Aspen Hill:
This Magnet Attracts
Korean Americans

By Marianne Kyriakos
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 9, 1995

Jennifer Lee is a busy sophomore at Silver Spring's John F. Kennedy High School. She is in her school's honors-level Leadership Training Institute and manages to maintain a 3.89 grade point average, even though her mother, Mimi, sometimes must remove the telephone receiver from her daughter's ear at 3 a.m.

As members of the large and active Korean American community in Aspen Hill, Jennifer lives and plays and worships in two distinct cultures.

"I have a lot of Korean friends," she said. "I have some in every single class. We're close friends because Korean Americans usually are raised pretty strictly, with a really big emphasis on academics, and the children are brought up in some church."

About 80,000 Korean Americans live in the Washington area. Many have settled in Aspen Hill in central Montgomery County as well as other Montgomery communities, including Rockville, Gaithersburg, Silver Spring and Bethesda.

Hochin Lee, who is not related to Jennifer, owns three bakeries, two near Aspen Hill and another in Annandale.

Lee said about half of his customers are health-conscious Americans who have visited the Orient and appreciate Korean pastries. Especially popular are low-fat, doughnut-style treats called Ppang, made with rice flour and stuffed with red bean paste or almonds.

Hochin Lee, who came to the United States in 1974, said members of the community help one another assimilate into American society.

"When I first came, the local Korean pastor was the moving center, and he helped everyone with job hunting," he said.

As the Korean community has grown, Lee said, with new families coming in little by little, people help each other. "We pick people up at the airport, find them apartments or houses to buy, and also we find jobs for them."

Most Koreans move to the area at the invitation of families, he said.

"And we love to buy houses," Lee said. "In Korea, it's a little hard to buy a house. There's a lot of population, and you have to pay cash for a home, and credit is very hard to get."

Most new arrivals rent apartments, or they move in temporarily with relatives or friends.

But usually, Lee said, they soon become homeowners. "Because here, with a decent job, you can own a house, even though it's the bank's house."

Most of Aspen Hill's detached homes range in price from the $120,000s to the low $200,000s, according to Scott Lokey, branch manager of the Silver Spring/Wheaton office of Coldwell Banker Realty Pros. There also are some condominiums with prices beginning in the $50,000s. "Most of the detached houses are 35-plus years old. They're a mix of ranchers and two-story colonials," Lokey said.

There are several Korean-language newspapers in the area. There also are many ethnic, philanthropic and professional associations, including the Korean Scientists & Engineers Association in America Inc. of Rockville.

"So we have a lot of meetings," Hochin Lee said. "And everybody is new {to the United States} so they find each other a job or help each other."

Hochin Lee said the 3,000-member Global Mission Church on Georgia Avenue is one of the biggest Korean American communities in the region.

About 60 percent of Korean Americans in central Montgomery County are Christian, most others are Buddhist. The church, Lee said, is the center of community life. "It is where our children learn Korean. There is an all-day Saturday Korean school at church. It is a full schedule of karate, art, music, computers, Korean culture and language," he said.

For 16 years, Young Nam has owned Korean Korner, a supermarket in the neighborhood. Nam, 50, believes it is the largest Korean store in the Washington region.

"We are a hard-working people," he said. "I came here from Korea 23 years ago, and I came with two $20 bills in my pocket," both gifts from his father.

"I was working next day, combing hair in a wig store, and I've worked every single day since."

Nam has two daughters, Tina, 18, and Lori, 16. He and his wife, Sun, are active in the church, and they also operate a Korean importing business.

The full-service store sells Korean bone china, housewares, groceries -- a wide variety of Korean item. On one side, a worker flips fragrant Korean pancakes on a griddle, and packages the beef and vegetable specialties while they're still warm. A customer examines a four-ounce bag of sliced Siberian deer horn. The price: $39.90.

Jennifer Lee picked up some Korean cooking tips from her mother, but mostly she prefers American or Italian food. "Sometimes, my mother will make something that my sister and I just hate -- anything with anchovies or shrimp."

No problem, she said. "I just attack the cereal."

In her spare time, Jennifer likes to trim the knotted and twisted bonsai trees that her father planted in the yard before he died two years ago. "He bought them from a Korean gardener," she said. "I won't let my mother cut them down. They remind me of my Dad."

© 1996 The Washington Post Co.

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