[Seattle, WA] Film Screening: CHOSEN at UW

Join the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI) and the Center for Korea Studies (CKS) on Thursday, March 28, from 6-8:30pm PT in Thomson Hall 101 for a screening of CHOSEN (2022) and a Q&A session with the director, Joseph Juhn.

In 2020, five Korean Americans of vastly diverse backgrounds with competing political views run for US Congress.

David Kim is a young, progressive, LGBTQ candidate running in Koreatown, Los Angeles, which boasts the largest concentration of Koreans outside of Korea. His father, a Trump-supporting conservative Christian pastor, disapproves of his son’s sexuality yet makes a temporary truce during the race.

Marilyn Strickland is a half-Korean, half-Black, centrist Democratic candidate running in Tacoma, Washington, whose mother had to face years of social stigma in Korea for being a “military bride”.

Young Kim and Michelle Park Steel, both Republican candidates running in Orange County, show unapologetically strong allegiance to President Trump and his rhetoric and seek to become, along with Marilyn Strickland, the first Korean American Congresswoman.

Then finally, Andy Kim, the only incumbent out of the five running for re-election in New Jersey, faces an uphill battle as no Democrat won his district twice in a row since the Civil War more than 150 years ago.

Each candidate symbolizes a different narrative of the Korean American immigration experience, and while historic events like the 1992 LA Riots and the recent anti-Asian hate crimes serve to unify their voices, events such as BLM and Trump’s controversies amplify their divergent positions.

With only one Korean American ever elected to US Congress prior to 2018, these five Korean Americans are determined to change history.

Joseph Juhn is a Korean American lawyer-turned documentary filmmaker. A serendipitous backpacking trip to Cuba in 2015 changed Joseph’s life when he ran into a third generation Korean Cuban by chance, inspiring him to further explore the notion of diasporic identity through storytelling. So came, JERONIMO, which was accepted to 18 film festivals around the globe and had a theatrical release in Korea in November, 2019. Joseph’s second film, CHOSEN, had the World Premiere at the Jeonju International Film Festival in Jeonju, Korea, in May, 2022. Joseph earned a BA in Film & Video at UC San Diego, and a JD at Syracuse University College of Law.