To simply put my experience into a single sentence, “It was a total FAILURE!” I was supposed to visit an archivist, but due to the circumstances, I wasn’t able to…
The moment I heard what we were doing for the bridge 2 project, without hesitation, I was determined to research on Korea Town. This was an obvious choice as I am Korean, but what attracted me to the neighborhood was also the history of the town that no-one paid attention to. Therefore, for this project, I chose to research the history of Korea Town — how the town was established and turned into the cultural hub we see today. So in order to get resources, I emailed many archives, and this is where everything started to crumble…
I first emailed all the Korean related associations in New York: Korean Cultural Center NY, The Korean American Association of Greater New York, Korea America Community Foundation, and The Korea Society. However, sadly all of the associations did not have an archivist or archives on the Korea Town in 32nd street. So, I emailed the Morgan Library, New York Public Library, Municipal Archives, New York Historical Society, and New York University Archives. However, again like the Korean associations, they emailed me back that they do not have any resources on Korea Town and that they do not really keep records concerning Koreans. For just in case, I visited the picture collection in the New York Public Library to see if they had any sources, and looked up into the Korea category and the streets of New York. But there weren’t any resources concerning “Korea Town”. This was extremely sad and I had a mental breakdown. However, thankfully I found some interviews of one of the first settlers of Korea Town on Korean websites. I think I would be able to find more resources on Korean websites.
Though the whole process was extremely frustrating and somewhat sad because no one had any archived resources on Korea Town. However, unawareness on the overall Korean history was I was trying to portray in my zine as a collection of records of the story that no own cared to know.
