The Stories We Bring to Bear: Flipping the Scripts on Adoption
with Deann Borshay Liem & Meejin Seol, moderated by Anna Kook

🗓️ Thursday, February 6, 2025
🕖 5:00 – 6:30 PM PT | 8:00 – 9:30 PM ET | Feb. 7 10:00 – 11:30 AM KST
🌐 Virtual/Online with ASL Interpretation

What exists beyond, around, and throughout the lives of adopted people and their various families and communities? How can we uplift a multitude of narratives in addition to the oft-told “reunion” stories? Individuals adopted from Korea and their first families bring especially critical stories to bear on the topic of ending the Korean War and “tongil” (통일, “reunification of the Korean peninsula”). Join us to hear from award-winning filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem and aspiring director and community organizer Meejin Seol, in conversation moderated by journalist Anna Kook. Speakers will talk about their work, families, geopolitics of adoption, and why we cannot hope to understand the history of the Korean War, militarism, or division without understanding the history of transnational adoption. We will discuss legacies of the ongoing Korean war and the present-day political landscape in South Korea – including impeachment and ongoing resistance by Korean civil society.

Timeless Youth with Minkyung Choi, Weng San Sit, and Elise Hu

Saturday, December 14, 2024
GYOPO Space
801 S. Vermont Avenue #201
Los Angeles, CA 90005
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM PST

Join Korean artist Minkyung Choi and Singaporean artist Weng San Sit in discussion with Elise Hu, author of FLAWLESS, a journalistic exploration of the present and future of beauty through the lens of South Korea’s booming “K-beauty” industry and the culture it promotes, for a screening, presentations, and conversation at GYOPO’s headquarters.

From 1–1:50 PM, you are invited to an optional screening of A Manual for Timeless Youth (영원한 젊음을 위한 매뉴얼 , 2024 which has been exhibited extensively in Korea. This is a special opportunity to experience “Timeless Youth,” a collaborative project by Minkyung Choi and Weng San Sit that investigates our individual & collective aspirations for “youth” and newness. The project attempts to understand the ways in which the phenomena is echoed in all aspects of our lives; from identities to our bodies to urban spaces, and in social, cultural, scientific and virtual spheres. Focusing on the Korean and Singaporean societies, ”Timeless Youth” explores this pursuit for youth and modernity and its often contentious relationship with our history and memory.

At 2 PM, the artists with Elise Hu, host of TED Talks Daily, co-host of Forever 35, and host-at-large for NPR, will share about their work and engage in a conversation.

Contact us with any questions or accessibility requests. ASL interpretation will be provided upon request (please email info@gyopo.us).

Please be advised that this event will be photographed and filmed and that GYOPO may use such photos and videos in print and online, including in social media. By RSVPing and attending this program, it signifies your consent to be photographed, filmed, and/or otherwise recorded.

Cold War Baby: Historical Context meets Aesthetics with Simon Leung, Sunny Xiang, and Steven Lee moderated by Amy Kahng
Co-presented with UC Irvine
November 6, 2024
Contemporary Arts Center Colloquium Room, 3rd Floor
Building #721, UC Irvine

Yong Soon Min was born in 1953– the year the Korean War ended in an armistice and the year of Joseph Stalin’s death during the Cold War. Min, a lovingly self proclaimed “Cold War Baby,” spent her artistic career unraveling the aftereffects and enduring consequences of these wars on nation-state history, diasporic (forced and chosen) migration, and on the bodies of generations of peoples. Join us for a panel discussion which includes Simon Leung, project-based artist and professor of art, UC Irvine; Sunny Xiang, assistant professor of English and affiliate professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Yale University; and Steven Lee, associate professor of English, UC Berkeley; who will contextualize the geopolitics of the Koreas in relation to the major players of the Cold War and share how the echoes of these pasts still are in play in contemporary politics and art practice today, especially in relation to Min’s final commissioned artwork, KISSSSS. After presentations by each participant, independent curator Amy Kahng, PHD Candidate Stony Brook University Department of Art, will moderate a dynamic conversation.

KISSSSS by Yong Soon Min
Curated by Bridget R. Cooks, Ph.D.
In collaboration with Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA)

Image: Yong Soon Min, Photo from KISSSSS (2024), Photographer C. Ryu

Destigmatizing Psychedelics with Preeti Simran Sethi, Pat Song, Candex Louie, and Harpinder Kaur Mann; moderated by Lisa Kwon
Hosted by David Horvitz 7th Street Garden

Saturday, August 24, 2024
David Horvitz 7th Street Garden
1911 7th Ave.
Los Angeles CA 90018
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM PST

Psychedelics are ancient history. From the fantastical to the comical, there is rich Asian lore around the magic of mushrooms and plant medicine traditions, which have been part of our healing for time immemorial. However, in true Western fashion, hallucinogenic drugs that were once criminalized are being commodified by the trendiest, wealthiest pockets of the American economy, leaving behind crucial populations that deserve to be released from the fear and stigma around drugs. Unsurprisingly, there has been erasure of the foundations and history of psychedelics, stripping them of their cultural and spiritual meanings for purely utilitarian purposes.

This program will highlight how psychedelics can heal individuals, families, and communities in the Asian American and Asian diaspora, and explore the impacts of harm and the ways Asians have been overlooked, othered, and appropriated in the Westernization of psychedelics. Speakers will address how trappings of Asian spirituality and philosophy have been commoditized or decontextualized in psychedelic spaces, and share ways to practice plant traditions with more respect for the cultures from which these traditions come. Psychedelic healing is our birthright.

Join us for presentations from esteemed scholars, practitioners, activists, cultural workers and healers in the field: Preeti Simran Sethi, writer, mental health coach, psychedelic support, and the founder of Asian Psychedelic Collective ; Pat Song, a clinical psychologist trained in psychedelic assisted therapy; Candex Louie, a trans Hokkien-Hoisanese storyteller, somatics and bodywork practitioner; and Hapinder Kaur Mann, a yoga asana meditation teacher, mindfulness educator, and community builder who will lead us in pranayama. Presentations will be followed by a discussion moderated by writer and GYOPO program committee member Lisa Kwon.

ASL interpretation will be provided upon request (please email info@gyopo.us).

Please be advised that this event will be photographed and filmed and that GYOPO may use such photos and videos in print and online, including in social media. By RSVPing and attending this program, it signifies your consent to be photographed, filmed, and/or otherwise recorded.

Image: The Legendary Emperor Shen-Nung, Illustration by Pen Tsao, 18th-19th Century (The first documented case of cannibis use dates back to 2800 BC, when it was listed in the Emperor Shen Nung’s, father of Chinese medicine, pharmacopoeia.)

The Pepper: Migration and Metaphor with Kristyn Leach and Victor M. Valle moderated by Saehee Cho
Co-presented by SSI YA GI, Second Generation Seeds, and GYOPO
Hosted by Nonhuman Teachers

Saturday, August 10, 2024
The Cactus Store Studio & Greenhouse
3209 Fletcher Dr.
Los Angeles, 90065
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM PST

There is no Mexican cuisine without the piquant acidity of chopped jalapeños in a homemade salsa, nor Korean food (since the 1500s) without its gurgling stews, red from sweet and savory gochugaru. Each person who uses a chile makes it their own, drawing out the smoky or spicy or acidic features important to their particular dish–even if they must substitute a poblano for an asagi gochu, or vice versa. Native to Central and South America, the chile pepper has traveled far and wide to become an integral ingredient in disparate cuisines. Under colonial rule, Indigenous Mexicans brought chile seeds and farming techniques northward, transforming and expanding their genetic diversity to adapt to new environments and taste buds. The chile pepper arrived in East Asia from Central America and developed unique genetic signatures which have shaped the Korean cuisine we know today.

Join us as farmer and seed steward Kristyn Leach and writer Victor M. Valle present the complex histories, epigenetics, mythologies of the chile, and efforts to protect heirloom varietals of chiles which are close to being wiped out by corporations seeking more uniform and controllable qualities. Their presentations will be followed by a conversation moderated by Saehee Cho, during which they will discuss how the migration and adaptability of the chile pepper may offer us tools of resistance, illuminating stories of colonization, Indigenous poetics, histories of agriculture, borderlands ecology, and genetics.

The evening will also include a special poetry reading by poet Mary Lau Valle on her Chinese-Mexican ancestry and a sneak peak of moderator Saehee Cho’s documentary that explores the Korean diaspora in Mexico. A conversation about peppers transcends notions of nationalism and cultural identity politics, and invites us to contemplate the magic of plants that retain so much genetic diversity that wherever planted by whichever people, beget new worlds of of taste and can only ever be “owned through repeated acts of love and care.”

ASL interpretation will be provided upon request (please email info@gyopo.us).

Please be advised that this event will be photographed and filmed and that GYOPO may use such photos and videos in print and online, including in social media. By RSVPing and attending this program, it signifies your consent to be photographed, filmed, and/or otherwise recorded.

Ssi Ya Gi is dedicated to sharing senior immigrant stories about foods, because the process of listening and transmitting our elders’ food stories creates opportunities for intergenerational and cross-cultural discoveries.

Second Generation Seeds tends to the kinship between the Asian and South West Asian/North African (SWANA) diasporas and the plants who have evolved alongside us. By preserving, adapting, and breeding beloved crops, we affirm that culture is rooted in our imaginations, not just our memories.

Pacific Imaginaries with Professor Crystal Mun-hye Baik, artist and architect Bz Zhang, artist and researcher Tony Cho

Saturday, June 15, 2024
GYOPO
801 S. Vermont Avenue. #210
Los Angeles, CA 90005
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM PST

How do we visualize the Pacific Ocean – through images, symbols, materials, memories, and beyond? Last August, the world’s largest maritime military exercise, the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) announced it was holding a competition to consider submissions for a new logo for its “2024 edition.” The submission solicitation stated, “This is an opportunity for any artist, designer or creative person who would like to see their work featured as the exercise’s official branding for stationary, press releases, websites, social media, coins, shirts, hats, and more. The winner will also be officially recognized by the Commander of the U.S. Third Fleet.”

RIMPAC occurs biennially and will take place again this summer, with the U.S. Pacific Fleet launching from San Diego to join other forces to hold so-called “war games” off the coasts of Hawaiʻi throughout the Pacific Ocean. RIMPAC involves an estimated 25,000 military personnel, alongside 38 warships, and over 170 aircrafts from 28 countries all over the world, including the Republic of Korea and the United States. RIMPAC purports “to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.” However, military exercises in the Pacific continue to destroy environments and untold scores of marine life that dwell in the ocean, including at least one instance of an Australian destroyer killing a mother fin whale and her calf in San Diego. 

RIMPAC is one example of the long history of the U.S.-led militarism, colonialism, and extraction across the Pacific Ocean. U.S. heads of state have also militarized the oceanscape in declaring “America’s Pacific Century” and the “Pivot to Asia.” In asking what it may mean to visualize the Pacific, we question for whom the Indo-Pacific remains “free and open.” We contend with the legacies of militarization in Hawaiʻi, the Marshall Islands, Bikini Atoll, and Guåhan – lands which have often served as what geographer Sasha Davis calls “sacrifice zones,” laboratories, and testbeds for militarized technologies. We also contend with the militarized dispossession and pollution of landscapes of the Pacific rim due to U.S. base sites in the Philippines, Okinawa, and South Korea, including the largest overseas U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. 

Yet the Pacific is also a site of active resistance. Generations of peoples have led movements for sovereignty, demilitarization, and rematraition of lands and oceans. What does this enduring legacy mean for gyopo and the peoples and environments of the Pacific and Oceania? How can we visualize, sense, and symbolize the majestic Pacific Ocean in the face of such militarism? How can artists, designers, and creative peoples draw from existing forms of resistance while creating new understandings of our connectivity and resilience? 

Join us as we hear from Professor Crystal Mun-hye Baik, artist and architect Bz Zhang, and artist and researcher Tony Cho.  Participants will share some of their work during which time they will imagine all attendees to consider anticolonial and liberatory symbolism, imagery, and other modes of visual communication.  

Attendees are encouraged to bring their own sketching and drawing supplies. Speakers will encourage folks to engage with their works through their own sketching, drawing, and collage-making processes to imagine for themselves how to visualize the Pacific. GYOPO will provide a limited amount of supplies on site. 

ASL interpretation will be provided.

Please be advised that this event will be photographed and filmed and that GYOPO may use such photos and videos in print and online, including in social media. By RSVPing and attending this program, it signifies your consent to be photographed, filmed, and/or otherwise recorded.

Photos

An Encounter with the Korean Avant-Garde
Co-Presented with the Hammer Museum
Friday, April 12, 2024
Hammer Museum / Bay-Nimoy Studio
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
2:00 PM – 6:00 PM PST
In-person with ASL Interpretation

Presented in collaboration with GYOPO, an L.A.-based collective of Korean cultural producers and art professionals, this program features dialogues with artists and thinkers on the historical, political, and cultural contexts of Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, with focus on the lasting impacts of this decisive moment within Korea’s local and diasporic creative histories, as well as the larger influence that these art histories have had within the global art world. The afternoon will culminate with a performance by Only the Young artist Sung Neung Kyung.

SCHEDULE
2:00pm Opening Remarks by Yoon Ju Ellie Lee and Pablo Jose Ramirez

2:10pm Keynote
Art historian Joan Kee delivers the keynote address on the Experimental Art movement.

3:15pm Panel Presentations and Discussion
Presentations by sociologist Jennifer Jihye Chun, artist Young Joon Kwak, and art historian Mina Kim will contextualize the experimental art movement and trace its legacies. Following the presentations, curator Harry C. H. Choi will moderate a conversation between the presenters and a Q + A with the audience.

4:45pm Break

5:00pm Performance by Sung Neung Kyung

RSVP NOT REQUIRED

Special thank you to Baik Art and Le Mieux Cosmetics for their generous support and the Hammer Museum for their collaboration on the symposium.

If you were unable to join us for the program, you can find the recording below!

Transnational Queering
Saturday, November 18, 2023
3 PM – 4:30 PM PST / 7:00 – 8:30 AM KST
🌐 Virtual/Online with ASL Interpretation
 
Have you ever wondered if queerness can be used to describe the experience of being “othered,” even in one’s very own “motherland?” Join GYOPO’s next program, as we go through the lens of contemporary practices and the lived experiences of artists bending barriers of gender. Transnational Queering considers the nuances of queering, and poses the question of how, or if, queering can be used in non-gendered terms to define the experiences of individuals who embody the varying intersections between the LGBTQ+ communities, those heralding from the “global majority,” and peoples with varying immigration statuses. Artists 𝐊𝐢𝐚𝐦 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐨 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐨, 𝐋𝐚𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐨, 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐚 𝐋𝐢𝐧, and 𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐞𝐮𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐠 focusing on how each explores ideas of queering, followed by a discussion centered around the queering of home and belonging, moderated by 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐌. 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐚 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢.

What’s Your Role in Social Change?
Monday, October 16th, 2023
7 PM – 8:30 PM PDT
 
GYOPO Space
801 S. Vermont Ave. #201
Los Angeles, CA 90005

Join GYOPO for a conversation on how to strengthen our social change roles, practices, and ecosystems. Deepa Iyer, author of Social Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and Connection (2022), will be in dialogue with Cathi Choi (Women Cross DMZ, Korea Peace Now!) and Alex Paik (Tiger Strikes Asteroid). The conversation will be followed by an exercise facilitated by Iyer during which you will have the opportunity to map your very own social change roles and bolster your solidarity practices. Copies of Social Change Now, published by Thick Press, will be available for purchase.

A conversation with GYOPO volunteers Cathi Choi, Alison Choi, and Haeri Lee on the US travel ban on North Korea and the Korea peace movement.

July 27 marked 70 years since the signing of the Armistice Agreement that halted — but did not end — the Korean War. On this occasion, the Korea peace activist organization Women Cross DMZ, along with co-convener partners, hosted a three-day national mobilization in Washington DC, Korea Peace Action: National Mobilization to End the War. To this day, the Korean Peninsula is still divided and remains locked in a state of war, as no official peace treaty has been signed. Cathi, Alison and Haeri attended the mobilization as young Korean American activists advocating for President Biden to end the Korean War and lift the US travel ban on North Korea.

Alison:
Cathi, during the Korea Peace Action week, you asked us, “Who are you bringing to this Korea peace movement?” I wanted to revisit that question here.

Haeri:
When I first heard that question [in July], I thought of the history of this movement and how many people have paved the way to reunification for us: the millions of Korean activists, organizers, workers and students who are counting on us, Koreans who live in the U.S., to pressure the U.S. government to lift the travel ban and sanctions on the DPRK and support a peace treaty. They are the ones who resisted the U.S. military occupation of South Korea from 1945-1954, they are the ones who defend the rights of the working class, the disabled, the elderly and children, they are the ones who are opposing the noxious impact of U.S. militarism in Korea and calling for reunification in Korea to this very day and far beyond. We as Koreans of the diaspora must commit to helping them heal our fractured homeland.
I also brought my family to this mobilization, my dad in particular. He was deeply committed to his work about ROK-DPRK relations, though from a conservative stance. Had he been around longer, I am certain we would have had serious conversations about these topics, and that I would have shifted his views. I have imagined countless conversations with him about the future of Korea, and while attending the mobilization, I imagined him standing right next to me, lending me his strength and focus.
I also brought my mother, who used to hold similarly conservative views as my dad, but after years of us talking and me offering her different historical perspectives, my mom now understands that she was taught modern Korean history from an extremely narrow view. She, like many proud Korean nationalists of her generation, thought of the Korean War as a shameful taint on Korea’s history, preferring to focus on the economic growth of the ROK in the 70s and 80s, which was the result of over-working millions of Korean workers, condensing power into the conglomerates, and neoliberal financialization. Now, I believe my mother and I are at this incredible middle ground politically when it comes to understanding modern Korean history. We are never alone in wanting peace on this peninsula. We were taught such a narrow view on the issue of Korean unification growing up, but we can gain power from learning our deep history while we are in this movement. I feel not alone; like our shoulders are being held.

Alison:
My first thought on this question went to my family. My grandparents literally experienced the war. Even though we’ve disagreed about our beliefs and ways of carrying out life, and their values about wealth and religion, I bring them in. I think a lot about my North Korean heritage because I’ve been so alienated from that part of me. I have never touched the soil of North Korea. Due to Western stigma against North Korea, I also never felt understood around my whole Korean identity as a child, and I feel like I’m reconnecting with it. My desire for unification is an embodied longing for connection with where I’m from. For myself and all Korean people.
At the same time, as a new activist in this movement, I can’t pinpoint every reason and person I’m bringing into the space, but I know I’m supposed to be here.

Cathi:
What Alison said about embodied knowledge is so important. For gyopos especially, trusting our bodies and intuition can be a strange and confusing journey because we have often been severed from direct experiences, like touching the land of our ancestors, as you said. I also relate to your point about not knowing exactly who I’m bringing in. It changes day-to-day. My paternal side comes from the north, and several relatives visited the DPRK prior to the 2017 travel ban. I am slowly learning to carry my family from all across the peninsula, on both sides of the DMZ, and from across the diaspora. I am also bringing in my chosen family from all chapters of my life – people who are not necessarily in Korean organizing spaces but in spaces like abolitionist and other diasporic liberation movements. I am so deeply grateful to them. Drawing lines between these different movements and diasporic communities is crucial.

Cathi:
To even dream about the possibility of lifting the travel ban or reunification can feel terrifying because fighting for change opens you up to heartbreak. So some may be tempted to settle instead into pessimism and dismiss any attempts for change as “naive.” A Korean elder organizer described this tendency as “so Korean”: to break your own heart, before anyone else can break it for you. However, in DC we learned how our predecessors across generations paved the way for us. We saw how individuals across generations take action – “big” and “small” – to change the world. All of this is empowering. As Haeri said, our shoulders are definitely held. We are just part of a wider tapestry – members of a resilient community that has long been fighting to end this war, end the draconian travel ban, and lift the deadly sanctions imposed on the DPRK.

Alison:
Historically, we’ve been pounded by grief. That embodied knowing of wanting to reunite our homeland involves politics that will make you challenge all that you know and have been taught. It creates a real reality check. American politics can become obscured.

Haeri:
As one of the many crucial steps that must be taken that leads towards the ultimate goal of an official peace treaty, lifting the travel ban will allow meaningful communication and exchange with the DPRK. Prior to 2017, separated families were reunited and humanitarian workers, students and scholars engaged in rich cultural and academic exchanges across borders. These channels of connection came to a sudden halt in 2017 when Trump issued the travel ban, restricting U.S. passport holders from visiting the DPRK. Koreans with U.S. citizenship have been unable to connect with their long-separated families in the DPRK for the last 7 years. This travel ban is renewed every August, giving the Biden administration the option of either ending the ban or renewing it.
A few weeks ago, on July 27th, Korea peace activists visited the U.S. Department of State holding piles of postcards signed by 1,000 individuals and endorsements from 62 different organizations. They demanded an end to this travel ban and sent the postcards by mail.
As we enter our 70th year of this unending war, we hold separated families close in our hearts. Renewal of the travel ban will only deepen the chasms of separation and disconnect that war and flawed policy has created. We must call for an end to the travel ban on the DPRK!

Cathi:
Also, the Korean government has facilitated 21 reunions of separated families, but Korean Americans have been left out of that process. Biden promised that Korean Americans would be reunited during his presidential campaign. He has not worked to make this happen.