(51) Gaining valuable experience

This is the last of my “Untold Stories” series. Through the course of this series, I have tried to provide my unique experiences, observations, and criticisms, as well as an unbiased comparison between Korea and the U.S., from my service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

I thank The Korea Times for the opportunity to allow me to write these stories and share them with its readers. I plan to make these behind-the-scenes stories of U.S. politics into a book so that future generations may glean something from my tales.

This book will be published by the Hankook Ilbo, a sister paper of The Korea Times, and there will be events both in Korea and the U.S. The proceeds from this book will be used to fund the “Jay Kim Fund,” a charity to help future Korean-Americans who harbor political aspirations.

This series is not a memoir of my life, but a series of stories that describe the American politics and society that I felt and experienced. I focused on the subjects that only I could write about from my own experiences. I started this series with the story about my experience with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its ratification process, and my own campaign for the House.

I also wrote for young Korean-Americans planning to enter politics, providing certain tips for my success in my political campaigns, where personal attacks were flying all over the place.

I talked about the deep emotion that I felt when I returned to Korea for the first time in 31 years, when then-President Roh Tae-woo invited me after I became mayor of Diamond Bar, Calif., the first and only Korean-American mayor in the U.S. I also explained my experience of visiting Taiwan and Hong Kong as a House representative-elect and Taiwan’s decision to sell their nuclear waste to North Korea, and my role in helping to block the transaction by passing a Congressional resolution.

In one of the stories, I talked about a fundamental difference in the lifestyles of the members of the Korean National Assembly and the members of the U.S. Congress. I revealed that many U.S. congressmen commuted to work by subway. I also introduced and provided sketches of my favorite past U.S. presidents. I compared regional animosity in Korea to regional animosity in the U.S. as well as the continuing history of racial discrimination in America. Then, after watching the protests in Seoul, I talked about the freedom of assembly in the U.S., citing my experience as a mayor.

I also wrote about same-sex marriage, which recently caused a controversy in California. I compared the Korean press with the American press, and talked about illegal immigration, one of the U.S.’s biggest headaches, and freedom of religion. I twice looked into whether or not a nation’s political system can change its character. I expressed my opinion on the movement from certain parts of the U.S. to abolish the U.N. and the reform of the U.N. Finally, I finished my series with the explanation of city, state, and federal politics in the U.S.

The death of former President Roh Moo-hyun made me look back on my difficult days. After I was elected into the House in 1991, I was a hero and a rising star. My popularity was so high that I was even in a high school history textbook. I made a lot of speeches in Congress, I was listed by the press as the most passionate freshman congressman two years in a row, and I was ranked as a “rising star” in U.S. politics.

As I did not realize that being on the fast track in politics would bring trouble, after my first official congressional session was over, I participated in a special program on C-Span, which was broadcasted throughout the country, to criticize the newly launched Democratic Clinton administration. Sure enough, a targeted investigation on my campaign fundraising activities started, and there was not one easy day for the rest of my congressional career due to the continuous, persistent investigation.

The investigation looking for allegedly violations of the election laws made my life and the lives of the people around me, including my family, friends and supporters, miserable. When I read the news that some Korean companies paid tremendous fines for making political contributions of a couple of thousand dollars indirectly without knowing the strict U.S. election laws, I was so sorry for them and so hurt from the indignity that I felt because they genuinely did not know about the complicated laws. Every day, major papers printed articles about me with my picture on the front page and targeted me, describing the case as “Korea-gate.”

Articles in Korean newspapers were translated into articles in American newspapers after a couple of days, which would return as new articles in Korean newspapers as they were translated back into Korean. It was a vicious cycle. This process distorted many stories, but I did not have time to respond to each of them one by one. My campaign manager repeatedly told me that when they investigate members of Congress with such intensity, very few could survive. It is almost miracle that I did survive.

Furthermore, when my close friend and volunteer who worked so hard for me was put on trial for violation of the election laws, it was so painful and unfair that I thought about killing myself on his behalf. I heard that his life was eventually ruined by this. However, whenever I was angered by all the controversy, I gritted my teeth and worked even harder in Congress, thinking of many Koreans and local residents who strongly supported and encouraged me and our next generation that considered me as a role model. That is why I kept up my 100 percent voting record.

My campaign manager always said to me that this would never happen if I were white. I didn’t believe it and I still don’t believe it. However, I did not give up, and instead worked hard at my congressional activities to avoid leaving a permanent blemish on Korean-Americans and second-generation Korean immigrants who have ambition in politics. I won all three House elections by a large margin of votes, won the perfect attendance award, and did many things within my power for my district. One accomplishment that I am proud of is the completion of the (LA) Ontario International Airport.

I’ve often thought that a public figure is not alone in the end. Now that I think about it, I am so thankful that I overcame the difficulties. I have gained such a valuable experience. I thank my family and friends, and so many supporters who believed in me whenever I was weak and throughout the several crises. I thank all of them from the bottom of my heart.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the KimChangJoon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).

(50) City and state politics in US

I was a political novice when I was elected into the U.S. House of Representatives. I was a city councilman and a mayor before that, but these were not so much political positions as leadership positions that represented specific areas. There are two types of mayors and city councils in U.S. cities.

In big cities with populations over a million people, like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, city councils consisting of roughly 50 members serve as the elected representatives of their districts. A mayor is selected either by an indirect election by the city council, by appointing a councilman with the highest vote in a council election, or by a mayoral election. Of course, the selection method is different in each city, but it is usually one of these three.

These positions are volunteer positions in most cases. They pay either nothing or a small amount of expediency money ($2,000-$3,000 a month). That means that mayors or city councilmen are mostly business owners who can make time for these positions, or locally influential people who are well-off financially.

When I was mayor of Diamond Bar, Calif., I also took care of city affairs at the city hall from 8:30 to 9:30 every morning and then had to hurry off to my civil engineering firm. The city council met once a week. It started at 7 p.m. and sometimes continued until 2 a.m. These council sessions were broadcast live from start to finish on a local cable channel. Sometimes, hundreds of people attended a session.

There were five or six residents who always attended those meetings. They always arrived early and sat in the front row. They always found faults and attacked me, the mayor, or other fellow city council members. Maybe it was their hobby, but they opposed and criticized everything. One session, hoping they wouldn’t come, I asked a staffer about them, who told me that they had been sitting in the front row, looking angry about something. My heart sank at this news. There are people like those in every city, and they are often called “gadflies.”

A mayor or a city councilman usually reveals his party affiliation, though he is not required to do so. However, there is no party nomination system, and during the election, he has to run the campaign without any help from his party. If someone has raised his local recognition by being a mayor or a city council member, he usually takes a shot at the state house or senate as a next step on the political ladder.

To become a member of a state assembly, he needs to go through the nomination process of his party through a primary election. The real party politics starts here. These people can truly be considered “politicians.”

Each state has a governor, a lieutenant governor and a state house speaker. A state assemblyman should have a district in the state, and there is no proportional representation. The system of the upper and lower chambers of a state assembly is slightly different in each state. In California, there are 80 state house seats and 40 state senate seats, each of whose districts combines two house districts. A member of the state house has a two-year term, and there is a three-term limit. The term for the state senate is four years and there is a two-term limit.

Being a state assemblyman in a big state like California, Texas and New York is a full-time job which pays a handsome wage. However, in other small states, these positions are basically volunteer positions. State assemblies do not hold their meetings every day, but a few times a year. Except for budget sessions, they do not meet that often.

Like the federal government, the state government operates on taxes (such as income taxes, sales taxes, and gasoline taxes) on its residents. It is usually not easy to pass a budget because of the opposition party. In the case of California, it is interesting that the governor and the lieutenant governor do not run together as running mates. They run for their offices separately from one another by getting nominations from their parties through primaries.

This means that the elected governor and lieutenant governor may belong to different parties. In that case, the governor always has to be aware of the lieutenant governor, and the lieutenant governor does not hesitate to express his opinion and opposition in executive meetings. In a sense, this is more effective than a toothless prime minister system.

The governor refrains from traveling abroad, absent from his office. The reason is that if the governor leaves his office to travel to a foreign country, the lieutenant governor can sign bills in place of the governor during the period. One can say that the government system in each state is a smaller version of the federal government. The crucial difference from the federal government is that a state assembly only deals with the matters of the state.

So, in most cases, politicians enter the U.S. Congress after getting enough political experience through several years in a state assembly. It is the reason why there are many U.S. congressmen who have been through state assemblies. Since they have enough experience in politics, they start their congressional activities without hesitation, even in the U.S. Congress.

In my case, I went straight from a city council and a mayoral office to the U.S. House without going through the state assembly. I still regret this. I believe that readers can fully imagine how difficult my congressional life was, considering that I was a political novice, who was the only Asian-American House representative from the Republican Party (known as a party of and for white people), and that I was elected in a white district by beating a white state senator and a famous political veteran.

The political advancement of Korean-Americans is in such a feeble state. Paul Shin of Washington is currently the only state assemblyman. Shin was adopted and grew up to become a state assemblyman of whom all Koreans can be proud.

Though the entrance of Korean-Americans into politics is occasionally reported in the front pages of newspapers, they are mostly mayors or city councilmen. I hope that all of them will move into the U.S. Congress through state assemblies.

There have been no other Korean-Americans after me in the U.S. Congress, but it will be only a matter of time. A small nation like Korea has produced geniuses in sports like Olympic baseball, figure skating and golf, something Koreans could never have dreamed of for many years. So, I firmly believe that it will not take long before another Korean-American becomes a U.S. congressman.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the KimChangJoon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).

(49) Shall we get rid of UN?

On June 20, 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to withhold the payment by the U.S. of its U.N. due by a vote of 221 to 184. This bill contained a demand for reform in U.N. organizations and the reduction of due payment to the U.N. to half until the adoption of said reforms.

At that time, this bill was adopted easily in the Republican-majority House, and I also supported it actively. The Republicans questioned the purpose of the U.N., saying it was wasting money on areas beyond its original purpose and it had become so big that it needed structural reorganization.

In this context, the bill demanded that the U.N. should implement its restructuring measures within two years. The bill also included the establishment of an independent board to oversee the spending and the protection of whistle blowers who report wrongdoings inside the U.N. The U.S. paid a quarter of the budget of the U.N. Its cost had been growing tremendously every year, there were many items, of which purpose was unclear, and many programs were redundant. Republican lawmakers had begun to show their dissatisfaction about the management of the U.N. on a full scale.

The Democratic Party opposed this bill strongly. They claimed that this kind of “my way or the highway” behavior would draw criticism from the international community and that this imprudent behavior damaged the honor of the House. Even the Department of State also made an official announcement that, though it fully understood and agreed with the reasons behind the bill, the House went a little too far by threatening the U.N.

However, the Bush administration agreed to the bill and also agreed to officially submit it to the U.N. Of course, the bill was more of a symbolic measure, but still it sent a strong message that the U.N. could not just ignore. The reason why the House passed the bill was that the U.N. had grown far beyond control. Many Americans began to wonder what the U.N. did and what kind of control the U.N. had. The U.N. spends too much with no accountability. This led to the idea of restructuring, or getting rid of the apparently fat, lazy U.N.

Recently, a movement to get rid of the U.N. has appeared again. The undeterred rocket launch by North Korea showed the incompetence of the U.N., and many Americans began to have doubts about the veto power that the five permanent members of the Security Council have.

I feel that the permanent member system, which was adopted 60 years ago, is out of date. It seems ridiculous to me: on what grounds should those five nations have veto power? Sixty years ago, the U.S., China, the U.K., France and Russia were called the five world powers, and that was the reason why they were given such a privilege. However, it is about time to change that system.

I think now is the time to remove the permanent membership system and put G20 nations in the Security Council. These days, economically powerful nations are the real world powers. I also believe that the U.N. should retain the system of having 15 nonpermanent rotational memberships in the council, and that every decision should be made by a majority vote; no country should have veto power and the principle of decision by majority, the fundamental idea of democracy, should be followed.

I would suggest that the six-party talks should be dismantled. I do not remember any noticeable result from the six-party talks for the last few years. It is pitiful to watch the interviews after those talks. Nothing seems to have come out of the talks except for the agreements to hold a meeting again. The talks were based on vague expectation that continuing talks would result in a solution, but the opposite has happened in reality.

Taking a closer look at the situation, Russia and China seem always to stand by North Korea, and I don’t know what we are trying to do with Japan. It’s deplorable. Japan always seems to only take on the issue of its people being kidnapped by North Korea, and does not seem to have any interest in the peace of the Korean Peninsula.

It would be better to change the six-party talks to four-party talks by removing Russia and Japan. The participants should be reduced to China, the U.S., South Korea and North Korea, and the level of delegates at the talks should be raised at least to the vice-minister level.

Finally, South Korea should also build a missile defense system as soon as possible. Of course, North Korea would not launch a $600 million intercontinental missile into South Korea, but the anxiety of South Koreans and foreign investors should be minimized by building a missile defense system.

Though China and Russia will oppose our missile defense system, I believe that if we proceed firmly and persuade them of its solely defensive purpose, China and North Korea will not be able to do much about it. The U.S. will welcome a missile defense system in South Korea quietly, and actively help Seoul build it, for the missile defense system will have to rely on U.S. equipment and technology. Then, the system will be a state-of-the-art system much more advanced than North Korea.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the KimChangJoon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com). The views expressed in the above article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.

(48) Freedom of religion in America

Everyone knows that the Christian faith played a profound role in the founding of the United States. According to history, the beginning of the U.S. was the Plymouth Colony, which was established on the Mayflower by the Pilgrims, who left England to escape religious persecution and arrived in New England in December 1620.

Their purpose was to build a new world in which they could practice their beliefs in peace. The belief that people should be free to believe and practice as they wish was carried over into the writing of the Constitution for the new nation after the revolution.

Nevertheless the Christian religion has held a dominant position since America’s inception, and the U.S. developed as a country based largely on Judeo-Christian values. In the 19th and 20th centuries the U.S. became a base for many Christian churches and organizations to send out missionaries throughout the world. As they worked in poor and uncivilized countries, many young missionaries often died from malnutrition and disease.

Some of these missionaries built new educational institutions and hospitals, as well as churches and orphanages, as in Korea at the end of the Joseon Kingdom. It is no exaggeration that their efforts made Korea one of the countries where Christianity flourishes most.

However, the influence of Christianity has weakened in the U.S. as time passed. As millions of immigrants came from all over the world, various religions spread and began to deeply penetrate into the traditional Christian culture of America. Not only in the U.S. but also in Europe, the number of people who have turned their backs on the Christian church has increased.

In fact, in the last 20 years, the number of Christians has decreased, while the number of atheists has increased fourfold. Younger generations increasingly resist Christian principles.

Movements arose to enforce strict observations that the government should not support or condone an official religion, which led to most public schools eliminating the habit of morning prayers.

Some also claimed that words from the Bible, pictures of Jesus, and the Ten Commandments should be removed from the walls of public schools. Their reason was that such coercion of religion violated the freedom of religion.

Several Republican lawmakers, including myself, decided to propose a school prayer amendment, and I took a lead on passing this bill as a sponsor. The content of the bill passed in 2002 can be summarized as follows:

“Nothing in this (U.S.) Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer. Neither the United States nor any state shall compose the words of any prayer to be said in public schools.”

In other words, schools can permit a prayer time as long as each student prays quietly following his own private religious belief without being forced to join in the prayer of a Christian or any other religion. This was a compromise with the hard-liners that wanted to get rid of prayer time in schools, and it contained the implication that private schools could continue to force Christian prayer.

In fact, there are many problems inside the Christian religion. As the great church leaders like Billy Graham became weaker, scandals involving Christian televangelists broke out, and as TV showed corruption and fights inside the church, the integrity of the Christian religion fell.

Christian groups had great influence in politics and society. They have fought strongly against abortion and gay marriage, and for allowing school prayer in public schools. However, they have lost a measure of their influence these days, as the American society has become a multiethnic, multicultural society of multi-religion. Even the military seems to recognize homosexuality with the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Around 1830, Mormonism appeared in the U.S. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the main branch of Mormonism. Mormons settled mainly in Salt Lake City in Utah, after facing many adverse conditions during their move from the East to the West to avoid oppression from Christians. The hero of these people was Brigham Young.

One striking feature of the Mormon belief was a return to what they considered the Biblical practice of a man having multiple wives. This caused a great deal of friction between Mormons and others in the U.S., and moved Congress to pass the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in 1862. The Mormon Church itself officially rejected the practice in 1890.

Even so, various pockets of fundamentalists continued the practice in various remote places even into modern times. Today, it’s against the law in all 50 U.S. states.

I remember magazine articles on the practice of polygamy among Mormon fundamentalists in the U.S. The articles contained several pages of pictures, and one of them was a picture of a shabby man with missing several front teeth with his six wives. The ages of his wives seemed to range from the 20s to the 40s, and they looked beautiful. After this picture, there were some men in the U.S who wanted to join the Mormon faith.

I was curious which wife the man who missed several front teeth has chosen to keep. As this issue has gradually disappeared from the interest and memory of the press and the people of America, I wonder what happened to these folks and their wives with children.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the KimChangJoon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).

(47) Humanistic interpretation of law

It has been long discussed whether the system of a country decides the character of its people. History has already proven that a democratic political system, where the people govern their country through their elected officials and the economy is left to the free markets, is generally the most successful of all political systems. This is not to say that democracy is free of faults. But it still rings true that no system better than democracy has been found on Earth.

The world could not hide its astonishment upon the adoption of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787 in Philadelphia. Until then most countries were ruled by a monarchy, where a single leader held power over everything in the country, including the lives of his citizens. It was even said that a monarch owned the birds that flew over his land.

However, under this new Constitution the people elected a president every four years, as well as representatives to Congress (whose numbers were determined by population size) to make the laws, and judges (not monarchs) would decide judicial matters. This stunned a lot of people; even at the time, there was a movement in the fledgling U.S. to put a member of the Russian royal family in charge, claiming that the Constitution gave the ignorant masses unlimited power. But in the end, the Constitution, created by the pivotal efforts of the 55 delegates from the 13 states which signed the Declaration of Independence, was ratified nationwide.

Some inherent problems of a democratic political system have become apparent. The most outstanding is the disparity between the rich and the poor. Though the Constitution emphasized the equality of people, abilities are not created equal, and the really unlucky found themselves left behind and in poverty. This led to the Socialist and Communist movements, and in Russia an egalitarian system where the country was governed by a committee of the people instead of a monarch took hold rapidly. However, even this system became an autocracy in the end, and Communism has slowly disappeared from the earth.

North Korea is the only major remnant, but even its system is not real Communism, but an autocratic monarchy where power is hereditary. North Korea, which rejects free market economy and deprives its people of suffrage, has become one of the poorest countries in the world.

On the other hand, the U.S., which introduced democracy, has become the representative of democracy and the richest country in the world. It drew the envy of the world, and every country began to copy its system. Numerous laws passed as the experience of democracy accumulated, and as the character of the nation was formed and changed by these laws, the unique American system began to stabilize.

Perhaps one unforeseen consequence of the principle that everyone is equal before the law is that the U.S. has become increasingly a country managed by law and lawyers, and where anyone who breaks a law may face stiff penalties regardless of the broader context. Contrary to this, Korea developed into a country governed by the law but with its unique humanistic tradition, under the principle that the people do not have to abide by bad laws. Abusing this has led to a lawless society where the police get beaten and violence occurs in streets, and even in the National Assembly, where laws are made.

Watching the Korean protesters against U.S. beef importation beating up policemen in the public streets of downtown Seoul became an everyday scene. However, when these same violent protesters came to the U.S. to protest, they held a quiet protest following police orders without complaint. I thought that the strict adherence of law and order in America led to this behavioral change. It seemed likely that they acted like meek little lambs because of the U.S. police’s reputation of shooting those that didn’t follow their instructions.

It was funny to see Americans frowning and sneering at the protesters, who had spent so much money only to march quietly on the sidewalks holding picket signs but not making any sounds, wondering why they even came to the U.S. to protest at such high cost of money and time. The protest was a complete failure; I was told that the protesters went sightseeing the next day and returned to Korea. A few days later I saw the returned protesters pushing and beating the police once again on Korean TV, as though they were making up for lost time in the U.S.

In America, both parties have dedicated major efforts toward solving the problem of crime. The Democrats poured hundreds of millions of dollars into crime prevention, claiming that prisoners should be rehabilitated to adapt to society. The Republican Party poured hundreds of millions of dollars into crime punishment, claiming that more policemen should be hired and more prisons should be built. Furthermore, the Republican Party strongly supports capital punishment and has regularly proposed a bill to limit appeals by those sentenced to death.

H.R.2703, H.R.729 and H.R.4029 are the exemplary bills proposed by the Republican Party. These bills propose that Americans a) build more prisons, increase the number of police officers and correction officers, and adopt a more effective capital punishment system; b) ensure that a death sentence cannot be reduced to life in prison; and c) quickly execute prisoners on death row.

I don’t claim that the U.S. laws should be copied without making changes. A large, diverse American society needs a strict system of law, and order cannot be easily kept without the strict system. I support the humanistic interpretation of law in Korea. I cannot accept that some people beat up the police, but I like the Korean system where people can push and take on the police. I think the benevolent system unique to Korea, where each person’s situation is taken into consideration even if he broke a law, is the right system. Instead of a cold, heartless punishment, Korean judges interpret the law from a much more humanitarian and sympathetic viewpoint.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the KimChangJoon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).

(46) Mass exodus from big cities

The exodus of Caucasians from big cities began to clearly appear in the U.S. in the 1970s. Caucasian families seemed to believe that when an African-American family moved into their neighborhood, the neighborhood would soon become akin to Harlem, causing the value of their houses to plummet. Caucasian towns would use all kinds of ways to block African-Americans from moving in. This was not because they did not want African-American neighbors, but more because they were worried about the value of their houses.

An African-American walking around a Caucasian neighborhood would often be stopped by a Caucasian policeman on patrol, and in some severe cases would bring them to their police station and only release them after a needless investigation. This sent a strong message for African-Americans not to come near Caucasian neighborhoods.

However, there was only so much they could do, and if there was a sign of African-Americans moving into their neighborhoods, Caucasians with money would quickly sell their houses, even at lower prices than market value, to move out to the suburb. As a result, African-Americans began to dominate big cities, and housing prices plummeted there. As major department stores began to move out to the suburbs, brand new larger cities began to form in the U.S. at that time.

One example of this was Los Angeles. Its inner city, once part of a beautiful tradition, became a mess in the 1970s. The main streets of the city became like those of a Mexican city on the weekends. Hispanic songs blared from every store, everyone would talk loudly in Spanish, and the streets were filled with the odor of Mexican food.

People on the streets were mainly Mexican, African-Americans and Asians, which meant that the occasional Caucasian walking around looked out of place. It was an unpleasant area full of homeless people who begged for change, would bother pedestrians, and would demand money from drivers after the unwanted washing of their car windows. Come Monday, the city would return to a typical American big city full of well dressed people. However, soon Caucasians in LA would move out to the suburbs, to places like Orange County and the San Fernando Valley.

As this cycle continued, the once-beautiful LA gradually turned into a not pretty city. The famous Wilshire Boulevard was no longer flourishing, and the beautiful old European-style houses, where famous actors used to live, were sold at below market prices to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and other immigrants. The Biltmore Hotel, a luxurious hotel with a long history, was also sold to Japanese investors.

Hollywood was in decline, and places for families to go on weekends gradually disappeared. Congress, in response, established the Community Redevelopment Agency to help revive downtowns. The idea was to set up a tax-exempt area downtown for redevelopment and draw the middle class back into the city. That was the time when the reinvestment of tax increment money began, and downtown LA was where this program was the most successful.

I once watched a news report about the concentration of the Korean population in Seoul. It said that half of the Korean population lived in Seoul and its nearby areas, and that almost 80 percent of the Korean economy was concentrated in Seoul. This was the opposite of the U.S.’s urban situations: as everyone came to Seoul, the population of rural areas reduced, local schools were closed, towns rapidly declined, and people had to bring their spouses from overseas.

Even building a new city outside of Seoul and moving government agencies there did not seem to stop the population increase in Seoul. People said that they would rather commute by KTX (bullet train) than leave Seoul, because of the major difference in education, medical services, and cultural life.

The problem in America was to bring the middle class families back to the big cities. To do this, LA built the now-famous Bonaventure Hotel, and the new area of high risers centered on the hotel was connected to downtown, changing the skyline of LA totally.

Following the government blueprint, as high rising condominiums and apartments with swimming pools and tennis courts were built in the inner city, the idea of enjoying city life appeared. As young couples, tired of commuting, began to move into LA’s downtown, it began to regain its own form.

However, it was not easy to give up residential areas with their open spaces, endless-looking lawns, good schools, and large trees. As expected, there was a limit to how much downtown LA would regain its old form. No matter how much money the government would pour into there, it fell short of drawing those still happily living in suburbs to the high risers in the city.

So the big cities of the U.S. play the role of a place to work for people who would commute there during the day and return home to their families 20-30 miles away in the evening. The American middle classes are satisfied with the suburban life, where they don’t have to send their children to crowded schools, while enjoy beautiful parks and big shopping malls with their families on weekends, even if they have to suffer traffic jams on weekdays.

From the early 1990s, young working couples began to return to inner cities, due to rising energy costs and ever-growing traffic jams. As Caucasians gradually returned to the big cities after 30 years, the life patterns of these cities began to change. Americans adapted to the busy life of big cities, where many races lived together.

Through this process, the negative opinions about Asians (especially Koreans) began to disappear, and the place of Korean-Americans in the U.S. greatly improved. Also, as excellent products made in Korea came to the U.S., American views on Korea changed as well. America finally became a color blind society, living together happily.

So now, with Korean-Americans holding higher status in the U.S., I hope that more Korean Americans will enter into politics. Who knows? It might not be long before a Korean-American will become a vice president.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com). The views expressed in the above article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.

(45) System and people

I read a newspaper article that claimed the character of a nation is determined by that nation’s societal system. For example, it is due to its societal system that U.S. citizens live in an organized manner with a high level of satisfaction in spite of the U.S.’s land mass, where it takes a six hour flight from Seattle (in the northwest) to reach Miami (in the southeast). It has a population of nearly 300 million with numerous ethnicities and religions.

America’s societal system is why thousands of people immigrate to the U.S. from all over the world every day, leaving their native countries behind. When I was the mayor of Diamond Bar, Calif., Koreans flocked to my city after hearing that a Korean-American was mayor there. One day, a high school principal met with me to discreetly discuss a pressing issue.

He told me that there were a few Korean students at his school who drove expensive sports cars, lived in luxurious apartments, and held parties with loud music almost every night. These students’ rich parents would send a great deal of money to their relatives or acquaintances that lived nearby to look after those students; however, these people were often very busy and would just leave them alone. The principal had no choice but to come to me, a fellow Korean.

If the music from a house is too loud, their neighbor calls the police, who immediately come to order the volume lowered. If this happens again, the offenders are arrested and are only released if their bail is paid. However, if this happens a third time, the situation becomes very serious. The offenders are put in prison, because of California’s “Three Strikes” law, with no room for forgiveness or exception. In fact, it is not just students but also their parents that face many difficulties when they first move to the U.S.

However, whenever immigrants are asked which part of the U.S. they like the most, without hesitation, they pick the education system first. The Diamond Bar High School was known for its good academics in LA County, and Korean parents had a high tendency to move to areas with good schools. The second reason why Korean immigrants come is the so-called “American Dream.”

The U.S. is often called the land of opportunity, since ordinary people have opportunities to succeed with their hard work here. It was only because American society provides plenty of such opportunities that Bill Gates was able to become the richest man in the world after he started his business in his garage.

Some Korean immigrants told me that people could not succeed in their own native land without connections with higher-ups in political power or without extreme wealth. Though it is hard to take these words at face value, I was surprised when I learned that the owner of a big corporation manipulated its stock prices for his son to inherit it cheaply, and made his son a millionaire overnight. If you have a rich father, you can be rich in no time. This was in contrast to Bill Gates, who donated his whole fortune to charity without leaving it for his children, since he was certain that his children would succeed by starting from scratch due to their father’s legacy.

It is also a pity to see the high-profile politicians that were summoned by prosecutors in Korea. Two former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo went to prison. In the cases of other former Presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, their sons spent time in prison. Even in the case of President Roh Moo-hyun, who was known as a person of integrity, his older brother is in prison and his son, nephew and wife were summoned by prosecutors.

I have never heard of a case where a former president or his children went to prison for corruption in the 250 years of American history. Is there any way to get rid of such corruption as the manipulation of stock prices or bribery in Korea? Among U.S. politicians, for example, Congressmen James Traficant (Democrat) and Randall Harold Cunningham (Republican) went to prison for taking bribes. Each of them was once a star of his party, but sentenced to eight years in prison.

In the U.S., the higher a person’s position is in society, the more severe punishment the person receives, because they are meant to be role models. Furthermore, if the person is found guilty, he loses the eligibility of any kind of public electoral position. He is branded as a criminal, and his family will also suffer. The severe punishments against corrupt officials and politicians are not so different from those against child-sex offenders.

Sexual offenders against children have to move out of shame even after finishing the sentence, because of the posters in their neighborhood that brand them as child-sex offenders. However, their crimes usually tend to be known in the areas to which they move, and they end up having to move to rural areas where they won’t be recognized and live out their lives in shame.

The common element in the corruption cases in the U.S. and in Korea is that the accused deny the fact that they received bribes until the end. They say in the U.S., “Deny, deny, deny!” Even presented with the evidence by prosecutors, they will deny any knowledge of the crime in question. One thing to be careful of is lying. Perjury will turn a five to 10 year sentence for contempt of court.

Without a heartless judicial system, it would have been difficult to govern the U.S. The judicial system does not leave any room for anyone, no matter what the person’s status might be, to commit crimes without having to pay the price. Of course, it is not appropriate for a society of a single ethnicity, such as Korea.

However, even Americans were surprised at the news that one million Koreans were pardoned by the president’s special amnesty. When I saw that people in high places were pardoned for their contribution to society, I thought about the practice of amnesty in the U.S., where a president pardoning just seven people drew severe criticism.

Recently, I saw a case where good-behaving prisoners were pardoned due to the lack of the prison space, even in some areas of the U.S. However, I think that the Korean system of amnesty is the wrong system, when I see criminals who held high offices waiting for the usual presidential amnesties on national holidays.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).

(44) Repercussions of N. Korea’s long-range missile launch

It was Aug. 31, 1998, when North Korea launched a Taepodong-1, its first long-range missile. At that time, the world did not pay much attention to the launch of the missile by North Korea, one of the poorest countries in the world and the only remaining Communist dictatorship in Asia.

The focus of criticism against North Korea in those days was not on military security, but on its humanitarianism; people felt North Korea would be better served by spending that money to save the millions of its own people starving to death. The reason behind North Korea’s missile launch was for them to get a strong negotiating position with the U.S.’s Clinton administration, as well as to let the world know that it now has ICBMs.

Though that missile test ultimately failed (the missile broke apart over the Pacific Ocean, though not before scaring the Japanese), it was not a matter to be overlooked that North Korea had developed the technology to make a missile that could travel 1,620 kilometers.

Most troubling of all, this posed a serious threat to South Korea and Japan, and the thought of this technology being used by terrorist countries or organizations made people shiver. The House of Representatives introduced a resolution that sternly criticized the test with my name on it, and it passed overwhelmingly.

The resolution pointed out that the missile launch was inappropriate under the circumstances, after then-President Kim Dae-jung proposed the Mt. Geumgang tourism project as part of his “Sunshine Policy,” and that North Korea had been exporting its missile technology to countries like Iran, Syria and Pakistan.

The resolution urged President Bill Clinton to seriously reconsider providing food and energy aid to North Korea’s irrational, undemocratic government, especially since the U.S. government’s aid to North Korean citizens was being appropriated for the North’s military. It also contained strong words that the North should restrain from another missile launch. There was a severe attack on me on North Korean television based on this resolution that I introduced.

Eight years later, North Korea conducted another missile test. This test was also a failure, as the missile was dismantled in the air 40 seconds after its launch. Public opinion was strongly against North Korea, which continued to test missiles while its people were starving to death.

The Asia Pacific Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a closed hearing with intelligence officials. Democratic members, whose party was the majority at the time, criticized intelligence agencies for not finding out whether it was a satellite or a missile that North Korea launched. They probed hard about the possibility of a North Korean missile to reach Hawaii someday, but could not get a satisfactory answer from our intelligence agency.

In fact, most members of Congress did not have much knowledge of or interest in North Korea, other than the unfavorable impressions about the country in terms of human rights. However, the tearful testimonies from those who escaped from the North in their special congressional hearing made many members began to hate the North Korean regime.

The general opinion of Democratic and Republican members was that North Korea should be considered part of the “Axis of Evil,” as long as it did not provide food for its starving people with the money it spent on missile launches and did not improve its poor human rights situation.

North Korea launched a long-range rocket (Unha-2) to put a satellite, Kwangmyongsong-2, on its orbit a few days ago (April 5, 2009). This time, the rocket flew 3,200 kilometers into the Pacific Ocean. Considering that the distance was twice as long as the one in 1998, the North Korean missile technology can no longer be the butt of jokes.

This shows that North Korea is, in fact, close to having the ICBM technology. It’s especially frustrating in that, unlike the last launch, the entire world, including China, gave strong warnings to North Korea, and the U.S. and 27 European countries made a joint statement to urge the stopping of the launch. However, North Korea still ignored those please.

It is a well-known fact that China has strong influence on North Korea, because it depends greatly on China in every sector of its economy, including energy and other necessities. These days, China has raised its status to the top in the world. When I was a House Representative, no one in Congress believed that China would become a world power in such a short time. And only few people had good impressions about China. However, obviously things have changed now.

President Kim received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts for reconciliation with North Korea. I can hardly understand why the North still depends only on China, dismissing its brethren in South Korea. I also wonder what the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, known for having very friendly policies toward North Korea, have done for their 10 years in power to make the North continue to ignore and despise South Korea. I only hope for the day in which North Korea will seek help from South Korea instead of China, and also trust and depend on South Korea.

It seems that a country that was embarrassed the most by the North Korean missile launch is Japan. It issued a false alarm twice, and even the Japanese press ridiculed the overreaction and panic from the Japanese government. Japan even declared that it would shoot down a North Korean missile with its Patriot missiles. This is ridiculous, since the North Korean missile in question flies 100 kilometers high, while the range of a Patriot missile is only 20 kilometers.

The boast of the Japanese government about the missile defense system of Japan ended up as a joke. However, the only thing that cannot be laughed over is that Japan will obviously take this as a great chance to increase its military capacity.

U.S. President Barack Obama has had to deal with urgent issues such as the economy and Afghanistan, and thought that agreeing to hold direct talks with North Korea would solve the issue of North Korea immediately. However, Pyongyang brushed this olive branch aside and launched a missile in response. The idea that a rational approach will bring out a rational response does not apply well in the case of North Korea. We must always be careful of its unexpected behavior.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).

(43) Illegal immigration: headache of US

The issue of illegal immigration is one of America’s biggest headaches. According to government estimates, there are about 5 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.; however, some reports estimate that the number has already exceeded 8 million. The states near the Mexican border, such as California, Arizona, and Texas, have the most serious illegal immigration problems.

When I was a House representative, supervisors of Los Angeles County (which was part of my district) requested a hearing in the House on the issue, insisting that it was a critical financial issue for the county. According to their report, there were four problems California suffered due to illegal immigration.

First, 25 percent of the prisoners in their jails were illegal immigrants. Second, the cost spent on a prisoner is over $30,000 per year. Third, the cost of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) for the children of illegal immigrants is estimated to be about $500 million annually. Fourth, 25 percent of patients in hospitals run by the county are illegal immigrants.

During the hearing, the county stated that it could not afford the cost caused by illegal immigration. It claimed that the cost should be shared with the federal government, since the immigration law is a federal law and the federal government should be responsible for the problem of illegal immigration.

The next week, a similar hearing was held in New York by their state legislature. The discussion centered on drug-related crimes by illegal immigrants. Finally, the members of Congress from California led an effort to change the immigration law.

After many twists and turns, “S 1348,” an immigration reform bill, came out in 2007. The bill contains 320 pages of very complex legal writing, and it is not clear when it will pass.

On the one hand, the far-right conservatives of the Republican Party claim that all illegal immigrants should be deported to their countries, since they may be potential criminals. On the other, the far-left liberals of the Democratic Party argue for an amnesty which will forgive illegal immigrants and grant them permanent residency. It is never easy to find a compromise between the two sides. Furthermore, some young liberals claim that the Mexican border should be opened and both Americans and Mexicans allowed to cross freely. They are called “open-border extremists,” and their influence cannot be ignored.

The Republican Party has hesitated to initiate any immigration law for concern it would be like poking at a hornet’s nest. Some Republicans thought that leaving the immigration law alone would be wiser, since if things went wrong it might be blamed on the Democrats.

There have been amendments to the immigration law proposed for political purposes. For example, the reform bill has articles such as building fences on the 370-mile-long border, adding 20,000 new border patrol agents, giving Z visas to illegal immigrants and allowing them to be eligible for permanent residency after eight years if they pay a $2,000 fine and return to their countries to apply for green cards. There are also complicated additional conditions, such as the number of Z visas issued should be less than 200,000 annually and the immigrants should be fluent in English.

Since the reform bill was originally proposed by some Republican members of Congress, it contained tougher requirements at first, but they were softened in the process of discussion.

The Democratic Party always welcomes a flexible immigration policy and claims that illegal immigrants should be accepted as long as they have not committed crimes. The intention behind this is to get Mexican-American votes and strengthen the political base by increasing the number of the Hispanic members of Congress. In fact, if a maximum 8 million illegal immigrants receive green cards and become U.S. citizens after five years, most of them will, presumably, support the Democratic Party.

Congressional Republicans have often requested that the Mexican government punish illegal immigrants crossing its border. However, the Mexican government has not helped very much, citing the lack of manpower as a reason. This made Republicans wonder if the Mexican government is really serious about changing the situation.

Most illegal immigrants are part of the working classes, and do not have any special skills or a good education. Many of these people live on government benefits, even in Mexico. Some members began to think that they are the burden of Mexico, and this makes one wonder if the Mexican government indirectly helps their migration to the U.S., thinking that it would be better for Mexico.

Many illegal immigrants are only able to find manual-labor jobs in the U.S. In fact, they often come to nationwide Koreatowns to work in restaurants. According to a report, 29 percent of them work in roofing businesses, 24 percent in agriculture, and 25 percent in construction. They now have become familiar with Koreatowns, and have become an indispensable labor force that does the tough jobs. These days, you can find about 50 of them, grouped in three or four, walking around on the streets of Koreatown in Washington, D.C. They are waiting for someone to hire them. Even the police cannot drive them away as long as they do not commit a crime.

The issue of illegal immigrants in the U.S., who barely make their living on a day-to-day basis, is a troublesome issue that does not seem to be going away.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).

(42) US press and Korean press

There is an old saying in the U.S.: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” This means that one cannot break even in a fight against the press, which can write endlessly on the matter.

When I was a House representative, I thought being friendly with reporters would result in favorable articles written about me. However, that was not the case. It was quite often that I was hit from behind by the reporters who smiled and seemed nice to my face.

There were several times that they inserted their opinions in their articles instead of reporting directly based on what I said, which sometimes took the articles in an entirely new direction. A quote without context can be unfairly damaging.

Once, I donated $100 to an organization that helped poor students and said, “If I were rich, I would like to donate $1,000 instead of $100.” A newspaper reported the next day that Congressman Kim said that he would like to donate $1,000 to charity organizations. The article reported that I would donate $1,000 without quoting the whole sentence that contained the part, “if I were rich.” After that news article, unsurprisingly, several charity organizations asked me to donate $1,000.

So, I called the reporter who wrote the misleading article to correct it. The next day, the newspaper had an article which said that I denied that I had ever said such a thing. I began to realize that the more I fought, the deeper I would get into trouble. I even began to wonder whether maybe it was my fault. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear.

I think it’s often the case that public servants cannot win against the press. So many politicians sue the press for libel and other reasons, but they never win. It is because freedom of the press is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The plaintiff must show evidence that a reporter was intentionally trying to hurt the person through his words. It is very difficult to prove that a reporter wrote an article to hurt someone intentionally.

My Republican colleagues told me that most of the major press in the U.S. has an anti-Republican bias. They often advised me to practice caution with some members of the press. They even named a few. They said that from the perspectives of the liberal media, the Republican Party represents the rich classes, big corporations and whites, and always seeks only their own interests.

Since the word “liberal” came up, I would like to say a few things about the liberal and the conservative. After several discussions with college students in Korea, I was surprised by the fact that many young Koreans have anti-U.S. and pro-North Korea tendencies and that these people were called “liberal.”

They called “conservative idiots” those who attached importance to Korea-U.S. relations, warned against the policy to give unconditional aid to the North and pointed out the severe oppression of human rights in North Korea.

They attacked me by accusing me of being a typical pro-U.S. conservative who could see only one thing. I asked them if they rejected the democratic system of South Korea where the people elect a president every five years and instead preferred the North Korean system that allows the inheritance of power from a father to son, then to his grandson.

The Watergate scandal that caused then-President Richard Nixon to resign changed the way reporters work. The reporters revealed this scandal by rummaging in trash cans to surprise the world. They won the Pulitzer Prize. After this, many American as well as Korean reporters adopted the style of an investigator who searches trash cans, instead of the previous style of merely reporting facts. The press leaned to sensationalism that attracts more readers.

When I became the first Korean-American ever elected to the House of Representatives, the interest of the media was concentrated on me. The press treated me like a hero, a symbol of the American dream almost every day. I realized much later that this was not all good. Other senior colleagues told me that after making someone a hero, articles that drag him down would make them more interesting and draw more readers. They advised me to be careful.

I was finally caught in this trap only eight months after my win. Despite my difficult congressional life due to this, I was elected miraculously three times consecutively by a great margin while being investigated by the FBI and this story was printed practically every day. Considering this, I think I am tough, and I am proud of it.

Recently, I have had more contact with the Korean press and more chances to meet Korean reporters. They seem to have a little more thoughtful approach. They do not report my sometimes blunt expressions if I ask them not to. I often found they changed my expressions to convey the meaning better than the original in their articles, even when I was not able to express it properly in Korean.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).