The Archive
Interviews
Each interview is a one-on-one conversation with a first-generation Korean elder — about life before immigration, the journey to America, the challenges of building a new life in a foreign land, and how faith carried them through it all. Every story is published with a full transcript, in both Korean and English.
Nancy Myungja Moon
First-generation Korean elder
Nancy Myungja Moon came to the United States from Korea in the 1980s, widowed and raising three children on her own. She talks about the language barrier that left her unable to answer the neighbors who invited her in for tea, the all-night prayer meetings that held her faith together, and the twenty years she has since spent singing in her church choir.
Read the transcriptJung Soo Moon
First-generation Korean elder
Born in 1945 in Gimpo, Gyeonggi-do, she came to America through Hawaiʻi in 1974 with two small boys. She talks about the night English classes she had to give up, the years of piecework sewing done at home while her sons slept, saving for a house in two or three years — and the coworkers who could never understand how she was happy every single day.
Read the transcript