Koreatown Storytelling Program

On this episode, we take an inside look at our most recent community events with the Environmental Services Unit. Through February and March, KSP teamed up with Environmental Services to bring forth art events under the Stop the Hate Initiative. We collaged, drew with chalk on walls, maintained utility boxes, and helped paint KYCC's latest mural on Pico. Our latest mural was designed and paint...

[Spanish Interview] Before we begin this episode, we would like alert you all that this episode is not recommended for Children. It contains strong opinions, language and mature subjects. Listener discretion is advised.   It is important for us to share trigger and content warnings on the topics discussed in this episode including deportation, death, and sex. If you would like confidential free he...

Today we share our Korean interview with Sion Kim (김석연) a Korean beekeeping expert with extensive knowledge of traditional beekeeping methods and the healing properties of bee venom. His expertise includes caring for bees and using bee venom therapy, a practice valued in traditional medicine. Sion is the grandfather of one of our KSP students, Timothy Lee. Before we share our Korean interview w...

September is National Recovery Month, where we uplift stories of recovery from substance use disorder and spotlight our recovery services. At KYCC we offer Drug and Alcohol Recovery Services (RS), integrating a harm-reduction approach with a focus on individualized care.   Koreatown Storytelling Program producer Tony Morales, sat down with Recovery Services Coordinator Jennifer Avilez to talk more...

The Koreatown Storytelling Program Podcast interviews Koreatown’s very own Jonnie Park, also known as Dumbfoundead. A Koreatown icon, acclaimed rapper, actor, and podcast host, Jonnie uses his voice to uplift community stories and Asian American narratives on a global stage. Jonnie has recently appeared in hit shows and movies like Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens and Anderson .Paak's K-Pops!, an...

Thank you for listening to KSP’s Podcast Series “Que Podemos Hacer” where we share our community's response to recent ICE Raids. This is the final episode of the series. On the morning of August 14th in Little Tokyo, Customs and Border Protection Agents arrived and stationed near the Japanese American National museum and detained at least one person. In a witness video shared by ICE out of LA,...

On the morning of July 7th, dozens of federal agents swept through MacArthur Park. No one was taken in the sweep, but USBP Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K Bovino used footage from the sweep with Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA” to post an edited video on social media.    On August 1st, a federal appeals court ruling upheld a lower court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking federal agencies from conduct...

One the first of July, federal immigration agents detained 2 street vendors in Koreatown. On the corner of Venice and Vermont, food vendors Angelina Solis and Reyna were detained as they prepared for their day of sales.  Please support our vendors, below are GoFundMe profiles created by their loved ones.  Angelina Solis Reyna   In recent data from the Deportation Data Project , most of the people...

On Monday June 23rd in Culver City, beloved paletero Ambricio Lozano also known as Enrique, was taken by masked men in unmarked cars. Enrique’s ice cream cart was left in the middle of Culver Blvd, a community he has sold to for over 20 years.  On that same Monday in Ladera Heights,  federal immigration agents took food vendor Selena Vanessa Hernandez cling on a tree near a Home Depot. Another wee...

On June 19th 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted two raids at Home Depots in Southern California. The Spanish news-station Univision, interviewed a day laborer at a Home Depot in Sylmar, where one of the raids occurred. The day laborer interviewed says, he saw 10-15 workers detained. Another raid happened closer to our community, at a Home Depot in Hollywood. In an instagram R...

This last month, KSP has been highlighting 6 businesses from Western Ave for our latest project, Legacies of Western Ave. or LOWA in short.  In this project, we interviewed six Korean-American business owners about the history and changing landscape of owning and operating their small businesses on Western Avenue since the 1980s. This project builds on our K-Town Atlas , which is a collection of D...

Today on the KSP Podcast, we premiere an interview from our most recent cohort on “Traditional Healing”. We spoke with healer Edith Rincon, who taught a workshop at our fair El MERCADITO MÁGICO .  Edith is an Intuitive Energy Practitioner with over 20+ years of teaching experience in the public school system. She now teaches alternative healing methods, mental well-being, and simple daily self-car...

This is the last episode of our "Notes From Koreatown Series" with another amazing intergenerational program, Heart of L.A. Eisner Intergenerational Music Programs. Heart of Los Angeles is a non profit organization that gives underserved kids an equal chance to succeed through a comprehensive array of after school academics, arts, athletics, and wellness programs. We will be interviewing members o...

In a community where stories connect and collide, we bring you our episode on hip hop in Koreatown through a musical technique used in hip hop: the remix. In this episode we learn more about hip hop stories in Ktown through four artists:  Omar from Hist City LA,  Rappers Preservear and Rez and producer Jonathan. All artists are connected through Hist City LA . They are a clothing and media company...

"Notes from Koreatown" is our latest interview series with artists creating Koreatown’s music. Today, we will be talking with garbagebarbie, a dynamic indie-rock group  featuring Fletcher Malloy, Daniel Khorashev, Anson Knopp, and Brayden Huff.  They were recently signed to State of the Arts and known for their bold creativity through their incorporation of quirky AI intros and high energy music....

KSP’s Notes from Koreatown, is an interview series with artists creating Koreatown’s music.  In our first episode of the series we learn about our narrator and series producer, Cira Mejia. We learn how her love for music begins, grows from admiration to creation, and the soundtrack that comes along with it.  Cira is a KSP student turned intern, preparing for her cross-country move to college. But...

Today on the show KSP intern Jane Lee, and program coordinator Dilan Askew interviewed Kija Kim. Kija is was the founder and CEO of Harvard Design & Mapping Co., served on the Massachusetts Asian American commission, and has also been a board member at multiple institutions including. Most recently she has added “author” to her CV, writing and publishing “meridian” a memoir that details her ch...

[Spanish Interview] Before we begin this episode, we would like alert you all that this episode is not recommended for Children. It contains strong opinions, language and mature subjects. Listener discretion is advised.   It is important for us to share trigger and content warnings on the topics discussed in this episode including deportation, death, and sex work. If you would like confidential fr...

Happy Halloween!  Earlier this year, the KSP team took a trip to watch the Korean supernatural film Exhuma , which translates to exhuming and relocation of a grave.  After watching the film, the team got together to talk more about the film and what we know/don’t know about shamanism and its influence in Korean culture. In summary,, shamanism is a practice that involves a person called a shaman, i...

Minye Cho has helped KSP produce video interviews in collaboration with Korean American Story. She has produced videos for global companies Samsung and Spotify and for kpop musicians such as Aespa. To name a few… Today we share a part of her journey from studying engineering in Korea to making her short film “Invisible” in Atlanta, and now managing a production company in Los Angeles. We hope you...

Boyle Heights Beat is a bilingual community news project produced by youth, offering “noticias por y para la comunidad,” or “news by and for the community.” Koreatown Storytelling Program is an  intergenerational ,  multilingual  and  multiethnic  oral history and digital media program that teaches high schoolers how to document, investigate, and interpret the stories of marginalized members of ou...

This month KSP celebrates Pride by sharing and highlighting participants in our 23-24 cohort. We spent the last year documenting stories from Koreatown's LGBTQIA+ community, while learning history in our monthly workshops. Check out our highlights here . Today we would like to share our conversation with someone who celebrates QTBIPOC year-round, Jordyn Sun. She is the creator of K-Town's...

[Spanish Interview] Hoy hablamos con Vanessa Sarmiento, leder del programa de negocios en KYCC. En esta conversacion  hablamos sobre los servicos del programa y el proceso para obtener permisos para vendedores ambulantes. Para mas infomacion sobre el programa de negocios en KYCC visite esta pagina: ⁠⁠https://www.kyccla.org/services/community-economic-development-ced/small-business-assistance/⁠⁠  ...

Today on the show, KSP Intern Janice Yun interviews journalist Jeong Park. Jeong has written for the Orange County Register, Sacramento Bee, and was an Asian American Communities Reporter for the L.A. Times. He currently works at the Seattle Times as the Assistant Metro Editor.  Janice spoke with Jeong on his journalist journey, his reporting on the 2023 Monterrey Park Shooting, and the state of j...

The interview portion in this episode is in Korean. This week marks 34 years since Los Angeles’s 1992 Civil Unrest. An event in Los Angeles history that put the light on the city’s tensions. In 2020, KSP interviewed community members on their experience on April 29th of 1992. To learn more about the 1992 Civil Unrest and community stories, head over to koreatownstorytellingprogram.org. https://www...