Kickstarting the Korean Vote
By Faith Miller, Posted 2/12/13
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- Korean Voters Full.mp3
Asian Americans make up fifteen percent of California's population, but only eight percent of the state's registered voters.
"Voting is not necessarily in our culture. We have to improve it bit by bit," Dayne Lee, the civic engagement coordinator for the Korean Resource Center said.
Asian Americans have been coming out to vote in increasing numbers over the past decade. The number of registered voters was up by 40 percent in 2012 from the 2002 election.
Civic Participation Coordinator Yongho Kim said the center is upping its efforts for 2013. "We hope to reach one hundred percent of Korean-American voters in Los Angeles," he said.
The Center compiled the answers to a questionairre about the major issues Korean Americans want to see addressed by city government. They sent the list to city council and mayoral candidates and asked how they would address the issues. The Center used the answers from the candidates to create a pamphlet detailing the platforms of each and sent that to thirty-thousand registered Korean American voters.
"We're slowly getting to a point where our voices are heard," Lee said.
Lee said the voices of legal immigrants are especially important. "Such a high percentage of our community is undocumented," he said. "Every vote in our community is precious. It counts for two or three votes."
Immigration reform is one of the most important issues for Korean American voters. People who anwered the Center's questionairre also wanted to see more green spaces and jobs, like the population at large, but they differed from the majority in that affordable housing for seniors is also near the top of the list, Lee said.
"This is a huge problem, everyone in our community knows about it," Lee said. "But our officials don't necessarily know about it yet because we don't vote."
The Center can't endorse any candidates or parties because it's a non-profit, and a representative says it doesn't need to. Its goal is to educate people so they can make their own decisions.
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