Hun_s_Picture-16n2g74Hun-Yong Jo was originally from Seoul, South Korea. It wasn’t his decision to immigrate to America. The nine year old knew he was going to live in a different country, but at first it didn’t feel real to him. To the boy, it felt that he was going on a vacation. Hun said there were probably many reasons that why he moved, but as a young child, he didn’t know why he moved. Now in his mid- fifties, he thinks the reason behind his move was that Korea was a third world country at reconstruction period during that time period. The two most prominent changes for the young boy at first were language and home. Hun lived in a house in Korea but down-graded to an apartment in America restricting space for the boy to run around. Prior to coming to America, he did not learn any English. Even though Hun had many disadvantages, he did not have trouble making friends on the first day of school.
The clueless immigrant was enrolled as a 4th grader at a public school in Detroit, Michigan. On the first day, a Caucasian boy was making fun of him. After school, Hun followed the boy and chased him down to his house to make a statement. Many of classmates from the school followed Hun as he kept chasing the boy. The boy was intimidated and was scared to come out of his house making Hun the hero of the day. His experience as an immigrant was abnormal, since he had no trouble socializing despite all the odds.
To him, Hun knew that his experience was unique since there was a low population of Asians, especially Koreans, in Michigan. In the 1970’s, life for an Asian was scary since there were lots of racial discrimination and oil crisis. Furthermore, people who commit hate crimes against Asians didn’t get penalized such was seen like in Vincent Chin’s case. Eventually, life for the all Asians got better as the decades went on. Over all, he gained more than lost more since Hun thinks that America has a potential for you to released your talents compared to such in Korea. Korea is a very strict and systematic place that makes it hard for people to grow and thrive in their talents. He said that “I brought the experience from Korea and built upon that in America since that is the ‘American Dream’”. Hun also said that “If I had stayed in Korean I would not be the same person but still would have survived”. His envision was that “America is what I built around me”.
