Genealogy America -- a Land

Genealogy

America -- a Land of many Kims!

According to journalist Chloe Yong-Shik of the periodical Korea Now in an article entitled "What's in a Name?" The Korean journalist notes that the pride native Koreans take in their family heritage is so intense that they often say: "If I am lying, I would change my last name." Kim is one of the most common Korean surnames in both Korea and in America today. Wherever there is a Korean community, one might say, it is easy to find someone named Kim

For one example of Korean diversity, one need look no further than Jonathan Kim, a lawyer, who currently works as a financial planner and investment advisor at AXA Advisors, LLC in New York. Jonathan Kim was raised in the nearby state of Connecticut for most of his adolescent life, after his parents came from America. He has lived in New York for the past twelve years as a vibrant member of the New York Korean Community. He writes about business and politics for the publication New York Seoul as part of his many endeavors and sees his Korean identity as part of his identity as an America. It has given him a journalistic voice, he notes, and has garnered him a great deal of respect in his legal and financial work.

However, not only New York hosts a vibrant community of people named Kim. For example, Dr. Benjamin Kim is a prominent physician in Salt Lake City Utah, a practicing Mormon as well as a surgeon with strong ties to the community, brought to Utah by his love of the intense fellowship and religious feeling evident amongst the Mormon community. He converted to Mormonism, and became part of the Utah Mormon American lifestyle and schema of beliefs. His neighbors appreciate the diversity individuals such as Benjamin Kim have brought to the Mormon community, one of the reason that Mormons solicit missionaries.

Dr. Hannah Kim boasts an equally diverse background -- but Hannah Kim dwells in a state with a larger Asian population, in Hawaii. There, she treats adolescents and counsels them in psychology. She has lived most of her live on the island, as has her family, and says she has never had a problem fitting into her American life.

An interesting commentary about the commonness of the Kim name is provided by the American computer designer Scott Kim, who wrote in 2000 in an article in his web log. "Both my names are quite common," in America. Of course, the surname Kim is very common in Korea, and was amongst Scott Kim's Korean born parents when they were growing up. but, according Scott in school, his "schoolteachers often reversed the order of my names. Kim is overwhelmingly the most common last name in Korea, my country of ancestry: much worse than Smith in the U.S.A., though not as bad as Jorgensen in Denmark, where the government will pay you to change your last name. I receive quite a bit of email addressed to other Scott Kims," he adds, which can be somewhat of a liability in his computer-focused profession. Worse yet, "there was even a Kim Scott in the Stanford computer science department at the same time I was a graduate student" at this California institution. (Kim, 2000)

Thus, growing up with this confusion did not limit Scott's educational strivings, as Stanford is one of the leading American graduate universities in America! To channel his feelings about his often-reversed name, the designer imagined a couple different ways "to invert my own name," as a computer graphic to express what he saw as the creativity inherent in possessing a name that was frequently confused. American creativity and even American confusion became a positive for Scott Kim, as he used different ways of writing his name to create a creative computer graphic! The difficulties he experienced fitting in because of his easily flipped flopped name became a source of creativity, and Kim's graphic arts are highly esteemed in his profession and amongst his friends. He even designed a graphic for his own wedding of his name and his fiancee's name.