Yesoon Lee 1 Transcript of Interview with Yesoon Lee Asian American Voices in the Making of Washington, D.C.’s Cultural Landscape DC Oral History Collaborative Narrator: Yesoon Lee Date of Interview: August 20, 2018 Location: Mandu (453 K St NW, Washington, DC 20001) Interviewer: Crystal HyunJung Rie Audio Specialist: Dave Walker Biographical Information: Yesoon was born in Seoul, Korea in 1946 before the Korean War. She came to the United State for her master’s degree in music composition at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She met her husband, who also came to the U.S. as an international student at UIUC. After they got married, they moved to Virginia. In the 1980s, Yesoon ran a deli in Old Town Alexandria with her church friend while her husband worked as a CPA in D.C. After her husband passed away, she opened an American Chinese franchise restaurant in Reagan National Airport. As her Charlie Chiang Kwai lease at the airport ended, the Lee family decided to open a Korean restaurant in D.C. After the opening of Mandu in Dupont Circle in 2006, the Lee family expanded their restaurant to Mount Vernon Triangle, opening a second Mandu. In 2017, the first Mandu restaurant shut down due to fire, but the family is in the process of re- opening the first Mandu space with a new concept, Anju. Description: Yesoon Lee discusses her childhood in Seoul, Korea during and after the Korean War. She discusses attending graduate school for music composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she met and married her husband before moving to Northern Virginia and teaching at Averett College. Lee also discusses the impact the early death of her husband had on her life and her culinary career after his death. Lee discusses opening a restaurant with her son and her perspective on the chef community in Washington, D.C. Y: Yesoon Lee (Narrator) C: Crystal Hyunjung Rie (Interviewer) D: Dave Walker (Audio Specialist) August 20th, 2018 (Monday) 3pm at Mandu C: Can you tell us about when and where you were born? Yesoon Lee 2 Y: I was born in Seoul, Korea, 1946, June 11th. C: Do you remember your childhood in Korea? Y: all I remember is at the Korean War, we went down to Busan, about a year or so with family and then I remember we came back to Seoul, I started my elementary school in Seoul. C: Do you remember the name of the elementary school? Y: Yeah, Nam-dae-mun (South Gate) Elementary School, Nam-dae-mun Guk-min-hak-gyo. C: How old were you when the Korean War started? Y: Four. C: So you don't really remember? Y: Not much, but I remember we were somewhere in Busan. C: How did the war change your family's experience? Y: [unintelligible] I was too young to remember all the details, but cause my father was working for government, so we came back to Seoul, I don't remember those horrible in a times during War, but everybody struggled including all family and after the War, but I remember I had a good childhood and elementary school, and then middle school and college. C: Do you remember the neighborhood that you grew up in Seoul? Y: You mean when I was in elementary school? In near now Namdaemun, the big, one of the treasure in Korea, that area. Yes, that where school was and that where we lived near that area. C: Did you also wear uniform to school? Y: Not during elementary school, but from Junior High School to High School. C: Was it female high school? Yesoon Lee 3 Y: Yeah, I went to female-only high school. C: Do you remember the name of the high school? Y: Yeah, Sudo Girls High School. It's in Yongsan nowadays. C: What kind of food did you eat at home? Y: Typical Korean food like rice, soup, jjigae, like a stew, and some meat. Meat was expensive that time, but still you know, special occasion, like bulgogi, and mainly fish, a lot of fish our family ate. C: Did your mom did most of the cooking? Y: My grandma was in a home too, so they both cooked simple Korean family meals. C: Did you help them out cooking in the kitchen? Y: No, not at all. We didn't know. I think in Korea, kids don't step into kitchen. They just asked to study, study, and study. That's it. C: Did you have any other siblings? Y: Yeah, I have my older sister and younger brother. C: How old were [crosstalk] Y: My sister is two years older. My brother is five years younger. C: Oh wow, he was pretty young. Y: Yeah, he was born in Busan after the War. C: You came to the State for grad school? Y: Yeah. C: So you went to undergrad in Korea? Yesoon Lee 4 Y: I went undergrad in Korea. Yonsei University. I came to the United States in 1970 for graduate school to Urbana Champaign, Illinois. [00:05:01] C: What was your major in [crosstalk] Y: I majored in music composition. C: Actually my mom, she majored in music composition. My grandpa and my father went to Yonsei for undergrad and my mom went to Yonsei for MA degree, so she also played piano. Y: Wow, that's great! Good! C: How was it like to.. Why did you decide to come to the United State? Y: I don't know. It's just, our family thought that was another step forward cause my sister came to the United States first for graduate school, so just everybody thought I would do the same thing. I would follow her footsteps. I just thought I had to do and then it was no doubt about it. C: I think that was really progressive for your parents to think that, especially for women. Y: Yeah, it was true. C: Where did your sister go? Y: She actually came to the same school, for graduate school, too. Illinois. But after she married, they ended up Detroit, Michigan, so she finished her degree in Wayne State University. C: What was her major? Y: Economics. C: Did you get to leave with your sister in Illinois or has she already graduated when you [crosstalk] Y: She moved already when I came to Urbana Champaign. Yesoon Lee 5 C: What was your impression of the United States before you came here? What did you think of the U.S. when you were in Korea? Y: It was kind of, of course, kind of a dream. Yeah, the America was kind of my dream. [thinking] I was coming to study, I didn't expect any other world, another part of lifestyle or whatever, just came, I thought I would just come to the United States and then study, and then go back to Korea, yeah, that's what I thought, but didn't work like that [laughing]. C: What made you to stay in the United States? Y: I met my husband there [laughing] and then we got married there, we moved, he got a job in D.C., so how we moved to D.C. area. C: What was his job in D.C.? Y: He was CPA. C: Did you guys, you guys moved to Arlington? Y: No, we lived in McLean first and then Vienna. That's it. C: What was it like living in McLean and Vienna? Y: It is nice area. We still live there, that's why my kids all born there, then they all grew up there, just love it. just love it. C: Were there other Korean family living there? Y: Hmm, not in our, of course, there are some, but we didn't know them well, but we met a lot of Koreans through church, Korean church, we started going to Korean church. C: Before you came here, in Korea, you didn't go to church? Y: I did, I went to church whole my life. C: What's the name of the church that you went? Y: The first Korean church I went, Korean Baptist Church. Yesoon Lee 6 C: And you went there for how many years? Y: I went there until my husband passed away. That was 1996. C: Then after he passed away, did you [crosstalk] Y: I was busy to work, to bring bread on table, so I, emotionally too much attached to the church, you know, after my husband died, so I just couldn't handle that. [00:10:08] C: And Danny told us about Pica-deli. How did that happen? Y: I met my best friend now at the church, so we, one day we were talking about do something together, and we got this small deli in Alexandria. Just it happened so quickly. C: Did you want to make Korean food back then? Y: We didn't, but we put some bulgogi sandwich there. We made some bulgogi and then for our customers, we introduced Korean food, bulgogi, we made some bulgogi sandwich there. It was popular. C: What was the neighborhood like around Pica-deli? Y: It's a [unintelligible] beautiful area, old town, right off King Street. It is beautiful, lots of shops, restaurants, water right there, yeah. C: Who were the customers? Y: There are some small offices there, so lots of office people came for lunch, just for lunch. C: Yeah, he was telling us about it started around 10 or 10:30am and then lasted until 3pm.