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[SPEAKER_09]: So you're scrolling on Instagram.
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[SPEAKER_14]: Hi, this is Team Hildo Korea.
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[SPEAKER_12]: We're starting a new chapter in Orange County.
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[SPEAKER_12]: If you're a Christ-like minded person who loves Jesus and loves America and Korea, come check us out below.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Another real, this time from Orange County.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And now, young Korean and Korean American men sitting outside on the sunny campus of UCLA.
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[SPEAKER_09]: They're smiling, wrapping.
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[SPEAKER_06]: Like, shout out to Vittal Korea, you know that I want to be a couple of this great nation, we are his big creation.
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[SPEAKER_07]: Vittal Korea, brother of America, free to make free was given by our Savior.
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[SPEAKER_07]: We're trying to rebuild it, and if you can't stop, that'll be going every day.
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[SPEAKER_08]: We come and you see a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of
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[SPEAKER_09]: built up Korea move over communism.
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[SPEAKER_09]: K-pop aesthetics, Instagram, humor, Christian nationalism, anti-communism, all packed into 30 seconds.
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[SPEAKER_09]: This is built up Korea.
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[SPEAKER_09]: If you listen to our first episode, you've already met its founder, Meena Kim.
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[SPEAKER_09]: You know about her partnership with Charlie Kirk.
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[SPEAKER_09]: her vision of reviving South Korea through conservative evangelical faith.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And her growing online following.
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[SPEAKER_09]: But builds up Korea isn't simply a South Korean movement.
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[SPEAKER_09]: What if I told you that all this Instagram posting and youth rallying was part of a movement that swept a conservative Korean immigrant woman from South Korea into the US House of Representatives in 2024?
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[SPEAKER_09]: A place no Korean woman had served before.
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[SPEAKER_09]: This candidate emerged because several historical currents converged at the right moment.
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[SPEAKER_09]: the aftermath of the Los Angeles uprising after the Rodney King verdict, growing Korean American civic organizations, the transnational shadow of the Cold War in Asia, long-standing Republican political networks, and the breathtaking demographic change across Southern California.
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[SPEAKER_09]: This story stretches across the Pacific to America, to the Southern California,
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[SPEAKER_09]: From the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement, this is K-Spiritz.
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[SPEAKER_09]: How the U.S. and Korea create evangelical power.
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[SPEAKER_09]: I'm Dr. Helen Jinkim, a historian who studies U.S. religion and history and global context.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And I'm the author of Race for a Revival, how Cold War, South Korea, shaped the American evangelical empire.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Over the last century, Korean the United States have shaped one another in profound ways.
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[SPEAKER_09]: This is the story of revival in migration, war and empire, prayer and politics.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Welcome to K-Spirits.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Recently, Mina Kim appeared at Grace Ministry's International, a Korean-American mega-church in Fullerton, California.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Photographs from the event show her alongside Republican Congresswoman Young Kim.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And Pastor Sam Han, once a top aide for Republican State Assembly member, Don Wagner, and California Director of the Conservative Think Tank Freedom Foundation, and now Executive Pastor of the Church, welcomes the gathering.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Later, Mina Posts photographs on her Instagram page, and she writes,
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[SPEAKER_09]: It's an extraordinary statement, not simply because it connects a Korean political movement to an American member of Congress, but because it assumes something larger.
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[SPEAKER_09]: That churches, politicians, and activists all belong to the same mission.
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[SPEAKER_09]: So how did these worlds become connected?
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[SPEAKER_09]: To answer that question, we have to leave Instagram.
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[SPEAKER_09]: We have to leave the present.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And we have to travel back several decades.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Because the story of build of Korea begins long before build of Korea have very existed.
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[SPEAKER_09]: When Americans tell stories about religion and politics, we often rely on familiar characters, white evangelicals, the religious right.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan, the Moral Majority.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Those stories matter, but they're incomplete.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Because while historians have carefully documented the rise of white evangelical conservatism, another
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history has unfolded alongside of it, one that receives far less attention.
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[SPEAKER_09]: The political history of immigrant evangelical communities,
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[SPEAKER_09]: For decades, Korean American churches have served as places of worship, but they've also been civic organizations, networking hubs, political classrooms, community centers, missions, agencies, and sometimes political organizing spaces.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Understanding that history helps explain why a movement like built up Korea could find
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[SPEAKER_09]: So why would mean a Kim, a bilingual and transnational Korean activist in 2026, traveled to Southern California, to celebrate an American congresswoman?
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[SPEAKER_09]: Historian Jane Hong helped me understand that the answer begins more than 30 years earlier in the aftermath of the Los Angeles uprising.
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[SPEAKER_13]: I'm Jane Hong.
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[SPEAKER_13]: I'm a professor of history at Oxford into college.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And I am currently finishing up a book, a history of Asian Recky Evangelicalism since the 1960s.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And my next book project looks at immigrant refugee conservatives of color from Orange County, California.
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[SPEAKER_09]: A few years ago, she wrote an important essay for the Washington Post explaining the emergence of Korean American Republican women in Congress.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Two names stood out.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Both represented Orange County, both for a born in South Korea.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Both became prominent Republican voices.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And both continued to shape American politics today.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Young Kim is once again running for Congress.
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[SPEAKER_15]: Hi, Congresswoman Yankees here.
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[SPEAKER_15]: Today is Election Day, so please don't forget to vote.
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[SPEAKER_15]: And I'll be honored to have your support so I can get back to Washington DC and to continue to fight for you.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And Michelle Fiel has recently been confirmed as the next United States ambassador to South Korea.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It is honor of a lifetime to be present Trump's nominee for U.S.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Ambassador to Republic of Korea.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm deeply grateful to present Trump and Secretary Rubio for their trust in me to serve the American people.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Meanwhile, Bills of Korea has repeatedly highlighted young Kim as a model Christian political leader.
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[SPEAKER_09]: So where does that story begin?
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[SPEAKER_09]: Hong says the answer isn't Washington.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It's Los Angeles.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So in the context of Los Angeles history, young Kim's rise was notable, because she was part of what I would call the post-LA riots or post-92 uprising, generation of Korean immigrants, who really began to take an interest in US party politics and in mainstream politics for the first time, because I think after the events of 92,
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[SPEAKER_13]: more active and visible role, less their interests not be recognized.
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[SPEAKER_09]: For many Americans, 1992 is remembered to the smoke rising above Los Angeles, the National Guard, helicopters, police brutality, the unjust acquittal of officers who beat Rodney King.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Within Korean-American communities, thousands of Korean-owned businesses were damaged or destroyed, abandoned by police and politicians.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And suddenly political participation looked less optional, it looked necessary.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Many Korean-Americans had their start in the Greater Los Angeles area, a small business owners.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Dr. Hong says that after 1992, Korean American political life changed dramatically.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Many of them had become naturalized citizens, but they were not kind of integrated.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So after 92, you see Korean immigrants really began kind of organizations for Korean Republicans, for Korean Democrats.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They also forged closer ties to local city officials, local town officials because, you know, during the events of 92, many business owners in South LA and free-atown felt like they could not rely on local law enforcement and local officials to watch out for their interests.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So there's that piece, and you could argue that young Kim was part of that.
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[SPEAKER_13]: She and her husband, Charles, I think, were also business owners.
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[SPEAKER_09]: that's when Republican politicians took notice of key Korean American leaders.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So there's political momentum for Koreans, but at the same time, the advance of 92 raised the profile of Korean immigrants and Korean American communities among local lawmakers and elected officials, especially Republican ones.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And when you think about someone like young
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[SPEAKER_13]: involved with local, create American community, organizing, so they had already been involved in the community they were well-known.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Young Kim hosted a radio show on a local Korean radio station discussing community issues.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And her husband Charles began working with the Korean American
coalition.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Founded in 1983, the Korean-American coalition sought to encourage Korean-Americans to participate more fully in civic life.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Its work wasn't narrowly partisan.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It encouraged voter registration, leadership, community engagement, political education.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It co-founded the Black Korean Alliance in 1988 and coordinated victim relief in the aftermath
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[SPEAKER_09]: After 1992, local Los Angeles Dawn Profits liked the Korean American coalition, also brought Korean Americans into contact with established political leaders.
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[SPEAKER_09]: One of those leaders was for public and congressman Ed Royce.
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[SPEAKER_13]: There was an elected official.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So at the time, so his name was Ed Royce.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He was a Republican congressman.
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[SPEAKER_13]: So he started off as a state senator, and so Kim met him during that period in the 1990s.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And she tells a story of how Royce surprised her by inviting her to work in his office as a community liaison to an advisor for Asian communities.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Kind of she gets known as a state senator.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He eventually gets elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where he serves for several decades.
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[SPEAKER_13]: and can follow him into that office and she basically spends about 20 years working in his office.
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[SPEAKER_13]: She also increasingly advises him on Korean affairs and so she's involved with thinking about a North Korean human rights law, so she's thinking about kind of not just local Korean communities, but also U.S. career relations.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Before young Kim ever held elected office herself, she spent two decades learning politics from inside one of Southern California's most influential Republican congressional offices.
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[SPEAKER_09]: She wasn't simply volunteering or attending fundraisers.
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[SPEAKER_09]: She was meeting with constituents, advising voice on Korean affairs, including North Korean human rights legislation.
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[SPEAKER_09]: By the time young Kim finally ran for office herself, she wasn't a political newcomer.
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[SPEAKER_09]: She was one of the most experienced Korean American Republican operatives in Southern California.
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[SPEAKER_13]: She's heavily anti-communist, so she very much fits within some of the political priorities of local kind of Republican officials in the 90s to 3,000.
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[SPEAKER_09]: anti-Communism.
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[SPEAKER_09]: That's a core theme throughout this story.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It's shape South Korea, it's shape South Korean and American evangelicalism.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It's shaped for public and politics.
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[SPEAKER_13]: I mean, folks who were born and raised in South Korea in the 1960s, my mom also went to high school in the 1960s in South Korea.
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[SPEAKER_13]: This was a heavily heavily anti-Communist.
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[SPEAKER_13]: school curriculum, this is under Pocton H, Park Chon H, the military leader of South Korea in the 60s and 70s.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Young Kim was born in South Korea in 1962, the youngest of seven children.
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[SPEAKER_15]: I was a young girl when my family decided to immigrate.
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[SPEAKER_15]: We first settled in the island of Guam.
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[SPEAKER_15]: As you know, it's a territory of United States.
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[SPEAKER_15]: I finished my elementary school in Korea, then finished my junior high school in Guam.
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[SPEAKER_15]: And then I went on to Hawaii.
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[SPEAKER_15]: We called it Hawaii and finished my high school there.
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[SPEAKER_15]: And then came to California to go to USC.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Young Kim carried the anti-communism of Park Era, South Korea into a very different American political landscape where it took on a new form.
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[SPEAKER_13]: If you've gone to college in South Korea, the political views might have actually changed quite dramatically by the time the pro-democracy movements came out in the 80s and so.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But when you think about the history of immigration, you really have to think about kind of what is the Korea that Young Kim was born into, that shaped her
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[SPEAKER_13]: and which at some point that she loves to come to United States, like what did she bring with her, and then how does that then take different kind of shape and form in the United States in a very different political climate?
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[SPEAKER_09]: But how did someone like Young Kim eventually build her political career as a Republican in the US?
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[SPEAKER_09]: As Dr. Hong explains, the answer is more complicated than ideology alone.
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[SPEAKER_09]: As he communism certainly mattered.
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[SPEAKER_09]: For many Korean and Vietnamese immigrants, the Cold War never really ended.
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[SPEAKER_09]: The division of Korea remains, Vietnam became a communist state, and many immigrants arrived in the United States with deeply personal memories of those conflicts.
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[SPEAKER_13]: You know, and even after the Cold War officially quote ended in the early 1990s, for Europe and other parts of the world,
the Cold War, I mean, it just, it doesn't necessarily end in a place like Korea, and it also doesn't end in a place like Vietnam.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The reality is a lot of the elected officials in office in Orange County in the 1990s, 80s, 90s, were Republican.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And so if someone like young can live in that area with active going to these fundraisers or living in these places, many of the folks that she'd be interacting with, some of them are Democrats, but a lot of them are Republicans.
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[SPEAKER_09]: In Orange County during the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans dominated local government.
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[SPEAKER_09]: If Korean immigrants wanted relationships with elected officials, Republican officeholders were often the people they encountered first.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Actually, some win, who's a historian at Cal State Monite Bay.
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[SPEAKER_13]: He writes about this in terms of the Vietnamese Americans.
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[SPEAKER_13]: The Vietnamese Americans are refugees, fleeing communism in Vietnam.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Yes, in these refugees in Orange County, many of them were already predisposed, like they loved their whole of the company.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They liked John McCain, the folks who they saw as their savior, but people who had sponsored legislation to let them in, to let their family members.
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[SPEAKER_13]: But it was also just because they lived in places that just had a lot of Republican lawmakers, and so it was also just a function of,
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[SPEAKER_13]: just practical realities.
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[SPEAKER_13]: And I think that that is also at play with young Kim.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Young Kim's rise, Dr. Hong argues, was shaped by both shared conservative values and the political realities of a changing orange county.
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[SPEAKER_09]: In the 1970s, in the years leading up to the rise of Reagan, orange county was 70 to 80 percent white suburbanites.
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[SPEAKER_09]: By 2002, people of color became the majority.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Today there's no one racial ethnic majority with Latino and Asian communities representing roughly 35% and 25% of the population.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Today, in Orange County, we find the largest diasporic Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam, especially in the little psychone area spanning Westminster and Garden Grove.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And across Fullerton, Bon Apparque, Irvine and Garden Grove, we find the second largest Korean American population of any county in the United States.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They're public and party have been much more aggressive about recruiting them in places like Orange County, like they opened an office, an election
office to actually recruit Vietnamese American and Korean voters, and the Democratic Party did not do that.
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[SPEAKER_13]: In the 1990s, the Democratic Party did take their first steps to work with Asian Americans on the national stage.
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[SPEAKER_09]: But the Democratic Party quickly began to shy away.
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[SPEAKER_13]: After 96, because there were all these racialized assumptions and kind of suspicions about Asian money and Asian campaign finance, but yeah, I think both parties have historically not been very interested, but on the local level, because California was a state where Asian Americans actually made up a large number of people, so even if they weren't voters, a lot of them were technically.
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[SPEAKER_13]: potential voters because they were naturalized.
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[SPEAKER_13]: You don't really see people officials tap into that kind of electoral power until much later.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Within the context of Korean American political marginalization, not only the Republican Party, but also the Christian coalition found common cause with conservatives of color.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Interestingly enough, I think
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[SPEAKER_13]: Asian immigrants were actually the ones to approach them first, but at least they were interested enough to work with them because again in California, Asian Americans actually made a of significant percentage of the population.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They were Christian, they believed in traditional marriage, like they liked law and order, but there are ways that some ideas did align, but it's both that and the practical realities of just Orange County being as red as it was
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[SPEAKER_09]: So, Young Kim didn't emerge because Korean Americans suddenly became politically conservative.
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[SPEAKER_09]: She emerged because several historical currents converged at the right moment.
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[SPEAKER_09]: the aftermath of the Los Angeles uprising, growing Korean-American civic organizations, the transnational shadow of the Cold War in Asia.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Longstanding Republican political networks and the breathtaking demographic change across Southern California.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Together, they created an opportunity that hadn't existed a generation earlier.
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[SPEAKER_09]: In 2020, young Kim finally won election to the United States House of Representatives.
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[SPEAKER_09]: She wasn't alone.
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[SPEAKER_09]: That same year, Michelle Steele, one, or a public and congressional election in Orange County as well.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And in the state of Washington, Maryland's Trickland, a mixed-race Korean-American woman became the first Korean-American woman Democrat elected to Congress.
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[SPEAKER_10]: It was the first woman of color to be elected mayor of Tacoma.
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[SPEAKER_10]: I was the first person of color to actually serve as the CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
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[SPEAKER_10]: I am the first African-American to serve in Congress, not just from Washington State, but from the Pacific Northwest.
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[SPEAKER_10]: and then one of three Korean American women to serve in Congress ever.
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[SPEAKER_09]: For the first time in American history, three Korean American women entered Congress in the same election cycle.
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[SPEAKER_09]: The moment felt historic.
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[SPEAKER_09]: In part, it marks the culmination of three decades of political organizing that began after 1992.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Orange County has played an outside role in American political history.
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[SPEAKER_09]: For decades, historians have described it as one of the birthplaces of modern grassroots conservatism.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It was the epicenter of the John Birch Society, the home of Fred Schwartz's anti-Communist school.
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[SPEAKER_09]: The airport is named after John Wayne,
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[SPEAKER_09]: and the KKK had a strong foothold in Anaheim, also the home of some of the most notable mega-churches in the country.
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[SPEAKER_09]: In her landmark books of urban warriors, historian Lisa Macger, traced how white middle-class women activists transformed, Orange County, and to one of the most important hubs of modern conservatism.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Orange County she describes help produce Ronald Reagan.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It helped redefine the Republican party.
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[SPEAKER_09]: It helped build the religious right.
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[SPEAKER_09]: But Dr. Hong's work asked us to continue that story because beginning in the late 20th century Orange County was changing rapidly.
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[SPEAKER_09]: The county that had once symbolized suburban white conservatism was becoming one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the United States.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And that demographic transformation would eventually reshape conservative politics itself.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Here's Dr. Hong again.
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[SPEAKER_13]: in the 1980s.
24:41.663 --> 24:52.151
[SPEAKER_13]: That's really when demographic change starts happening in a dramatic fashion, and it's not just post 1965 voluntary immigrants, right, coming under the 65 immigration that because they wanted to.
24:52.251 --> 24:53.612
[SPEAKER_13]: So that's like the Korean story.
24:53.672 --> 24:54.953
[SPEAKER_13]: It's my parents' story, right?
24:55.013 --> 24:56.094
[SPEAKER_13]: Might be your parents' story.
24:56.614 --> 25:03.479
[SPEAKER_13]: But the post-75 post-Vietnam wars, that story is its own distinct story.
25:04.000 --> 25:07.102
[SPEAKER_13]: I mean, Orange County, these are not small communities.
25:07.422 --> 25:15.928
[SPEAKER_13]: And in fact, their numbers really begin growing in the 80s, 90s, they're not voting, though, until like really the 2000s and after.
25:16.489 --> 25:21.452
[SPEAKER_09]: South demographic shift has meant to shift in the political dynamics of congressional races.
25:22.293 --> 25:34.198
[SPEAKER_09]: Because, indeed, in 2024, Michelle Steele lost her congressional seat to Derek Tran, a lawyer, Army veteran, and a child, a Vietnamese refugees.
25:35.859 --> 25:41.882
[SPEAKER_09]: Tran flipped the 45th congressional district blue and a razor-thin race against Steele.
25:42.462 --> 25:47.404
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents came to this country after they fall off side gone and I grew up extremely poor.
25:51.980 --> 26:19.535
[SPEAKER_13]: Just to give you a sense of what has changed since 1980, in 2024, the most expensive house race in the entire country was the race between Michelle Steele running for reelection, versus Derek Tran, a Vietnamese American Democrat, veteran and lawyer, literally the most expensive house race, one of the most expensive houses in history.
26:20.330 --> 26:31.473
[SPEAKER_13]: I don't want to overstate the importance of significance of Orange County particularly because, honestly, Southern California, big printed LA County look very similar to Orange County in terms of their politics.
26:32.333 --> 26:43.276
[SPEAKER_13]: I just find Southern California politics incredibly fascinating, but what's particularly fascinating is the way that kind of religion kind of intersects, cold war, anti-climitism, foreign policy.
26:43.396 --> 26:46.757
[SPEAKER_13]: It all, it all really converges and really
26:47.680 --> 26:50.983
[SPEAKER_13]: unique ways in a place like Orange County and that is the product.
26:51.003 --> 26:57.368
[SPEAKER_13]: That is really the context out of which we have to understand the rise of somebody like the Uncam but also Michelle Steel as well.
26:58.689 --> 27:04.194
[SPEAKER_09]: After her congressional defeat, Steel was confirmed as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea.
27:04.894 --> 27:10.759
[SPEAKER_09]: But how do these stories of local congressional politics in Orange County and Southern California?
27:18.721 --> 27:31.196
[SPEAKER_09]: How, if at all, can we understand our representative Young Kim's election to her congressional seat within the local context of Korean American and Asian American evangelical history?
27:33.257 --> 27:51.351
[SPEAKER_09]: Indeed, Protestant Christianity has played a pivotal role in Korean-American history since there early 1900s when US missionaries recruited Koreans to migrate to the Hawaiian islands, including the first Korean-American women who were so-called picture brands.
27:53.132 --> 28:00.678
[SPEAKER_09]: It was not uncommon for Korean picture brides to be greeted by a Protestant Korean-American pastor upon arrival.
28:02.599 --> 28:21.800
[SPEAKER_09]: In David use book contentious spirits on early Korean-American immigration history, he argues religion provides the most important entry point in Korean-American history because it attended to the full range of human experience marked by complexity and content.
28:22.768 --> 28:50.298
[SPEAKER_13]: The church historically has also been the most, probably the most important community organization or institution among Korean American immigrants, and particularly for, you know, a lot of downwardly mobile immigrants who might have degrees that they're not using in the U.S., there's a way that the Korean church, the immigrant church, becomes, it becomes a source of professional networks and employment, it becomes a source of kind of social life community,
28:51.278 --> 28:59.164
[SPEAKER_09]: Indeed, even today, according to the Pew Research Center, majority of Korean Americans are Christian, most Protestant.
29:00.505 --> 29:07.210
[SPEAKER_09]: Filipino Americans are even more likely to be Christian, but unlike Korean Americans, they are mostly Catholic.
29:09.131 --> 29:17.517
[SPEAKER_09]: Of course, there are significant minorities among these groups, but the Christian Church is certainly a powerful source of community for immigrants.
29:19.478 --> 29:23.942
[SPEAKER_09]: Now, to be sure, Korean-American Protestants are politically mixed.
29:25.183 --> 29:36.172
[SPEAKER_09]: In political scientists, Janelle Wong's study of Asian-American evangelicals, she shows that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have fully captured their votes.
29:37.273 --> 29:42.657
[SPEAKER_09]: They tend to be more liberal than white evangelicals on issues of race and immigration.
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[SPEAKER_09]: but on the abortion and on the same sex marriage, they tend to agree with their co-religionists.
29:50.683 --> 30:01.271
[SPEAKER_09]: And that's where we see some of the political convergences on the right, including at local Korean-American mega-churchs like Grace Ministries International.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Recall that last December 25 at Grace Ministries International in Fullerton,
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[SPEAKER_09]: Executive pastor, Sam Han, welcome to both Representative Young Kim and Mina Kim, the founder of the Far Right Movement, Buildup Korea.
30:23.587 --> 30:31.733
[SPEAKER_03]: We invite you to a time of prayer, worship, and equipping on what it means to have a public faith with guest speaker, Mina Kim.
30:32.353 --> 30:34.254
[SPEAKER_03]: Faith doesn't stop at the church store.
30:34.595 --> 30:37.837
[SPEAKER_03]: It shows up in how we live, choose, and speak.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Join the conversation in the World Church Center in the Visual Center at 445 today.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And Mina Kim
reflect in.
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[SPEAKER_09]: God has prepared a courageous church, pastors, and a political leader in California.
30:52.882 --> 31:01.388
[SPEAKER_09]: How did the Korean American mega church like this one become a space for politicians, pastors, and activists will align in the same mission?
31:03.250 --> 31:08.273
[SPEAKER_09]: Dr. Hong tells us that we need to look closely at the politics of the family.
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[SPEAKER_13]: Here's what I know about Grace Ministries International just to provide a bit of context.
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[SPEAKER_13]: in what I had previously called that the part of the turn, right?
31:23.706 --> 31:28.709
[SPEAKER_13]: We're a Korean immigrant evangelicals begin registering to vote in large numbers.
31:28.729 --> 31:33.431
[SPEAKER_13]: They sign petitions to try to get a traditional marriage amendment on.
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[SPEAKER_13]: They wanted a proposition on the California ballot.
31:35.372 --> 31:36.993
[SPEAKER_13]: So those were a lot of the early petitions.
31:37.173 --> 31:43.736
[SPEAKER_13]: I'm talking about 1999, 2000, 2004, leading up to the 2000 California State Proposition.
31:44.237 --> 31:46.118
[SPEAKER_13]: Prop 8 was probably the most famous.
31:46.178 --> 31:46.698
[SPEAKER_13]: This is the
31:47.398 --> 31:57.405
[SPEAKER_13]: proposition where Californians across the state were asked, you know, to add an amendment to the California Constitution, the finding marriage as between one man and one woman.
31:58.126 --> 31:59.687
[SPEAKER_09]: So they began organizing.
32:00.447 --> 32:14.277
[SPEAKER_13]: And so 99 2000 Grace Minister's International, they are some of the folks who are spearheading those very early kind of get out the vote and petition signing and organizing activities.
32:15.475 --> 32:25.518
[SPEAKER_09]: But this religious activism on the part of Korean American and Chinese American immigrant evangelicals didn't happen all at once, but in fits and starts.
32:26.258 --> 32:36.980
[SPEAKER_13]: The story to me is not one of, you know, Korean and Chinese immigrant evangelicals get really involved around same-sex marriage and they become this like, the human's like lobbying force.
32:37.000 --> 32:38.361
[SPEAKER_13]: Like, I don't think that's the story.
32:39.680 --> 32:42.122
[SPEAKER_13]: It was kind of an on again, off again, kind of sporadic piece.
32:42.182 --> 32:43.383
[SPEAKER_13]: They were really interested.
32:43.423 --> 32:45.965
[SPEAKER_13]: Many of them were really interested in the same sex marriage piece.
32:46.525 --> 32:50.468
[SPEAKER_09]: And they were motivated by a sense of, quote, reverse missions.
32:51.329 --> 32:57.313
[SPEAKER_09]: Of bringing the Christian gospel back to a West that seemed to have lost its political faith.
32:57.714 --> 33:02.777
[SPEAKER_13]: When you actually look at what Korean immigrant evangelicals, it's in the California, like, why did they get involved?
33:02.857 --> 33:05.479
[SPEAKER_13]: A lot of them, they weren't really that interested in
33:06.997 --> 33:14.520
[SPEAKER_13]: actually weren't that interested in some places in U.S. politics, it's they actually refers to for Chinese folks as well in Northern California.
33:15.060 --> 33:17.621
[SPEAKER_13]: They called it their mission so their reverse mission.
33:17.701 --> 33:32.447
[SPEAKER_13]: So it's whereas once White Western missionaries brought Christianity to places like South Korea and the third world of the majority world, now in a time of growing secularization, it is now up to the majority world to bring true biblical Christianity
33:34.014 --> 33:37.395
[SPEAKER_13]: to places like the United States and the West, like the places like Europe.
33:37.795 --> 33:49.577
[SPEAKER_09]: Korean and Chinese-American evangelicals held hands with the family research council because of this desire to bring what they call true biblical morality back to the United States.
33:50.197 --> 34:00.960
[SPEAKER_13]: Like they were happy to work with white vehicles, white evangelical vehicles, but if you asked them what they were doing, for them it was in many ways a Korean evangelical missions project
34:03.704 --> 34:18.018
[SPEAKER_09]: And in Southern California, even beyond the O.C., Korean Americans are building important religious and political coalitions that span national borders to bring America back to their understanding of Jesus.
34:19.799 --> 34:27.627
[SPEAKER_09]: Remember, Pastor Justin Lim, the translator at the Bells of Korea, 2025 event we covered in episode one.
34:29.003 --> 34:39.752
[SPEAKER_09]: He stood by Meenakim and Charlie Kirk, listening closely, translating in real time, Korean and English, English and to Korean.
34:40.192 --> 34:44.076
[SPEAKER_14]: The fight against communism is one that both our great countries share.
34:58.241 --> 35:02.545
[SPEAKER_09]: but to describe him simply as a translator would miss what is happening.
35:03.727 --> 35:11.014
[SPEAKER_09]: Because translation in this context is not only linguistic, it's relational, institutional, spiritual.
35:12.496 --> 35:18.662
[SPEAKER_09]: My research across two national contexts suggests don't overlook the translator.
35:19.942 --> 35:31.268
[SPEAKER_09]: Though they may seem secondary, they are actually sometimes the star of the show, without whom events and alliances like builds up Korea would fall apart.
35:32.649 --> 35:37.991
[SPEAKER_09]: Because when we look more closely, we see that Pastor Lim is not just conveying words.
35:38.992 --> 35:43.234
[SPEAKER_09]: He's part of the infrastructure that allows this message to move.
35:50.590 --> 36:02.722
[SPEAKER_09]: Dr. Myeongsam saw a sociologist at Sagan University in Seoul, Korea and an expert on the contemporary South Korean Christian right emphasized the significance of the translator.
36:03.480 --> 36:17.707
[SPEAKER_11]: When Charlie Corp came to Korea, and then we not came invited Charlie Corp. And then there was a
guy who was translating Charlie Corp for the audience, and then his name is Reverend in Gesson-Moksha.
36:18.127 --> 36:30.133
[SPEAKER_11]: And he's the pastor of the Harvard Church in Sondo, Incheon, and then if you know anything about the new apostolic reformation movements,
36:31.281 --> 36:38.324
[SPEAKER_11]: one of these apostles actually a Korean-American pastor based in Pasadena, California.
36:38.964 --> 36:42.866
[SPEAKER_11]: He's the pastor of the Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena.
36:44.086 --> 36:44.407
[SPEAKER_09]: Dr.
36:44.487 --> 36:46.908
[SPEAKER_09]: Saw is speaking about Chey-on.
36:47.568 --> 36:51.029
[SPEAKER_09]: He's a well-known global leader in the new apostolic
36:53.298 --> 37:08.905
[SPEAKER_09]: He's the spiritual father of Pastor Jessing Lim, who was ordained in harvest international ministry or him, a transnational, charismatic network led by on, who was often referred to as Papace.
37:10.786 --> 37:16.328
[SPEAKER_09]: This is how the influence flows back and forth between South Korea and Korean American churches,
37:22.627 --> 37:23.007
[SPEAKER_09]: Dr.
37:23.127 --> 37:27.190
[SPEAKER_09]: Saw notes that Pastor Lim is deeply connected to the NAR.
37:27.890 --> 37:42.138
[SPEAKER_09]: Connecting chain ons hub and Pasadena, California, to his church located in the Songdo district of Inchon, South Korea, a transnational highway where conservative evangelical organizing flows freely.
37:42.917 --> 37:57.009
[SPEAKER_11]: Reverend Injesum, the translator for China Kirk, he is a teacher, the name of his church, is also a high-risk work church in Chancongdong, and also Reverend Injesum is the present of the core queer.
37:57.789 --> 38:01.652
[SPEAKER_11]: The core ministry in the United States is founded by Lou Engel,
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[SPEAKER_11]: who has recently organized this voice to DC March, anti-feminism.
38:09.558 --> 38:14.301
[SPEAKER_11]: He's also part of the new Apostle Reformation, and that work one of the Apostles.
38:15.022 --> 38:22.387
[SPEAKER_11]: Not many people pay attention to who's translating, but whenever Reverend Cheyenne comes to Korea, Injesum is the one who's translating.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Indeed, Pastor Lim is a spiritual prodigy of Cheyenne.
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[SPEAKER_09]: So when Pastor Lim translated for Mina Kim and Charlie Kirk at Bellsup Korea 2025, just a week before Kirk's murder, he did so from within a shared theological and institutional world, not outside of it.
38:46.142 --> 38:53.984
[SPEAKER_09]: Through his bilingual translation work, Pastor Lim helped to connect the world of turning point USA,
39:02.072 --> 39:02.433
[SPEAKER_09]: Dr.
39:02.534 --> 39:06.547
[SPEAKER_09]: Saw notes, pastoral limbs, special skill as a translator.
39:07.069 --> 39:09.670
[SPEAKER_11]: Translating sermons, and these are different skills.
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[SPEAKER_11]: If someone offers a sermon, then they cite our biblical passages.
39:14.452 -->
39:20.714
[SPEAKER_11]: You have to memorize the Korean translation of that biblical passage, in Korea, right?
39:20.994 --> 39:32.559
[SPEAKER_11]: Because otherwise, if you translated literally the audience who are familiar with the Korean version of the Bible, recognize which passage that the person is talking about,
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[SPEAKER_11]: You know, I came obviously knows a lot of Bible, but I think this is actually professionally trained to serve us to translate for creature, and that sense he has a unique role.
39:48.557 --> 40:11.372
[SPEAKER_09]: Indeed, like Minikim, pastor, Jess and Lim is a bridge to evangelistic and revival networks that fuel far-right politics, to Christian nationalist charismatic leadership structures that already operate across borders, connecting Korea to communities in southern California.
40:12.892 --> 40:20.117
[SPEAKER_09]: The expansion of Chey on's transnational network depend on faithful translators like Pastor Lim.
40:21.698 --> 40:27.142
[SPEAKER_09]: Indeed, just recently, Chey on visited Pastor Lim's church and he translated for him.
40:27.930 --> 40:31.032
[SPEAKER_04]: In the Bible says, in Genesis 1, 28, I want you to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth that has not changed over thousands of years.
40:31.052 --> 40:50.146
[SPEAKER_05]: Hanani, in the last three years, the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful, and the world has been successful,
40:50.226 --> 40:52.568
[SPEAKER_05]: We have a lot more to do.
40:52.808 --> 40:55.390
[SPEAKER_05]: Ruingul Moksani was born in California.
40:55.531 --> 40:57.492
[SPEAKER_05]: California is a Japanese.
40:57.512 --> 40:59.934
[SPEAKER_04]: There were a couple in California as one child.
40:59.994 --> 41:02.336
[SPEAKER_05]: California is a Japanese.
41:02.597 --> 41:09.222
[SPEAKER_04]: So when Luz family and our family were going to McDonald's for lunch, they thought we were an elementary school field trip.
41:09.242 --> 41:13.646
[SPEAKER_05]: So Ruingul Moksani and I were born in California, and when I went to the McDonald's,
41:19.400 --> 41:22.622
[SPEAKER_09]: from the U.S. to Korea across this back and forth.
41:23.402 --> 41:31.366
[SPEAKER_09]: In
Southern California, other conservative evangelicals are animated by this message, even outside the Korean diaspora.
41:32.106 --> 41:36.748
[SPEAKER_09]: One significant connection we haven't discussed yet involves Rob McCoy.
41:37.889 --> 41:43.832
[SPEAKER_09]: Charlie Kirk and Minicam shared a pastor or spiritual father in Pastor Rob McCoy.
41:44.964 --> 41:50.765
[SPEAKER_09]: And when McCoy, a key figure in turning point USA, you'll realize Charlie Kirk.
41:51.425 --> 41:53.586
[SPEAKER_09]: He interwoven his visit to Korea.
41:55.226 --> 42:07.328
[SPEAKER_09]: McCoy brought this message back into white evangelical America at the massive media event of Charlie Kirk's memorial and at his southern California church in Ventura County.
42:08.648 --> 42:10.148
[SPEAKER_01]: Charlie Kirk called me as pastor.
42:14.918 --> 42:19.440
[SPEAKER_01]: I was with Charlie about, uh, little over two weeks ago in Korea.
42:21.040 --> 42:31.024
[SPEAKER_09]: The ongoing Korean War animates a far right of Angelica Alliance across national borders that continue to fan the flames of Christian nationalism.
42:33.945 --> 42:40.567
[SPEAKER_09]: So much of America's story of faith in politics gets told through a black and white racial binary.
42:41.922 --> 42:48.384
[SPEAKER_09]: Korean and Korean Americans don't neatly fit into that story, even though they've been shaping it for decades.
42:49.504 --> 42:57.826
[SPEAKER_09]: From the views of Orange County mega churches, from Congressional offices in Washington, from Instagram deals and Los Angeles.
42:59.327 --> 43:06.989
[SPEAKER_09]: When we overlook the stories of minoritized communities, it's harder for us to understand how the religious and political
43:10.292 --> 43:22.777
[SPEAKER_09]: It's harder for us to understand American political and religious choices, like why young Korean-American men are wrapping about far-right Christian politics on the campus of UCLA.
43:24.418 --> 43:34.322
[SPEAKER_09]: But the history of war, immigration, diplomacy, dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality help us to peel back the layers.
43:35.969 --> 43:40.953
[SPEAKER_09]: And it's important for us to pay attention for their politics don't stay here.
43:41.613 --> 43:42.194
[SPEAKER_09]: They travel.
43:43.275 --> 43:46.617
[SPEAKER_09]: Bills of Korea has just announced yet another chapter.
43:47.238 --> 43:50.380
[SPEAKER_09]: Now in my own hometown of Atlanta, Georgia.
43:52.061 --> 43:56.545
[SPEAKER_09]: And their faith and politics travel across the Pacific and beyond.
43:57.640 --> 44:11.701
[SPEAKER_09]: In our next episode, we'll continue pulling on these transnational threats and follow them back to even deeper historical roots in the wake of the Korean War, South Korean authoritarianism.
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[SPEAKER_09]: And Billy Graham's largest crusade, hosted not in a mega church in Southern California or in a southern football stadium.
44:23.157 --> 44:27.983
[SPEAKER_09]: But in of all places, Seoul, Korea, in 1973.
44:35.099 --> 44:36.420
[SPEAKER_09]: That's it for this episode.
44:37.120 --> 44:47.346
[SPEAKER_09]: From the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement, Case Spearances brought to you by Apari, the Asian Pacific American Religion's Research Initiative.
44:48.166 --> 44:52.349
[SPEAKER_09]: It's part of the Under God's Project, funded by the Henry Luz Foundation.
44:53.129 --> 44:57.732
[SPEAKER_09]: It's produced by Andrew Gill, with Editorial Direction from Brad O'Neshi.
44:58.692 --> 45:08.294
[SPEAKER_09]: Leopane is the executive producer, production assistance from Carrie Onishi, a regional score by David Bazão.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Logo by Eric Zwarzinski, I'm Dr. Helen Junkim.
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[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you for listening.
45:23.116 --> 45:25.277
[SPEAKER_09]: And Mina Kim, if you're listening,
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[SPEAKER_09]: I'd love to interview you.
45:27.943 --> 45:29.206
[SPEAKER_09]: Hit me up on Instagram.