Outcry Grows As LA's Korean American Museum Hangs In Limbo

With admiration and some envy, Korean American filmmaker Christopher H.K. Lee has watched some of L.A.’s largest diaspora communities build cultural history museums over the last 30 years.

The Armenian American Museum is under construction in Glendale, scheduled to open next year. The Chinese American Museum and the Japanese American National Museum have been serving their communities for decades.

Then there is the planned Korean American museum in Koreatown. First proposed in the early 1990s, the project has struggled ever since, even as more than $20 million has been raised in private donations and government funds.

Those seeking information can only turn to a website run by the nonprofit trying to build the future Korean American National Museum. The homepage promises “new website coming soon” and asks visitors to “join the waitlist.”

Filmmaker Christopher H.K. Lee leads a meeting of community members demanding accountability around a long-stalled project to build a Korean American museum.

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Josie Huang

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Lee, who joined efforts to build a museum in the 1990s, is tired of waiting. He’s leading a new community group demanding greater accountability and action from the nonprofit’s board called Friends and Supporters of the Korean American National Museum.

He said it was embarrassing that the Korean American community didn't have a place to commune and celebrate their culture.

“Not having a home to go to — how do you call that a successful immigration story?” Lee asked.

Repeated delays

None of the nonprofit’s board members — headed up by JaeMin Chang, publisher of the Korea Times, a family-owned newspaper — would give interviews for this story. Neither would the former executive director Shinae Yoon, who said she stepped down April 1 to pursue other projects.

By e-mail, Yoon said she was still very hopeful for the future of the museum but said it was dealing with extenuating circumstances, such as delays caused by the pandemic, escalating construction costs and changes in city leadership.

“So there’s going to be a period of re-evaluation, and it’s going to take time,” Yoon wrote.

About 70 people turned out for a meeting last month in Koreatown to call for action on the Korean American museum project.

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Josie Huang

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The plan has been to build the museum on a municipal parking lot on the corner of 6th and Vermont in Koreatown through a unique lease arrangement with the city that costs the nonprofit virtually nothing for 50 years, but requires it to work closely with the city on the project.

Devyn Bakewell, a spokesperson for Councilmember Heather Hutt, who represents Koreatown, said in an e-mail that “the City has been a ready and willing partner to build this project for the last five years.”

The planned construction site for the Korean American National Museum is a city-owned parking lot in Koreatown on the corner of 6th and Vermont.

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But she said the museum project has been delayed by “the historical lack of funding and the constant changing of designs.”

Changing designs

The board unveiled its fourth design in a little more than a decade last month, frustrating critics who feel the project is going back to the drawing board.

Past designs included apartments. The latest one, inspired by the architecture of a hanok or traditional Korean house, does not. It’s not clear how the changes in designs or the removal of housing from the master plan will affect the lease agreement. Asked about the status of the lease, the City Attorney’s Office said it had no comment.

Lee contends the project is suffering from a lack of transparency from both the board and the city and is calling on greater community involvement.

More than 200 people have lent their name to the group’s website, and about 70 people met in Koreatown for the first time last month. There were questions about how the funds raised — $5.6 million in private donations and $14.5 million in city, state and federal support — were being used, and the acknowledgement that much more was needed for the project.

Others wondered where the art and historic items that have been donated to the future museum were being stored.

A former design for the Korean American National Museum released in 2019.

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Morphosis Architects

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Art historian Seungkyu Choi said that the longer the museum languishes in the planning stages, it’s missing out on building its collection. He pointed out that LACMA recently received its largest gift of Korean art in the museum’s history.

The 92-year-old Choi exhorted the group convened at the Korean Education Center to push for action.

“We can do it!” Choi said. “We can do it now — before we all die.”

Aside from attracting historians, the group also included leaders of Little Bangladesh, which is surrounded by Koreatown, and younger Korean Americans like Ashley Ham, a junior at the Harvard-Westlake School, who said she wanted to preserve her history.

High school junior Ashley Ham spoke out on the need to build a Korean American museum during a meeting in Koreatown last month.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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"It is my dream that the creation of this museum will serve as a bridge for generations of people to help them understand the importance of our roots," Ham said.

Lee, for his part, plans to chronicle the community effort to get a museum built which he expects to turn into a documentary.