From Korea to the Capitol: Engineering the American Dream

Jay Changjoon Kim, Former Member of U.S. House of Representatives, , 41st District

My name is Jay Changjoon Kim, and I am a former member of the U.S. House of

Representatives. I was born in , Korea on March 27, 1939. I was part of the generation that was born during the Japanese occupation, and the horrors of war were never far away from me during my youth. During the , my home was destroyed during combat; this devastating event brought me face to face with poverty in a way that I never wanted to experience again. The constant battles in my homeland gave me a very powerful understanding of how much being a Korean really meant to me and how precious my status as a Korean truly was. I was part of a generation lucky enough to have escaped subjugation from other nations and live in an independent Korea, and I was also part of a generation that had all sorts of opportunities to grow and present itself after the war.

As I grew older, I realized that the only way that I would be able to avoid poverty would be to work as hard as I could at whatever I did. I soon decided that the best chance that I had of making a name for myself would be to emigrate to the of America. After completing my service in the Republic of Korean Army in 1960, I applied for a student visa that would allow me to attend college in the United States.

1 Education and Engineering

When I flew to America, I, 23 years of age, had only $200 in my pocket, but I also had the will and determination to succeed. I earned both a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering (in

1967) and a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering (in 1969) from the University of

Southern California, working nights as a janitor, a busboy, and a newspaper agent in order to make ends meet. I then went to California State University’s Graduate School of Public

Administration, in order to further my civil engineer career, but during this time, I began to learn a little about the American political process and what it meant to govern.

In 1976, I started Jay Kim Engineering, a firm that specialized in designing highways and water reclamation projects. In the following decade, I built this firm into a company listed as one of the 500 largest design firms in the state of California, with 130 employees in three different locations on the West Coast. I was appointed as the planning commissioner for the city of San

Dimas, California, and garnered several awards both in the civil engineering and business community for my engineering work. I also became a registered civil engineer in Oregon,

Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona, which allowed me to expand my horizons and learn more about the Western United States.

Diamond Bar, California and the Mayor’s Office

In 1990, I moved to Diamond Bar, California, a newly incorporated suburb of Los

Angeles. It was here that I decided that I wanted to try my hand in local politics. I had learned a great deal about how local governments run through my work as a civil engineer, where I was in constant contact with city governments from different states, and my time as the planning commissioner of San Dimas had given me some experience within the forum of a small city. I

2 ran for Diamond Bar’s City Council, and was rewarded for my efforts with a seat on the Council, a remarkable achievement for a Korean man living in a mostly white suburb of .

One short year later, I had become popular enough within the Diamond Bar community that I decided to run for Mayor of Diamond Bar, and was duly elected as the city’s Mayor.

I put in a lot of hard work as Mayor of Diamond Bar, juggling both my duties as an elected official and my continuing work at a civil engineering firm. On days in which the City

Council would hold a meeting, I would occasionally chair such meetings until 2:00 in the morning, with hundreds of residents in attendance. This was a remarkable learning experience for me, as I found myself constantly working hard to satisfy the needs of a city that was still so new in conception that it did not have its own police department, but had to contract with police officers from the county of Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, I still wish that I had had a longer term as Mayor; even though I have no regrets about what occurred after one year, the added experience of a longer mayoral term would have been a great help to me in the future.

Setting the Bar Higher

While it was a great honor to have become both a City Councilman and Mayor in such a short period of time, I still felt like there were more opportunities ahead for me. In 1992, a new

Congressional district had been created in California (the 41st, then encompassing southeastern

Los Angeles and northeastern Orange County, and the western part of San Bernardino county, including my city of Diamond Bar), and I decided that I could be a viable candidate for this congressional seat as a member of the Republican Party. As that new district was solidly populated with Republican voters, I knew that if I could win the Republican primary, I would have a very good shot at defeating Democratic candidates and becoming a member of the House

3 of Representatives; also, because there was no incumbent Representative due to the district having just been created, I knew it would be easier to win such an election than to have to face an established incumbent.

However, winning the Republican primary would be a very tall order; not only did I have a limited amount of experience as a political administrator and less name recognition than the people I was running against in the primary (a State Senator, veteran politician, and an attorney for the U.S. Department of Commerce), but I was also battling a historical record where no

Korean American had ever so much as won a primary for elected office. I was given very long odds in making it out of the primary at the start of my campaign.

I realized that the only way that I would be able to win this election would be to create an elaborate campaign strategy, including hiring a veteran campaign manager, Bob Gouty. It is entirely possible that I would not have made it out of the primary, let alone won the general election, without Mr. Gouty’s assistance as my campaign manager. In the first poll that was conducted for the primary, I only received 7% of the vote, mainly due to the fact that I had no name recognition outside of Diamond Bar. After this poll was released, Mr. Gouty asked me if I was absolutely sure that I wanted to continue with my campaign. I told him that I was sure, and he would later reveal that he had believed from the start that I actually had a good chance of winning, but wanted to test my resolve in the face of adversity. Fortunately, my many years of overcoming adversity meant that I was ready to take this challenge on as well. I knew that once my name recognition was built up, I would have a strong chance of winning.

With my message of “poor immigrant who made good” and “small businessman who wanted to run Congress like a private business,” I began to climb in the polls. Not only did I present myself as a humbler businessman/engineer alternative to a professional politician and a

4 government lawyer, I also presented myself as an embodiment of the American Dream, a Korean who came from nothing and built himself up through his own hard work. And the voters of the

41st District responded very well to my life story and my promises to work to streamline the government if I was elected. Eventually, my opponents had stopped attacking each other and started attacking me instead; however, they were unable to prevent my winning of the primary.

After the primary, but before the general election, I spoke to the Republican National Convention during a prime-time speaking spot, where I extolled my story and the virtues of the American

Dream to a national audience. From there, I defeated the Democratic Party challenger in the general election, and became the first Korean American member of the House of Representatives.

I ran for Congress as a member of the Republican Party, not just because I believed it would help me win, but also because I shared certain elements of the Republican belief at the time. I consider myself a political conservative, especially when it comes to economic policy.

Having built myself up to a level of wealth and comfort from arriving in America nearly broke, I know the value of hard work and the pain of worrying about how I would be able to support my wife and three children. I could not support a political party (the Democrats) that wanted to redistribute wealth while taking away much of the money I’d earned through higher income taxes. I believe that, rather than alleviate the problem of poverty through taking from the rich and giving to the poor, only economic growth and job creation will be able to help the poor support themselves. Thus, it only made sense that I would become a member of the Republican Party, which champions such job creation through hard work.

While I was in office, I worked very hard to bring fiscal responsibility to Congress, working to clean up government waste and reduce out-of-control spending. This didn’t mean that

I was totally against government spending; on the contrary, I’d worked very hard to secure

5 funding for public roads, water safety, and pollution treatment projects, all of which directly affected the citizens of my district. And I still consider my crowning achievement as a

Representative to be the effort that led to the opening of Ontario International Airport, in which I had to deal with both the Federal Aviation Administration, the city of Los Angeles (who have their own international airport, of course), and the State of California, and by overcoming their objections, I helped create an economic vehicle that would keep the region’s financial future secure for decades to come. But I made sure that government funds went to the right places, rather than being spent indiscriminately, and thus remained within the Republican policy of keeping the government viable while ensuring that they spent as little as necessary.

Life after Office: Continuing the Fight for Koreans and

Even though I am no longer a member of the House of Representatives, I have never stopped fighting for Koreans and Korean Americans alike. I consider myself a very proud

Korean, and I have never forgotten my roots and the country that helped shape me into the man I am today, and I also consider myself a very proud Korean American, who has spent so much of my life working to make my adopted country a better place both for myself and for Korean

Americans just like me, people who work hard to earn a comfortable living for themselves and their families. Even while in Congress, I was a member of the International Relations

Committee’s Subcommittee for Asia and Pacific Islands and Western Hemisphere, and fought hard for the rights of all Asian Americans.

Today, I am the Chairman of my own Kim Changjoon U.S.-Korea Foundation and Kim

Changjoon Politics & Economy Academy in Korea as well as publishing a monthly newspaper called “Kim Changjoon KORUS TODAY”. Also, I serve as the Chairman of the Washington

6 Korean-American Forum, where I constantly work to improve relations, both business and government, between Korea and the United States. I was recently appointed as a member of the

National Economic Advisory Council by President Park Geun-hye; this council is a presidential advisory body which was established on November 20, 1999 under Article 93 of the Korean

Constitution.

I am an advisor for numerous Korean cities and Korean businesses, have written articles for numerous Korean-American publications, and contributed stories about my life and time in

Congress to . In short, I have ensured that I have remained a constant ambassador for Korean-American relations, both in my words and in my deeds.

I hope that the readers of this biography realize that it was not easy for me to take the path that I took through my life. Not only was I born in Korea during one of its most extraordinary periods in its long and glorious history, and not only did I have to build a business from the ground up after an arduous and impoverished education process, but my road through the American political system was constantly beset with obstacles, not least of which was succeeding in a white-dominated system as an Asian American. But that does not mean that I wish to dissuade any future Korean politicians from attempting to follow the path that I did. On the contrary, I believe that with my example as a guidepost for how to succeed in politics as an

Asian American, coupled with the greater number of opportunities for Korean Americans to succeed in America now than when I emigrated nearly five decades ago, there may yet be a young Korean that reads this biography and one day eclipses my feats in Congress, perhaps becoming a Senator, or even President of the United States. It gives me the greatest sense of pride that I blazed the trail for every Korean after me, so that their road to success is not as

7 difficult as mine was. Also, I learned one thing; only in America, this kind of success story is possible.

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