Science Minister nominee Kim Jeong-hoon
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By Jay Kim
President Park Geun-hye made a great choice in nominating Kim Jeong-hoon as the minister of future planning and science. This choice reveals her will to build a creative economy by tapping into the global talent pool. Kim is an appropriate pick for the head of the ministry, an agency that will be a driving force to develop the future economy of Korea, based on cutting-edge technology and not on imitation.
Furthermore, Kim is not a politician but a successful entrepreneur and scientist untainted by Korean politics. He is a proud Korean who was born in Korea and emigrated at age 15 to the United States, where he succeeded.
Unfortunately, criticisms against the choice have already come out. One such is that someone who cannot comprehend the Korean language should not become a minister of the Republic of Korea. However “1.5 generation” immigrants who were born in Korea seem to learn the Korean language in a short period of time. For example, Paul Shin, a Washington State senator, was adopted into a U.S. family when he was a child.
He lived in the U.S. for more than 60 years and did not speak Korean at all at first. But after several visits to Korea, he learned Korean in just six months, and now can speak Korean more fluently than me. He has given testimony at various Korean churches in Korea. It must be a latent ability of the “1.5 generation” Korean-Americans for learning Korean. In this time of globalization, where English has become the international language, the concern should not be a minister who is fluent in English while less fluent in Korean, but those ministers who cannot speak English.
There is also no law that prevents a foreigner from becoming a minister of the Korean government. The problem is that appointing a foreigner as a minister will give the person special access to national secrets.
I cannot understand why people still call Kim a foreigner after he acquired Korean citizenship. From what I heard, he will also soon be giving up his U.S. citizenship. This was a difficult decision for him, considering he will have to pay about 100 billion won in taxes by giving up his U.S. citizenship. People should not distort this brave decision that he made for the sole purpose of devoting himself to his native land.
Why would he want to return to become a minister in Korea when he is doing so well in the U.S.? The mind of someone who wants to come back to Korea, the country where he was born and the country of his parents, can never be understood by those who have never experienced success while enduring hardships living abroad for half a century.
There is also a concern that Kim was a member of an advisory board for the CIA. He was not a special agent of the CIA. He was just an external advisor as a successful entrepreneur in the global communication device industry. Furthermore, the U.S. is our strong ally, a country that has shed blood with us in wars. So what is the problem?
I went to the U.S. alone with $200 when I was 24. I struggled through poverty to graduate from college, and entered into the mainstream of U.S. society. I, a strange Asian with a weird English accent, was elected onto the city council of an affluent, predominantly white city, and then became its mayor. I was even elected into the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating 12 white candidates in a district of 700,000 white people. I was a symbol of the American dream.
I am a naturalized American citizen with an English accent, and Kim Jeong-hoon also is a Korean-born citizen who is not good at Korean. Both of us are obviously Korean-Americans who have 100 percent Korean blood. Both of us have suffered racial discrimination at one time or another, but succeeded in the face of such adversity. It is sad to see that he is being discriminated against for wanting to come back and work for his mother country, Korea.
We need to change the way we think of our people living across the world. We should accept and help them as our brothers, bringing excellent people back as ministers if needed. We should treat them kindly when we go abroad, do business with their companies as much as possible, and make them feel that their native country still helps them without forgetting them.
When an election comes, members of the National Assembly frequently visit Koreans living abroad, talking about things like the suffrage of overseas Koreans. But once the election is over, they ignore and never keep even one campaign promise that they made to overseas Koreans. Now is the time to make this bad habit vanish.
Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Kim Chang Joon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website at www.jayckim.com.