Everyday Urbanism in L.A.’s Koreatown
Cindy Olnick 0:00
Today on Save As:
Junyoung Myung 0:01
Even though Korean immigrants and Korean Americans have been Southern California for more than 100 years, and Koreatown has great cultural significance in Los Angeles, it was hard to find history places that represent the identity of Korean community.
Cindy Olnick 0:27
Welcome to Save As: N NextGen Heritage Conservation, an award winning podcast that glimpses the future of the field with graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Cindy Olnick.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:38
And I’m Trudi Sandmeier. So, Cindy.
Cindy Olnick 0:41
Yes, Trudi?
Trudi Sandmeier 0:42
Today’s episode is a delightful conversation with a student who graduated some time ago. now. It’s one of those, Where Are They Now episodes. So it was fun to talk to our former student, Junyoung Myung, who we call Jun, and he is now teaching and doing all kinds of interesting things since he graduated a few years ago. Jun is originally from South Korea and moved to Los Angeles to go to graduate school, and moved to Koreatown because that seemed like a place where he would find community and familiar food. So it was really a place of comfort and home for him, but maybe different than what he was expecting as well.
Cindy Olnick 1:32
As our listeners know, Koreatown is a really popular place. That’s actually an understatement. It’s known as a 24-hour neighborhood, really hopping with food, entertainment, karaoke, K-pop, of course, but all sorts of nightlife. It’s very, very diverse. But underneath it all is a really complex, layered history. And Koreatown means many different things to different people, which is an area of Jun’s research.
Trudi Sandmeier 2:00
Yeah, he was able to take his research that he did in 2015 and really expand upon that. And he’s almost done with his PhD, and he’s already out teaching.
Cindy Olnick 2:11
Yeah, so yet another career path in heritage conservation. The whole area of teaching, as we do here at USC, but going out and helping to cultivate the next generation and also advancing scholarship in the field, he’s doing really cool stuff.
