K-Pod

Say it isn’t so! After five seasons, we are wrapping up our podcast about Korean Americans in arts and culture. For the final episode of K-Pod, co-hosts Catherine Hong and Juliana Sohn look back on the series and recall some favorite moments, from creative director Ji Lee on the value of pursuing personal projects to interior designer Young Huh’s case for beauty in everyday life. They also reveal...

Continuing their special series on cultural topics, Catherine and Juliana discuss the ways Korean Americans are observing age-old traditions like Paebek (wedding tea ceremony), Dol (first birthday) and Jesa (ancestor veneration). Their first guest is event planner Christine Chang of Live Love Create in Los Angeles, who explains how her wedding and Dol clients are honoring their heritage in a “fusi...

While Korean immigrants are notorious for pushing their kids to become doctors, it’s worth remembering that Koreans have cultivated their own age-old approach to wellness for over 5,000 years. Hanbang – aka traditional Korean medicine – encompasses acupuncture, herbs and cupping and has lately attracted a surge of interest among both Korean Americans and Westerners. Continuing our special series o...

Whether you’re a fluent Korean speaker or barely capable of uttering 안녕하세요, this episode is for you! Kicking off our new series on cultural topics, K-Pod pays a visit to Young-mee Yu Cho, Rutgers University Professor of Korean Language and Culture. As co-author of the widely-used textbook series Integrated Korean, Cho has shaped how Korean language is taught in the States today. She dives int...

K-Pod is back! To kick off Season 5, co-hosts Catherine Hong and Juliana Sohn present a special two-parter. First, they preview the upcoming season, which, as they explain, will look a bit different this time around. Instead of focusing on the lives of individual artists and creatives, they’ll be chatting with experts on a range of Korean American cultural topics. The first of these episodes will...

Daniel K. Isaac is best known for his ensemble role on the Showtime series Billions where he plays portfolio manager Ben Kim. But 2022 was a pivotal year for the actor and playwright, whose passion is the stage. He starred in The Chinese Lady at the Public Theater; he made his playwriting debut with Once Upon a (korean) Time for the Ma-Yi Theater Company; and he's currently starring opposite Linda...

Kathleen Kim is the talented puppeteer behind Ji-Young, the electric guitar-playing, ddukbokki-eating seven-year-old Muppet character who made her debut on Sesame Street last fall. Kathy was born in Flushing, Queens to parents who immigrated to the States in the 1970s. Puppeteering was just a hobby until 2014, when Kathy — who had been working as a reality TV producer — was accepted into a program...

In recent years we’ve seen a boom of Asian American actors in film and TV. But for decades, John Cho was practically the only one. He first came to fame in 2004 playing Harold in the Harold and Kumar films, a role that challenged many people’s ideas about what a leading man could look like. He’s built his career thoughtfully ever since, taking roles (Sulu in the Star Trek films, Spike Spiegel in N...

Eric Kim is a writer for the New York Times and author of the cookbook Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home. Over the past couple of years, Eric has become something of a darling in the New York food world not only for his innovative and idiosyncratic creations (think: sheet-pan bibimbap, gochugaru salmon, Stouffer’s style mac & cheese) but the intimate stories that accompany them. His read...

If you’ve seen a Pixar movie in the last 20 years, you’ve almost certainly enjoyed the work of Peter Sohn. A director, animator and voice actor, Sohn’s credits include Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL.E, and 2015’s The Good Dinosaur, which he directed and co-wrote. Another fun fact: Peter served as the physical model for Russell, the lead character in Up. Peter tells Catherine and...

With his lacerating wit, pop culture savvy and equal fluency with humor and pathos, the Emmy-nominated screenwriter, playwright and producer Jason Kim is one of the most dynamic young voices in the entertainment world. He has written for Girls and Love and is a producer on HBO’s Barry. He also wrote the book for KPOP, an off-Broadway show that won Outstanding Musical at the 2018 Lucille Lortel awa...

Michelle Zauner is a singer, songwriter and guitarist who records dreamy, melancholic indie pop under the name Japanese Breakfast. She’s also a talented writer whose debut book, a memoir titled Crying in H Mart, is being published by Knopf today! In it, she recounts her experiences growing up half-Korean in her mostly white town of Eugene, OR, her path to becoming a musician and her struggle to re...

Edward Lee is the acclaimed chef of several restaurants in Kentucky and the DC area, most notably Louisville’s 610 Magnolia, where he first made his mark on Southern cuisine almost 20 years ago using ingredients such as gochujang and soy sauce aged in whiskey barrels. He won a James Beard award for his 2018 book Buttermilk Graffiti and he was nominated for an Emmy for his work hosting the PBS seri...

Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, On Such a Full Sea, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest novel, My Year Abroad, is a dazzling tale about an American college student whose life is upended when he travels to Asia under the wing of a mysterious Chinese American entrepreneur. From his home in San Francisco, where he’s on sab...

Jim Lee is one of the most influential and revered figures in the world of comic books. The chief creative officer and publisher of DC Comics, Jim was born in Korea and immigrated to the States when he was nearly five. From Superman to Batman to Iron Man to Wonder Woman, Jim has drawn just about every superhero you can think of and holds the record for the best-selling comic book of all time, X-Me...

Designer Carol Lim has been at the leading edge of American fashion since 2002, when she and Humberto Leon co-founded the retail shop Opening Ceremony in downtown New York. She and Humberto went on to design their own acclaimed fashion collection, also called Opening Ceremony, and to become co-creative directors of Kenzo, a position they held for eight years. In January 2020, Opening Ceremony anno...

Margaret Cho needs no introduction. In 1994, the comedian was the first Asian American to have her own sitcom (All-American Girl, loosely based on her experience as a teenager growing up in San Francisco). After the show was cancelled, she returned to standup, where she built a reputation for her confessional, bawdy and subversive material, which targeted racism, homophobia, fat shaming, the enter...

Los Angeles-based siblings Jeanne Yang and Ben Yang have both made their mark on the fashion world, but in very different ways. Jeanne Yang is a highly sought-after stylist known for her work with Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr. and Christian Bale. Previously, she designed the fashion line Holmes & Yang with actress Katie Holmes. Ben Yang (aka Ben Baller), Jeanne’s younger brother by five years, o...

Diana Son is a television writer and producer whose credits include The West Wing, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Southland, Dirty John, Blue Bloods and Thirteen Reasons Why, where she served as showrunner. She first came to fame as a young playwright in 1998 with the acclaimed play Stop Kiss, which premiered at the Public Theatre and starred an unknown Sandra Oh. In a Zoom interview, Catherine and...

Author David Yoon became a breakout star in 2019 with his critically acclaimed YA debut novel, Frankly in Love, which hit the New York Times bestseller list and has also been optioned for a movie. In a Zoom interview, Juliana and Catherine talk to David about his path to becoming a writer, the “surreal” experience of seeing his first novel take off, and his partnership in love and literature with...

Ashley Park is a Tony, Grammy, and Emmy-nominated musical theater actress who has dazzled Broadway audiences with her performances in Mamma Mia, Sunday in the Park With George, The King and I and Mean Girls. She has also appeared in Netflix’s Tales of the City and off-Broadway in KPOP and Grand Horizons. But Park didn’t waltz her way into stardom without struggle. As a teenager in Ann Arbor, she w...

Visual artist KangHee Kim, best known as @tinycactus on Instagram, uses Photoshop to transform images of everyday street scenes and apartment interiors into surreal dreamscapes, all featuring portals into dreamlike worlds. On a visit to KangHee’s home and studio in Queens, Catherine and Juliana learn that the artist’s very distinctive work is directly connected to her status as a DACA recipient, w...

Eunjo “Jo” Park is the executive chef at Kāwi, the fine-dining Korean restaurant opened by David Chang’s Momofuku restaurant group in New York City. Jo is at the forefront of a growing group of chefs putting modern Korean food on the map. After culinary school at CIA she climbed the ranks in some of the best kitchens in the country, including Daniel, Per Se and Momofuku Ko. She tells Catherine and...

Welcome to Season 2 of K-Pod! For our opening episode, we’re turning the tables on the show’s co-hosts, writer Catherine Hong and photographer Juliana Sohn. The longtime friends chat with the founder of KoreanAmericanStory.org, HJ Lee, about their first meeting (at summer school in the 1980s!), their work for magazines, and what’s most surprised them about doing the podcast. Hosts: Juliana Sohn @j...