Korean American comedian Yehee Son speaks out about migration experience, disability
Yehee Son appears at Comedy Mothership. Courtesy of Troy Conrad
Yehee Son won’t be silent.
This was how she began her comedy career; she accidentally heckled someone at an open mic event and the host asked, “Do you want to get up here?”
That was in May 2025, and she’s already come a long way, appearing on "Kill Tony," YouTube show "Soft White Underbelly" and at Joe Rogan’s Texan stand-up club, Comedy Mothership.
The comedian, a South Korean-born U.S. citizen with cerebral palsy, may seem an odd fit for a stage owned by Rogan, a fact she herself admits.
She didn’t go into her immigrant background while performing there — telling The Korea Times, “I care about my safety” — but she still spoke about her disability.
She argues that she can’t ignore it, calling it the elephant in the room, but that it also helped her because it gave her a “niche identity.” She could offer a new perspective to audiences while still being funny and relatable.
Of course, in some rooms she feels like she can talk about her dual national identities. She changes her set based on the demographics of a room, she explains. “A mostly white and middle-class audience would go quiet, but when there are other demographics in there, they laugh a lot more,” she said.
In Korea, Son said, people are taught not to stand out, but this is the opposite of what she is doing with her comedy. “The point of stand-up is to make waves,” she said, while adding that she doesn't think many comedians help create change.
When her audience tells her, "Don’t get into politics, just be funny," she responds that it’s impossible. As a disabled immigrant, her very existence is political.
Indeed, her status as an emigre to America is primarily why she reached out to The Korea Times. She wanted to amplify her story, to draw as much attention as possible, in case something happens to her or her mother, whose English is limited. Given the heated political climate in the U.S. and the mass deportations of migrants, she knows that increased visibility is her friend, noting that some people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were only released after media coverage.
However, she doesn’t save her criticisms for the U.S. only. Son and her family emigrated from Korea when she was 6 because of the treatment she was receiving in the education system. She recalled how they wouldn’t put her in regular classes because of her disability, and insisted that she’d never be able to learn anything more than Hangeul, even as she had taught herself to touch type.
Quickly proving this assessment wrong after emigrating, she later obtained a bachelor’s degree in math and a master’s in education.
Comedian Yehee Son / Courtesy of Moriah Bisewski
When Son returned to Seoul last summer, she was sad to see that disabled access was still lacking in many areas.
She cited a large supermarket chain where the groceries were on the bottom floor, with the only way down being stairs. “South Korea has the best engineers in the world — why aren’t they able to figure out ramps?” she quipped.
Son stressed that she is a legal U.S. citizen, despite what her most vocal detractors say. After posting on Instagram about attending a protest against ICE activity, she was, in her words, inundated with hate speech and blatant racism.
Son criticizes U.S. news outlets for how they portray immigrants. At the protest she held a sign reading "I'm an immigrant. How will you villainize me?" — referencing the media’s propensity to make supposed outsiders seem dangerous. She wonders if, as a visibly disabled woman, they would describe her crutches as weapons.
In the current political climate, her primary concern is her mother. She worries about what might happen if her mother is accosted without her ID or if there is no one there to assert her rights, given the language barrier. She knows that she can’t always be there to help her. That is another reason why she’s trying to reach a larger audience, to foster a wider community that could help out people like her family, who can’t advocate for themselves in bad situations.
Does she think she can change the minds of racists? Not really. Yet, she hopes to reach the right people and make them take action.
She believes that comedy, and any kind of visibility for minorities, can help change the larger public’s perception, and she urges others to tell their stories. “I know it’s scary, but just letting people know about the immigrant experience is humanizing at a time of dehumanization. Speak out.”
And that is what Son is doing, with every social media post, every protest and every stand-up gig: speaking out.
Follow @heyms.yehee on Instagram for more information.
Rory Kelly is a writer, actor, improviser and stand-up comedian based in Seoul. He's also often spotted not quite winning pub quizzes in the Itaewon area.