The only music I remember listening to (not counting church songs, oh god) before my family arrived in Los Angeles when I was 10, was Julio Iglesias, ABBA, and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. This was all from my time in Paraguay. Don’t ask me about music from Korea. I have zero recollection of my life in my hometown of Seoul. I was 5 when we left.

When my family came to L.A. in 1980, our first home was in Koreatown, a six-unit apartment just off Olympic and Wilton Place. Our next-door neighbor had a daughter my age whom I was madly in love with from fifth grade all through junior high. But that’s a whole different story I would like to not get into right now, OK? Anyway … her big brother had an AC/DC record, Highway to Hell, that blew my mind. (The only reason AC/DC is not on this playlist is because I rarely think of a single track, just memories of sitting at Margaret’s place listening to Highway to Hell and then Back in Black.) Soon after, I was exposed to R&B and hip-hop through the Black kids who were the first (and only, for a while) people to accept me.

When I sat down to make this playlist, memories like these came to me surprisingly fast. And soon after, the feelings. Ohhhh, the feelings.

It makes sense once you think of it, but it’s so easy to forget that there is a soundtrack to your life. Just like in the movies, specific songs are played in varying volumes to accompany the moments you’re living through, to accent them.

I just didn’t know until I wrote this that the audience was me.

“Doo Wa Ditty” by ZAPP

No matter where I am or what I’m doing, no song instantly takes me back to Los Angeles better than this song by ZAPP. It might be the first song I fell in love with, but I’m not sure. Because 1982, two years after my family arrived in L.A., had some songs for me. It is the first time a song made me want to dance.

“You Dropped a Bomb on Me” by the GAP Band

Another ’82 classic. This song always makes me think of my older brother because it might be the last pop song that he and I ever bonded over. He loved this song, which looking back now, seems almost like fiction (he’s a classical music aficionado). I miss this time when he and I would sit in front of the stereo in our apartment on Gramercy Drive in Koreatown, our minds blowing each and every time the song came on.

“Nasty Girl” by Vanity 6

Um … sex. Pure sex. To me at this time (1982 is like “Another one!”), it was a wake-up song, except for parts of me that I didn’t even know existed. Vanity’s voice, way beyond even her physical beauty, made me feel like I was entering a different world, one that I’d never experienced before. You could call it the American Dream, the U.S., life in the West, the Global North, Hollywood, puberty, sexual awakening, possibility … Yes, I think possibility.

“Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order

High school. ’80s. Parties. Drogas. This is a song that is the center of my playlist called “80s 5AM COKE MUSIC” because in the soundtrack of you walking out of a West L.A. apartment at 5 a.m., those Pyrus calleryana spewing jizz into the atmosphere, your body about to murder you for all the Bartles & Jaymes you used to wash down the drugs, your heart broken by, well, you don’t even remember exactly what or who did that to you.

“Feel Good Hit of the Summer” by Queens of the Stone Age

Driving around with my childhood friend George in his black IROC convertible until we hit Torrance for no reason. We weren’t even talking. But we understood our lives were about to take drastic turns and we wouldn’t see each other much anymore—a friendship that began with a fight by the handball courts at Wilton Place Elementary in Koreatown, continued through his crack years, his shooting incident, his Boston exile and subsequent Boston prison term, his return to L.A. and his opening of a successful sushi restaurant in Palmdale.

“Walking Away” by Craig David

I couldn’t stop singing this song in the summer of 2001, and it continued into summer of 2002 as I was getting ready to leave L.A. for N.Y. It was for grad school but I didn’t think I was coming back. There was, as Mr. David says, too much trouble in my life in L.A. and all I wanted to do was run away and disappear. The canceled engagement. The post-canceled-engagement-self-destructive Eurotrash Era. The Why I Wouldn’t Date You List that I was given over dinner at Nobu when I asked a woman I was in love with why she wouldn’t date me. But …

“Ship Song” by Nick Cave

… I came back to L.A. in 2004, with Judeth, who I met at NYU. And we got married in DTLA, on the rooftop of the Oviatt Building on Olive Street. It was a Sunday night because it was cheaper to rent on Sundays. And street parking was free. This song was our first dance. Therefore, this song is ours. Nobody else can have it.

The post Chiwan Choi’s Diaspora Jukebox Playlist appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

How did we forget about the first Koreatown, USA?

In the early 20th century, Korean Americans flocked to Pachappa Camp in citrus-rich Riverside, California, to gather, live and work together, and keep the Korean identity alive. During its short stretch of existence, this self-governed community made for and by Korean Americans became a mecca for the Korean independence movement and a bulwark against anti-Asian racism in America. But Pachappa Camp’s significance was forgotten about until the early 2000s, when students at the University of California, Riverside, located the camp’s name on an old map. Intrigued, Edward—a Korean American studies scholar—and a team of researchers and students dug through archives of Korean newspapers and historic documents to uncover an amazing tale of survival and perseverance.

In 1902, the first married Korean couple to come to the United States, Dosan Ahn Chang Ho and Heyryon Lee, also known as Helen Lee Ahn, arrived in San Francisco. Dosan (his pen name) was a Korean independence activist who had made the voyage, in part, to learn about democratic ideals. At the time, Korea was struggling to remain an independent nation. Activists like Dosan were looking for ways to preserve Korea’s sovereignty as an empire and a monarchy, and prevent Japan from taking over their homeland.

The couple eventually settled in Riverside, enticed by its warm climate and job opportunities- not to mention its burgeoning Korean population. Once there, Dosan founded a Korean labor bureau, which offered economic opportunities to entice more Koreans to come to Riverside. As more came to the area, Dosan got started on creating a Korean community all their own: Pachappa Camp.

Located at 1532 Pachappa Avenue next to a railroad track, Pachappa had previously been the site of a labor camp for Chinese railroad workers. When Dosan founded the camp in 1905, it consisted of about 20 vernacular, single-story, wood-frame buildings, in addition to a one-and-a-half story community center duplex. At first, living conditions were harsh: In her memoir Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America, Pachappa Camp resident Mary Paik Lee recalled the cold and lack of amenities, including no running water or electricity, in the “shanties.” But even from the start, Korean Americans flooded the site with warmth and welcome. They built a community hall, held Korean language and culture classes, and the Calvary Presbyterian Church, which took an interest in the diaspora, provided English classes.

When Pachappa was founded, Korean Americans found themselves suddenly a people without a country. That same year, in 1905, Japan annexed Korea under military rule; by 1910, Korea was officially folded into Japan’s empire. Pachappa, in response, became an active site of Korean independence activities led by Dosan himself, who continued to distinguish himself as a leader of the movement that sought to unify overseas Koreans to preserve their national identity and community. Many came to refer to Pachappa as “Dosan’s Republic” because of the community regulations he implemented and the independence organizations he started there. The most significant of them was the cooperative association Gongnip Hyeophoe, which laid foundations for the development of the Korean National Association (KNA)—a political organization that represented the interest of Koreans in the United States, Russia, and Manchuria.

In 1911, the KNA hosted a major 10-day conference at Pachappa, where chapter presidents from around the United States laid out the principles that would go into the founding of the Republic of Korea 37 years later. KNA members agreed on 21 articles of governance for Koreans, including guidelines on social practices, internal policing mechanisms, and the establishment of committees that helped organize and regulate Koreans on everything from the way they dressed, to curfew times.

Throughout Pachappa Camp’s existence, residents continued to agitate for Korean independence. When Japan’s Prince Ito was assassinated at the hands of Korean nationalist Chung-kun Ahn, camp residents collected funds for Ahn’s defense and held nightly meetings full of speeches, promises, and stories of past heroics to express their support. Anecdotally, one married couple even pledged a horse and buggy to the cause—though the wife took her husband to task for his generosity afterward. But such a protest would have been half-hearted; everyone in the camp was aligned in support of Ahn.

Pachappa Camp’s residents were a people fighting for their rights in both their home country and their new country. Asians were the first minority community to be targeted specifically by U.S. immigration laws, beginning with the1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Pachappa Camp residents experienced the rampant anti-Asian hatred that permeated the country firsthand. Lee, in her memoir, recalled how other students sang racist songs toward her at school. Jacob Thun, another resident and child at Pachappa, wrote about being ridiculed for his racial identity and called slurs like “Jap.” The Riverside Daily Press also reported on anti-Asian hate crimes and other incidents—an article in early 1906 titled “Villainous Spite Work,” for example, reported on five Korean boys whose bicycle tires had been “slashed to pieces.”

Still, Pachappa Camp maintained its robust community and resilience. Korean newspapers noted that residents continued to conduct Korean independence movement meetings and cultural classes, hold weddings, and generally operate as an extension of Korea. Pachappa likely would have continued to flourish had it not been for the 1913 Great Citrus Freeze, which decimated crops and forced laborers to leave Riverside. Over the next five years, the camp’s numbers dwindled until Pachappa finally closed in 1918. But its influence lived on long past its end, with former residents spreading the spirit of Korea’s independence movement with them wherever they went, whether it was to nearby Vine Street, up north to the Bay, or down south to Los Angeles.

Almost exactly a century after its closure, in December 2016, the city of Riverside formally recognized Pachappa Camp as its first Point of Cultural Interest. On March 23, 2017, the city celebrated the designation. Among the attendees was Dosan’s youngest son, Ralph Ahn.  “Pachappa Camp was the site of the First Organized Korean American Settlement founded by Dosan Ahn Chang Ho in 1905” announces the sign commemorating the first Koreatown, USA. The sign and the designation—coming thanks to the research of Edward and his colleagues—ensure that Pachappa Camp itself, its role in the Korean independence movement, and its place in Korean American history will not be forgotten again.

The post How the Inland Empire Helped Create the Republic of Korea appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

As I signed in for the Elite Educational Institute class in a room that looked like an enormous dentist’s office, a widescreen TV directly behind the reception desk showed interview testimonials from kids who, according to graphics on screen, had scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT (the test now has three parts worth 800 points each) after taking this test prep course.

But then, after signing in and entering the prep center, the receptionist, a Korean lady who doubled as disciplinarian and administrator, greeted me with a look of such contempt that I nearly dropped my pen.

You are late! she said, as a couple other students filled out forms nearby.

I glanced at another TV screen, devoted solely to the time. She was right. I was late. By four minutes. I’m sorry, I mumbled.

She pointed her index finger directly between my eyes. Her eyes flashed red, and I could have sworn that she had grown by at least two feet. She towered over me.

You dishonor your family! she shrieked.

Koreatown, a densely populated neighborhood west of downtown L.A., become a center of test prep centers—providing intensive classes to study and practice for standardized tests such as the SAT—with Elite Educational Institute, the Wilton Academy, Young Ji Tutoring, the Jei Learning Center, and Kumon all located around Central L.A. At the prep center, I’ve met kids not only from Koreatown but from all over: La Crescenta, Whittier, Pasadena (both South and non-South), Arcadia, even freaking Glendora.

My stint at my test prep center came at the request of my parents, who had heard from friends that the only way to receive a very good SAT score was to go to Elite. I spent two days a week there for eight weeks. On Fridays, we students took a full, 3 1/2-hour, SAT practice test. On Saturdays, a list of each student’s practice test scores, ordered from highest to lowest, was published with for all to see. Both the teachers and the students treated those who scored the highest with deep respect (“Jack, good job on that last math section”) and those who scored the lowest with a mixture of pity and disdain (“Cole, you had one of the worst scores last practice test”).

The classes ranged from good to very, very terrible. The teachers were mostly male and mostly Korean. The grammar teacher was a generally cool guy who had traveled the world in his 20s and often broke up his lectures with amusing yarns about the crazy times he’d spent in Europe and Asia, and his classes were somewhat better than bearable. However, I don’t think I managed to successfully stay awake through the reading comprehension class once. Luckily, I have been blessed with the gift of being able to move my hand back and forth as I nap, which makes me appear to others as if I am taking notes even as the sandman guides me further and further into the dream world.

Each day, we had a minimum of 8 hours of classes (two hours each of reading comprehension, math, writing, and vocabulary). Although there was a brief respite between classes as the different teachers switch out, our only official break time was our lunch period, which was exactly 30 minutes long and the best part of the day. Every week for homework, we were expected to memorize 250 vocabulary words, read and complete two 20-page packets (one on math and one on grammar), and read and write a book report on a novel.

There were no windows in our classroom, and even though we were on the first floor, the general feeling was that we were buried deep underground. The room had an intercom and, most frighteningly, a video camera, both of which were linked directly to the desk of the Lady Out Front. Occasionally, during breaks, a student would stand up and attempt to stretch, only to immediately hear the crackling of the intercom and the Lady Out Front saying, “You in the red shirt, sit back down!”

One of my fellow classmates, Kevin, held that the prep center is like “a gulag run by Asians.” Others compared it to a North Korean prison camp. There were rumors that the kids with the lowest scores on the practice tests were taken by the Lady Out Front to the building’s basement and caned.

The Lady Out Front is the institute’s chief disciplinarian, and she was feared by the class in the same way I imagine the Danes feared Grendel. On occasion, she entered the classroom and asked slowly, menacingly for one of the students to accompany her to the front. (Students’ offenses ranged from calling the Lady a bitch and talking back to teachers to acting wild in class.)

With downcast eyes, the requested boy/girl followed her, never to be seen again.

None of this is hyperbole. There seemed to be something almost dictatorial about this set-up, and the attitude of the student body grew more hostile as the summer went on—insults were more savage and less whispered. In response, the Lady Out Front reminded us that we were there “for our own good.” And, of course, we were. We were there to practice for the SAT, to one day become 2400 kids like those smiling broadly on the TV above the front desk. It may be unpleasant, but I found the prep center to be effective. (Elite claims it produces “an average increase of 240 points.”) It would help raise my score.

But it also instilled in me a deep, ingrained hatred for everything test-related. I also felt guilty. By going to Elite, I was, essentially, cheating the system, memorizing specific problem types in order to score better, turning the SAT from a test that evaluated my ability to think on my feet into a test that evaluated my ability to apply information I had memorized through hours and hours of practice. I couldn’t help thinking there must be a less horrifying, less intense, less boring way to prepare for these tests.

On my last day at the test center, I’d never seen a group of people looking so relieved. It was as if the entire student body had simultaneously released a breath it’d been holding for the last three months. Even the Lady Out Front was smiling. As the bell marking the end of our last class rang, the students hastily packed up their bags before rushing out of the building, laughing triumphantly, delirious smiles on their faces. Sure, we still had to take the actual SAT, but compared to our days at the test prep center, the test itself didn’t seem all that bad.

The post I’m a Survivor Of Koreatown’s Test Prep Despots appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The earliest picture is from 1904, when the already 42-year-old congregation (then called Congregation B’nai B’rith) was located in its more humble second home, at 9th and Hope streets. Like all such archival collections, this one is fascinating in that it shows how the fashions worn by a century’s worth of budding 16-year-olds continually change. But what I believe is more noteworthy is what doesn’t change in these photographs—year after year, the faces of certain individuals keep reappearing alongside the confirmands.

From 1922 to 1983, the photographs include Rabbi Edgar Magnin. From 1983 to 2004, they include Rabbi Harvey Fields. From 1988 to the present, they include Rabbi Steve Leder. And, of particular interest to me are the photos from 1950 to 2002, which include Rabbi Alfred Wolf, my father.

These four men held the position of senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple over the past 94 years. Together, they devoted a total of 181 years to this institution.

To a large extent, the senior rabbi establishes the gestalt of any congregation. When there is frequent turnover in this position, the gestalt keeps changing and never really takes root. Thanks to these four men, whose tenures substantially overlapped, Wilshire Boulevard Temple has enjoyed a consistent identity that nevertheless has evolved, shaped by the distinct personas of each of its leaders.

And I was privileged to know them all.

I was born in 1950, less than a year after Dad joined the Temple. The larger-than-life Rabbi Magnin was my godfather.

Edgar Magnin was a legendary speaker whose booming voice could easily reach the last row of the 1,800-seat sanctuary. Even more remarkable, anyone who sat in that distant row invariably felt as if Rabbi Magnin were speaking directly to him or her. His reputation was national and enduring: For years, he had his own weekly radio show and syndicated column, he delivered the invocation at Richard Nixon’s first inaugural, and he remained active at the Temple nearly until his death in 1984 at the age of 94.

But for me, Rabbi Magnin was also something of a time machine. This was someone who evacuated his home at the age of 16 … because of the San Francisco earthquake! He built one of the first homes in Beverly Hills, helped found Hillcrest Country Club, and oversaw the construction of the Temple’s Pantheon-like sanctuary, which opened in 1929. He counted Louis Mayer, William Randolph Hearst, Irving Thalberg, and the Warner brothers among his friends. But he was also happy to have lunch with my family at Hamburger Hamlet following my son’s naming ceremony. The man who befriended moguls also befriended me.

My father joined Rabbi Magnin at Wilshire in 1949. The following year, Dad launched the Temple’s camping program, which led to Camp Hess Kramer and Gindling Hilltop in Malibu. Dad’s commitment to camping was rooted in his teenage years when, as a Jewish youth leader in Germany, he regularly defied the Nazis by taking kids into neighboring forests where they could savor practicing their religion free of fear.

Dad’s experience living in Germany, from which he escaped in 1935, also led him to be a leader in intercultural affairs, becoming the first chairman of the Southern California Interreligious Council as well as chairman of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations. He was determined that the hatred and demagoguery he had witnessed in his homeland never take root in his beloved L.A. Most memorably, during Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Los Angeles in 1987, Dad addressed the pontiff on behalf of the entire Jewish community at an extraordinary interfaith gathering.

In photo after photo on the confirmation wall, we can see these two vital religious leaders as they proudly passed their heritage to new generations. The photo from 1966 depicts the largest class, with 202 students. There’s Dad, there’s Rabbi Magnin, there’s Rabbi Maxwell Dubin, who served the Temple for 50 years. And there, in the middle, hair shiny with Brylcreem, is me. Moving down the wall there is a photo featuring my son, Aaron—who was part of the 1997 class, the smallest in the Temple’s history with 12 students. Since then, the confirmation classes have been growing again. The Temple now has a Jewish elementary school with 280 students at its Westside campus, the construction of which was spearheaded by Rabbi Fields. And, a new day school at the Wilshire campus is growing steadily, populated by children of the Jewish families that are increasingly moving to neighborhoods such as Hancock Park, Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock, and Echo Park.

Indeed, if the Temple restoration project had merely resulted in a beautiful place to house the congregation for annual High Holiday services, then that gleaming dome would be little more than an empty shell. Instead, it is Rabbi Leder’s vision for it to be a bull’s-eye of Jewish life right in the center of our city.

And so, as with that wall filled with confirmation photographs, there is continual change to be seen. But, just as in those pictures, the essence of this old/new congregation remains the same, and it propels us forward.

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Next decision point: “Quiere de todo?” No way, no sense wasting precious space on cantaloupe. Just give me mango, cucumber, jicama, and watermelon (which always sounds more enticing when called sandia). That’s right, you can choose fruit and veggies. There is a solemnity to the way Maria chops up the produce, then scoops it into the container before proceeding to the coup de grace–the squeezing of the lime juice atop the plate, with one of those industrial-strength lime-squeezing contraptions, followed by the raining of the chili powder. By this point, the anticipation has made me impatient. How quickly can I go up the 14 floors and rip into the container?

But there’s also a triggering of nostalgic flashes. Of mangos enchilados in Chapultepec park as a kid, and pepinos consumed after soccer practice outside Chihuahua’s Soriana store. And so I thank Maria a bit too profusely with each visit, realizing she is providing a lot of us with far more than tasty nutrition.

Andrés Martinez is editorial director of Zócalo Public Square and vice president of the New America Foundation.

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