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Director Meets Korean Educators
 Saturday, March 12, 2016 
Ile Omode director, Baba Jahi Awakoaiye, recently received Korean educators from Japan. The surprising visit underscored many similarities between the goals of Korean educators in Japan and independent African educational institutions in the United States.
The delegation was informed of Ile Omode by Arnold Perkins, an elder with the Brotherhood of Elders, through his friendship with Marvin T. Gibson, who has served as the board president for the Japan Pacific Resource Network for over 10 years.
Marvin led a delegation that included Professor Kyung Hee of UC San Diego, who teaches ethnic studies and, Kwangmin Kim, the executive director of a Korean NGO Center in Osaka, Japan.
The group toured the school and were especially interested in Ile Omode's pedagogy for sustaining an authentic African-centered curriculum, as these efforts parallel their attempt, particularly Kim in Japan, to maintain educational systems based on Korean culture in Japan.
Professor Kim is an educator, researcher and practitioner of multicultural community building. One of his particular focus is on working with and servicing children and Korean youth in Osaka. Moreover, he is a prolific writer, publishing in academic journals and policy briefs.
In Japan, the largest immigrant population is made up of Koreans, but at times they have been treated as second class citizens. Employment opportunities are often limited due to Korean discrimination, and a sizable number of Koreans will change their names to Japanese names to further blend in to the general population (Korean names tend to be monosyllabic).
Professor Hee shared that her family strongly discouraged her from maintaining a Korean name, but her identification with Korean culture was too strong, and this in part drove her efforts to study ethnic studies at UC San Diego.
The struggle to maintain Korean schools has waged for years, beginning with a law passed in 1949 which led to the literal destruction of Korean schools in Japan. There is little public funding for Korean schools, and the schools struggle financially. Kim discussed the fiscal challenges, and wanted to know how an African-centered school in the US without public funding survived.
Dr. Hee had a close friend who taught in a Korean school and went almost a year without receiving a salary. It was only through support from his family and friends that he was able to provide for himself and his family.
It was an amazing visit and showed how even across an ocean and an even larger gulf in culture, that the struggles for self-identification and independence ring through for many displaced peoples.
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