KOREAN AMERICAN POLITICAL ALMANAC

In 1954, Philip P. Minn was elected to Hawaii’s territorial legislature, and became the first American of Korean ancestry to hold public office anywhere within the United States and its territories. In 1959, Hawaii joined the United States, and Minn served in the Hawaii State House of Representatives until his passing in 1966.

In 1960, Alfred Hoyun Song was elected to the City Council of Monterey Park, California, becoming the first Korean American to hold public office in the continental United States. He went on to serve until 1978 as the first Asian American elected to the California state legislature.

Following these trailblazers, there have been over 225 Americans of Korean ancestry who have held elected office, at all levels of government, and in a range of states and political affiliations.

The Korean American Institute has conducted extensive research to identify and to share the most comprehensive set of information about Korean American public officials ever curated.

At this initial stage, KAI’s “Political Almanac” project consists of two parts:

• Interactive map of the United States of America (minus Alaska for now) showing the locality where each of these past and current Korean American elected officials were based.

• A list of all past and current Korean American elected officials, which can be sorted by name and state.

In the coming months, we will add more features to these resources to make them downloadable and more searchable, as well as creating new information, including links to each official’s biographical and background information prepared by KAI, and videos and other insightful resources about their stories.

Please note that we intentionally included only executive and legislative policymaking offices at the federal, state, and municipal levels where one must be voted in by the public.

At this stage, we excluded judicial or quasi-judicial offices (Articles III), even if some states select these positions through a political campaign process. We plan to create separate lists of Korean American judges and significant political appointees as future projects.

This KAI Political Almanac project is extremely time consuming and labor-intensive, but we cannot be confident that we have identified every person who should be included.

Therefore, if you are or know of a person of Korean heritage who has held or currently hold elected office anywhere in the United States and its districts and territories, please let us know at [email protected].

In addition to conducting original research, KAI staff relied on resources and information from the following collaborators among many other public sources:

• UCLA Asian American Studies Center which has published the National Asian Pacific American Political Almanac from 1978 to 2015.

• Asian Pacific American Leadership Foundation which has an interactive map listing many former and current Asian Americans in elected office.

• Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies which has a database of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders currently in elected officials.

• Korean American Grassroots Conference which has a list of Korean Americans currently in elected office.

• Korean American History Museum which has Korean-language profiles of some former Korean American elected officials.

We are pleased to share this information with the public, and we hope that it will be useful, especially to public affairs professionals, historians, academics, and everyone interested in learning about this aspect of Korean American history.

If you want to use this research and material, we only ask that you acknowledge the source as the Korean American Political Almanac produced by the Korean American Institute, all rights reserved.

Thank you.