By K. W. Lee

"If Jesus were physically here on earth, where would He be? If Jesus were in your neighborhood, your community, what would He be doing? Who would He spend time with?"

You can take the inner city out of Joan Kim, but you can’t take Joan Kim out of the inner city.

That’s the way it was for the Harvard graduate in the fall of 1995, when she was on her way to UC-San Diego Medical School after a year’s stint at Price Waterhouse in Washington, D. C.

What made her make an abrupt U turn and decide to abandon, at least temporarily, her career goal for which she had spent arduous years of studies at Cambridge?

Days earlier, she read a Washington Post story about a humble Korean thrift store owner’s effort to do something for children in the impoverished neighborhood which surrounded his store.

Back in 1993, Joon Park, who owned the store beneath a topless night club on 14th Street NW, leased the top floor and turned it into a free tae-kwon-do studio and summer camp for kids in the impoverished neighborhood.

Joan was moved. Joon Park used to attend her Global Mission Church of which she was a core activist. And when his son wistfully spoke of the dire need to start an afterschool/tutoring program for the kids to get them off the streets, her heart couldn’t resist.

"I felt like God wanted me to work with this family in their ministry to children," she wrote in her church bulletin. "Even before meeting the Parks, I had been struggling over the decision whether to go to medical school, and meeting the Parks only intensified my inner conflict.

"I struggled with the decision for a few agonizing days, until one of my friends finally asked me, ‘What would Jesus do?’

"The first words out of my mouth were, ‘He would be with those kids.’

"In my heart, I felt a desire to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, into the inner city. What I did for the ‘least of these,’ I was doing for Him. In being with these kids, I knew that I would be in His presence."

She wrote, "I came in with golden ideas for changing children’s lives. However, my expectations were challenged, frustrated and crumpled up on discouraging days.

"I kept on encountering behavior that had to change - violent reactions to anger and racist remarks, crumpled up balls of paper that turned out to be months-old undone homework, foul language, strong emotions that always got expressed right away and really loudly.

"At the slightest correction, some of the most outspoken kids would cry or hide. After one little girl stuck out her tongue at me, calling herself a dog all day and refusing to do anything she was told, I went home an emotional wreck, not knowing what to do.

"Then God’s answer came through my prayers: ‘Don’t try to change them, but love them.’ He showed me that when others encounter Christ’s love in me, then His love starts to change them. God started opening my eyes.

"He showed me:

Violent-tempered relatives crowded in a house that barely supported itself on two welfare checks; a lovable but out-of-control mother with a substance abuse problem; a single mom who acted like she didn’t want her children.

"I spent one lovely spring afternoon out in front of a house, watching moms and kids run races down the street, as little girls climbed all over me, so hungry for affection.

"Now the kids who drove me craziest before are some of my favorites. That’s God’s doing. He is teaching me now to love."

Then came a cheerful note six months later:

"I’m finding myself in the middle of a growing dialogue between Korean American churches and African American churches, and a truly close partnership is emerging.

"I see young African American kids screaming in Korean at the top of their lungs during taekwondo practice, and bowing to me and other adults, saying, "Ann-nyung-ha-sae-yo, How are you?"

"It still trips me out. One girl and her dad came up with a rap about taekwondo, and our demonstration team is doing taekwondo moves to black gospel music.

"The cultures are blending in some pretty funny ways. Most of all there’s a family feeling here that extends across race. I believe that God is doing a healing and reconciliation work here.

"Some black pastors from Southeast Washington have been bringing kids from the Projects for free taekwondo lessons, and we have been meeting for prayer meetings with the pastors, who also have a heart for racial reconciliation.

"I’m still inspired that God’s been using a Korean merchant family’s incredible generosity to start the ball rolling. They work six days a week, 12-14 hours a day, and pour their life savings as an investment into the lives of needy black and Latino kids. Amazing."

A couple months later, Joan Kim wrote me in a more pensive mood:

"K W, remember you told me to look at life from the worm’s eye view? It’s simultaneously enlightening and saddening to try to look at life from the point of view of the children I’ve encountered through the afterschool program.

"The other day, one 6-year-old boy blurted out ‘My daddy’s in jail because he hit my mom.’ What followed was an extemporaneous discussion among the four children there about domestic violence they witnessed within their homes.

"Apparently, these kids had watched the whole thing from the kitchen - watched their dad beating their mother, watched their mom being taken to the hospital, watched their dad get arrested and taken to jail...

"Two Saturdays ago, while I was tutoring an 8-year-old girl, we were reading a children’s book of prayers. I was explaining the word ‘meditate’ to her, and asked her what she meditated about. She said, her father and her mother. Turns out, her father’s in jail. He saw her only once, when she was 2. Her mother no longer has custody of her because of a substance abuse problem.

"It would be hard to guess any of this; this girl looks so happy on the surface - exuberant, lively.

"She took me by the hand that day and showed me her neighborhood - the group home on the corner (All the girls there are bad, she reported), her friends’ houses, the corner store she goes to all the time.

"As we were walking, we encountered other children that we knew. For all the problems, this neighborhood really feels like a neighborhood - people are outside, the streets are lively, all the people know each other and place each other in relation to others that they know.

"All this reminded me of Isaiah 61:1-4:
‘The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me
Because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor
He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted
To set free the captives
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
And the day of vengeance of our God
To comfort them the beauty instead of ashes...
To give them the beauty instead of ashes...
The oil of gladness instead of the spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness
A planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.’

"Jesus began His earthly ministry with these words. And it’s my prayer that these children can grow to be oaks of righteousness: tall, strong, free from the ashes and despair that have caught the generation before them."

An indifferent churchgoer, I can’t help but pray that her candle burns bright in the darkest corner of this nation’s capital.

K.W. Lee edited the Korea Times English Edition 1990-92. He lectures investigative journalism in the UC system.