New York Insiders by Korean Outsiders

Three Korean authors, Seongmin Ahn, Christina Kang, and Katie Bomi Son, shared their respective experiences as an artist, an art advisor/consultant, and art-event organizer, as well as the inspirations behind writing books on New York’s art scene.

 

 

New York Insiders by Korean Outsiders

with
Seongmin Ahn, Katie Bomi Son, and Christina Kang 

 

Members: FREE | Nonmembers: $10

If you have any questions, please contact Jamie Tyberg  or (212) 759-7525, ext. 321.


About the AuthorsAbout the Moderator

Seongmin Ahn

Seongmin Ahn received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Asian traditional painting from Seoul National University in Seoul Korea and her second M.F.A from Maryland Institute College of Art. With practical experience and a deep understanding of tradition, her work takes Asian traditional painting as a starting point and transforms it into something experimental with her own interpretation bridging tradition and modern, East and West. She is a recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation grant and the top prize from AHL Foundation. She has also been reviewed on Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, NY Arts magazine, Baltimore Sun, Plain Dealer, and others. Her national and international exhibitions include solo shows including, but not limited to Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (Wilmington, DE), Queens College Art Center (Flushing, NY), Gallery Ho (New York, NY), White Wall Gallery (Seoul, Korea) and Gomez Gallery (Baltimore, MD). She also has taught Asian traditional painting at different institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Queens Museum of Art, Art Students League, and Korean Cultural Service.

 

Katie Bomi Son

CEO & Founder of Project AA * Asian Arts, Katie Bomi Son specializes in art & culture collaboration, branding and contents marketing company for Asian artists based in Asia & New York. She graduated from Seoul National University with B.F.A in Business Administration, Science, and English. While she worked as an enthusiastic marketer at Johnson & Johnson, Katie Bomi Son was selected as a member of World Economic Forum, Global Shapers Community (GSC, since July 2012) in Seoul, Korea. She is also an optometrist, author, volunteer, traveler, blogger, and active lecturer. Her first book The Greatest Selfish Global Volunteer Trips (세상에서 가장 이기적인 봉사여행, 2011) is a book about her experience in traveling around 25 countries and volunteering in 6 countries. Her most recent book, New York Artists (뉴욕 아티스트, 2014), is a story about meeting and interviewing more than 100 people in the art industry, especially in New York City. As a passionate supporter of the global art & culture, healthcare, and youth sides of development, Katie Bomi Son believes making a better world is one of the most valuable things we can do.

 

Christina Kang

Christina H. Kang attended College du Leman International School in Geneva, Switzerland and obtained her B.F.A in Textile Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Ms. Kang completed her M.A in Visual Arts Administration at New York University and has worked in the primary and secondary markets in both Korea and New York, with affiliations to Christie’s, Museum of Arts and Design and several leading New York City galleries. In Seoul, she is an art advisor in the art and design divisions of major corporations and art institutions where she collaborated with artists, designers and architects. She is also an avid art collector. Currently, Kang is an adjunct professor at Ewha Womans University Graduate School of Design and an author of The Collectors (2014) and The Artists (2015). She successfully launched 2015 Design Art Work (DAW Fair) in Seoul, Korea.

 

 

 

Liz Yisun Kwon is a New York-based curator, writer, and art consultant. Kwon’s exhibitions, writings, and publications have been introducing the artists in New York to the Korean art communities, bridging New York and Seoul. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art Education from Korea University, and Master’s degrees in Art Theory and in Arts and Cultural Management from Seoul National University and the Pratt Institute, respectively. Beginning her career at the Noguchi Museum and the Guggenheim in New York, her involvement in the art community inspired her to expand her works into diverse projects. While serving as the director of the Yace Gallery and the Project Manager at NY Projects Inc., an international art advisory company, Kwon organized a wide range of international art and design projects. In addition to her current title as the Director of Gallery HO in Chelsea, she is an avid art critic and writer whose publications include Museums Make New York Peculiar (뉴욕의 특별한 미술관, 2012). She is also a board member of uJung Art Center and uJung Foundation in Seoul.


 

Korean-American Adoptee Voices

2015 09 17 adoptee  icon

 The Korea Society and KoreanAmericanStory.org presented an evening of readings by acclaimed Korean adoptee writers. Matthew Salesses, Milton Washington, Heather Schultz, and Kim Sunee shared their unique voices and powerful stories as they read works both new and old. A panel discussion moderated by Korean adoptee and KAS Board Chair Julie Young followed the readings.

Thursday, September 17, 2015 | 6:30 PM

 

If you have any questions, please contact Jamie Tyberg or (212) 759-7525, ext. 321.

 

About KoreanAmericanStoryAbout the Authors

korean-american-story KoreanAmericanStory’s mission is to capture and preserve the Korean American experience through personal stories. The organization wholly embraces the many different groups of Korean-Americans, including adoptees, the LGBTQ community and mixed race Korean-Americans. Signature projects, such as The Legacy Project video series, showcase the personal stories of members of the Korean American community from a first person perspective. All of the content created by and for KoreanAmericanStory is being permanently archived in the Korean Heritage Library of the University of Southern California.

2015 09 17 adoptee  Matthew-Salesses Matthew Salesses was adopted from Korea. He is the author of The Hundred-Year Flood. His stories and essays have appeared in NPR, The New York Times, the Center for Asian American Media, Hyphen, Koream, Korean American Story, and others. His previous books include Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity (essays) and I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying (a novel).

 

2015 09 17 adoptee  Milton-WashingtonBorn in South Korea, Milton was adopted and brought to the states in 1979 where he learned English and the American culture. Today he lives in Harlem and operates a boutique production and photography business called Slickyboy Studios while completing his memoir by the same name—Slickyboy. His memoir, Slickyboy, tells the story of a fatherless black boy who was born to a Korean prostitute a decade and-a-half after the Korean War. Left to roam his camptown with a pack of homeless kids, little Milton-ah fights, steals, and drinks while his mother works long hours. All until the age of 8, when he’s adopted from the country that never claimed him, by a black military family from Texas, the Washingtons. Slickyboy is about the love and the loss of one mother, and a finding of another, with a lifetime of living in between.

 

2015 09 17 adoptee  Heather-Schultz Heather Schultz is a Korean-American journalist based in Long Island. She received both a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and Master of Public Administration from CUNY Baruch College. Her articles have been published in The New York Times, NBC News, New York Daily News, St. Louis-Post Dispatch, WhoSay, Library Journal, Direct Marketing News and Law Technology News. She has also written columns on reproductive health for the Center for American Progress and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. As an avid spoken word lover, she has performed long-form poems in New York City based on her upcoming memoir regarding her experiences as an adoptee and domestic violence survivor in suburban Long Island. In addition, Heather is on the Board of Directors of Also-Known-As.

 

2015 09 17 adoptee  Kim-SuneeKim Sunée was born in South Korea, adopted, and raised in New Orleans. She is the author of the national bestseller, Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home (Grand Central Publishing). Trail of Crumbs has been translated into Korean, Chinese, and Hebrew. Her cookbook, A Mouthful of Stars was published in May 2014 by Andrews McMeel. She has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Ladies’ Homes Journal, People, ELLE, and Glamour. She ate and lived in Europe–mostly France–for ten years before working as a food editor for Southern Living magazine and Cottage Living magazine. Her writing has appeared in Food & Wine, The Oxford American, Cooking Light, and Asian American Poetry and Writing. Sunée has appeared several times as a guest judge on the Food Network’s Iron Chef America. She is currently a food columnist for Alaska Dispatch and freelances as a recipe tester, editor, and food stylist. For more food and travel, please visit www.kimsunee.com.

 

 

 


 

Supported by Also-Known-As

image05

About Also-Known-As

The mission of Also-Known-As, Inc. is to empower the voice of adult international adoptees, build cultural bridges, transform perceptions of race, and acknowledge the loss of the birth country, culture, language and biological family experienced by international adoptees.

 

Sponsored by CJ

image04

 


Korean History in Maps

2015 08 19  korean-history-maps  icon

 

Michael D. Shin, lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Cambridge, and editor of the new historical atlas, Korean History in Mapsfrom Prehistory to the Twenty-First Century, discusses Korea’s history through maps, from early Choson to the present.   

Korean History in Maps provides overviews of the political, cultural, economic, and social systems for each period of Korean history, along with chronologies and lists of monarchs. With numerous images of artifacts, paintings, and architectural structures, the atlas helps to make Korean history accessible in a beautifully presented, full-color coverage of all periods of Korean history from prehistoric times to the present day.

 

 

Wednesday, August 19, 2015 | 6:30 PM

 

Members: FREE

Nonmembers:  $10

If you have any questions, please contact Jamie Tyberg or (212) 759-7525, ext. 321.


 

About the Speaker

Michael D. Shin is a lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the Japanese colonial period (1910–45), and he has published many articles on the intellectual, literary, and social history of the early twentieth century. .

After earning his BA at Harvard, he spent two years in Seoul learning Korean, and it was there that he decided to go into Korean Studies. He entered the MA program in Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley intending to study sociology or anthropology. However, for his MA thesis, he did research on the Tongnip sinmun, the first vernacular newspaper in Korea, and he enjoyed it so much that he decided to study Korean history instead. For his Ph.D., he moved to the Department of History at the University of Chicago. His dissertation examined the emergence of the discourse of the nation through the works of the writer Yi Gwangsu. During his graduate studies, he spent a total of three years in Korea, and he also spent one year in Japan at the Inter-University Center for Advanced Language Studies. From 2001, he taught in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University and then moved to Cambridge in the fall of 2008.

Classics Reimagined

 

Authors Adrienne Leslie and Patricia Park discuss and read from Alice Again and Re Jane, contemporary retellings that pay homage to Alice in Wonderland and Jane Eyre, but with a Korean-American twist. These new love stories about identity and culture are just in time for summer beach reading!

The books will be available for sale, and a reception and book signing will follow the discussion.

 

2015 06 02  Classics  book2015 06 02  Classics  book2

Tuesday, June 2, 2015 | 6:30 PM

 

Members and Students: FREE

Nonmembers:  $10

If you have any questions, please contact Jamie Tyberg or (212) 759-7525, ext. 321.


 

About the SpeakersAbout the BooksAbout the Moderator

2015 06 02  Classics  leslie Brooklyn born, Queens raised and educated at C.W. Post College,Adrienne Leslie fully expected her life to take her no further than the outskirts of New York. Then in 2003, when teaching, Ms. Leslie was named NY Educational envoy to The Republic of Korea. The trip changed everything. The world was bigger than she thought and more interesting than she imagined. She left teaching and through a grant, published her first novel in 2005. Bird and Fish became a sensation among non-Asian women as well as Korean-Americans. It was followed by her sequel, Sea and Sky.

Adrienne soon found herself lecturing on all things Korean-American on Korean television, including a cooking show and an English-speaking weekly spot on Radio Korea. An opportunity at The New York Daily News Impact Panel led to her weekly views of living on a budget in the most expensive city in the world. Her pieces received the most buzz during the impact panel’s reign.

For her tireless work in the Korean-American community, she has been recognized by KAAGNY, NYKAPA and KAYA and presently sits on the board of the Korean-American Scholarship Foundation where she is donor to the Adrienne Leslie Scholarship Award.

Adrienne lives in her Queens’ home with her husband, Jim, and dog, Fido, where she writes her blog, One More Thing Before I Go.

 

2015 06 02  Classics  parkPatricia Park was born and raised in Queens and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. She received her BA in English literature from Swarthmore College and her MFA in fiction from Boston University, where she studied with Ha Jin and Allegra Goodman. She has taught writing at Boston University, Ewha Womans University Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation, and CUNY Queens College. She was a Fulbright scholar to South Korea, an Emerging Writers fellow with The Center for Fiction, and a Fellow with the American Association of University Women.

Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, Slice Magazine, and others.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

 

From the Publishers

ALICE AGAIN by Adrienne Leslie is a contemporary retelling of Alice in Wonderland, where, in the summer of 2009, Alice Pleasance, mother of a fallen 9-11 police officer, makes a surprising birthday wish for a dreamy dark-eyed young man to notice her just one more time in her life.  It’s all in fun while she blows out the candles and returns home with her gifts including an insomnia cure from a Korean herb shop.

Later, Alice awakens years younger and racing to prevent her son Luke from going to the Towers only to find she has not gone back in time but has arrived in an alternate New York City under a vibrant red sky.

Alice’s nocturnal travels quickly fill with new friendships and involvements that force her to face her husband’s involvement in her travels. Red Sky may have started as an innocent time-out from tending to her surviving son, but it’s is getting harder to leave since young dark-eyed Hoon Park has asked her to stay.

It may only take one lifetime to grow older but you may need two to grow up.

 

RE JANE by Patricia Park is a fresh, contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre and a poignant Korean-American debut novel that takes its heroine Jane Re on a journey from Queens to Brooklyn to Seoul—and back.

For Jane, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, Flushing, Queens, is the place she’s been trying to escape from her whole life. Sardonic yet vulnerable, she toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store and politely observes the traditional principle of nunchi (a combination of good manners, hierarchy, and obligation). Desperate for a new life, she’s thrilled to become the au pair for the Mazer-Farleys, two Brooklyn English professors and their adopted Chinese daughter. Inducted into the world of organic food co-ops, and nineteenth-century novels, Jane is the recipient of Beth Mazer’s feminist lectures and Ed Farley’s very male attention. But when a family death interrupts Jane and Ed’s blossoming affair, she flies off to Seoul, leaving New York far behind.

Reconnecting with family, and struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, Jane begins to wonder if Ed Farley is really the man for her. Jane returns to Queens, where she must find a balance between two cultures and accept who she really is.

 

Born and raised in South Korea, Peter Boklim Choi completed his undergraduate studies at Yonsei University in Seoul and got a master’s degree in communication from the City University of New York. He has worked as a reporter and writer in the United States and Korea for more than 20 years. He has published two books of poetry and two novels in Korean. His recent book, The Mountain Rats is his short story collection in English. Choi lives in Port Washington, New York, with his wife, and has three daughters.


 

Literature in Late Colonial Korea

2015 04 23  when-future-disappears  iconInterweaving cultural, intellectual, and literary history, Professor Janet Poole, author of When the Future Disappears: The Modernist Imagination in Late Colonial Korea, looks at Korean writers in the final decade of Japanese colonial rule.  Korean writers, including Yi T’aejun, Ch’oe Myŏngik, Im Hwa, Sŏ Insik, Ch’oe Chaesŏ, Pak T’aewŏn, Kim Namch’on, and O Changhwan, used various strategies to narrate life as colonial subjects of an empire headed toward total war, producing some of the most sophisticated writings of twentieth-century modernism.

The book will be available for sale anda reception and book signing will follow.

 

Thursday, April 23, 2015  | 6:30 PM

 

Students, Explorers and Above: Free

Members: $10

Nonmembers:  $20

 


 

 Contemporary Culture programs are generously sponsored by CJ

CJ logo

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot with Blaine Harden

2015 03 18  great-leader  iconAuthor and journalist Blaine Harden discusses his new book, The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot:The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom, with Kenneth Rowe (No Kum Sok), the former fighter pilot in the North Korean Air Force who defected to South Korea in his MiG-15 in 1953. The book interweaves Rowe’s story with that of Kim Il-Sung’s rise to power during the Korean War.

Using government documents found in Chinese and Russian archives related to the role of Mao and Stalin in Kim’s rise to power, as well as Rowe’s never-before-released FBI, CIA, and US Air Force files, Harden has written a heart-pounding escape adventure that provides an entirely new way to understand the world’s longest-lasting totalitarian state.

The book will be available for sale and a reception, and book signing will follow.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015 | 6:30 PM

 

Students, Explorers and Above: Free

Members: $10

Nonmembers:  $20

 


 

“I could not put this book down. The interwoven stories of Kim Il-Sung and MiG fighter pilot No Kum Sok are carefully researched and artfully told. Harden shows how each man played the system to achieve his lifelong goal—in Kim’s case, the creation of a personality cult and oppressive regime, and in No’s case, defection from it. Harden succeeds in offering a unique lens on North Korean history and politics that offers something for both the general and expert readership.”

—Dr. Victor Cha, Professor of Government and Director of Asian Studies, Georgetown University; former National Security Council director for Asian affairs, 2004-7

 

“Having exposed the full horror of the North Korean gulag by telling the story of Shin Dong-hyuk’s escape from Camp 14, Blaine Harden now uses contrasting portraits of the founding tyrant Kim Il Sung and the young MiG pilot who flew to freedom six decades ago to explain how the monstrous political system of North Korea came into existence in the first place.  The result is a triumph of story-telling that brings history to life and explains why the North Korean regime is such a menace to its own people and to the world.”

—Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy

 

Jang Jin-Sung: Poet, Spy, Escapee

2015 02 02  Poet.Spy.Escapee icon

Author Jang Jin-sung, on his first visit to the U.S., discusses his new book, Dear Leader Poet, Spy, Escapee—A Look Inside North Korea, which describes his life in North Korea as a psychological warfare officer and one of Kim Jong-il’s revered “court poets,” as well as his dramatic escape to China and South Korea. Jang will also read selections from his poetry and share insights into North Korea shaped by his experiences as well as contacts with North Korean exiles and overseas officials. The evening’s discussion will be led by Dr. Su Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and current senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

The book will be available for sale, and reception and book signing will follow.

 

Explorers and Above: Free

Members and Students: $10

Nonmembers:  $20

 

 

Jang Jin-Sung: Poet, Spy, Escapee

Monday, February 2, 2015 | 6:30 PM 


The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

 

 

 


 

Ambassador Donald P. Gregg’s Memoir: Pot Shards

2014 11 05  amb-gregg  iconDonald P. Gregg, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea and Chairman Emeritus of The Korea Society, discusses his fascinating new memoir, Pot Shards. The book relates experiences from a career that includes thirty-one years as a CIA operations officer and ten years in the White House, which culminated in an appointment as the National Security Advisor to then-Vice President George H. W. Bush. A reception and book signing will follow the program.

 


 

Ambassador Donald P. Gregg’s Memoir: Pot Shards

 

Wednesday, November 5, 2014 | 12 PM

 

11:30 AM  |  Registration & Light Fare

12:00 PM  |  Discussion

 

 

If you have any questions, please contact Stephanie Lee or (212) 759-7525, ext. 313.

 

$10 Members | $20 Nonmembers

 ~ Explorer and YPN Members are free but must register here .~


 

Without You, There Is No Us

2014 10 23  north-korea-elite  iconSuki Kim, who has written about North Korea for Harper’s and The New York Review of Books,discusses Without You, There Is No Us, her fascinating new book which chronicles her six month stay in North Korea, where she taught English to the sons of the North Korean elite at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology during the end of Kim Jong Il’s reign. The book will be available for sale and a reception and book signing will follow.

 

Thursday, October 23, 2014 | 6:30 PM

 

Explorers and Above: Free

Members and Students: $10

Nonmembers:  $20

 


 

 Contemporary Culture programs are generously sponsored by CJ

CJ logo

Euny Hong: The Birth of Korean Cool

2014 10 15  korean-cool  iconAuthor Euny Hong discusses, with The Wall Street Journal Online’s columnist Jeffrey Yang, her  first nonfiction book, The Birth of Korean Cool, which mixes stories from her childhood in Korea with in-depth reporting and exclusive interviews with government officials and cultural icons. The result is an entertaining look at how South Korea made an unprecedented leap into the 21st century to become a global leader in business, technology, education, and pop culture. The book will be available for sale and a reception and book signing will follow.

 

Wednesday, October 15, 2014 | 6:30 PM

 

Explorers and Above: Free

Members and Students: $10

Nonmembers:  $20

 


 

 Contemporary Culture programs are generously sponsored by CJ

CJ logo