was one of those guys that were on the
front line.
-
Cline
- Since now I have a really direct context for it, I was going to ask what,
if anything, was your memory of the Vietnam War and the atmosphere here
relating to that, especially considering that, whether you were aware of
it or not, there were certain kind of echoes, shall we say, reminiscent
of the Korean situation.
-
Lim
- It was a very difficult time within our family, because my mother was,
obviously, very, very nervous day in and day out about my brother being
in Vietnam in a very dangerous war situation. Myself, being a younger
brother, I was fearful for him, but just going to school and you talk to
friends and the information that you pick up, there was, as you know, a
very strong antiwar sentiment at all school levels. I remember
manifesting my protest by wearing these bands around my arm to school
and being admonished by schoolteachers for that, even though I had my
brother in the war, and maybe because he was in the war my protest was
heightened. So for me personally, I was against the war, and even though
the similarity with the Korean War was the Communism battle, the
influence, is what we were fighting against, I was against the war in
the sense that the war in Vietnam, as most people know it, is that we
just didn't know who we were fighting against. The Korean War, although
there was some degree of that, by and large, people were wearing
uniforms, clearly showing which side you were on, but that was not the
case in the Vietnam War.
-
Cline
- What was your parents' point of view, and how much awareness or interest
did they show in things like the American political or what contemporary
issues here as they affected the U.S.?
-
Lim
- I do know that my parents were in favor of defeating the Communist Party
because they come from that background. They were very concerned about a
nation in Asia being taken over by the Communists. But at the same time,
I think they were very concerned about the way the war was going and how
their son is over there and so forth. So I'm sure they had some mixed
feelings about it, but there was very strong anti-Communism within them.
-
Cline
- Were you concerned that you might eventually become drafted into the war?
-
Lim
- I was, because I was told that I wasn't too far away. I remember when I
was in high school, I was probably maybe only a year or a year and a
half away, but, of course, the war ended right about that time, so it
was before being declared for a draft.
-
Cline
- We'll get more into your high school years and things, I guess, in the
next session. We're kind of probably getting near the end of this
session right now, but just to continue this a little bit now, when you
were going to elementary school in the Koreatown area now, describe if
you can--you said you felt more at home because it was more diverse
racially and ethnically. Particularly among the Asian students present,
what do you remember about the breakdown of the different nationalities
representative, if any?
-
Lim
- Just within the Asians?
-
Cline
- Yes, particularly, and what the perception may have been by non-Asians as
to what their idea was about these Asian students. I guess what I'm
getting at is, what did they think you were and if they knew you were
Korean, what, if anything, did they think that meant?
-
Lim
- That's a tough one. You know, going to school at that time was just a
matter of learning to deal with other ethnic groups, and I was probably
quite consumed with figuring out how I can survive in that mode, because
it was not a very safe environment. I mean, I remember getting into
fights here and there just because you needed to put your foot down and
say, "I'm not going to get pushed around." I obviously didn't speak the
language very well. I was a little kid, so I was, I think, prone to be
picked on by other kids. I remember having some physical confrontations
with kids of non-Asian--they were minorities. But in terms of going back
to the Asian kids, I think most of them were like Japanese American
kids, from my recollection. There were a few Korean kids. But I didn't
really have any particular Korean circle that I hung out with, because
there was just insufficient number to even constitute that circle. But I
do recall that the teachers were very, very supportive and they really
went the extra mile to help the kids who had just recently immigrated,
because they knew that we would have greater struggle in adjusting. But
eventually I got quite comfortable at that school. By and large, I'd say
I have fond memories of that school.
-
Cline
- That's good. Behind my question was the fact that I hear frequently that
people who were non-Asian frequently just called all the Asian kids
Chinese, for example.
-
Lim
- Oh yes.
-
Cline
- What was your sense of their perception of who you were?
-
Lim
- Well, I mean, I didn't have any confusion about my background, but the
confusion about my ethnicity or my--there's no confusion about--I
misspoke--about my original country where I originated from was more of
an issue when I went to middle school than the elementary school,
because the elementary school, Hobart Elementary School, it was really a
melting-pot school and nobody really paid a whole lot of attention to
that. If you weren't white, that's all that mattered. Interestingly, it
was a school where the white kids actually got all the negative
attention, if you will.
-
Cline
- Interesting. So we'll get more into middle school and that situation and
what it was like going to a mostly white school.
-
Cline
- Did you have any sense when you--I assume you would explain that you were
Korean, as to whether or not non-Koreans or non-Asians had any idea what
that meant or where Korea was?
-
Lim
- That was actually quite the case when I was in Highland Park in Pasadena.
The kids in the neighborhood asked me, "Where are you from?" Because I
obviously don't look white, and because I didn't speak the language,
they asked me, "Where are you from?" I'd say to them, I would tell them
I'm from Korea. And they'd say, "What?" Of course, it went on and on.
The kids only knew of Japan and China. Korea was not on the map, as far
as they were concerned. But of course their parents knew because of the
Korean War. The kids in the neighborhood did not know.
-
Lim
- Then they asked me how I came to the United States, and because I didn't
know the word "airplane," I didn't know how to explain it to them. So I
remember spreading my arms and telling them, "This is how I came." If I
didn't make the engine sound, they probably thought I flew over here.
-
Cline
- Interesting. What do you remember about your interaction with some of the
other Asian American kids and what their perception of you might have
been?
-
Lim
- Obviously there was no interaction in Pasadena. There was interaction in
the L.A. area, but I think they had a better understanding of--because
they'd been more exposed to immigrants, they had a better understanding
of my situation. So there was virtually no explaining that was
necessary. They were, I think, a lot more receptive to the fact that I'm
an immigrant. They were a bit more helpful, because maybe they relate to
the fact that I am Asian.
-
Cline
- Who, if any, were your friends in elementary school then?
-
Lim
- I was friends with a different ethnic mix. I mean, I was not limited to
Asian kids per se, just because I'm Korean American.
-
Cline
- Did you then have them over for hot dogs?
-
Lim
- Yes. I had Mexican friends and African American friends, some Asian
friends, some Korean kids.
-
Cline
- Coming from your situation in Korea, do you remember having any feelings
about that, what that was like since it was so different from what you
were used to up until then, this diversity of different people and how
they look and what they're like, what their food is like, all that?
-
Lim
- It's an interesting experience all the time, and I think that I embraced
it. I liked the fact that I was experiencing different things and
different people. Learning to eat taco was great. I still love tacos.
Looking back, I think it just made me a stronger, better person, because
I grew up in that neighborhood where it was a melting pot. I was more
open to different things and I think I was able to tolerate difference
better because of that experience, rather than growing up in a suburb
where I did not have that experience.
-
Cline
- What do you remember about starting to see--you mentioned a little bit
already about starting to see more Korean immigrants and more Korean
businesses starting to crop up in your area.
-
Lim
- Yes, in the seventies, definitely.
-
Cline
- Well, I guess we should probably wait until next time to talk about that.
We'll get fully into the seventies, you'll be being bused out to North
Hollywood and simultaneously more Koreans are coming into your
neighborhood.
-
Lim
- Right.
-
Cline
- Does that seem like a good place to end it, then?
-
Lim
- Sure.
-
Cline
- Okay. Because you have a lunch date and everything is looking good, I
thank you very much for talking to me this morning.
-
Lim
- My pleasure. [End of session one]
1.2. Session 2 (January 17, 2008)
-
Cline
- This is Alex Cline interviewing John Lim. Today is January 17, 2008.
Happy New Year.
-
Lim
- Happy New Year.
-
Cline
- This is our second session here at Mr. Lim's office in downtown Los
Angeles. Good morning.
-
Lim
- Yes, good morning.
-
Cline
- It's been a while since our first session. We got into your immigration;
we heard about your life as a youngster in Korea; coming to Los Angeles;
your elementary school days; and your schooling; your adjusting to the
neighborhood actually in Koreatown. I have a couple of follow-up
questions I wanted to ask that relate to issues we discussed in that
session before we head into your teen years and your early adulthood.
One was, you mentioned that your brother enlisted in the United States
Army.
-
Lim
- Correct.
-
Cline
- Do you know why he chose to do that?
-
Lim
- At the time I believe we had the draft system.
-
Cline
- Yes, we did, and he wanted to get ahead of it?
-
Lim
- Correct.
-
Cline
- What was your parents' feeling about that choice?
-
Lim
- My recollection is that my mother was very apprehensive. My father [Dong
Sun Lim], who, himself, does have a military background, I think he had
mixed feelings about it. He thought it would be a good experience for
him, but of course safety was a big concern on his part. But, really, my
appreciation of their thinking process, I believe, was quite limited at
that time, given my age.
-
Cline
- You mentioned that there was a bit of a different point of view between
you and your parents, perhaps, regarding the Vietnam War at that point,
and I wanted to know--well, actually, before we get into this question,
as this kind of gets back into the teen years, growing up in the
neighborhood that you did, you mentioned that it was diverse, you
mentioned, of course, in those days it was probably not considered the
best neighborhood in Los Angeles. How much concern do you think your
parents had for your safety just growing up in that area, walking to
school and back, all that sort of thing?
-
Lim
- If they had any concern, they certainly didn't express it.
-
Cline
- You were kind of just left on your--
-
Lim
- On my mine.
-
Cline
- That was pretty common. There's so much concern about that these days,
and there was relatively less, I think, in those days.
-
Lim
- Well, my parents were immigrants; they were struggling to make a living.
I don't think they had the luxury to really express a whole lot of
concerns about the safety of their kids going back and forth from
school.
-
Cline
- Interesting. Now, remind us which junior high school you went to.
-
Lim
- I attended Walter Reed Junior High School. It's out in North Hollywood.
-
Cline
- Oh, that's right. Okay. I remember.
-
Lim
- I think we had covered this briefly before.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- I was one of the first students to have been bused from the inner
city--some might call it a ghetto city--out to North Hollywood. At the
time, North Hollywood was a real nice suburban, middle-class
neighborhood, predominantly white.
-
Cline
- Largely white.
-
Lim
- Not anymore, but it was. This is, what, 1969.
-
Cline
- Yes, right. Let's get into that experience a little bit. Describe, if you
will, your feelings about having to get on the bus and go out to school
and back every day in a strange neighborhood.
-
Lim
- Yes. First of all, you got less sleep because there was travel time
involved, and you know how kids are about having to get up early in the
morning and cutting short on their sleep time. I was no exception. I
hated getting up earlier than other kids. I hated having to ride the bus
for, I don't know, it seemed like forever back then, but I assume it was
like a twenty-, thirty-minute ride. So that was not a welcomed
experience, but I just basically took it in stride and thought that it
was something that I had to do. That was not so much the negative,
although clearly it's something worth noting. The real negative was
being put into an environment that was very different from where I had
come from. The first shocker was from Korea to the United States.
Another shocker was from going from a very diverse minority-dominated
neighborhood to very much of a white neighborhood.
-
Lim
- I remember, I think there were like two buses that took us there, and I
remember the bus stopping in front of the school and people would just
all kind of stare at us getting off the bus. Off the bus, they were
like, you know, the African Americans, the Latin Americans, and a few
Asian Americans getting off the bus, and all these moms just giving us
what I perceived back then as not such a welcoming expression on their
face. Of course, the kids were no more friendlier either. It was an
adjustment process. There was a lot of name-calling and posturing, but
eventually I think it worked out, because the school, especially the
P.E. [Physical Education] department, embraced the athletic talents of
the kids that were being bused.
-
Cline
- And that's still the case oftentimes. So do you remember how many of your
friends from your elementary school were bused with you?
-
Lim
- I don't remember the number, but there was a good number of us, yes.
-
Cline
- And you were able to kind of share the experience?
-
Lim
- My sister was also bused with me. Debbie's her name. She's also a lawyer
now. By the way, she went to UCLA, undergrad. She was bused with me for
the duration of her middle school years.
-
Cline
- So did that help?
-
Lim
- I think so in a way for probably both ways. There was maybe some comfort
in knowing that your sibling's in the same pool.
-
Cline
- I would think. So when you said there was name-calling, do you remember
what form that took, the kinds of things kids would say?
-
Lim
- [laughs] Yes, somewhat, vaguely. I'm not sure if I would recall all the
name-callings, but it was very racist name-calling. "Chinaman." "Hey,
Jap." Of course, I'm neither Chinese nor Japanese, but that doesn't
matter, as far as they were concerned. I remember going into the
cafeteria and they would just make funny comments like, "Hey, rice. It's
rice today, you'll be happy," or something like that. But a lot of that
went on largely because the kids were immature. Now that I think back,
their parents weren't sophisticated enough--I don't know if that's the
right way to put it--to properly educate their kids at home. But, you
know, kids are kids, so even if they were educated, they could say and
do what they want to do.
-
Cline
- What, other than--well, let's just put it this way, what do you remember
about that school experience that was maybe positive? Did you have any
memorable teachers or anything that stood out as being good?
-
Lim
- By and large, one thing that was very positive, I think, was because I
was put in an environment where I had to deal with people that are very
new to me, people that I have not had much experience in dealing with
and understanding, or better understanding how to interact the majority,
mainly the whites, Caucasians, I think that was sort of an educational
experience that I got, even though it's not something that was taught in
the classroom. I think that was very valuable, because later on in my
life I think I found myself always being comfortable around what we call
mainstream folks.
-
Cline
- The dominant culture.
-
Lim
- Right, and that's because I was exposed to it at the early age. Really,
other than that, I don't think that I particularly enjoyed, to be
honest, Walter Reed Middle School.
-
Cline
- Right. Yes, and it's a hard time for everybody, anyway.
-
Lim
- Yes. My son [Jonathan Lim], who's now almost twenty-four, he was actually
accepted to the Highly Gifted Program at Walter Reed School. Apparently,
there's some federal program for what they call, like, very advanced
level of education for middle school kids and it's very hard to get in,
apparently. I'm not sure, really. But anyway, he got in, and I had such
negative experience from the school, I think it actually factored in in
my vote against him going there. So eventually he didn't go.
-
Cline
- Wow. What were your interests at this point, other than just getting
through the day? Were you developing particular interests? 1969 was
certainly quite a turbulent time culturally in this country and there
was a lot going on, but what interests did you have at that point?
-
Lim
- My interest was mostly in music--guitar, bass guitar. I played the
trumpet in the school band. I played some sports, but I was really not
good at it. I was a smaller kid, smaller, slower Asian kid.
-
Cline
- The whole physical education experience when you got to junior high is
also quite shocking, anyway.
-
Cline
- How much of what we could think of as sort of the counterculture at that
time did you start to pick up on during this time? You said you were
into playing guitar and bass guitar, I presume, and we know that that
was rock-and-roll in those days. How much of that culture started to
interest you around this time and how much awareness did you have of
what we might call hippie culture now?
-
Lim
- Thinking back, I think it was just a way to escape from the academic
pressure that I was under, because a lot of the immigrant parents really
put a lot of pressure on their kids to excel at school.
-
Cline
- You walked right into my next question.
-
Lim
- Really, that's generally well received by the Asian kids, because I think
Asian students, not all of them, but many of them are very eager to
please their parents. I don't know if that's a culture thing or not. For
me, it was something that I just didn't want to do just because my
parents wanted me to do it. I knew eventually that I would have to
study, because just looking at my parents and their parents and the
parents of those parents, I didn't think that I had much of a chance
being a basketball player or a rock-and-roll star. Deep down inside I
knew that eventually I would end up in the academic arena, because my
father's a scholar, my mom is very well educated, and I know from just
going up the chain that most people are very academically successful. I
just didn't want to do it at that time. I guess those were the days
where you're supposed to have fun and I didn't like the idea of just
hitting the books all the time. I mean, I'd just go to school to take
the test, but I wasn't really much interested in schoolwork.
-
Lim
- So we set up a garage and played music and we just loved copying
Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beatles. I was just listening to
them. We didn't have money to buy the music piece, so we'd just kind of
listen to the music and sort of replicate the sound as much as we could.
Well, you know how that feels.
-
Cline
- Sure. Who did you do this with or who were the members of the band?
Neighborhood--
-
Lim
- Yes, neighborhood friends. Actually, they were all Korean American kids.
-
Cline
- Interesting. What did your folks think of that?
-
Lim
- I think that they were concerned that this was going to take me further
away from school, but my father had the wisdom to let me figure that out
on my own.
-
Cline
- That's pretty remarkable. People now forget that it wasn't really
considered a desirable thing to start playing in a rock-and-roll band as
a youngster.
-
Lim
- Especially if you come from the Korean culture, because in Korea, back
then, people from the music industry were looked down upon. Not anymore.
Now they're gods, almost.
-
Cline
- Right, especially in Japan, I guess, right? A lot of Korean--
-
Lim
- Japan and Korea. Korea, actually the Korean music industry, from what I
hear, is the leader among the Asian entertainers.
-
Cline
- Oh yes, because I know Korean singers are huge in Japan, for example.
-
Lim
- It's huge in Japan and all the Far East countries, as well.
-
Cline
- Interesting. But of course the music business changed a lot here, too, it
became encouraged, I think, by parents to have their kids take up.
-
Lim
- Sure. Now they pay for these vocal lessons at age twelve.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- Which was unheard of when I was growing up.
-
Cline
- Yes, it's very different now.
-
Cline
- So you mentioned that in elementary school a lot of your friends were of
different racial and ethnic communities. Did this continue when you were
in junior high school? Obviously, the people you were in school with,
most of them didn't live anywhere near you, but did you make friends
with any people from that community out in North Hollywood?
-
Lim
- I think I had three different groups of friends; friends that I have at
the middle school, the suburb in the white neighborhood during the
weekdays, friends that I had on Saturdays when we'd go out and play
basketball, very mixed, I'd say probably more African Americans than any
other group, and the friends I have on Sundays, which are the church
friends and Korean kids, you know, Korean American friends.
-
Cline
- Interesting. As you started to grow older, and it sounds like you're
headed into an unavoidably decidedly more American cultural direction,
how did your relationship with your parents develop, change, or how
would you characterize it, say, as you're heading into the high school
years, and clearly more of an American?
-
Lim
- I think the economic hardship continued through high school. The
immigrant parents got a bit better off, but they certainly didn't become
wealthy. So they were pretty much preoccupied with what they had to,
especially my father being so devoted to the church. So I'm not sure if
there was much of a change in that respect. But what should be noted
here is that all of the kids in our family, my siblings and I, worked
throughout middle school and high school to make an economic
contribution to our family well-being.
-
Cline
- What kind of jobs did you do?
-
Lim
- Oh, all sorts of jobs. One of my earlier jobs was--I think I might have
mentioned this before--delivering the paper, the [Los Angeles]
Herald-Examiner. After that, a whole slew of different kinds of jobs,
delivery of advertisements to individual homes; to working at a gas
station; market; a cleaning person, janitorial service; working at a
fast-food restaurant, Der Wienerschnitzel. The best I had, the cushiest
job, was being a tutor, which I landed when I got to college, but
throughout high school it was more the--
-
Cline
- The service industry, as they say.
-
Lim
- Right. Labor. Hard labor.
-
Cline
- And you would do this when, then, in your schedule while you were going
to school?
-
Lim
- Well, it would be after school, weekends. The fast-food jobs were on
weekends. In high school I did the night work at Wienerschnitzel, and
during the summer as full-time. But during school, school months, it
would have mostly part-time or even less than part-time.
-
Cline
- What were your feelings about having to work some of those jobs?
-
Lim
- I don't know. I just probably thought that I didn't have much of a
choice. One experience that really stands out is one summer I worked at
this assembly line of an air brake company, and so I stood in line to
put brake parts together for trucks. I forget where it was, but I did
that the whole summer and it was a night job. So I would go to school in
the morning and then in the afternoon I would take some break and then
go to work at night. I don't know why, but they didn't--it might have
been because I didn't feel that the glove really provided enough
friction to do the work efficiently, but I remember feeling like my
hands were all torn with a lot of cuts and bled a lot.
-
Lim
- So to go back to your question, I think at that time I was very young and
I said to myself, "Now, why do I have to do this at this young age? It's
hard work." But looking back, I think all that work really made me
appreciate all the other things in life and made me work hard. I think
it molded good work ethics.
-
Cline
- Yes, I would think it would give you an appreciation, if not compassion,
for people who work in that area.
-
Lim
- Oh, absolutely.
-
Cline
- What about your siblings? What kind of jobs were they doing?
-
Lim
- Oh, car wash, donut shops, restaurants, a whole range of blue-collar
work.
-
Cline
- How were the English skills at this stage, now that you're a teenager and
working?
-
Lim
- My English skills?
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- Probably better than the more recent immigrants, but not as good as
somebody who spoke it as a native language.
-
Cline
- But clearly, I mean, working at, say, for example, a fast-food restaurant
I'd think you'd need to have passable language skills, depending on what
you're doing.
-
Lim
- Yes, but you don't need to speak a whole lot of words. You know, "french
fries," big one," "small one."
-
Cline
- Where were some of these places, like the Der Wienerschnitzel? Was it in
your neighborhood?
-
Lim
- The Wienerschnitzel was on Crenshaw Boulevard between Exposition
[Boulevard] and what used to be called the Santa Barbara [Avenue]
Boulevard, but it's now ML King [Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard]
Boulevard.
-
Cline
- So in an African American neighborhood.
-
Lim
- Yes, that was predominantly a Japanese American neighborhood back then.
-
Cline
- Interesting. The other inevitable question that comes up when you head
into your teen years: girls. Where was that going for you at that point?
Were you interested? Were starting to meet the opposite sex and move in
that direction, or was still something that was not encouraged or you
didn't have time for?
-
Lim
- You mean by my parents?
-
Cline
- Well, yes.
-
Lim
- You have to understand, this is in an era where I didn't care what my
parents thought. [laughs]
-
Cline
- Okay. I wasn't sure where the line was.
-
Lim
- So whether they encouraged it or not, obviously, the cultural setting for
them, I don't think would have my parents encouraging me in that
respect, because to them it was all about school, school, school, study,
study, study. But, yes, my general feeling on that was that that was the
best part about being a teenager. Wasn't it for you, Alex?
-
Cline
- Oh, it was pretty agonizing for me. [laughs]
-
Lim
- I think that was a lot of fun, You know, girls everywhere. It was a
situation where you had to sort of balance your girl interests with the
other stuff, the responsibilities that you have, right?
-
Cline
- Right. What position did your parents have regarding this sort of thing
that would have been sort of informing your, perhaps in this case,
rebelliousness? Were they the type of parents who you felt were really
going to want to have a lot of involvement in your evitable nuptials, or
is it going to be a very traditional sort of approach, or were they more
liberal and maybe more--
-
Lim
- I think they were far more liberal than most Korean parents, but even
then, that was more conservative than the value systems of, let's say,
the white family.
-
Cline
- So where did you go to high school?
-
Lim
- I went to Fairfax High School.
-
Cline
- And it was a very happening and desirable school to go to.
-
Lim
- In what respect?
-
Cline
- Well, it was considered one of the better high schools in L.A., I think.
-
Lim
- Oh yes, no question about that, and that's why I'm not sure if it was so
desirable. [laughs] All the kids that went to that school were very
smart. That's not necessarily a good thing.
-
Cline
- Yes. It was in a totally different kind of community.
-
Lim
- Could be a confidence killer if you're not up for it.
-
Cline
- Well, let's talk about this. What was high school like for you after
being bused out to the Valley? Fairfax High is yet another very
different sort of a demographic area, and as we said, was considered one
of the better schools. Evidently, it sounds like it was pretty
competitive.
-
Lim
- Oh yes, it was a very academically intense school. Most kids were very
studious there. There was just a small minority of kids who wanted to
play, like me. So I was, again, a minority not only ethnically, but just
the way that I wanted to go about my high school days.
-
Cline
- How many people then from your neighborhood were going to Fairfax High?
Because it seems like-or did you get into Fairfax through some kind of
different connection? Was that the high school you would have normally
been--
-
Lim
- No, I was outside of the district. I took Latin, and at the time if you
took a particular subject that was not offered by the high school that
you would have attended within the district that you lived in, you had a
special permit to attend the school outside of your district. Frankly, I
don't remember why I took Latin. It might have been something in the
back of my mind said, some day when I go to law school, maybe knowing
some Latin would help, and that might have sort of prompted me to do
that. But in any event, I took Latin and I ended up at Fairfax High
School. Also my siblings, my older sister, Debbie, attended at the time
Fairfax High School.
-
Cline
- Where would you have gone otherwise?
-
Lim
- L.A. [Los Angeles] High School.
-
Cline
- Yes, that was a common preference, people trying to not go to L.A. High
and trying to go north to Fairfax.
-
Lim
- Well, L.A. High at one time was a very, very good school.
-
Cline
- Well, this would have been around the time that it was damaged by the
Sylmar earthquake, too, and they built a whole new school. That was '71?
-
Lim
- Yes, '71. No, I went to high school in '72, so right around that time,
yes.
-
Cline
- So it was condemned.
-
Lim
- Right.
-
Cline
- Like some of the buildings at my high school.
-
Lim
- Where did you go? Which high school did you go?
-
Cline
- Uni [University] High School.
-
Lim
- Uni High School.
-
Cline
- Yes, we had the auditorium and the gym were both condemned, but they were
still using the gym, which wasn't a very comforting thought. But L.A.
High and Uni High were the two oldest high schools in L.A., so I guess
that figures.
-
Cline
- What were your friends like now at Fairfax? Did you make friends outside
your general community and did your friends become even more diverse,
perhaps?
-
Lim
- Actually, yes, Fairfax High School had more ethnic minorities than Walter
Reed. The school was predominantly Jewish American. I can't put a
percentage on it, but it was a huge percentage, and the non-Jewish
Americans were comprised of Asians and blacks and Latin Americans. So
there were a good number of Korean American kids there. They were all
smart. They're all the ones that ended up going to M.I.T. [Massachusetts
Institute of Technology] and Harvard [University].
-
Cline
- Right. Did you have any memorable teachers or experiences while at
Fairfax that stand out?
-
Lim
- Well, I can think of a couple of them. I'm not sure if "memorable" is the
right way to put it. I really enjoyed my geometry class, which really
came to me as a surprise, because I didn't really like math. I always
thought that I really wouldn't enjoy math, but there was a teacher named
Mr. Roach, and he presented the concepts of geometry, I think in a way
that I embraced easily. So I remember excelling geometry and getting a
good grade in that class, and thinking to myself, "Now, how in the world
did I get an A in this math class?" That was interesting, because I
never studied. I wasn't the type of kid that did all the homework or go
to all the classes. I was pretty well known for ditching school. [mutual
laughter]
-
Cline
- What were you doing when you ditched school?
-
Lim
- Largely just going to the beach and reading different kinds of books that
I enjoyed reading, not the ones that were prescribed by high school, and
sometimes going to check out girls in different high schools.
-
Cline
- Okay. Now, you were interested. Now, were these girls also of a diverse
makeup or did you sort of keep it within your community?
-
Lim
- I think by high school I was more interested in dating Asian American
girls, to be honest.
-
Cline
- Where were the high schools you were investigating?
-
Lim
- That's a good way to put it. The subject of the investigations were
Hollywood High [School], L.A. High. I think it went as far as Marshall
High [School] a couple times, on Belmont [Avenue].
-
Cline
- This actually relates to one of my questions here, which is by now it
sounds like you're driving. Are you driving by now?
-
Lim
- Yes.
-
Cline
- What do you remember about parts of the city or parts of the area that
you were interested in frequently or spending time, or what you
considered fun or interesting? You mentioned other high schools and the
beach. Where did you like to go and how much of the city were you seeing
at this point outside your neighborhood?
-
Lim
- Well, when it came to going to beach, it was mostly Venice Beach and
sometimes Malibu, but that would be a far drive. You know, fortunately,
gas wasn't that expensive back then.
-
Cline
- It was before the Energy Crisis.
-
Lim
- Right, right before.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- In terms of just going to other schools, it was just driving over there
and mostly during lunchtime or recess time and hanging out with them.
Many of the kids actually came to K-Town. There was a burger joint on
Vermont [Avenue] and Olympic [Boulevard]. I think it was called the
American Eagle, but I can't really be sure. That's where a lot of the
high school, Korean American high school kids, hung out, eating junk
food.
-
Cline
- Yes, American junk food.
-
Lim
- Yes.
-
Cline
- Once again, you walked into my next question. This is where I was going
with this, which is by this time what do you remember about where
Koreatown was headed and how it had developed and the changes you were
seeing in your neighborhood, what kind of businesses and changes you
were seeing coming up?
-
Lim
- Well, there was clearly a huge influx of the immigrants in the seventies.
During the sixties, not many Korean Americans in L.A., even though it
had more Korean Americans than any other city in the country. In the
seventies you see a lot of businesses popping up, a lot of restaurants
popping up, grocery markets, dental offices, etc. So I think the notion
of Koreatown is truly becoming real in the seventies.
-
Cline
- You mentioned some of these, the types of businesses. Now that you're a
teenager, other than fast food, what do you remember about places that
might be kind of more fun to hang out? Especially nightlife, that kind
of thing, was that coming in yet, or was that a little later?
-
Lim
- No, no, we didn't have much of a nightlife in high school.
-
Cline
- Okay. At this point we've talked a little bit about things like food, and
you mentioned American junk food just a minute ago. Were you pretty much
given over to that kind of cuisine at this point, or were you still
eating some Korean food?
-
Lim
- We were doing both.
-
Cline
- Because I remember you were cooking for yourself a lot of the time, as I
recall, when you were younger, hot dogs and stuff. But when there were
more Korean restaurants coming in, how much interest did you have in
that at this point?
-
Lim
- I think it was a function of how much money you had in your pocket. The
less money you had, the more likely that you would go to an American
fast food restaurant, McDonald's, things of that sort. But if the
friends were in a serious mood for celebration, we would go to a Korean
sit-down restaurant and pay a few bucks more. Most kids, I think, had
strong preference for the traditional Korean food. It was just that it
was not easy to afford that.
-
Cline
- We've got teenagers congregating. It's now the early seventies. How much
contact did you have at this time with the drug culture? Was that around
much or not?
-
Lim
- Well, not within my circle. I knew that that was going on with certain
other kids.
-
Cline
- At your high school?
-
Lim
- Right. My circle was more into just smoking and drinking beer if they can
get a hold of one. We were all under age, so we couldn't buy it. There
was a significant amount of flexing your muscle and being [unclear] to
impress the girl you want to get, that type of thing, but not much drug
in my circle.
-
Cline
- Interesting. How about your siblings at this point? Is their experience
somewhat parallel to yours or is there anything significantly different?
-
Lim
- I think pretty different, because they were all very good kids.
-
Cline
- I see. Following the program more?
-
Lim
- Yes, they were studious and they didn't disappoint my parents. All of
them went to UCLA and pursued their education and they all did all
right. I was the black sheep, if you will.
-
Cline
- Yes. Wow. When things started to get toward the end of the line at high
school and questions start to come up about "What you want to do? Where
you want to go? You want to go to college? If so, where? What line of
work do you imagine yourself going into?" where were you on all those
issues?
-
Lim
- Going to college was never a question. I mean, I grew up in an
environment, even though I was doing a bunch of crazy things, I knew
that it was expected of me to go to college, and more importantly, I
knew that it would be good for me to go to college. I mean, I wasn't the
kind of guy who was going to go just because my parents told me to go.
It was just a matter of wanting to have fun and enjoy your middle school
and high school days, and then I just thought that once I get to
college, I'll shape up, and that was sort of always in the back of my
mind.
-
Cline
- Interesting. So what did you decide to do?
-
Lim
- Well, I thought that eventually I would go to law school. That was always
in the back of my head, because my mom told me when I was a kid that she
thought that I would make a great lawyer. Now, why did she say that, I
have no idea, but she always remarked that I had the uncanny ability to
reason things and put the other person in a defeat position. In her
view, being a lawyer was all about adversary proceeding, which it is
not. Now I don't do any of that stuff. I'm not a litigator. I'm more a
consensus builder by doing transaction work. But in any event, at the
time she thought that because of that ability, at least the perceived
ability as I had, that I would make a good lawyer. I must have bought
into that, I don't know.
-
Lim
- So I went to Cal[ifornia] State [University] Northridge, which is the
only school I applied. It's very near home. I wanted to study business.
I knew that it had a good business program, so I went there and
eventually majored in accounting, and I got a degree in accounting, not
intending to be a CPA, but I thought a degree in accounting would go a
long way in many different respects, and it is turning out that way.
It's a great degree to have because you understand how businesses work.
-
Cline
- You were already somewhat acclimatized to the culture of the San Fernando
Valley at the time, so I presume you were commuting then to college.
-
Lim
- Well, I wasn't, actually. I lived in the dorm for a couple of years and I
had lived in an apartment with friends of mine.
-
Cline
- In the [San Fernando] Valley?
-
Lim
- Yes. It was hard to commute. I mean, yes, it's only twenty-five miles
away, but it was just very hard to commute every day from L.A. to the
Valley. But it was close enough that I could just come home at will.
That was the beauty of going to that school.
-
Cline
- How was it for you being on your own out there in the Valley at that
point?
-
Lim
- It was a lot of growing-up time and I think I started to finally do the
things that I said I would do eventually, which is to focus on
schoolwork, which was totally a new experience for me, because I never
did that before.
-
Cline
- Wow. Where were you at, at this point? Considering you're sort of
painting a certain picture here, I'm curious to know where you're at
with the religious aspect of your family life. Are you still going to
church? Where do you stand with regard to that?
-
Lim
- By and large, I was going to church, but I had a period of time where I
was raising a lot more questions than before. One of the beauties of
going to college is to learn how to think and to raise questions and to
challenge your traditional beliefs and values. So, yes, I went through
that process and it was good, that was very healthy, I think, to get rid
of a lot of misconceptions.
-
Cline
- Do you have any sense of what your father's feeling was at this point
when you're kind of--first, you described yourself as the black sheep of
the family and now you're kind of buckling down to beginning to question
some things.
-
Lim
- Yes, my father is an amazing man in that he always would say that "I have
total faith in you, I trust you, and I know that you're going to be very
well, you're going to be doing very well. Just a matter of time." So he
wasn't the kind of father who, you know, was all over your back and
lecturing to me, "Are you reading the Bible? Are you going to church?"
No, he was not that kind of father at all.
-
Cline
- That's really quite remarkable.
-
Cline
- Now that you're moving into your twenties, were there any rumblings about
where you were going to be headed in terms of marriage and all that sort
of thing, family life? Any concerns coming from your parents on that
end?
-
Lim
- I don't think my parents worried that much about my finding a girl to
marry. It was more of a question of when, because they knew that I was
fully capable of doing that.
-
Cline
- So they weren't looking for you or anything like that?
-
Lim
- I'm sure they would have loved to have had the opportunity to do that,
but they were not.
-
Cline
- What about with your siblings? Was it different with them or not?
-
Lim
- Not terribly different. My brother [Peter Lim] got married when he was
twenty-five, and so did I, by the way. So we all got married very early.
-
Cline
- Well, that wouldn't be considered early for someone from Korea, would it?
-
Lim
- No. No, I'm not sure if that was a thing of somebody from Korea or not. I
think it was at that era, that time, a lot of people did get married in
their twenties. Nowadays, people get married in their thirties and
forties.
-
Cline
- Yes. So when you lived in, you said in an apartment in the Valley, did
you have roommates, or are you on your own?
-
Lim
- Yes, I had roommates. I had roommates when I was at the dorm. I had
roommates when I was at the apartment.
-
Cline
- What was that like for you? What kind of folks were they?
-
Lim
- My roommate at the dorm was a Caucasian guy, and I didn't notice until
years later, but I think he was doing a lot of drugs, because he rarely
went to school. [mutual laughter] Basically, he had the lifestyle that I
had when I was in middle school and high school. So I'm not sure if he
ever really finished school.
-
Cline
- That's kind of more typical for college for a lot of people, they get
away from home.
-
Lim
- Yes, he came to college to party, whereas I already partied through high
school and I went to college to study. So there was a big difference.
Then later on when I had roommates, the roommates were my Korean
American friends from high school.
-
Cline
- At this point, through high school and into college, what was your
perception of what some of the dominant culture's awareness was of your
nationality being Korean? Did people now have a sense of what that
meant, or did you have a sense that--I mean, for example, obviously in
junior high people are calling you Chinaman and Jap. What was your sense
of what being Korean meant to people around you at this point?
-
Lim
- Well, I think there was no question that everyone knew what I was made
of. Yes, I probably behaved in a way that appeared as having assimilated
better to the mainstream culture, and I did, in fact. But being a Korean
American was, by that time, not such a terrible thing, not such an
embarrassing thing anymore. I think many people regarded that aspect of
me as somebody who was driven, motivated, strong work ethics, and
possibly even have additional language skill, i.e., speak Korean. So I
think there were more--I was beginning to sense that there were more
positive attributes by the time I was in college. You know, I did not
take a job at an accounting firm after graduation, but I worked at
different places when I was in college, tutoring and part-time in an
accounting firm, and I almost got the sense that the presumptions that
were made were in favor of me because I am a Korean American. By that
time the generally--no, I misspoke. The prevailing belief among the
mainstream about the Korean Americans were, I think, by and large,
positive.
-
Cline
- What about for yourself? At this point did you have a sense of your
feelings of your identity were about and what it meant to you to be
Korean American at that point?
-
Lim
- I didn't think of it in any particular way other than to think that, yes,
I have this unique background and I could use it as an advantage. I've
retained the Korean language skill to a large extent, for which I'm
immensely thankful. I understand cultures outside of the American
culture, which even if you don't understand all the other cultures, but
just the knowledge that you have about the existence of culture outside
of the American mainstream culture, I think sort of broadens your
horizons and just makes you a better person, I think. That's the
advantage that I think Europeans have over Americans.
-
Cline
- One of the reasons I ask this, sometimes when people get to college,
there tends to become through their education more of an awareness of
what we could generally refer to as ethnic studies and talk of racial
identity and all that kind of thing, and that changes some people.
-
Lim
- That may be, but I had that since I was ten years old. I mean, I wasn't
going to get awakened by it suddenly when I got to college. I mean, I
think it was the other way for me. That might be the case for many other
people, but for me the awareness was heightened when I was much younger.
So by the time I got to college, I was all about how do I fit in, how do
I assimilate, how do I become a part of this mainstream, which, in fact,
is not just a white culture anymore.
-
Cline
- Yes, that's right. And you're still spending time in Koreatown and with
your Korean friends?
-
Lim
- Sure. Sure.
-
Cline
- What were you doing in Koreatown? What was happening? What were you
starting to see by the time you're now--you said you were doing some
work after getting your degree in accounting. Are you entering the
workforce on some level? Like who were you friends and things at that
point, too?
-
Lim
- Well, my friends were other college students from, largely from UCLA and
some from 'SC [University of Southern California], Northridge, you know,
college friends. We'd go to these parties that are hosted by different
college groups, Korean American groups, and this is where you get an
opportunity to meet potential dates within the same ethnic group. But I
don't think any of us going to these parties thought of them as sort of
exclusive, racially motivated functions, but it just kind of went that
way, because I think that the immigrants probably felt that a fellow
Korean American would understand their predicament and challenges better
and there was sort of an underlying faith that the emotional connection
would be facilitated by that background.
-
Cline
- How did you meet your wife then at twenty-five?
-
Lim
- I met my wife at Northridge. She was an engineering student there and
she's Korean American. I know you haven't asked, but I assume that that
was going to be a question. She came at a much later age than me, so she
had a greater language challenge.
-
Cline
- I was just about to ask that.
-
Lim
- Because she had a lot of strength in science and math, then she was able
to do well in engineering.
-
Cline
- So how long were you seeing each other before you got married then?
-
Lim
- Too long. [mutual laughter] Two years in college and then three years of
this, what, well, they call it long-distance relationship, because I was
in San Francisco in law school.
-
Cline
- Okay. Yes, we haven't got into that chapter then, I guess.
-
Lim
- So, five years total.
-
Cline
- Wow. So what brought you up to San Francisco then?
-
Lim
- Oh, I went to law school there.
-
Cline
- Okay. What made you decide to finally just, "Okay. Now I'm going to study
law"? What happened?
-
Lim
- Well, I got much more serious about school once I got to college, as I
told you earlier, and then as I was thinking about applying to law
school, you know, with all the movies that you see, like Paper Chase,
there's just this fear about getting killed at a law school. I knew I
needed to buckle down even more and become a lot more serious about
school. So at the time I just felt that it would be very difficult to do
that in Los Angeles because of all the friends and temptations in Los
Angeles. I wanted to actually go to [University of California] Berkeley
and I didn't get in, so I ended up at UC [University of California] San
Francisco.
-
Cline
- What was that like for you to now, for the first time since arriving
here, relocate to another city?
-
Lim
- Oh, in San Francisco?
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- It's a very different city, as you know. Initially I thought it was just
too dirty and too dangerous, but after I got settled in, maybe, I would
say maybe three, four months later, I realized that this is a very safe
city and it's a beautiful city. I realized that San Francisco is a city
that is rich with diversity and culture. I still love that city. You can
leave your apartment and just walk maybe at most two miles and virtually
get everything you need.
-
Cline
- Right. A real city.
-
Lim
- A real city. And public transportation is wonderful there.
-
Cline
- How much of a Korean population did you notice once you got up there?
-
Lim
- Well, my dad introduced me to this person who's a friend of my father,
who lived in the city, and he took me to his church one Sunday, and then
through that I met a lot of people and I realized that, yes, there's a
healthy number of Korean constituent there. But obviously compared to
L.A. it's just a fraction.
-
Cline
- How did you manage to weather the long-distance relationship experience?
-
Lim
- A lot of effort on my part. [laughs] You didn't have e-mails back then.
It was letter writing and phone calls.
-
Cline
- Right, high phone bills.
-
Lim
- And phone calls were very expensive. So it was usually a lot of letters.
-
Cline
- So what was the law school experience then like for you, after seeing
these kind of horrifying movies?
-
Lim
- Yes, the first semester was intimidating and I think they sort of do that
by design. They just kind of want to make it as scary as possible so
that the weak would drop out. I don't know, I'm just saying that, but it
was a very intimidating experience the first semester, but I think after
that I got settled in and it was fine. I really like the Socratic method
of teaching. I'm a big fan of that. I think I've always liked it,
because even when I was in high school and in middle school, I was all
about questioning the reasoning that people would articulate for their
position. That was always amazing to me. So in a way, law school,
Socratic method of teaching kind of suited me very well. Maybe I was
meant to go to law school.
-
Cline
- Your mom was right. What were your parents' feeling about you going off
to San Francisco for law school?
-
Lim
- I don't think they had any real concern. By that time I think I've
demonstrated to them that I was finally mature enough to take care of
myself.
-
Cline
- What about the finances at that point? How was that being worked out?
-
Lim
- Well, throughout college and law school I was largely on my own. My
parents were not in a position to lend any economic aid. Fortunately, we
had Jimmy Carter at that time in college as the president, and then I
think Ronald [W.] Reagan became president in 1980, but the system was
already in place before Ronald Reagan came into the picture, to really
provide significant, meaningful financial assistance to students. So I
think I'm a great beneficiary of the programs that were promulgated by
the Democrats in the seventies.
-
Lim
- For example, we had these loan programs where the interest rate, I think,
was 3 percent, and you didn't have to pay any of that principal or
interest until you graduated from school altogether. So in other words,
if you proceeded to go to grad school, that got further deferred. So it
was grants, some scholarships, some loans. It's a great country.
-
Cline
- Or was.
-
Lim
- Or was.
-
Cline
- How did you go about selecting the particular area of law that you wanted
to concentrate on?
-
Lim
- Well, when I was in law school, I thought about going into a field that
would maximize the utility value that I thought I had in me, in being
able to speak Korean and the business background that I had from
graduate school. So basically I wanted to get into business law, which I
did. Then in the course of learning the various different aspects of
business law, I just enjoyed real estate transactions and finance, so I
ended up doing a lot of that. So to this day, I mean, that's my forte,
real estate work. But being in a smaller firm now as opposed to a large
firm that I used to work at when I was a young associate, I'm forced to
deal with a lot of general business questions that might be outside of
my area of expertise. So after having done that for many years, now all
the other general--not all of them, but many of the general business
matters become more familiar to me.
-
Cline
- So when you finished law school, you came back to L.A.--
-
Lim
- I did.
-
Cline
- --where your then girlfriend--and what happened at that point? I mean,
you got married, it sounds like.
-
Lim
- I came back, studied for the bar exam, took the bar exam in July, and
then we got married in October.
-
Cline
- And you passed it the first time?
-
Lim
- Yes, I did.
-
Cline
- Had to ask.
-
Lim
- I guess I got lucky.
-
Cline
- What did you have in the way of goals or aspirations in terms of starting
a family and that sort of thing? Was that interesting to you, or did you
have other interests at that point?
-
Lim
- Oh yes, I've always loved kids. I come from a family of four kids. I
thought it was great, you know. Wish I had more siblings. So I wanted a
lot of kids. My wife came from a smaller family and she didn't really
like the idea of kids running around the house. So anyway, we eventually
compromised and ended up with three kids.
-
Cline
- After all, she is the one who has to give birth to them, as well.
-
Lim
- Yes. I was looking for an alternative, but I couldn't find one.
-
Cline
- Where did you ultimately settle in terms of employment, and also where
you settled in terms of your home life in L.A.?
-
Lim
- Well, my wife had already been working here at an engineering firm, I
think it was ITT, and subsequently she worked at Westinghouse. So she
was working primarily on the Westside and I was working in downtown Los
Angeles. So we settled in--initially we lived in the Fairfax area close
to where I went to high school, and then we managed to save some money
and we bought a home in Hancock Park and lived there for a long
time--twelve years.
-
Cline
- What, upon returning to L.A. and settling here and getting your family
going, do you remember about how Koreatown was developing at that point?
What year are we talking about now, in fact?
-
Lim
- We would be talking about '82, right? Yes, '82 on.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- By that time K-town has really, really matured. I mean, hundreds of
restaurants, hundreds of churches, and maybe hundreds of nightclubs,
too.
-
Cline
- Yes, right, the nightlife started up.
-
Lim
- I was just too damned busy working. I mean, I'm not sure if you know how
young lawyers operate. When they first come out of law school and they
get a job, they have to kill themselves to prove to the firm that you're
a worthy associate and that you might be partner material. So I was just
working like a dog.
-
Cline
- When did you have your first child, you and your wife?
-
Lim
- Actually only two years after I became a lawyer, so it was rather early.
Yes, 1984 is when I had my son. His name is Jonathan [Lim]. I was
working so hard. I remember the best times were coming home and giving
him a bath late at night.
-
Cline
- I mean, I can only imagine starting a family and working that kind of a
job, you weren't getting out much. [laughs]
-
Lim
- Yes.
-
Cline
- You said that there were lots of restaurants and all this kind of thing
going in. At this point did you have a sense of who was really running
these businesses and who they were getting to work for them and how the
community was developing as far as who lived here and who didn't and all
of that?
-
Lim
- Not so much in the eighties. I think I had acquired a much better
understanding several years after that; maybe in the nineties. I started
my own law firm in '86.
-
Cline
- Oh, pretty soon.
-
Lim
- Yes, and that's when I was sort of forced to understand the dynamics of
the Korean businesses.
-
Cline
- Okay. Well, we'll get to that, I guess. So it sounds like you did pretty
well working yourself to death if you were getting your own business
together by '86. How much time were you able to spend with your family
when they were really small, and when did your second child come in the
picture?
-
Lim
- She came in '87. Then I had a third one in '88. So, yes, it was work,
work, work, but I'd try to take vacation time off and spend time with
the kids and the family.
-
Cline
- Your wife, did she continue working?
-
Lim
- She stopped working after the third one. She chose to be a stay-at-home
mom. It was sort of a debate. Well, she wanted to make it a debate. She
said, "Should I or should I not?" And I said, "It's your choice,"
because I just didn't want to unduly influence her. If it didn't turn
out well, then I would be bearing the responsibility. [laughs]
-
Cline
- Right. Of course. Well, that must have really helped matters in terms of
your children then.
-
Lim
- Oh, absolutely. I think it was--for them, I mean, it was a wonderful
thing that she made the choice that she did. I'm not sure if it was a
good choice for her.
-
Cline
- Right. And it certainly put more financial pressure on you, I guess, at
that point.
-
Lim
- Yes, you just work harder.
-
Cline
- Oh, man. What led you to decide in '86 to start your own firm?
-
Lim
- Well, a number of things. Even before I went to law school, I had visions
about servicing Korean American businesses. In my belief that the
community will be stronger if the business foundation for the community
is stronger, and to be able to assist the business people in the
community, to enable them to achieve their success, I thought in a macro
sense would help the community. To be able to play a part in that, I
thought, would be very meaningful.
-
Lim
- That as a background, I perhaps made the move earlier than I had
initially thought, but I had a friend who was working in a New York
firm, both of us at the time had worked for the L.A. office of a New
York firm in downtown, right here, and he kept approaching me and
suggested that we start the first Korean American law firm. His name is
Tong Soo [T.S.] Chung, for the record, actually a very prominent,
well-known person in the Korean community. He not only ran for State
Assembly position back in the eighties, but he was also one of the first
Korean Americans to be appointed to the Department of Commerce as a
deputy during the [President William J.] Clinton administration. So he
worked under Ron Brown.
-
Lim
- But anyway, as much as I would like to take credit for this firm, the
founding of this firm, I have to give it to him, because he's the one
that persisted about this idea of forming the firm. And it worked out
really well. I'm glad he was persistent.
-
Cline
- It was timed well, too, it seems, as the community was really booming at
that point.
-
Lim
- I think so. Yes, a lot of the Korean American businesses were beginning
to take off. There was a bank called Hanmi Bank, which is the largest
Korean American bank, it was formed in '82 and it was beginning to
mature. There were other very thriving Korean American businesses that
really needed quality legal services, but they didn't really have, at
the time, a law firm that they could really depend on to implement their
business strategies. So I think we came into the picture at the right
time. There were some Korean lawyers around, just a handful of them at
the time, but most of them were general practitioners, some were doing
criminal defense, but I think most of them were doing a bunch of stuff,
immigration, family, auto accidents, and on top of that to do business
work, and that would have been very challenging, I think, whereas we
came into the picture and we said, "All we're going to do is business
practice," and that's all we do to this day. We don't do all the other
stuff. So I'm glad that we were able to be of some service to this
thriving Korean business community.
-
Cline
- You mentioned the Hanmi Bank. What were some of the other types of
businesses that you felt needed the support of your legal expertise?
-
Lim
- Well, just to throw out some names, we did work for Hanmi Bank; we did
work for Center Bank; we did legal work for a company called Fashion 21
dba Forever 21, which has now become one of the major players in the
country. We did legal work for a blue jeans manufacturer which
eventually became AG Jeans. Another one that's pretty well known, I
think, is the independent market chain known as Superior Warehouse.
They're a very large company. But when we started with them, or I should
say when they started with us, I think they had two markets and they
were a small company, and now they're one of the largest in California
as an independent chain operator. So, yes, I think we worked side by
side with these businesses that were small and they have now become
major significant players in California.
-
Cline
- How much awareness during this time did you have of what was going on in
Korea or how much of a necessity was it for you to keep abreast of
things going on over there?
-
Lim
- I don't think that the necessity level was that high, but I've always
endeavored to understand the Korean politics and the Korean economy
because it had an impact on the Korean businesses here.
-
Cline
- Yes, right. More and more so, I guess, as time goes on.
-
Lim
- Oh, absolutely.
-
Cline
- Does this sound like a good place to call it for you today?
-
Lim
- Sure.
-
Cline
- Okay. We'll continue next time with more specific information about the
growth of these businesses in Koreatown, and of course that will place
us headlong into 1992 when the Korean American community suddenly
becomes very--
-
Lim
- The L.A. riots?
-
Cline
- Yes, well known to the rest of the country for the first time.
-
Lim
- Sure.
-
Cline
- Thank you.
-
Lim
- You're welcome. [End of session two]
1.3. Session 3 (February 14, 2008)
-
Cline
- Today is February 14, Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day.
-
Lim
- Thank you. Same to you.
-
Cline
- Thanks. It's the year 2008. This is Alex Cline interviewing John Lim,
once again at his office in downtown Los Angeles.
-
Cline
- Good morning.
-
Lim
- Good morning to you.
-
Cline
- Thanks for making some more time to talk to me. We've had a few shifts in
this schedule and here we are at last following up with our third
session now.
-
Cline
- One thing I wanted to ask you by way of follow-up questions, is you were
pretty clear in describing the way you seemed to approach your middle
school and high school years as being a time for fun more than anything,
and that you kind of got down to it when you graduated high school and
went to college, starting with an accounting degree at [California State
University] Northridge and then going on to law school in [University of
California] San Francisco. One of the things I was curious about is,
particularly in light of the amount of academic pressure exerted by
families in the Asian community, when you were goofing around and having
fun and ditching school and all that in high school, who were you doing
that with?
-
Lim
- Friends who were similarly situated as me, mostly I would say Korean
American immigrant kids like me who were having the same types of
challenges as me in terms of assimilating to a mainstream society.
-
Cline
- Do you have any sense of numbers of how many were there like you in the
community?
-
Lim
- Well, I wouldn't be able to come up with a number for that, but it would
be a significant pool of friends. I would say less than a hundred, but
definitely more than twenty. Somewhere in that range.
-
Cline
- Because, as I'm sure you're well aware, there's this notion that Asian
kids are all very studious, and I think the people who struggle against
that and who have trouble assimilating don't get a lot of coverage, or
perhaps the way that people deal with those difficulties doesn't get
talked about a lot.
-
Cline
- So it was more than just you who was feeling the rebellious streak coming
out of that situation?
-
Lim
- There were more than a handful of us, I would say. I think that
prevailing perception is accurate, but there were kids who didn't fit
into that stereotype, like me. But the ones that excelled through high
school didn't necessarily excel in college or grad school. I think the
Asian kids who tend to be quite obedient to their parents are the ones
that generally did very well through high school, but what I noticed was
that some of them, regretfully more share or more number than one would
like to see, struggled in college because suddenly they were now given
the freedom and responsibility to manage their own time. They never
learned that in high school because they were such good kids to their
parents.
-
Cline
- Interesting.
-
Lim
- It was the opposite for me. I had all the freedom and the burden of time
management.
-
Cline
- Would you say there were any other factors that some of these kids like
you had in common? Was there an economic consistency or was it very
diverse, the kinds of backgrounds, the families that they came from?
-
Lim
- I think there was a high degree of consistency, if you want to
characterize it as such, in that we were all from families that were not
economically well off, and being put out in the workforce at an early
age probably exposed us to things that came with that, which was how to
have fun.
-
Cline
- Interesting. You would, at this point, be starting to see a lot more
Korean immigrants coming into Los Angeles. I'm assuming that where you'd
probably be seeing that most, other than the neighborhood, would be at
church.
-
Lim
- Correct.
-
Cline
- What would some of your observations be about the new generation of
immigrants that were coming in and what ways were they maybe the same or
different from, say, your family and your situation?
-
Lim
- Frankly, at the time I don't think I had much of an observation, other
than seeing quite a number of people coming from Korea, because I was
too young to be sensitive to that issue. But I realized much later that
the families that immigrated in the years much later than me, I would
say maybe ten years later or so, were generally much better off. They
were wealthier immigrants, and we'll put quotation marks around
"wealthier," because by U.S. standard it wasn't that much wealthier.
They had the capital to embark on their entrepreneurial pursuits,
whereas the immigrants that came in the sixties, like myself and our
families, we were very limited in the capital. I think at the time there
were some constraints put on the families immigrating to the U.S. under
Korean law.
-
Cline
- Oh, interesting.
-
Lim
- That you couldn't take with you, as you were leaving Korea, more than $50
per person.
-
Cline
- Wow.
-
Lim
- That's my recollection.
-
Cline
- Interesting. That would certainly limit things.
-
Cline
- Related to this, one of the things I wondered about was the amount of
suburban flight that would, I imagine, be taking place with some of the
immigrants coming in who were better off. Your family stayed in the
Koreatown area, which I gather is actually not that common, the pattern
usually being getting out of there as quickly as possible and going into
other suburban areas where the schools have good reputations and things
like that. What was your sense of where people were going once they got
here? Where were they headed?
-
Lim
- The earlier immigrants, those that came in the sixties and seventies, I
have seen them, quote, unquote, "get out" to the Valley, San Fernando
Valley area. I think the immigrants that came after that group tended to
move to the Orange County area more so, the Fullerton, Cerritos area. I
don't know if that's responsive to your question.
-
Cline
- Yes, absolutely. As the wealthier immigrants were coming in during the
eighties, and you mentioned that they had more capital, they were more
able to exercise their entrepreneurial muscle, so to speak, maybe you
were too young to notice this, but looking back on it, perhaps, how did
the types of businesses that Korean immigrants were going into change?
What changes did you start to see in the Korean business community, the
types of things that might have been different about what they were
getting into entrepreneurially speaking, as opposed to earlier, if
anything?
-
Lim
- I'm not sure if I can actually call it a change in the types of business.
I think it's more of an evolution process. The immigrants that were
doing the restaurants and the markets in the early seventies maybe set
the stage for the later immigrants to get in the same line of business,
but the ones that came later, as I said earlier, had more capital and
they capitalized on the rapidly increasing immigrant population. So the
restaurants flourished and the markets did well and the travel agencies
that went with that, and you just saw a huge boom. So there was sort of
a sub economy within the L.A. economy within the community that didn't
really require much language skills, and they were dealing with the same
type of consumers that they had back in Korea, and I think they did very
well in that regard. Then they started to form their own banks. In 1982
Hanmi Bank was formed, which was the first Korean American home bank.
Prior to that there was another bank called California Credit Bank, but
that was owned by the government bank in Korea. So from that point on,
after Hanmi Bank, you saw a number of banks that got formed over the
course of the years. Now I think we have up to, if I'm not mistaken,
maybe fourteen or fifteen Korean American banks.
-
Cline
- Wow. So do you say there were just more of similar sorts of businesses
rather than more different kinds of businesses, just larger numbers of
them everywhere?
-
Lim
- By and large. The exception to that is that some of the Korean
entrepreneurs embarked on businesses that really catered to the
mainstream consumer market. You had Korean Americans starting clothing
stores that catered to the Latin Americans. You had Korean Americans in
the grocery business that catered to Latin Americans. So when there was
a change, it seemed like they were targeting more of the other ethnic
group.
-
Cline
- Interesting. So, related to that, when some of these people would set up
a business and they would start to become successful enough so they
could start hiring more employees, do you have a sense of who they were
hiring to be their employees?
-
Lim
- I think it was primarily a combination of the more recent immigrants in
comparison to themselves, and the Hispanic market.
-
Cline
- Who are right here in this community, the Koreatown community.
-
Lim
- Right.
-
Cline
- In terms of this more recent influx of immigrants, who do you think was
kind of showing them the ropes, so to speak, when they got here? I mean,
I know certainly earlier it was the church that tended to get people
established and show them what they needed to do and the kind of forms
they had to fill out and all that kind of thing. Do you think that was
changing? Was it the same? Where do you think they were getting their
information and their assistance?
-
Lim
- I think that evolved into friends and relatives, and mostly relatives, I
think, the earlier immigrant relatives helping the latter immigrant
relatives.
-
Cline
- When do you remember starting to see these assistance organizations
popping up around for the Korean community, nonprofit organizations and
things? I mean, obviously a lot more came in after 1992, but do you
remember seeing any of that kind of thing going on during the eighties?
-
Lim
- Yes, I think there were other grassroots community organizations in the
eighties, but the churches definitely preceded them.
-
Cline
- What about the interaction between the various generations now? You're
what has been termed "the 1.5 generation." There was an earlier
generation here and then, of course, there's a later generation that
comes in. What was your sense or maybe your personal experience of the
interaction between these generations and what might be perceived the
differences or similarities between them?
-
Lim
- Well, that's a tough one, Alex. The 1.5, and possibly including the
second generations that were educated in the U.S. I think tended to be
more open-minded about racial issues, more sensitive to the need for
diversity and tolerance of other cultures. The first generations coming
from a very homogenous society had less of those skill sets, so the
interactions between those two groups I think were fine when it came to
food and entertainment, but on certain sensitive issues such as those
cultural, racial tensions, and politics and what have you, I just sense
that there were some differences and some challenges in debating them. I
recall the issue about the withdrawal of the troops, the U.S. troops in
South Korea, and the second generation and the 1.5s understood the U.S.
policies, but at the same time they also understood the concerns their
parents had or have. This was a long time ago. This was when [President]
Jimmy Carter actually pronounced that he was going to cause the gradual
withdrawal. By the way, I don't think much has happened since then.
[laughs]
-
Cline
- No. I was going to say, very little has happened since then.
-
Lim
- But I'm just using that as a small example where the 1.5 and 2.0s
understood the U.S. perspective on certain issues that the first
generation just simply could not accept. I'm not sure if that's the
question that you're getting at.
-
Cline
- Well, that's an example, sure. I know there starts to become some more
contentiousness, particularly after 1992, in the community where there
are some very different ideas as to what direction things need to go.
-
Lim
- I guess it's another good example. The first generation came to the U.S.
believing that this is a true capitalistic society and if you work hard
and you invest money and you reap your profits, what's wrong with that?
There was less consideration, if you will, about the social impacts and
the other issues, whereas the 1.5 and the second generations were more
sensitive to that and they were somewhat more sympathetic to the local
community concerns, even though they were ambivalent themselves about
the deprivation of the business opportunities that came after the L.A.
riots to the Korean Americans that had businesses there, one good
example being the moratorium that was passed by the city ordinance to
prevent the rebuild of certain liquor stores altogether. There's clearly
compelling social reasons for that type of ordinance, but at the same
time you were taking away the fundamental right to rebuilt your business
for which you paid substantial money for.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- So it was a public interest versus private enterprise interest, and the
first generation tended to put more weight on the second, and the second
and 1.5, I wouldn't say put more weight on the first, but they
understood the reason for the dichotomy and the tension between the two
issues better, I think.
-
Cline
- How much do you think language issues had an impact on the relationship
between the generations?
-
Lim
- Well, from the standpoint of the first generation not having a full
understanding of the perspectives of the U.S. culture and U.S. policies,
I think the language had a huge impact. If they had the level of fluency
and understanding, I think that they themselves would not have been so
one-sided in their view. But within the family I don't think that the
language challenge posed that much problem, because notwithstanding the
fact that the second generations often didn't speak Korean language that
well, they spoke well enough and understood well enough to, I think,
have a meaningful dialogue with their parents.
-
Cline
- Where would you say information about what was happening in the Korean
American community was coming from in this period, in the eighties?
-
Lim
- Well, an ordinary person would be relying on the media, the paper, TV,
Korean news. Many church-goers, I'm sure, got some additional
perspective from their pastors speaking on Sunday sermon, which in the
Korean community the sermons often went beyond just the Bible. There
were comments here and there about what immigrants ought to do and how
immigrants should succeed and pursue their American dream.
-
Cline
- There's been a lot suggested, particularly during this period, about how
little it appeared that Korean Americans were getting involved in things
like local politics or public service in that way. I'm aware of a lot of
reasons for that, but in your view, what do you think was happening in
terms of the Korean immigrants' view and experience of political
involvement or public service, even at the local level in terms of how
they might affect their own community?
-
Lim
- Well, first of all, I think that is an issue to which the response would
vary immensely, depending on who you're asking. So just as sort of a
general background, I would tell you that the first-generation
immigrants that came to the U.S. in the sixties and the seventies are
the ones that had lived in Korea under the rule of the dictator Pak
Chung-hee. So they'd been sort of ingrained in their mind that there's
very little you can do to alter the politics or have an impact on the
policy of the government, so I think they tend to be more apathetic, if
you will. I'm sure language had a major factor in it, too, not
understanding the issues. Sure, the Korean paper and news may address
the subject, but since I'm bilingual and I listen to the Korean TV and
news once in a while and I read the Korean paper once in a while, it's
very clear to me that the way they address the issue or explain the
issue is very limited and superficial at times. Frankly, I can't fault
them, because you have to have the interest level there to really get
into it from the media standpoint. So language, again, was a major
factor. In defense of the immigrants, I would say that another
significant reason is they're so consumed in trying to make it in the
U.S. and pursuing their American dream, that politics sort of took a
backseat. But I see that changing right now. I see a greater interest
than ever before among the Korean Americans to understood political
issues and to have an input, and I think the voter registration has
dramatically increased, and the Koreans are playing, I think, a vital
role in local politics. Not at the national level, we just don't have
the number, but at the local level in certain districts more so than
before, definitely. I believe that trend is going to continue.
-
Cline
- When you were going to school, of course one of the things you would have
had to learn, perhaps again and again, was U.S. history, and of course,
you also get to learn about what they call civics, you know, how all
these various agencies work, how everything's set up here in this
country. What was that like for you and how much relevance do you think
that seemed to have at the time you were learning all about it? And
related to that, how much impact do you think that had on changing
attitudes about immigrant involvement in things like politics, if any at
all?
-
Lim
- As I told you, Alex, as a kid I wasn't that much into school stuff, but
like James Taylor said, "I don't know much about history." You know the
song, right? The James Taylor song?
-
Cline
- Yes, right.
-
Lim
- But clearly these subject matters became very important to me as I was
getting older.
-
Cline
- Which is when history does tend to become more interesting to people
anyway.
-
Lim
- Absolutely, and of course now I'm a history buff. But it's hard to answer
that because I don't really recall acquiring a certain level of
knowledge that I thought was instrumental in my later days. I probably
let my mind wander off in the history class a little too much. But,
sure, just to be a bit more responsive, I got to understand the basics
of the U.S. government structure when I was in high school and had an
opportunity to compare that with what I knew of the Korean government
back then. The Korean government, they don't have a Senate and a House
[of Representatives]. It's a Parliament structure and the term is
five-year presidency, one-term limit, and things of that sort, which
were just merely informative back then, but now very intriguing, and the
constant debate in my mind now as to which system is better.
-
Cline
- Interesting. Well, I see I should have written that down. The question
just flew right out of my head. Give me a second here.
-
Cline
- Oh, they have things like student government in high school and junior
high school, and one of the ways it's sometimes seen to excel in school
is to get involved in student government. Do you remember any of your
Korean American classmates getting into that sort of thing?
-
Lim
- The short answer is no, and if any of them did, they wouldn't be my
friends anymore.
-
Cline
- [laughs] Wow. Interesting, because actually suddenly I had this memory of
these first-generation Korean classmates I had growing up, and they were
very--I mean, I don't know that they even spoke Korean, but they were
both very accelerated when it came to things like academics, and one of
them was the student body president at my junior high school.
-
Lim
- Well, they're driven kids. They're the kind of kids that all the parents
would love to have as their kids.
-
Cline
- Yes, and they were among the only Koreans in the school, too, but, yes,
they were real achievers. The Ahns.
-
Cline
- Okay. One of the things that you mentioned last time was this person who
basically convinced you to go into this law firm with him, to start your
own law firm. I presume this is T.S. [Tong Soo] Chung, a name that comes
up again and again in these interviews, by the way. Among other things,
I guess he was involved in the founding of the Korean American
Coalition, and since he is not available to talk to us, can you perhaps
say a little bit more about him and his influence not only in the course
of your life, which obviously is considerable, but his importance in the
community as we head towards the landmark year of 1992 here? Just a
little bit more about who he is and what he has done.
-
Lim
- T.S. was the poster child, if you will. He's a couple of years older than
me. He went to Hollywood High School. He went to Harvard [University]
undergrad, Princeton [University] graduate school, and then subsequently
UCLA Law School. So he was sort of the figure that the parents wanted
their kids to emulate, and he was very much into politics, not for the
sake of making a name for himself, but he understood that politics was
the vehicle to make changes for the Korean Americans here, give them
opportunities that he felt that they deserved and get them recognition,
some voice in the mainstream. I believe that's what motivated him to
start the Korean American Coalition. So in many ways he's a pioneer of
the advocacy of the interest of the Korean Americans in the U.S., I
think.
-
Lim
- He was a lawyer by trade. He actually became a lawyer two years after me,
because he had gone to graduate school in between college and law
school. I believe I told you that he went to work for the Department of
Commerce. Did I tell you that before?
-
Cline
- No.
-
Lim
- Oh, I'm sorry. So when we started in the firm in 1986, we had a common
vision, which was that we would be the legal vehicle to further the
interests of the Korean American businesses, which would in turn, we
believed, would positively impact the Korean communities at large. In
1993 he was given an opportunity to join Ron Brown. I think he was the
deputy assistant to Ron Brown.
-
Cline
- I think you did mention that, yes.
-
Lim
- He went off and I was left, with a number of other partners in the firm,
to carry on our dream. We have succeeded in that respect because the
firm is much larger and stronger now than the time that he left the
firm, so I think that if you were to ask him, he would say that he's
proud that I didn't let this thing collapse.
-
Cline
- He is often characterized as being quite outspoken. How would you
characterize him in terms of his advocacy for the community?
-
Lim
- Outspoken in the sense that he's not shy about making his position known
on controversial issues, but he's not the kind of person who is
confrontational in the way he communicates his thinking. He's much of a
diplomat. I mean, if I had the opportunity to appoint ambassadors to
different regions of the world, I mean, I would definitely consider T.S.
as a good candidate.
-
Cline
- So one of the things that was also happening that I wondered if you had a
sense of, as regimes change, you were talking in South Korea the system
there and how it turns over. With the regimes changing, and we, of
course, over here have this view of the South and the North being, you
know, North bad, South good, not a lot of people, I think, in this
country gave a lot of thought to the fact that a lot of the people who
were running the government in South Korea weren't exactly allowing a
lot of certain types of freedoms either. How much do you think
governmental policy and regime changes affected the reasons that people
were coming over here as opposed to just, say, economic opportunity?
-
Lim
- Fifties, sixties, even up through the seventies, I would say that that
aspect played a critical role, but over that time period I would say
more so than the earlier, within that period, and less so in the latter
part of that period. As democracy started to really become a real thing
in Korea and there was less persecution of the opposing party leaders, I
think that it just became less of a factor. But definitely in the
fifties and sixties, many defected. I don't know if that's the right way
to put it, but a forced defection, if you will. I know that many of them
have gone to countries like Brazil and, yes, a lot to the United States
and then some to England.
-
Cline
- Although there were anti-immigration limitations here until after 1965.
So, yes, I guess they would have had to--
-
Lim
- Even then.
-
Cline
- --get creative.
-
Lim
- I think the student visa status was the commonly used vehicle and they
would come as professors, or initially as graduate students and then
take a position as a professor and get their residency status as a
professor or as a professional, like physicians and what have you.
-
Cline
- This is perhaps more of a general question, even though we're still kind
of talking during the eighties at this point, but considering the
divided nature of the country and the perception and feelings about
communism prevailing, what was your sense of the Korean American
community's general political character? Was there any consistency there
or was it pretty diverse?
-
Lim
- I think on the North-South issue, very conservative. The immigrants
brought with them the political state of mind from the era that they
emigrated. On the social issues, much more liberal, and on the religious
issues probably in a way initially more conservative and then becoming
more liberal as they get assimilated into the mainstream.
-
Cline
- How much--I'm trying to think of a way to phrase this question. Coming
over here, I know there's a fair amount of keeping in touch with what's
going on, obviously, in the homeland. How much do you think immigrants
who came over here maintained a sense of where South Korea was really
at? I guess really what I'm asking is, how much do you think their
perception of South Korea basically stayed the same once they were over
here? In other words, how much do you think they were really aware of
what was changing over there?
-
Lim
- I think in the recent years they're very much on top of it because of the
Internet. Prior to the Internet age, I would say they relied heavily on
TV and newspaper and what their relatives tell them over the phone on
international phone calls in terms of just information about what's
going on. In terms of their cultural posture, and that's kind of an
interesting way to put it, but the reason I put the word "posture" is
that it's more how they project themselves as opposed to how they really
feel. In that respect, I think they just sort of really kept the
old-fashioned Korean culture that prevailed upon them in the sixties and
seventies, when in fact Korea has changed altogether.
-
Lim
- I'll give you, let's say, an example between a husband and wife. In the
old days, when those Koreans immigrated in the sixties and seventies,
maybe the wife was expected to sort of do all the kitchen work and care
for the baby by herself, but that has changed dramatically in Korea.
Now, that is not the prevailing culture in Korea. I wouldn't say it's at
the level of the U.S. culture, but not much different. But the
immigrants that came to the U.S. in the sixties and seventies still have
that same disposition, at least in the way they project themselves with
their posture. How they feel inside may be a different story. So it's
kind of interesting to see that the Korean Americans are more
old-fashioned than the Koreans in Korea.
-
Cline
- Others have pointed that out. How much travel do you think there was
going back to South Korea with people more of your generation? I have to
assume that nowadays there's a lot more travel back and forth, but how
much do you think that would have an effect on their point of view about
what was happening?
-
Lim
- Oh, I think significant, if they had the opportunity to travel more
frequently. I mean, obviously the more affluent you are, the more able
you are to travel because it's not a cheap proposition to go to Korea.
It's very expensive, the hotels and airfare and everything. But the
people who go back often, like myself because I have business matters
there to attend to, I think have a better understanding of what Korea or
South Korea is really like today, than the ones that immigrated and have
not gone back and just kind of see Korea through what they see on TV,
mostly soap operas.
-
Cline
- Right. Channel 18.
-
Cline
- So one of the things that we've been kind of dancing around here, I guess
I'll just walk right into now, which is a landmark event that really
brings the Korean American community into the living rooms of the rest
of the nation, is the riots here in 1992. Of course, a great many Korean
American businesses were affected in this. Where were you that day and
what do you remember about it?
-
Lim
- I was actually here [at his law office in downtown Los Angeles]. We were
very nervously awaiting the announcement, or the verdict in the trial of
Rodney King, and when it came down to not guilty, yes, I was
apprehensive, because the grounds were actually laid in before that
verdict came down because of the case that preceded that case, which was
Soon-Ja-Du, the Latasha Harlins case. I forget exactly how many months
it preceded that, but that was all over the news here, L.A. Times
reporting it as a Korean grocer killing a sixteen-year-old or
fifteen-year-old African American girl. It was tragic in so many senses,
but I don't think media helped by calling Soon-Ja-Du "a Korean grocer."
The emphasis on the word "Korean" clearly raised tension. I mean, it was
not a--but, you know, that's how news works, media works, right?
-
Cline
- Yes, right.
-
Lim
- You can't say, "A grocer killed a girl." You have to put the racial
component in there.
-
Cline
- That's the dominant culture at work.
-
Lim
- Right. But, you know, to be accurate, which is what media is expected to
be, be accurately reporting, she should have been called a Korean
American grocer, because Korean grocers are in Seoul, Korea, or
different parts of Seoul, Korea. She was an American like the rest of
us, but when something negative is portrayed, we take out the American
part. It's like if something happens in Costa Mesa, it's a Vietnamese
gang as opposed to--but when something positive happens, like what's
that famous--Michael Chang wins the French Open and, of course, nobody
says it's a Chinese tennis player winning the French Open, the headline
was "Our American Wins the French Open."
-
Cline
- Yes, right.
-
Lim
- When Kristi Yamaguchi won the world skating--
-
Cline
- Yes, the Gold Medal in the Olympics, yes.
-
Lim
- Right, Gold Medal. Clearly the headline read, "Our American Wins the Gold
Medal."
-
Cline
- Yes, right.
-
Lim
- Did say, "Our Jap Won."
-
Cline
- That's for sure. [laughs]
-
Lim
- It's the hypocrisy of the way the media works is, I think, extremely
tragic and very unfortunate to minorities. So clearly the stage was
already set for that, with that Latasha Harlins tragic incident and
compounded that was the Rodney King case. So I was right here, to go
back to your question, and I was looking out from my window, and as the
day was getting darker, you could see flames all over the city. I was,
at the time, the president of the Korean American Bar Association
[KABA]. The vice president was Angela [E.] Oh, who is extremely well
known in the L.A. community at large, and she was on Nightline, as you
may recall, with Ted Koppel. So Angela came to my office and we were
looking at the city together from my twenty-eighth floor in my building,
and we got into my SUV [sport utility vehicle] and we drove around town
and we were talking about what we needed to do as Korean American
lawyers. So from that day it was a very busy twelve-month period
following that, not precisely twelve months, but over a year, because we
did pro bono legal work for the victims of the riots.
-
Cline
- When you said you drove around, where were you going?
-
Lim
- I can't remember precisely, but it was, by and large, K-town.
-
Cline
- What did you see?
-
Lim
- What we saw on TV; fire, looting, people screaming, yelling. It was one
of the most tragic things that I had to eyewitness in my life and hope
to never see again, which, unfortunately, is something that happens
quite often around the world right now in less democratic societies.
-
Cline
- Right. Then what was your impression of the media coverage of the riots,
dare I ask?
-
Lim
- Well, I had mixed feelings about it. Some of the coverages were a fair
depiction of what was going on, the issues were brought to the surface,
but in a certain other respects it was unfair to the Korean Americans. I
mean, it was almost as though the Korean Americans were the cause of the
anger, the sense of injustice, and the frustration that the African
Americans were feeling within the community. The Koreans, I think Korean
Americans understood a lot of that. What they don't understand is, but
how could that take or cause this sort of criminal activity to be viewed
as okay. That's the part that I think most Koreans or Korean Americans
struggled with.
-
Cline
- What about the scenes of Korean Americans defending their businesses with
firearms and all that kind of thing?
-
Lim
- Yes. I think, you know, it happened and it's fair, if it happened there's
no reason for hiding that, but what I was saying earlier about how the
Koreans felt that it was unfair was that those situations were
relatively isolated situations, which were sort of magnified and put on
the front page, in the highlights of the news all the time, making it
seem like Koreans were people of such greed that they would kill to
protect their property, which is a very unfair depiction, and to this
day, I think that many Koreans are resentful about the American media
because of it.
-
Cline
- What do you remember about how Angela Oh sort of became the spokesperson
for the community and wound up on Nightline with Ted Koppel as that
spokesperson, and what was your perception of how that may have helped
or not helped the situation with the media portrayal that was happening?
-
Lim
- See, I don't understand the controversy behind that, because I was in
total support of it. I was the president. In fact, I made the decision
along with other key people to have Angela be our spokesperson, and I
think she did a magnificent job. I applaud her. To this day we are
grateful for her. And of course, she's always been my friend, so I'm
partial. I think it was to me, by and large, a fair and accurate
projection of the sentiments of the Korean Americans at that time.
Whenever you have something like that, there's going to be a small
faction who says, "Oh, you're not speaking for me."
-
Cline
- Yes, of course.
-
Lim
- But so be it. I think she sent the message to America at large, some of
the feelings that the Koreans had at the time.
-
Cline
- And apparently for that show originally there had been no Korean American
invited at all.
-
Lim
- That's correct. That's correct.
-
Cline
- Which is pretty astounding. So you began doing pro bono work on behalf
of, I presume, a lot of these business owners?
-
Lim
- Well, to be more accurate, it's not just me, I mean it was a group of
about a hundred Korean American lawyers that we mobilized who were
members of the Korean American Bar Association of Southern California.
It so happened that that year I was the president, and usually to get
the lawyers to come together for any event was a real challenge, but
that's when everybody just jumped up and said, "How high do you want me
to jump?" Everyone rolled up his or her sleeves, and we worked out a
schedule, and lawyers from different segments of their legal community
all came and we were really united in our goal, and that was to provide
free legal services to the victims in their relief process.
-
Cline
- How would you characterize the composition of this group of lawyers? Were
they largely Korean? Were they all types of people?
-
Lim
- Yes, it was an overwhelming percentage. I would say more than 95 percent
were Korean American lawyers.
-
Cline
- You mentioned, obviously, the frustration and the resentment. What was
your perception of the prevailing feeling of the people you were
assisting in the wake of this tragedy?
-
Lim
- Oh, gosh, it's heart-wrenching. The people that were coming to our
clinic--by the way, I can sort of maybe be a little bit more descriptive
about how that pro bono operation worked.
-
Cline
- That would be great.
-
Lim
- We'd initially set up our operation at a local church, Oriental Mission
Church, on Western [Avenue], and it was maybe about twenty lawyers. The
word got out that KABA, which stands for Korean American Bar
Association, is operating this pro bono clinic, and lawyers that we had
not seen for years just came up to sign up to be pro bono lawyers. So at
its high point we had up to a hundred lawyers on our list, and what we
did was we had a sort of a time chart. What's the best way to describe
it? We had different shifts with different people and different dates
and we would cover from morning to evening. The lawyers would sit there
and there would be tables set up and the victims would just come in,
walk in, and the lawyers would review their situation and give them
advice on how to pursue it. In many cases--in some cases not many cases,
some cases they would actually take the case to their own firm and sign
them up as a pro bono client. So there were issues like lease
termination, insurance coverage, FEMA [Federal Emergency Management
Agency] relief, and a whole host of other legal issues that come up. We
were doing some direct services to the victims. We were also getting
involved with impact litigation, which was a lawsuit against FEMA, and
we were also doing policy advocacy. That was what KABA did. I can't take
credit for that. It so happens that I was the president and I was under
the spotlight, but it was really the work of all of those members of
KABA that I think made a difference for many people, because they would
have never been able to pursue their legal rights and remedies without
the assistance of a lawyer, which they couldn't afford, because
everything got burned down. Right?
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- So they were in a bad, bad situation and it was so disheartening to see
them walk in, and I've never seen that many clients cry. I mean, in my
practice, you know, I meet CEOs [chief executive officers] and CFOs
[chief financial officers]. I just don't see clients shed their tears in
an office, but that was one year when basically it was every day
witnessing, eye-witnessing, Korean Americans, many of them elderly
folks, you know, fifties, sixties, seventies, running businesses that
were burned down and just in total tears as they would come and see us,
because we were the only source of hope for them.
-
Cline
- Who else was involved in supporting these people and providing some kind
of aid, not necessarily legal, but were there other organizations?
-
Lim
- Oh, absolutely. Yes, there was a very important and very instrumental
organization called Asian Pacific American Legal Center, headed by
Stewart Kwoh, who was the executive director. As a matter of fact,
Stewart and I became very good friends through that incident and I
actually sit on that board now. I've been sitting on the board for
fifteen-plus years of that organization. It's a legal aid public
interest law group for Asian Americans at large.
-
Lim
- KABA was never meant to function as a permanent relief center. That was
sort of more of a reaction to a crises and we did it for a year, but in
the course of doing that, we teamed up with the Legal Center, Asian
Pacific American Legal Center, Stewart Kwoh's organization, and Rebuild
L.A., because a lot of this work went well beyond a one-year period. We
thought that it'd be prudent to team up with an organization that had
continuity. So after that approximately twelve-month period of time, the
workforce essentially got merged into the work that Rebuild L.A. and the
Legal Center were doing.
-
Cline
- I presume you had to keep your own clients and things going in order to--
-
Lim
- That was a real challenge, because I know that I worked almost full-time
that year, 1992, on the relief efforts, and then on top of that, I had
to work part-time here. So it was an incredible year. I lost a lot of
weight. I was getting very little sleep. I had to keep my firm above the
water, but in reality, it was that one year we actually went into red
and we had to borrow from our line of credit to keep it above the water.
-
Cline
- Oh, wow.
-
Lim
- But my partners were very understanding and they had the same commitment
I had. It was just that I was in the front line and they weren't, but
they were very gracious and they allowed me to do what we all felt that
needed to be done.
-
Cline
- I know this is a huge question, but I'll ask it anyway. How do you think
the riots changed the Korean American community here in L.A. and beyond?
-
Lim
- I guess in a way that it changed the Jewish American community after the
Watts riot. The sensitivity to these racial and culture issues were
definitely raised, I think. The notion of owning a mom-and-pop store in
the quote, unquote, "ghetto neighborhood" was not necessarily viewed as
the best way to make a living. I think there was a greater increasing
effort to have a good relationship with other ethnic groups, especially
the African American communities. I noticed that more churches were
reaching out to provide some economic assistance under the auspices of
better community relations, like scholarships or funding certain types
of projects, what have you. So I think a lot of positive came out of it.
It's just that so many innocent business owners have to pay a huge price
for which they never got fully addressed.
-
Cline
- How do you view the impact on the different generations, particularly the
first generation versus the 1.5 or second generation people, in the ways
they were aspiring to handle the aftermath and the significance of it?
What was your sense of how that was playing out? Were they united in
this? Were there different points of view?
-
Lim
- There were some different points of view, I think. Like I said earlier, I
think the second generation, the first 1.5 generations, which were more
sympathetic to the outcries coming from the African American community
than the first generation.
-
Cline
- What kind of an impact did that have on the leadership within the Korean
American community?
-
Lim
- Probably more of the affirmation of maybe the divided view within the
Korean community. There is an organization called Korean Federation and
there's the KAC, Korean American Coalition. They play a different role,
but the Korean Federation is the organization that I think is closer to
the hearts of the first generation, whereas KAC to the hearts of 1.5 and
second generation. Generally those two organizations still kind of work
independent of each other, although I think there is a concerted effort
to sort of increase the dialogue and collaboration. But certain issues
will divide them, no question, because the first generation will have
the more, you know, old-fashioned view of my position, my stake, etc.,
whereas the 1.5 and second will be more sensitive to the issues raised
by the communities outside of our own.
-
Cline
- What was your view of how the city government here began to view and
handle the Korean American community after the riots?
-
Lim
- I think your earlier question about the Korean Americans' level of
interest in politics where in fact significantly affected by the
disappointment that prevailed among the Korean Americans with the city
of Los Angeles and the politicians within that. The general perception,
I thought, was that the city and its political representatives were much
more in tune with hearing what the African American community leaders
were saying and were sort of deaf ear to the Korean Americans. They were
sort of complaining about that, but I think the second generation and
1.5s were saying, "What did you expect? We have no voice, because you
guys don't do anything to create a political muscle. You use your money
to send your kids to Harvard and Yale, but you don't donate to
organizations that want to be your voice, so what do you expect?" That
was sort of the kind of dialogue that went back and forth between the
first generation and the 1.5 and second.
-
Cline
- Interesting. There was a lot of talk about rebuilding and revitalizing
the city in the wake of all this, and L.A. got a new mayor [Richard J.
Riordan] shortly thereafter. What is your view of how that went,
particularly in light of the need of the Korean American community?
-
Lim
- You know, I'm really not sure. My general sense is that there was the
feeling that the mayor really didn't do anything for the Korean
Americans. He sure came to collect on his political funds, and I think
Korean Americans started giving more after the riots. I think that's an
example of where the yield was zero, because it really didn't do
anything. That's a perception. I mean, I'm not saying that is in fact
the case; I think that is the prevailing perception among the Korean
Americans that I've talked to.
-
Cline
- What was your sense of the number, maybe percentage-wise, of Korean
Americans who just bailed out, didn't rebuild, didn't go back into
business, maybe even--
-
Lim
- There were quite a few. I can't put a number on it, but there were quite
a few.
-
Cline
- Did they stay in L.A. or did they just go away?
-
Lim
- I couldn't answer that, Alex.
-
Cline
- This is just one of those things you never hear about.
-
Lim
- I know from a fact from just knowing a couple of people, there were some
relocation efforts. I don't know if, in fact, they did move or not.
-
Cline
- You hear about how many people leave L.A. after, for example, the [1994]
Northridge earthquake, but you don't hear about people leaving because
of riots, and you know some had to have left, because maybe there's
nothing here for them anymore. I was just curious about that.
-
Cline
- So you mentioned the Korean American Coalition and the Korean Federation.
What was your awareness of some of the other nonprofit organizations in
the community's involvement in helping the community in the aftermath of
the riots, and what do you remember about the development of more of
these kinds of organizations in this effort?
-
Lim
- Well, a number of organizations stepped up and played a very critical,
pivotal role, I thought. Korean American CPA Society was very
instrumental in the relief effort in assisting many of the victims to
renegotiate the SBA [Small Business Association] loans that were
outstanding, in some cases to actually get more SBA loan to rebuild. A
lot of the business owners didn't own the business free and clear. But
the means by which they were repaying the interest and principal have
one day vanished. So that was a very difficult situation, and as lawyers
we could only do so much. We can evaluate their rights under the lease,
remedies, their obligations under the SBA loan documents, but in terms
of actually trying to restructure the loan and getting the numbers
crunched, it was the CPAs that actually stepped up and did a lot of pro
bono work. So it was really a beautiful collaborative spirit that had
prevailed among the professionals that really put in hundreds and
hundreds, and in my case more than a thousand hours. I mean, I put in, I
think, about well over a thousand hours largely unnoticed, you know, and
no glory there, but that's fine, because none of us ever thought for a
moment to get any sort of recognition out of this, because that wasn't
what drove us. What drove us was the sense of equity and wanting to
assist the victims in remedying the situation so that the gross
injustice is at least in some way alleviated.
-
Cline
- How much, if any, support and sympathy do you remember receiving from
people in organizations outside the Korean American community? I mean,
obviously language issues notwithstanding.
-
Lim
- I can't speak for other organizations, but KABA was widely supported by
different organizations. L.A. County Bar [Association] offered to
provide assistance. The [California] State Bar [Association], as well. I
mean, there was a significant amount of recognition for the work we did
within the legal community. I'm embarrassed to say this, but I was the
recipient of the Pro Bono Award in the following year for the work that
I did in 1992. I felt really guilty getting it, because I never for a
moment thought about the award when I was doing it. Apparently, it's a
very prestigious award, but it was an award that should be given to all
of the KABA lawyers who did the pro bono work and not just John Lim, but
I guess you can say that I was the recipient on behalf of all of them. I
was put into a situation with having to meet with people like Jesse
Jackson and George [H.W.] Bush, then president, senior, and none of that
was that important to me. I was looking for an opportunity to translate
that into more relief and greater harmony. But to be honest, I don't
think I succeeded in that endeavor because George Bush, president,
senior Bush, didn't really, in my view, do much for the Korean American
businesses and owners.
-
Cline
- How would you assess the potential change in the political climate of the
community, not just in terms of suddenly becoming aware of the need for
political involvement, but maybe in terms of political philosophy, once
essentially the government sort of let them down? Did you have any sense
of a shift in point of view within the community at that point?
-
Lim
- Just for a while, but I'm not sure. If there were any significant shift,
I'm not sure if that stayed that way for too long. I think at the time
when there was a lot of blaming done on the Koreans and Korean Americans
that contribute to the social ills of the African Americans, a lot of
the self-righteous Korean Americans were very, very vocal in their
opposition to those community leaders that were pretty outspoken back
then. You have to remember, a lot of the African American leaders had
access to media.
-
Cline
- Right. Right.
-
Lim
- But the Korean American leaders, if there were any, I'm embarrassed to
say, I guess, many Korean Americans might have looked to me as one of
them, but we didn't have that much access. I mean, I had an opportunity
to debate with Maxine Waters, and I met with Jesse Jackson, sat on the
same panel on a certain present--it's so long ago, Alex, I can't even
tell you what the topic was. But our voice was just generally not heard
very well. I know that some of the discussions that we had were aired on
the radio, it might have been NPR [National Public Radio], I'm not sure,
but by and large, Koreans were not sought out, the Korean American
leaders. In fact, you can't even blame the media because how would they
find out? I mean, sure, if they did more homework, maybe they would get
some directions there. But, yes, that's changing, no question about it.
I think we're getting much better at it now. In the paper, nowadays if
you read the paper you see the same names pop up over and over again. So
I think that's sort of a positive indication that maybe the media is now
able to find these unofficial spokespersons.
-
Cline
- Now, of course, whenever there's some big tragedy in the Korean American
community, they're all standing out in front of that building [KOA
Building at Sixth Street and Harvard Boulevard] over there on Sixth
Street or wherever it is, talking to everybody over there.
-
Cline
- I suppose this is one of the ways that Angela Oh wound up becoming the
kind of default spokesperson since they had probably no idea who else to
talk to if she had become the spokesperson on this show then everybody
wants to ask her. I know she's very self-conscious about that now, which
is why she keeps turning me down about when I ask her to do an
interview. She said, "I'm the most interviewed Korean American there is.
I've probably said enough."
-
Cline
- How much were you traveling to Korea around that time and the time of the
riots? Were you still traveling a lot then?
-
Lim
- No, in that era I couldn't do anything. After the riot, I was trying to
get back to my normal business routine.
-
Cline
- What was your sense of the perception of this event in South Korea?
-
Lim
- Perplexed, confused, angry, sympathetic, but still somewhat distant from
it because they don't live here. And maybe to some folks it was amusing.
-
Cline
- Interesting.
-
Lim
- So-called the most developed nation in the world to be so uncivilized, so
crazy, in their view. You know, when there's political demonstrations in
Korea and the police force come and students throw whatever they throw,
it's covered on Nightline and The View--
-
Cline
- Yes. Yes, I'd say they have a lot of that.
-
Lim
- The projection there is that, "Look. Look at this developing nation.
They're still violent about expressing their views and how they exercise
their freedom of speech. It's primitive." And yet in this country,
so-called the most powerful and developed, sophisticated, civilized
society, what was going on was absolutely shocking. Where were the cops?
-
Cline
- Yes, I was going to say the police and then even the National Guard.
-
Lim
- Where is the National Guard? Right. So, yes, the Koreans were probably
amused. You know, "They call themselves the most civilized people in the
world." Something you couldn't imagine seeing in Korea.
-
Cline
- Wow. Interesting. After all that was becoming a feeling more in the past
and you were returning to your regular work sort of life, what was your
sense of where you may have felt the community was headed at that point?
-
Lim
- Although it's for a very tragic incident that maybe set the stage, but I
thought the community was increasingly becoming more sensitive to, I
think, racial issues. More effort was being made, more monetary
investments were being made to improve interracial relation issues. So I
think some positive definitely came out of it. It was unfortunate that
it was prompted by something so negative.
-
Cline
- Yes. And of course, you know, we did start to see the businesses come
back and--
-
Lim
- Not all of them came back. Many of them couldn't come back because of the
ordinance I was telling you about.
-
Cline
- Right. But certainly in the Koreatown area things continued to develop.
-
Lim
- Sure. Oh, absolutely.
-
Cline
- Well, I think on that note, we'll call it for today and then I think we
can finish next time with your feelings about where things are now and
looking back at that as a historical event, it's been a while now, and
where things may be headed from this point on, and where you are with
your life and your work and where you see yourself now as a Korean
American. Okay?
-
Lim
- Sounds good.
-
Cline
- All right. Thanks a lot.
-
Lim
- Sure. [End of session three]
1.4. Session 4 (March 7, 2008)
-
Cline
- Today is Friday, March 7, 2008. This is Alex Cline interviewing John Lim,
session number four, at his offices in downtown Los Angeles.
-
Cline
- Good morning, again.
-
Lim
- Good morning.
-
Cline
- Thanks for sitting down and talking. First of all, I wanted to ask by way
of taking advantage of the moment as much as I can, you just came back
from a trip to South Korea, which was, from what you said last time to
me, really about your being present at the inauguration of the new
president there.
-
Lim
- Well, that was just part of it, yes.
-
Cline
- Oh, it was part of it. Okay. I wanted to ask you, related to that,
because this will sort of play into some of the direction that we're
headed today in this interview session, what your feelings were about
that and particularly as they relate to where you feel the political
situation may be right now in South Korea and where it may be headed,
and that will, I think, play into how that might affect what's going on
here with the Korean community and the development of Koreatown here in
Los Angeles.
-
Lim
- I think it's a widely held belief that the new administration headed by
the newly elected president, M.B. Lee [Lee Myung-bak], is someone who
desires a more favorable relationship with the U.S. He is also known to
be much more conservative in the approach with respect to North Korea,
probably more in line with the policies of the U.S., and just generally
very pro business, pro free trade, friendly toward the western business
investments, etc. So I think the Korean Americans generally embrace the
new administration because they look upon that as a situation where they
could benefit more both in terms of business and just other general
interactions with Korea, because the Korean Americans are, after all,
Americans first.
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- They have a relationship with Korea, and the general positive relations
between the two nations is believed to have more of a fostering effect
in their interaction with the Koreans in Korea.
-
Cline
- Where do you think this might take the relationship with North Korea,
which has gone through a lot of drama in the last few years?
-
Lim
- That is a very difficult question, really. I mean, who knows? I think
different scholars would say different things. But the hope is that it
won't set back in the progress that has been made in terms of just
creating more dialogue, but at the same time the message to North Korea
is more clear in terms of what South Korea and the U.S. would be willing
to do in developing the relationship with North Korea. More specifically
it's about disarmament and closure of the nuclear plant as a condition
precedent to providing more economic aid and having a diplomatic
relationship. It's a tough one. It's a very difficult issue.
-
Cline
- Yes, and certainly it has at least appeared that there were some
diplomatic strides being made at the end of the [President William J.]
Clinton administration here that were essentially completely scrapped
when the administration changed over to the [George W.] Bush
administration, but now we still hear reports of people like Jimmy
Carter trying to broker communication and dialogue between these people,
the big question that I want to ask you being how this all might go once
we have a possible regime change right here in the United States, since
we do have an election coming up, but what are your personal feelings
about the situation with North Korea and particularly the topic of
reunification?
-
Lim
- Those are real heavy issues, Alex. You must be in the mood to just punish
me here. [laughs]
-
Cline
- No. You don't have to answer either, but some people have very--
-
Lim
- I'm just a lawyer and I don't have the expertise to really give you an
intelligent answer, but it's, I guess, hoped among the Americans at
large that the new administration, whether it be the [John] McCain
administration or [Barack H.] Obama/[Hillary Rodham] Clinton, as of
today that is a, I guess the hottest topic in the country. You know, the
role of the super delegates is going to perhaps shape the history of
this nation.
-
Lim
- But in any event, it is hoped that whoever is the successor would do a
better job than the [George W.] Bush administration has done, but to
really pick up on the progress that has been made in recent months or
years, and I think the landscape is ideal in the sense that now you have
a very collaborating partner in South Korea. I mean, in defense of Mr.
Bush, I would say that it must have been rather difficult to foster a
good strategy when the two nations were not on the same page.
-
Cline
- Yes, exactly. The reason I asked that question was not to just kind of
throw you in the deep end of the pool, but because so many of the people
I've interviewed have very definite opinions about this particular issue
and a fair amount of passion about it, as well, in many cases. So I
figured I'd--
-
Lim
- Well, I share the passion, but I can't say that I have a definite view on
it, because it's really a work in progress right now, and I would
question anybody who is so certain about these issues. I would question
their wisdom. It's a moving target and the issues are very dynamic and
you see little things that could mean a lot. Like there's talk about
Eric Clapton going to North Korea to do a concert.
-
Cline
- Really?
-
Lim
- I mean, for a former musician like yourself and myself, okay, it's
another concert, but politically speaking, it could have much grander or
much bigger significance than one might think in ordinary context.
-
Cline
- Totally. The New York Philharmonic just played there.
-
Lim
- Right. That, of course, I think set the stage for this rock concert
they're talking about.
-
Cline
- Amazing. Yes. The health of totalitarian leaders also tends to play into
these issues in a big unpredictable way, which is something we've just
been seeing recently with Fidel Castro, for example, and there's a lot
of speculation about that, as well.
-
Lim
- Well, in Kim Jong-il's case, I think he's secretly passionate about
western culture. Actually, not that much of a secret anymore. Everybody
knows his love for cognac and movies and sports cars, you know, all of
which is western stuff.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- So if he had it his way, he would want to rule the country with a strong
fist, but play in the backyard of his country. [laughs] Or England.
-
Cline
- Yes, right. Well, that's pretty amazing.
-
Cline
- We left off last time talking about the riots here in 1992 and we talked
a bit about the aftermath of that, the significance it had to the Korean
American community here in Los Angeles and at large. One of the things I
wanted to ask you about to follow up on that is what your assessment,
after dealing so heavily with the legal issues, the pro bono work you
did for the community, what your assessment was of the recovery after
the riots. You mentioned that you didn't know, for example, how many
people just had to kind of pack up and leave, but certainly a lot of
people who had what could be called mom-and-pop businesses in other
parts of Los Angeles were pretty much shut out, while others in the
Koreatown area generally started to make a recovery and come back. What
was your feeling about what you were seeing in terms of the recovery
after the riots, and how much of that recovery do you think has been a
factor in the continued emergence of Koreatown as a major cultural and
economic force in the city?
-
Lim
- Well, that's a twofold question. On the first one, I think it's a fair
assessment to say that the Korean Americans demonstrated enormous
resiliency in their recovery endeavor. Like I said before, I don't know
how many of them actually came back to restore their business, but you
didn't see news about suicides. So I think probably the Korean culture
of working together to lend support to each other, not just within
family groups, but within friend groups or church groups, really made it
possible for them to get back on their feet.
-
Lim
- I don't know if you know, but there's a very interesting financing, debt
financing vehicle in Korean culture called kye. It's called kye. That's
phonetically. It's called kye, and what that is is a group of people
essentially putting a certain sum of money on a monthly basis in a pot
and then on a lottery basis the sequence by which the funds would be
taken is determined. So each of them would take the pot money as they
come in. So for the ones that take early, with advancing money--no, I'm
sorry, would be taking the money and the others would be advancing the
money, and the ones that take later would be the ones, conversely,
funding the debt financing structure. This is a kind of financing
structure that is not practiced, as far as I know, in the United States,
and this is widely available, even to this day, from what I know, I
think practiced to a lesser extent with the 1.5, or probably not at all
with the second generation, but still relatively utilized on a regular
basis among the first generation for people who cannot otherwise get
conventional financing. You know, they may not have the credit rating or
they may not have the collateral or proof of repayment ability, but
within the group, just based on this trust notion that they could get
that kind of financing, which is what I think probably enabled many of
these people to get back on their feet. This is an enormous advantage I
think Korean Americans have, because I know a lot of my friends in the
African American community have asked me at different times, "How is
that the Koreans can come to the United States and open up the shop so
quickly? Are these all very, very wealthy people coming to this
country?" I tell them that, no, they're not wealthy. In fact, if they
were wealthy, they'd have stayed in Korea.
-
Cline
- Yes, yes. Interesting.
-
Lim
- Many of them are not wealthy and they come with very limited capital, and
the way they can buy the hamburger store or the ice cream shop or the
dry cleaner business is that they go into this financing scheme that the
bank wouldn't offer, because they don't have the collateral or the
credit rating, and they pull together the capital to start a business.
It comes from thousands of years of Korean history. So my good friends
in the African American community say that's a brilliant idea, but they
don't have--what they're saying to me is that that is not a system that
can be tapped into in that community, which in a way it may be--which
you hope that it wasn't the case, because what I think other ethnic
communities could empower themselves from a business standpoint would be
if they had easier access to money, capital.
-
Cline
- Right. Yes. Yes, I'd heard about this a long time ago and it's an
interesting combination of both what people always like to point out
about one of the strengths of the Korean immigrant community, which is
their entrepreneurial spirit, but in a nation which often defines the
entrepreneurial spirit as being in line with sort of rugged
individualism that we associate with the American psyche, this is
obviously a very collectively-minded sharing-oriented way of looking at
it that is very different culturally from what we are used to here.
-
Lim
- A thought just came into my head as I was listening to you. I think one
can describe this kye concept as a co-op micro finance. I mean, if I
were to actually try to describe it to an economist. Because it's a
micro finance, but not from an institutional level, but from a co-op
basis. In other words, among the members of the co-op giving each other
micro finance credit facility. That's what it is. It's an amazing
concept when you think about it.
-
Cline
- It is.
-
Lim
- But it's also a very risky concept.
-
Cline
- Sure.
-
Lim
- Because I've heard so many people of having paid into this, but never got
their money because somebody decided to drop out. So the reliability and
accountability is so heavily dependent on the individual members of that
co-op, that just the slightest error or loss of loyalty could cause
significant harm.
-
Cline
- Yes. Well, it takes a lot of trust. It's remarkable.
-
Lim
- Yes, but apparently enough of them have succeeded to provide a lot of
mom-and-pop stores in L.A. I'm not saying all of them went through this
financing structure. The ones that were able to get loans from the
community banks, I'm sure they got that. That would be the preferred
mode of financing. But there are a lot of small shop owners that cannot
get a loan from a conventional source.
-
Lim
- Right. You've represented a lot of people in the business community here,
involved in a lot of real estate transactions. How, if at all, did your
client base change after the riots?
-
Lim
- Well, I don't think--it changed a little bit in the sense that the client
base got much more institutionalized, but I don't think it had anything
to do with my involvement in the riots. It was just the natural
progression of the firm getting larger.
-
Cline
- Okay. How was it different?
-
Lim
- Not a whole lot. I mean, generally I still represent the businesses that
I represented then. Many of my clients go back pre-riot days. Of course,
the clients that I got after the riots were in character similar to the
clients I had before the riot. They're foreign companies that are coming
in-bound to U.S., and they're major U.S. businesses that are owned by
Korean Americans and they're also major U.S. Fortune 500 companies that
for different reasons want minority lawyer representation. So it's that
type of situation.
-
Cline
- Interesting. Along with maybe not so much change in the type of client,
what about the sorts of issues that you were having to contend with? Did
any of that start to change or was it all just pretty much the same,
just maybe a larger scale than before, as your firm grew and as the--
-
Lim
- I think it's the latter.
-
Cline
- Okay. So you talked a bit last time about how one of the positive
outcomes of the riots afterwards was an increased sensitivity to
different cultural points of view, different ethnic communities,
especially the African American community. We started to see a younger
generation of leadership in the Korean community. Can you think of any
other ways, particularly after 1992, that the Korean American community
here, business or otherwise, started to noticeably change? Certainly it
continued to grow, but other than that, is there anything really marked
or pronounced that you would say defined the community in terms of
change?
-
Lim
- Well, change definitely occurred. I'm not sure which of them or to what
extent they were caused by the '92 riots. But in addition to the things
that you mentioned, which actually is a regurgitation of what I
mentioned, and maybe it's just part of that or an extension of that, I
think that I began to see a lot more political activism and political
voice. You hear a lot more political voice from the Korean community
post riot. Again, it may be just a function of the community getting
more mature and more assimilated into the American mainstream society.
-
Cline
- How much, if at all, did there start to be interest and support for the
concerns and endeavors of the Korean community by people outside the
Korean community, non-Koreans? I'm asking this because certainly the
Korean American community was presented in an unprecedented fashion
after the riots here. Did this change the relationship of the community
to the non-Korean community in any pronounced way that you can think of?
-
Lim
- That's a real tough one for me, as well. I would like to think that I'm
really in touch with the greater Korean American community, but to be
perfectly frank, my interaction is somewhat limited to the
legal/business community within the Korean community. But just from my
general observation I would say that there has been a significant level
of sympathy, support from the communities at large in the Greater Los
Angeles area, probably from the mainstream America, as well, but that
sentiment, I think, sort of dissipated rather quickly. You know, the
outcries that were being manifested at that time and the people say,
"Oh, we feel so terrible about the Korean Americans," or, "They
shouldn't have to suffer like that," and all that, and the words of
encouragement that came, I think were very nice, but I don't think they
lasted very long. I think people forget very quickly. I mean, the Watts
Riot, yes, it was horrific. I mean, it was crazy. But I think a lot of
people forgot about it, and in fact, if you ask people on the street
today, a lot of people don't even know about it.
-
Cline
- Yes, for sure. Yes. Well, since we are working in the business community,
particularly as Koreatown in the Korean American community and L.A.
becomes even more developed, larger, and more economically influential,
did you see a change in the types of people or companies who are
investing in the area, in the community?
-
Lim
- In the Korean community or the--
-
Cline
- Money coming into the Korean community and Koreatown in particular, which
has certainly been changing a lot in the last ten, fifteen years.
-
Lim
- Clearly, there were bigger projects that were being undertaken and the
inflow of capital were getting intensified. But, again, I'm not sure if
there's a cause-and-effect relationship.
-
Cline
- Yes. Well, ignoring that for the moment, just as we head more into, you
know, through the nineties and into the present day, I guess, what do
you see in terms of, if anything, in terms of different types of
companies or entities investing in the area, in the businesses?
-
Lim
- I think most of it was the same type of business, a lot of cars, tires,
clothing, etc., but I began to notice that there were more
bioengineering endeavors, some companies relating to stem cell. So the
high-tech component, I think, definitely picked up. More Korean
companies are now willing to finance projects in the United States
because of what they see as an attraction stemming from the favorable
currency exchange rate, favorable from their perspective.
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- And the trade surplus that they're enjoying, or I should say they have
enjoyed, I don't know, with the continued currency exchange rate
changes, the trade surplus might dissipate in time. Anyway, so I think
there definitely has been greater infusion of capital by the Korean
companies into the United States.
-
Cline
- Was there any interest from investing and in getting involved by
non-Korean companies or individuals, or is it pretty much still
maintained within the Korean or Korean American [unclear]?
-
Lim
- Well, no, actually the infusion, a lot of it is outside the Korean
community. The clients that I represent are buying facilities. In the
past they were just renting, they were leasing facilities, but they're
buying facilities throughout the country, you know, Georgia, Alabama,
even--yes, northern--east parts of the country like New Jersey, Ohio. I
think that there is a greater willingness to speculate on the real
estate than in the past. Also I think the fact that they're holding onto
a lot of cash is probably a plus in making that decision.
-
Cline
- There's currently a lot of development going on in Koreatown and its face
is essentially changing very fast. Aside from the fact there is only a
Koreatown in Los Angeles, when people think of these--to use a loaded
term--sort of ghettoized ethnic neighborhoods, historically they usually
think of a pretty small concentrated area, whereas I can speak from
experience, people I know who come from out of the country or out of
town, who come here, and when I'm taking them around and showing them
L.A., and I since I don't tend to show them things like Hollywood
Boulevard, I tend to show them different things, people are consistently
completely amazed and utterly unprepared for the size of Koreatown as
compared to similar communities that they're used to seeing. That
said--I know this is a big question--but what is your take on the
direction that Koreatown has been going in the last few years, and
therefore, where do you think it's headed as a community? Because it's
still a diverse community; it's not just Koreans by any stretch.
-
Lim
- Right. Alex, that's okay, I mean, at least you're consistent with big
questions. [Cline laughs.] I think that the first-generation Koreans
that have sort of made it in the United States, achieving their American
dreams of accumulated wealth vis--vis equity in a home, their stocks in
community banks, what have you, have accumulated significant wealth.
Many of them are holding net worth in excess of tens of millions of
dollars and some of them over hundred millions of dollars. So because
they know their community and they know their town, there's, I think, a
great propensity to invest in an area that you feel comfortable with.
So, with abundance of wealth that they've accumulated and with the
desire to have a sustained wealth-accumulation landscape, which as you
know is often real estate, I think there is still a very growing and
increasing interest among the first generation to amass real estate and
draw income stream from that. The first generation tend to be very
apprehensive about the securities market, the bond market, and the whole
concept of investing in stock is still relatively at a young stage for
Koreans just because of the short history. Now, Korea, South Korea, is
highly sophisticated when it comes to the financial market, but
nevertheless, with the older folks there's, I think, a continuing
apprehension in that regard. I think the older folks tend to take more
comfort in real estate investment.
-
Lim
- So with that as a background, what would the 1.5 and 2.0 [generation]s
do? I think you'll see, at least this is my guess. It's not even an
educated guess, it's sort of a wild guess, that the 1.5s will tend to
follow the footsteps of the first generation when it comes to real
estate, because they see it as an easy, safe route to go. It's already
been demonstrated that wealth can be accumulated in this fashion and
"I'll just follow my dad's footsteps," or something like that.
-
Lim
- Second and third generations might be a bit different. I think that
they're not just interested in wealth; they're interested in having fun,
and real estate ownership just doesn't seem, quote, unquote, "sexy"
enough for them. I think as the second and third generations become more
assimilated and become truly more quote, unquote "Americans," the
diversification, I think, will be increased and we will begin to see
much more active trading, stock investment, and bond, and other types of
investments, not just real estate. And I think they will be better
informed, I should say, better informed when it comes to investment.
-
Lim
- Now, what kind of a long-term effect would that have on the real estate?
Perhaps the--this is really long-term, right?
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- Okay, this is really long-term, but the speed with which the equity has
appreciated in real estate in the Korean community may not be sustained
in that long period of time, because the interest may not necessarily be
there, I think. I think the money will be better utilized, in the views
of the second and third generation as they diversify their portfolio and
invest in the mainstream. Okay, but that's, again it's just a guess.
-
Cline
- Yes, sure. We've seen Koreatown go from your basic sort of start-up
business in an area that was being not economically particularly
notable, so there was opportunity there and there's still been a lot of
that in the area. There's a lot of potential in that regard. A lot of
the businesses now are starting to look a lot slicker, a lot more kind
of trendy and attractive. A lot more people, I think, from outside the
Korean community are coming to Koreatown to spend their time and money.
I think for years the perception of a lot of people, if not most people,
outside the Korean community was that Koreatown was a pretty insular
place, mostly geared towards the community itself. Not a lot of English
signage, for example. How much do you see in the way of change, or not,
the Korean community as it's been developing, reaching out to
communities outside their own community?
-
Lim
- Oh, you can see that change already happening, right? A lot of the Korean
restaurants are actually catering towards non-Koreans. There has been
some effort by some entrepreneurs to try to franchise the Korean food
business altogether, really with the view of making success in the
mainstream. So clearly the businesses, I think, see the Korean community
as a solid foundation, but to make it big, they understand that the
market within the Korean community is limited and the mainstream market
is much larger. I mean, an easy small example would be Forever 21, which
is a multi-billion-dollar retail outlet in the country. When they
started it, it was a small shop run by Koreans targeting probably
low-income or mid-income Koreans and Hispanics. Now it's in every major
mall in the country. So they went outside the Korean community knowing
that the market's much bigger out there. But I think to a certain extent
the reason the Korean businesses have adopted this notion of English and
Korean signs and English on the menu and generally appearing to be more
welcoming of the English-speaking people, ironically, I think it's not
so much for the non-Koreans, but it was actually for the Korean
Americans who can't read, because their second and third generations are
not comfortable in the hardcore Korean setting. So to a certain extent
they alter their business model to be a bit more Americanized, to be
more appeasing, if you will, to the second- and third-generation Korean
Americans. And in that process, I think that the non-Koreans, like the
Chinese or the Filipinos or the white and blacks and what have you, have
really found that going to a Korean business establishment doesn't feel
as foreign as it had been in the past.
-
Cline
- This steps us right into another one of my questions, which is--
-
Lim
- A tough one, too?
-
Cline
- Well, we'll see. [mutual laughter] The natural progression from
generation to generation as they come here is that they become more
assimilated, more, as you said, American, and I wanted to know what you
were seeing regarding that generationally here in the Korean community,
but particularly specifically from your own experience as it relates to
your own family. What do you think the significance of this, as you just
said, maybe discomfort with what you termed the hardcore
Korean--encounter with the Korean cultural and traditional milieu is for
those who are more assimilated, less hardcore Korean, and what are the
implications of that for the Korean community as the generations
progress?
-
Lim
- Looking at the Japanese American community, we can learn a lot about what
the Korean American community would look like fifty years from now. The
sansei, or all the generations after the third generation, they have
very strong cultural ties to the Japanese culture or Japanese community,
but away from it, you wouldn't see them as anything but an American. [Telephone rings.]
-
Cline
- Right. Wow, I hope this isn't an emergency. Hang on just a second. [Recorder off.]
-
Cline
- That was who that was. Sorry about that.
-
Lim
- No problem.
-
Cline
- My apologies.
-
Lim
- No problem.
-
Cline
- You were talking about the Japanese community as a model for what we
might see for the Korean community in the future.
-
Lim
- Yes, I think that's where we're going to go to eventually. So as I was
saying, you wouldn't see any of them being less of an American, but once
they're in the--you know, if they're visiting their parents in J-town
[Little Tokyo], they're not shy about being somebody of Japanese origin.
So I suspect that that's what's going to happen, but the Korean
community concentration I don't think will continue to grow at this pace
as the assimilation becomes more widespread, because the Korean
community is still comprised largely of immigrants. That's not the case
in the Japanese American community.
-
Cline
- Right, definitely. This obviously will also have an impact on whether
[unclear] perceived as the traditions in the culture in the Korean
community. With this in mind, how are you raising your own children?
-
Lim
- Well, I want them to be enriched with the Korean culture, like I guess no
different from Japanese American parents or Chinese American parents. We
all want our kids to be a better person because of our heritage and to
know the history and to have a cultural understanding and ideally to
speak the language, but that's a real challenge. Unless you actually
have an opportunity to use the language, it's very hard to keep it. My
kids speak somewhat and I would say that their proficiency level is not
as high as I would like them to be, but they get by. I think each of
them have a desire to, at some point, become quite more proficient at
it. But as far as the culture goes, I think they're very Korean in a
Korean setting and I think they're very American in an American setting.
There's no need to be a hybrid, you know? You go to a Korean setting and
there's no reason to act like you don't know the Korean culture. If you
know the Korean culture, you just fit right in. But you can't go to an
interview at a major U.S. company and then sit and bow and do all the
other stuff that you do as a Korean. You can't do that. So I've always
stressed to my children that "You should be proud of your Korean
heritage and proud that you're a Korean American, but you are an
American and you're going to vote within this American political system,
you're going to live here, you're going to raise your family here,
unless, of course, you want to move somewhere else. As long as you're
here, you're an American and you should respect our American culture,
but don't get into a situation where you're something in between and
you're not either. You're both."
-
Cline
- Interesting. What about religion in this context? You come from a family
where your father [Dong Sun Lim] was a minister.
-
Lim
- Right.
-
Cline
- I would have to think that religion was a major component of your family
tradition. Here in L.A. the vast majority of Korean immigrants are
Christians.
-
Lim
- Are you sure of that?
-
Cline
- That's what I--those are the numbers I've seen.
-
Lim
- Is there some data on that? I'd like to see it.
-
Cline
- Yes. I don't remember where I got it, it was so long ago, but it was a
very different percentage from that in South Korea itself.
-
Lim
- Yes, South Korea, I understand, is about 25 percent. That's what I heard
many years ago.
-
Cline
- That's even less than I saw, yes, because I think so much of the
sponsorship of immigrants initially was through the churches here and so
much of the facilitation of the immigration was through church
connections, at least initially.
-
Lim
- Also the role of the church in being a quasi community center for
immigrants probably had something to do with that.
-
Cline
- Right. Really the sociocultural center of the community. Where do you see
that going in relation to, say, your own children and their generation?
-
Lim
- Well, just speaking personally, I feel quite blessed that I am empowered
with the faith that I have, but it's something that I treasure without
wanting to force it upon my kids. So I've always shared my thoughts, but
I've said, "I'm right and you're wrong." I don't think faith works that
way. So I give them all the room in the world to make their own choice.
I don't even try to manipulate it into a direction that I want them to
go, which is what a lot of parents do.
-
Cline
- Oh yes.
-
Lim
- I'm not quite sure where they stand, but I think, being college kids, and
one actually is post college, you know they're going through that
process of intellectual stimulation and questioning and critical
thinking and all that good stuff, so I think that's fine. I just see it
as a wonderful process, and whatever they ultimately decide is their
faith, literally.
-
Lim
- For the community at large, you know, I would hate to make any sort of
projections in this area, because I certainly don't have the expertise
or the credentials to speak on it, but I just don't think that, again,
as the immigration history gets longer and as the community becomes more
assimilated to the mainstream community, the need for the church to be
something other than a spiritual post will necessarily continue to be at
that intense level. Right now it's still high.
-
Cline
- Yes, very high.
-
Lim
- But I would have to think that the more hardcore church, in the
traditional sense, will continue to draw congregation members, but the
ones that are more of a community center for people to come together. I
mean, I'm not knocking that, it's certainly a valuable function, but I
just don't think that's going to be necessarily there thirty, fifty
years from now.
-
Cline
- This, in some way, I think, plays into your relationship with your
father. The way you've described it in these interviews, your father,
who, aside from being a figure of spiritual authority, also culturally
would be seen as potentially quite the strong figure in the family, and
yet what you've described is somebody who, I think, showed a lot of
faith in your nature and let you be yourself and explore things the way
you wanted to, despite what might have been his own expectations or his
own desires, something I would think is fairly unusual in any culture.
How is your relationship with your father today, certainly now that
you're, obviously, quite successful in your chosen field, a father
yourself? How do you see his influence in your life?
-
Lim
- The relationship I have with my father today is as good, if not better,
than it was, let's say, thirty, forty years ago. As I get older, I think
my level of appreciation for his wisdom increases, as well. Yes, he was
a strong figure, but he was also a very soft man. The contrasting style
in him is what made, I think, him very attractive. He is a beautiful man
because of that. He knows when to be strong and when to be weak, and too
many of us don't know when we need to be weak.
-
Cline
- Interesting. Or maybe meek would be a good Christian term.
-
Lim
- Well, you could say meek, but I mean, meek--I don't mean weak in a
negative sense. Weak in a sense that you don't have to demonstrate power
and necessarily overpower everyone that you meet to be a good person.
-
Lim
- Anyway, my relationship with my father is quite unique in that I've
always seen him as sort of a--not just my father, but father to a lot, a
lot of people, literally tens of thousands of people, and they come up
to tell me, "We think of him as our dad, too." So when I was a kid I
didn't quite like that, because, gee, why do I have to share my dad with
so many other strangers? But now I obviously very much embrace that
notion. I think it's a good thing that he has served as that father for
so many people, assuming that he was a positive impact, and I have no
reason to think that he was not.
-
Cline
- In your work here, you pretty much have a first-hand view of the role
that the Korean community is playing economically in terms of business
and, as you said, investment in Los Angeles as a city, and certainly in
a community that has changed dramatically because of the Korean
community's presence and investment in it, in part of the city, but all
over the city. How do you assess the contribution economically of the
Korean immigrant community to this city? How would you describe that?
-
Lim
- I don't have figures with me.
-
Cline
- Yes, I'm not looking for figures.
-
Lim
- And I'm obviously very partial.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- I would say the Korean Americans have enormous positive impact to the
economy of the L.A. at large. I would love to see some sort of a study
done on it at some point.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- But just in every respect, employment base, sales tax, property tax,
development, just enormous. I think it's really a shame that we don't
have a Korean American City Council member of, what, fifteen?
-
Cline
- Yes. Yes, you're headed right into my next question there.
-
Lim
- Yes, because the Korean Americans, in my view, are almost the backbone of
the city of L.A. Now, again, I remind you that I am partial and I don't
have the economic data.
-
Cline
- Right. What do you see as some of the biggest--this is obviously, you
know, you mentioned the big contribution. What do you see as some of the
biggest challenges or obstacles facing the Korean American community at
this point?
-
Lim
- Hmm. I just don't see a whole lot. I mean, that's really--I mean, just to
sound like you are objective, you want to say something about it.
-
Cline
- Yes, right. Right.
-
Lim
- But it must be that I'm either too partial or I'm so blind to it, I just
don't see a whole lot of negative or challenges here. We don't have a
huge subprime situation here. Obviously, the business will be affected
by the subprime to a certain extent. There are banks that may have
overextended credit, but all of that is just ordinary course of
business.
-
Cline
- Yes, right.
-
Lim
- I don't see a whole lot of negative going on. Again, as I said earlier,
the thing that is rather unsettling is why the Korean Americans can't
come together with some sort of political force.
-
Cline
- Right. That's what I was going to ask you next.
-
Lim
- That's troubling to me, but your question was more about economics. I
don't see a whole lot of downside there.
-
Cline
- I guess I wasn't really asking specifically about only economics, but it
used to be, for example, that aside from political representation, one
of the challenges often named in relation to the Korean community was
just the issue of language, still. As the generations progress, clearly
this becomes less of an issue.
-
Lim
- I don't think that was necessarily a huge impediment in the Korean
community, because you can go to K-town and speak to anybody in Korean.
You don't have to speak a word of English and get by.
-
Cline
- Right. But I guess in terms of assimilation, then it becomes an issue.
-
Lim
- Well, that's just going to be a natural progression.
-
Cline
- Right, exactly.
-
Lim
- Their children will assimilate.
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- The mom and dads will have their shop in K-town and that's quite okay.
-
Cline
- Do you think--well, let me think of how to phrase this. How much do you
think Koreatown is continuing to be an attractive place that draws both
immigrants and tourists, for example?
-
Lim
- Well, I think there are a lot of interesting eateries around.
-
Cline
- Yes. There's a lot of change in housing, for example.
-
Lim
- Right, and there's more night entertainment than any other place in L.A.
So I would guess that it would continue to attract non-Koreans or
visitors, but in my view--and I've been saying this for the last
twenty-some years--there's a major deficiency in not having a stage or
landscape that stands out as really the gateway from Koreatown. In other
words, there's no landmark that we could point to and say, "You see
that? That's why it's called K-town." I've been wanting to see some
developer with the foresight to do something that is extremely ethnic
and culturally rich that is very distinctively Korean that would be a
reason by itself for the visitors to want to go see this monument or
this cultural piece. So I've been wanting to see something that I would
call a Korean village, bring the architecture from Korea, you know, the
ones that are 500,000 years old type of architecture, stores, shops, and
the facade. The inside, of course, you'll have flush toilets and
refrigerators and the hood to suck the smoke out. But make something
that really is a historical, or at least has a historical flavor. I
mean, it's obviously a modern structure, but if we had that, I don't
know the exact number of L.A. tourism, but, god, can you imagine, every
tour guide is going to want to stop by with his or her busload of
people.
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- But, you know, I'm not a developer. I'm a real estate lawyer. If I were a
developer, that's what I would do, and I've told every developer client
of mine and Korean American developer that are not clients of mine
urging them to do it. It hasn't happened yet.
-
Cline
- And of course the boundaries of Koreatown continue to expand and become
more blurred.
-
Lim
- Frankly, something like that is such a destination project that virtually
anywhere in the proximity to Koreatown would draw people like crazy.
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- And moreover, it would really set the stage for a lot of cultural pride
among the young people.
-
Cline
- Do you think because of, for example, the language component that you
mentioned, you can be in Koreatown and not have to speak English, and
there are Korean businesses, Korean restaurants, how much do you think
that Koreatown will continue to be a place where particularly
first-generation or visiting Koreans will want to spend their time? This
is in relation to what we were seeing as a definite change in the type
of housing being built and offered in the Koreatown area. For a
community that largely often used Koreatown as an initial sort of
staging area before moving out to the suburbs, how much do you
think--therefore, I guess my question is, do you think Koreatown will
continue to be a draw to the Korean community?
-
Lim
- I think it will continue because of the convenience factor. There
definitely is a reemergence right now of the well-to-do Korean Americans
who have maybe gone out to the [San Fernando] Valley to raise their
kids, wanting to come back to K-town because of the convenience factor.
I mean, there's the restaurants and the spas and whatever right here.
They don't have to worry about their school districts anymore, so
they're coming back to K-town to be close to the places that they go on
a regular basis. But the traffic being what it is, I mean, can you
imagine them wanting to drive an hour just to get lunch down in K-town?
Forget that. I mean, we don't need to be on the road; we'll just live in
K-town. So some of the luxury units are being marketed to the older
empty-nester couples.
-
Cline
- Yes, exactly. I mentioned the boundaries of Koreatown. I know this is
another opinion question, but how much do you think those boundaries
will continue to expand, or do you think they will become, by necessity,
more contained as the generations progress and things kind of maybe
decentralize a bit more?
-
Lim
- I think the expansion mode has slowed down quite a bit, from what I can
sense. Probably it's also a function of just economics.
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- But it's becoming much better defined than it was ten years ago, and at
this point there's really not a whole lot of new areas that they can
expand into within the city of L.A., but the expansion that I'm sort of
forecasting, not that I have a crystal ball, but would be different
pockets of other suburb areas, new Koreatowns will emerge in the way
that may be Monterey Hills--is that correct?
-
Cline
- Monterey Park.
-
Lim
- Monterey Park, sorry. Monterey Park has become--
-
Cline
- Right, suburban Chinatown. Yes.
-
Lim
- Monterey Park, sorry. Monterey Park has become Chinatown number two. In
fact, it's much bigger than the Chinatown number one.
-
Cline
- Oh, yes, and old Chinatown is mostly Vietnamese now.
-
Lim
- Right. So I don't know if that transformation or a comparable
transformation will take place with Koreatown, but I think we will see
new K-towns in different areas, like Buena Park, Irvine.
-
Cline
- Or Fullerton.
-
Lim
- Or Sherman Oaks or Encino area. Where I live, there's no evidence that it
will ever become that way, but I certainly wouldn't mind seeing at least
a small shopping center with a concentration of Korean restaurants in
the Calabasas area, but--
-
Cline
- Yes. What do you come to Koreatown for, since you live out in that part
of the world, when you want something?
-
Lim
- You know, frankly, in my case it's quite limited to mostly just for
eatery or to meet clients for dinner or bring my kids out for some
Korean noodles, simple food but unique Korean food. Fascinating, Korean
food is fascinating.
-
Cline
- Yes. How much of that does your family eat at home, if any?
-
Lim
- Well, we don't eat Korean food that regularly at home. In fact, one of
the things that we talk about is how Korean food is so difficult and
time-consuming to make, there's no point in doing that at home when you
can go to a restaurant and actually support the restaurant's business by
paying a modest tab. It's great food and it's not that expensive,
comparatively speaking. I mean, it's not cheap either, but it's a very
labor-intensive preparation process, which I think can be left to people
who want to make money, and go ahead and support them. So we--I would
say maybe once a week.
-
Cline
- As time has gone on and your business is continuing to thrive and you're
raising your family, for example, you were, as a younger man, interested
in playing music. What are some of your interests now, now that you're
at this stage of your life? Are you still interested in music?
-
Lim
- This is the first time you've asked me an easy question. [mutual
laughter]
-
Cline
- I have to balance it a little bit.
-
Lim
- I play some golf, not that often, but from time to time. I'm an avid
skier, but that has time constraints. I try to get as much skiing done
during the ski season, and then during the non-ski season I try to play
some golf and exercise a bit. But I became an avid skier not too long
ago, about five and a half, six years ago. Prior to that, I was just a
once-in-a-blue-moon-type of skier, but I just realized after like twenty
years of practicing law, that my body wasn't getting any younger,
although I was young at heart, and that I needed to really be engaging
in more rigorous physical exercise. I'm not the kind of person who
enjoys lifting weights in the weight room. So I figured I'd do something
crazy and hit the slopes, and it became really a serious habit.
-
Cline
- Do you still enjoy music? Do you follow any of that anymore?
-
Lim
- I listen to music and I enjoy listening to music and I play guitar, my
acoustic guitar, once in a while when no one's around, because I don't
want to torture anybody. [mutual laughter] I wish I had the time to pick
up some new instruments. I know it sounds crazy, but I always wanted to
learn how to play cello, but I don't know if I'll ever get around to it,
because that's not an easy instrument to learn.
-
Cline
- No, but the beginner's mind is always a great experience, as we get older
especially, and you don't want to get too calcified.
-
Lim
- Right.
-
Cline
- Moving into more difficult and general questions, we talked about how you
are raising your children. One of the things that you said, I think very
specifically and interestingly, was that you really wanted your children
not to feel sort of trapped or confused between identities, but to be
both, essentially Korean and American. How do you view yourself in light
of that, and therefore, what does it mean to you to be Korean American
at this point?
-
Lim
- Well, exactly that. I am Korean by origin and an American legally and
also in my way of life, but I tap into the Korean culture whenever I
need to, and it's quite fun that way. I think the identity crisis that
we see from time to time among the younger Korean American kids stem
from the fact that they grew up having this ambivalence about who they
want to be, because their parents said, "You have to be a Korean," but
they knew that if they stay Korean, that they wouldn't succeed in the
western mainstream society. So some of them felt like, "Well, if I
became too American, am I betraying my parents or am I betraying my
culture?" I think that's a terrible way to raise kids. I think the
parents should encourage them to be Americans, because they are. But at
the same time, you know, you have to--you should enjoy, you have to
enjoy your advantage. Why not enjoy your advantage? You'd be a fool not
to enjoy your advantage and to be proud of their Korean origin and to
really learn as much as you can about it. That way you can be Korean
when you want to be, you can be an American when you want to be.
Actually, it's slightly different. You don't have to be an American,
because you're an American anyway. It's by default.
-
Cline
- Right. Right.
-
Lim
- It's when you hit that "select" button to be a Korean, that's the Korean
mode that you're operating. But who are you anyway? Of course you're an
American. The fact that you have a Korean origin doesn't make you any
less of an American, no less than an Italian American or a German
American, so why do we make a huge issue out of this when it comes to
Koreans? I think it's because of this short history, the immigration
history, but that will not be an issue several generations down the
road.
-
Cline
- Although, of course, racially you look different from the mainstream, the
way people think of--you know, versus you mentioned Italians or Germans.
-
Lim
- Sure. Sure, but that appearance issue is an issue because we are living
in 2008. I really don't think it's going to be an issue--well,
hopefully, I mean, it will be less of an issue, let's put it that way.
I'm not insensitive to racial tensions and the importance of diversity.
All I'm saying is that we put too much weight on this appearance factor,
but Americans are not defined by our appearance, and if we went with
that, where would our presidential candidate Barack Obama stand?
-
Cline
- Right. Right.
-
Lim
- He is in every aspect as American as anyone can be, but he's got this
interesting name. Right?
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- And he's not white. But does that make him less of an American actually,
or not? And I think the voters have shown that, which is actually
amazing. With a name like Barack Hussein Obama, you can still be the
leading candidate on the DNC [Democratic National Convention].
-
Cline
- Right. Wow. Yes. In your case, knowing the Korean language seems like
quite a gateway into that fluidity. What is your view as to the
importance of that in maintaining--to be able to push that select
button, as you said, to be more fluid in the Korean side of one's
culture?
-
Lim
- What is the what? I'm sorry.
-
Cline
- The language, how much of a factor do you think that--
-
Lim
- Language, how much of a factor is it?
-
Cline
- Retaining the language, how much of a factor do you think that is in
retaining that fluidity?
-
Lim
- Oh, no question it's huge. I think culture is to a large extent defined
by understanding the language. It's very huge, I think.
-
Cline
- Have your children been to South Korean much?
-
Lim
- Yes, yes. Oh yes, we've taken them, and are always willing to send them
when they want to go.
-
Cline
- How do they like it?
-
Lim
- They have mixed reactions, to be honest. By and large, they enjoy the
food and they enjoy the sightseeing and things of that sort, but they
have their challenges in terms of interacting with local Korean kids,
because they're in a different world. But I think that's a great
experience, I mean, to understand and interact with people from a
different culture. The tough part for them is that they're expected to
know the Korean culture, when in fact they don't, and that's what, I
think, so disheartening for them and that's the apprehension that they
have coming from that, because they wish they did know, but they don't.
I think that's kind of sort of a confusing factor for them.
-
Cline
- We started the interview talking a little bit about the current situation
in South Korea, and you've been able to travel to South Korea a lot
during your career as a lawyer. Where do you see South Korea now, and
particularly in relation to the Korean community here that's been here
for many years? How do you view that relationship between the community
here, which is now essentially American, and the homeland, which has
evolved in its own direction, a different direction perhaps from the
community that's been here for a number of years?
-
Lim
- Well, as I said, as the current administration appears to be more
proactive in fostering a positive relationship with the U.S., I think
that inevitably will have a spillover effect to the Korean Americans
here. Just an example, the current administration is pushing to have
even middle school and primary school kids be taught English.
-
Cline
- Oh, wow.
-
Lim
- And that in some institutions maybe English only would be a good thing.
-
Cline
- Like an immersion thing.
-
Lim
- And the vision behind that, or I should say the rationale behind that
vision is that to become an economic super house in the way maybe Japan
has become, and not that Japanese have adopted this model, but--
-
Cline
- Right, they haven't.
-
Lim
- --with very limited resources, it's a country of limited means in that
regard, the administration believes that its biggest strength is in the
people and that the government, thus, should empower the future leaders
and the future businesspeople and enhance their capabilities
linguistically, and what better language is there in the world that can
command business proficiency than English?
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- And that was sort of the rationale that I picked up. So with that as a
background, what does that mean to the Korean Americans here? Well, I
think naturally that would open up some opportunities for the Korean
Americans. Not the first generation, not even the 1.5, especially the
third and fourth generations who were otherwise shut away as having been
sold out to the white world, are now suddenly the stars that they want
to recruit and have onboard on their ship. So I think that's an
interesting transition that we may be seeing in the near future.
-
Cline
- Certainly since you came here, South Korea has risen quite a bit as an
economic force, not just in Asia, but in the world. First, how much
significance has that had for you just in your life and your business?
-
Cline
- Oh, huge. Huge. I remember when I first came here in '67, when the kids
in my neighborhood asked me where I was from, I told them I was from
Korea, and really none of them knew where Korea was. I may have said
this in our first interview, but they were just very amused that a
country like Korea existed, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. was
involved in the Korean War from 1950 to '53. But as our mother country
acquired greater respect around the world, obviously the Korean
Americans here feel like they're more respected.
-
Cline
- Yes, right. There's certainly a lot of conjecture about the role that
China's ultimately going to play economically, not only in Asia, but in
the world, as well as a lot of concern among Japanese about how they are
going to be able to ultimately maintain their economic strength,
particularly in light of their immigration policy and their dwindling
birthrate, for example. What do you think the ultimate aspirations
economically for South Korea are going to be? Actually, my real question
is how much of an impact do you think that status is going to have on
the Korean Americans here, right here in Los Angeles?
-
Lim
- The impact on the Korean Americans will depend largely upon, at least
with respect to that topic, largely upon how effectively South Korea
plays the card with China, I believe. This is also a big strategic point
of the new administration, and that is that South Korea must be more
willing to work with China, as opposed to try to compete against it.
-
Cline
- Yes, since China has such a close tie with North Korea, yes.
-
Lim
- Right, and Korea has its economic advantages over China when it comes to
technology. China has a huge labor force and they have abundance of land
and they have all the deregulation landscape where they can sort of
contaminate their environment like crazy and be okay with it, whereas
Korea is not like that at all. There's very strong environmental
protection regulations in place. Now, that almost sounds like, "Let's go
spoil the backyard of somebody else," but I think it's a
supply-and-demand issue and the way the Korean businesses are looking at
it is, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We have what they need from us
and they have what we need from them. So I suspect that we'll see an
increased level of collaboration and Korea trying to sort of exploit the
growth of China to its own advantage.
-
Cline
- With the rise in respect for the Korean American community and certainly
the increased level of awareness for the Korean American community here,
how do you view the relationship not only between the Korean community
with the dominant culture, which is sort of the white European culture,
but with other Asian communities that exist, that co-exist here in Los
Angeles, which, of course, has a very high number of Asian immigrants,
generally speaking? What's the relationship now between the Korean
community and their Asian neighbors?
-
Lim
- I think for the longest time I've always sensed that it was some sort of
a Chinese wall. That's an ironic phrase to use, but between different
Asian communities. But in the recent years or so, maybe ten years or so,
I'm beginning to see more and more people crossing the line, so to
speak, and creating interaction, especially the interracial marriage, I
think is probably helping that. So, yes, I'm all for it. At our firm, as
an example, we've always believed that a business should be diversified
and be reflective of the composition of what L.A. truly is. So the idea
of having different ethnicity within the firm is a great concept, I
think. It just strengthens us. I don't think diversity is something that
we should just tolerate; diversity is something that makes us better in
so many respects and really makes us stronger and smarter.
-
Lim
- So to go back to your question, I'd like to see the Korean American
communities reach out to, like, the Chinese American community, the
Japanese American community, and really collaborate and have collective
power, especially in the political arena. And I see organizations that
are beginning to do that. A great example, probably the best example
that I can think of is an organization called Asian Pacific American
Legal Center, headed by Stewart Kwoh, and that is the civil rights voice
for Asian Americans of not only Los Angeles, but of the whole country.
If you look at that organization, it's across the board. In fact, they
have Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Filipino
Americans, you name it, and they work together so well, tremendous
cooperation and collaboration there. So I hope that we can see more and
more of that so that we find more reasons to be on the same page, find
more reasons to join effort for a common goal, than to spend more time
and energy finding differences and thus we should be different or in
different camps. When we unite like that for common causes, clearly we
would be a stronger voice and this, again, takes us back to the
political voice issue. And we can make a difference. I mean, just like
the way that Latin American voice, political voice, is making a
difference in Texas, apparently, for Hillary Clinton, right?
-
Cline
- Yes, right.
-
Lim
- So as you know, in the political platform it's sometimes the difference
of 2 percent or 1 percent is what changes it. We know that from Ford.
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- So the Asians can have a very, very critical pivotal role, but right now
we're all over the map. We don't have strong leadership. Hopefully that
will change, too.
-
Cline
- Yes, have to overcome some of those old historical points of view or
prejudices.
-
Lim
- I think the proper perspective would be, "Hey, I'm an American." Then you
go to the next layer, "I'm an Asian American," and you want to go one
more layer beyond that, "I'm a Korean American," as opposed to, I think
a lot of first-generation Koreans, "I'm Korean. Okay, you want to call
me Korean American, fine. You want to put me in this Asian American
pool?" "Gee." Reluctantly, "Okay. Well, when it comes to MediCal or
Medicaid or maybe even welfare, I'm an American, yes." That, I'm sorry,
I do understand that, I respect that, I don't fault them for it, but
it's not something that I wish to see be a prevalent thinking. I would
rather see the former than the latter.
-
Cline
- Yes, interesting. With regard to, you mentioned interracial marriage,
something I was going to ask you about. One of the things that
frequently does happen when people integrate is their children marry
outside not only their culture, but their race. What are your feelings
about that, Dad? [laughs]
-
Lim
- First of all, Dad doesn't have a choice. So that itself makes this issue
almost moot. If I want to get really opinionated about it, I can tell
you, frankly, that I have no qualms about my kids marrying non-Koreans.
So in that sense people will say, "Oh, that's guy very Americanized." I
don't see that as being really an Americanized or not Americanized
issue. I see it as being an issue more of being pragmatic and being wise
versus being stubborn and being stupid. So what do I want to be?
No-brainer.
-
Cline
- Wow. We're heading toward the homestretch here. You're successful in
business, you're a Korean American, you live in L.A. L.A. is a place
that is unique in the number of Korean American immigrants and their
contribution economically and otherwise to the city. What do you think
that the Korean immigrant can bring to Los Angeles, as a city, beyond
entrepreneurial spirit, economic growth, investment, something that you
think is particularly and uniquely Korean that does make Los Angeles
therefore a unique place?
-
Lim
- I don't know if these reasons would be sufficient to make them uniquely
Korean or to help Los Angeles be more a unique city, but aside from all
the things that you mentioned, I think that Koreans bring very, very
good work ethics, so they're working hard at their jobs and their
businesses, and are a great example to the rest of the lazy L.A. folks.
[mutual laughter] I know that's a cynical remark. And also the emphasis
on education in addition to the work ethics. The emphasis on education I
think is very unique. I mean, I think the Jewish Americans would say
that it's not that unique to them, because they're the same way. And the
effort and the hard-working attitude of the Korean American kids in
school, although I would question whether that's actually a good thing
in the long run. But anyway, in any event, it is what it is, and I think
that empowers L.A. because you've got a lot of students that are bright.
That's something to brag about as a city, right?
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- So, again, I'm not sure how unique that is to Koreans, but I see that
Koreans are--again I'm very partial--but model immigrants in every sense
of the word. They're hard-working; they're smart; they can pull capital
together; and most of them are very honest and they educate their
family; they stay away from crime; all those good things. Of course, we
have our share of the domestic violence and drunk drivers, but by and
large, I think Koreans are a very positive factor in L.A. and a major
contributor to L.A.'s economy.
-
Cline
- How much has been being a Korean immigrant actually been an asset to your
success as a business lawyer?
-
Lim
- Well, you know, a true response would have to be one that compares with
what it would be like to be a non-Korean American, but just without that
comparison, and from my subjective assessment I would have to say that
it's been good for me. I think it's an empowering position to have.
-
Cline
- Yes, and it seems create a lot of opportunity for a lot of people,
something that's still going on. Is there anything we have not talked
about that you would like to bring up or talk about or say?
-
Lim
- Well, I think we covered a lot of--I mean, if I could make a plea with
the Korean Americans in L.A., or, for that matter, Korean Americans in
the United States at large, that we try to adopt the frame of mind that
is more inclusive of other ethnic groups and really make a genuine
effort to assimilate, to be more truly American, and not to perceive
that as being someone betraying his own country, because it's not. And
when we want to let our wallet do the talking, that we go beyond just
the Korean Americans. I appreciate the fact that Korean Americans would
like to be generous to the Korean American community, folks who are the
Korean American organization, and that's understandable. I mean, in
Korean old sayings, there's a saying that says that your arm bends
inward, not outward. Sure, the natural inclination is to want to support
Korean organizations or organizations run by Korean Americans, but my
plea would be that we look beyond that at some point and that we really
make a genuine effort to work toward a better society for all and not
just a better society for Korean Americans. I'd like to see that happen.
-
Lim
- I mean, as an example, our firm started up a scholarship foundation some
years ago and we give to various different ethnic organizations, not
limited to Korean Americans. But from my take, just very limited
exposure, so I could be dead wrong, but Koreans give to churches, which
is fine, I mean, it's based on their faith, but it's always the Korean
American church, community organizations, always the Korean American
organization. My hope is that we can go beyond that.
-
Cline
- Some of those Korean American organizations, and I assume businesses, as
well, have also extended their level of concern and success to the
community around them, which includes a whole lot of non-Koreans.
-
Lim
- Absolutely.
-
Cline
- You see more of that happening as--
-
Lim
- And that is the right direction to go. I mean, it shouldn't be about
drawing boundaries. It should be about being inclusive and really
extending benefits to all. To all, not based upon racial categories. So
you sort of invited me, so I take this opportunity to make that pitch to
whoever may be listening to this years from now, and particularly to the
Korean Americans, because I am one of them. Maybe I can say that and get
away with it.
-
Cline
- Great. I just want to end by updating your--you mentioned your family a
little bit, just if you could update us on where things are at with your
family now, how old everyone is, what they're doing.
-
Lim
- My wife is fifty years old and she's a wannabe LPGA [Ladies Professional
Golf Association] player. No, I'm kidding. Only in her dreams. She plays
golf and she enjoys golf. We're pretty much done raising kids.
-
Cline
- And she put her own career aside, as I recall.
-
Lim
- She did. She was an electrical engineer about nineteen, twenty years ago
and became a stay-at-home mom, calling herself a domestic engineer.
-
Lim
- My first child, Jonathan [Lim], is a naval officer, submariner,
stationed, as of today, stationed in Hawaii. I dropped him off at the
airport today.
-
Cline
- Nice.
-
Lim
- Yes. Yes, he was making a transition from Connecticut to Pearl Harbor.
-
Cline
- That's big.
-
Lim
- Yes. He started the training program a little less than two years ago
right after graduating from UCSD [University of California, San Diego].
-
Lim
- My middle child, Stephanie [Lim], just turned twenty-one two weeks ago, I
want to say, February 25. I was in Korea attending the inauguration that
day, so it was the first time I had missed a major birthday for my
child. She's an international relations major there, a junior. She says
she's thinking about going to law school.
-
Lim
- My youngest, Janis [Lim], is nineteen. She will turn twenty this year.
She's a sophomore at Pierce College. She apparently will make a move to
one of the UC schools and probably end up at UCLA. She hasn't decided on
her career yet, as of this moment, but I think she's secretly thinking
about law.
-
Cline
- Oh, wow.
-
Lim
- Yes. I don't know if I should be happy for it or sad for it. No, I'm
kidding. I think it's a great profession if you have the right mindset
for it. As a matter of fact, I just spoke at UCSD a couple of nights ago
about a legal career. I think it's a great profession. I remember
reading an article in the [Los Angeles] Daily Journal some years ago
about the fact that lawyers who were surveyed as to whether they would
do it again if they had a chance to do it again. Fifty percent said no.
So I'm in the other 50 percent.
-
Cline
- Koreans are famous for stressing education sometimes in the most hands-on
sort of way, and you already described, I think, your parenting style as
being different from that.
-
Lim
- Oh, very hands-off. In a way I'm probably very unusual, very exceptional,
not necessarily in a positive way, my wife might say. I'm not a dad who
is big on kids getting diplomas from big schools for the sake of that. I
mean, if they want to go to Harvard [University], god, I won't stop
them. That's fine. I mean, I applaud that. I applaud people who attend
and achieve. But I have more of a problem with overachievers for the
sake of overachieving or sometimes because of their parents. It's really
a tragic thing, I think. I think I would rather see my kids get a good
education anywhere--it doesn't have to be a big-name school--and really
enjoy themselves and then find a purpose in life and be motivated to
pursue that in him or her own clock or time and own terms. You know what
I'm saying?
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- So that they feel like whatever they achieve is their own achievement,
not a product of my dad's influence or force or undue influence. That's
more important, because due influence might be positive.
-
Cline
- Right.
-
Lim
- So, yes. I'm not at all ashamed about the fact that my kids didn't go to
Yale [University]. I'm not. I'm very proud of what they are doing and
they're doing on their own. Now, if any of them end up at Yale for grad
school, that's fine, too, but it would be because of what they wanted to
do. It won't be because I pushed them that way.
-
Cline
- Right. It seems like you were given a certain amount of that sort of
space, as well.
-
Lim
- Oh, absolutely, yes.
-
Cline
- There's a cliche that Korean immigrants they want their kids to be one of
three things: doctor, lawyer, or an engineer.
-
Lim
- And go to Harvard, too, on top of that.
-
Cline
- Right. But I mean, but you weren't pushed in that way and here you are,
you're a successful lawyer. I think that speaks volumes, because I think
you're clearly someone who's here because you want to be and because you
like what you're doing.
-
Lim
- Well, I appreciate that comment. Absolutely.
-
Cline
- We can transmit that to our children if we allow ourselves to step back.
-
Lim
- You know, you see too many sad stories that come out of the undue
pressure that parents put on them. Not too long ago I remember reading
in the paper about a young lady who was a star by her own right in high
school, applied to Stanford [University], didn't get in, but she
pretended like she was attending Stanford for years, and then ultimately
got caught because she wanted to enroll in the Stanford ROTC [Reserve
Officers Training Corps] program.
-
Cline
- Wow.
-
Lim
- That's really sad.
-
Cline
- And all the stuff that hit the news about, let's say, padded, if not
fictionalized, resumes in South Korea, for example, too.
-
Lim
- That too. There's just too much of that going on. I think that if we, as
parents, not as Korean American parents, I mean parents across the
board, would just focus more on instilling in the minds of our kids good
character, good value system, and the desire to pursue their happiness,
hopefully from all that, formulate their own motivation level that is
sufficient to get to the point where they want to get to. I think that's
really the essence of the meaning of success.
-
Lim
- So I kind of define that as the process of narrowing the gap between your
goal and the effort level to support those goals. Another way of saying
that is that people who have these grand visions about where they want
to be, but make very little effort to get there, to me is failure, even
if they, by objective standard, have achieved a lot. Conversely,
somebody who sets realistic goals and works really, really hard to be
there so the gap between the two is very minimal, I think that's a true
success.
-
Cline
- Is your father proud of how you turned out, after all that wacky--
-
Lim
- Yes, I think he is. I think he is. You know, Asian dads are not very
expressive, but he's much more expressive than any other dads I know,
but he's definitely not as expressive as me. But in that sense, maybe
I'm more Americanized.
-
Cline
- It's a fascinating thing. Anything else?
-
Lim
- No, that's it. I mean, why did we get into all of this anyway?
-
Cline
- It's all related.
-
Lim
- Is it?
-
Cline
- Yes.
-
Lim
- Okay. All right, if you say so.
-
Cline
- Thank you very much. I think we've hit the proverbial end of the line
here.
-
Lim
- Excellent. I enjoyed it myself.
-
Cline
- Good. We thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy
schedule to sit down and participate in this interview, so thank you
very much.
-
Lim
- You're welcome. It's been my pleasure. [End of interview]