While reporting on the void left by Myung Ki Hong, chairman of the M&L Hong Foundation and a longtime pillar of the Korean American community, one question kept coming to mind.
Who is carrying Hong’s baton now?
For years, Korean Americans have said it is time for the second generation to take over. But that framing misses the point.
The standard needs to change. Generation matters, but so does actual age.
Covering Korean American community events often leaves me with the same sense of frustration.
Most attendees are in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Someone in their 40s is often treated as the youngest person in the room. When younger people fail to show up, the response is usually the same: “The next generation just isn’t interested.”
Chang Keun Kang, former chairman of KAF, offered a different approach.
“The first generation should now support the community with its financial resources and experience, while leaving operations and decision-making to the next generation,” he said.
That does not mean the first generation that built the Korean American community should disappear.
It means stepping back, sharing experience, connections and financial resources, and creating space for younger leaders to make their own decisions — even if that means allowing them to fail.
The real question is how to bring younger Korean Americans into the community in the first place.
Robert Ahn, president of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles, said younger generations are less likely to embrace unconditional sacrifice for the community.
“The next generation looks at what involvement can offer them, whether that is networking, career opportunities or something else,” Ahn said. “The starting point has to be an understanding of their own roots.”
With each successive generation, he noted, Korean Americans may become more likely to see themselves simply as Americans rather than primarily as Korean Americans.
Without meaningful participation from younger generations, however, the Korean American community will find it increasingly difficult to resolve the major projects that have remained unfinished for decades.
The Korean American National Museum is perhaps the clearest example.
The museum should be more than a building that displays artifacts from Korean immigration history. It should become a place where younger generations can discover their roots, gather and develop a lasting connection to the community.
That makes its completion all the more urgent.
Yet the project has been stalled for more than 30 years.
Jae Min Chang, chairman of the Korean American National Museum, is approaching 80. Most members of the board are also middle-aged or older.
The contradiction is obvious.
The museum is supposedly being built for future generations, yet younger Korean Americans are largely absent from the institution’s decision-making structure. There is not even a committee dedicated to next-generation participation.
A look at how the Armenian American Museum in Glendale has been developed makes the lack of progress on the Korean American National Museum all the more difficult to defend.
Glendale Mayor Ardy Kassakhian and Armenian American Museum Executive Chairman Berdj Karapetian have viewed younger generations as a central part of the museum-building process.
From early in the project, the organization established a young leadership committee and actively brought Armenian American professionals and college students into the effort.
Karapetian said the number of younger people who have participated over the years likely reaches into the hundreds.
Then consider the Korean American National Museum.
The project received land from the city of Los Angeles, yet decades later construction has still not begun.
The time for simply repeating that “the next generation is important” has passed.
Seats must be opened. Authority must be transferred. Younger Korean Americans must be given the opportunity to become owners of the community rather than merely being invited as guests.
What is needed is not a cosmetic reshuffling of a few board seats, but something closer to a fundamental overhaul.
The current board must also accept responsibility for the project’s prolonged delays.
For years, the Korean American National Museum board has effectively failed to perform the role expected of it.
Does it still have the will to move the project forward?
If its members are no longer capable of completing the museum, they should at least be prepared to pass the baton.
A project intended for the next generation cannot credibly move forward while that generation remains absent from the room.
