The Power of Dignity (Feature) A Call for Peace (in National News) Huge Budget Cuts Will Affect APAs at City College (in Bay Area News) Rockets Beat Lakers in Overtime (in Sports) Anti-Abercrombie (in A&E) Golden Stuff Tarnished by Tolbert Race Apology (in Opinion)

Korean American Politics

DEAR EDITOR: I just read “Korean Americans Speak Out for Peace, Demilitarization,” (Jan. 9). This truly is a one-sided story. Why don’t you provide the opposite views?

I am a Korean American and we should appreciate what Americans have done for us. Without the help of the United States, South Korea would have been a communist country. Most younger Koreans don’t appreciate this country. I am in my 30s and have been in America for 25 years. My family is puzzled regarding this issue about the girls who were killed. It is a sad situation, but it was an accident. The girls were in a restricted area.

Why don’t you write about the recent violence in Seoul? Several Korean American were attacked by the Koreans because they were speaking in English. Please be fair.

Also, for those who pray for reunification with North Korea, please be real about this. Think about the issues. South Korea’s economy will collapse. It has taken Germany over 10 years for proper reunification and East Germany was in much better economic shape than North Korea.

Gene

San Jose, Calif.

DEAR EDITOR: Your article “Korean Americans Speak Out for Peace, Demilitarization,” (Jan. 9) contains the paragraph: “Korean Americans of all ages overwhelmingly support a peaceful resolution to the current crisis between the Bush administration and North Korea. Yuk said the reason behind this is because the older generations lived through the horror and devastation of the last American war on the Korean peninsula.”

To call what happened from 1950 through 1953 in Korea, “the American war on the Korean peninsula” is to give evidence of a very particular political agenda, not one that has ever been identified with the pursuit of peace. To suggest that the United States started the war, or that the United States was looking for a place to fight a war, would be laughable, except that so many people died in a war that started with a North Korean invasion of South Korea.

I’m reminded that when I was in college I heard someone speak of the war as “the Korean people’s liberation struggle.” As if the North Korean people made the decision to invade the South, or the people of North Korea can be said to live in any kind of liberty.

I’m sure the person who said that would find a kindred spirit in Mr. Yuk.

Albert Alioto

San Francisco, Calif.

Keeping Issues on the Agenda

DEAR EDITOR: I agree with Phil Tajitsu Nash’s call to support Asian Pacific American women in the next congressional election, “Keeping Race on the Agenda,” (Jan. 9) and wanted to elaborate on the importance of supporting these candidates not because of their race, but because of their positions on the issues concerning the APA community. I do not believe that primae faci racial representation is enough, or desirable, to promote issues important to APAs. Given the ethnic, economic and educational diversity of the APA community, it would be difficult to find one candidate, APA or otherwise, who could truly represent all of the issues important to the community.

I believe the eventual danger will be that if race remains on the agenda, then one day we will wake up with racially proportional representation, but APA issues will still not be addressed. We should support candidates based on where they stand on the issues we care about, not the color of their skin. It will be pertinent to find APA candidates who fit that bill. For the future I hope that American society is moving towards a time when there is no difference in the ability for people of different races to represent one another.

Esther Ro

San Francisco, Calif.

Keeping the Dream Alive

DEAR EDITOR: As an Asian Pacific American growing up in America in the past two to three decades, things haven’t really been all that great. But I would hate to even think what America might like if it were not for Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement in the 1960s.

After careful research, I have discovered that the first Asian born in America was born in 1825, in New York City. He was the son of a Chinese merchant seaman who married an Irishwoman. In the early days, APA settlers arrived to work on the trans-continental railroad and other available jobs. They often put in many long days with little time off. They often faced many discriminating laws that were unfair and unjust. In 1870, foreign-born Asians were singled out as the only racial group not eligible for U.S. citizenship. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act virtually barred Chinese from immigrating to the United States.

Additional laws were passed in the early 1900s to extend the ban to Japanese, Koreans and Filipinos. In many states, APAs could not legally own land or marry whites until after World War II. And in 1965, the U.S. government removed the last vestiges of anti-Asian discrimination from its immigration laws.

I truly believe that the last vestiges of anti-Asian discrimination laws were removed from the immigration laws due to Dr. King’s civil rights movements.

Therefore, I believe, we as APAs should pay a special tribute for all the work that Dr. King did to achieve racial justice and an integrated society for all races today. I know we have a long way to go still, but we have to believe that we are making progress. Because without belief and hope, there can be no America.

Brian Huynh

Foster City, Calif.

Correction

In “Chinese American Newspaper Disputes Unionization” (Jan. 9), attorney Thomas Lenz’s quote should have read “about three-fourths of the employees in the voting unit signed [the petition] saying they did not want the union and that ‘We want to be done with this’.”