From Mokpo To Mississippi - Sam Lee Part 1

He’s ten years old, fresh from postwar Korea, and suddenly sitting in a Mississippi classroom with no English. That’s where Sam Lee’s American story begins and it’s nothing like the polished version we usually hear. We talk with Sam as he maps the world he came from: growing up in Mokpo, living with nightly curfews, shopping at traditional markets daily, and moving through a Korean education system built on exams, public rankings, and fierce competition. 

Then the real jolt hits. Sam shares what it’s like to immigrate to the United States in 1970, get placed into fifth grade without the language, and navigate an all-Black elementary school during the era of integration. We dig into the loneliness of sounding different, the pressure to adapt fast, and the quiet grit it takes to keep showing up when you want to quit. If you care about immigrant experience, Korean American identity, language learning, or the realities of growing up between cultures, this conversation stays with you. 

We also make room for the parts that don’t fit into a hardship narrative: the way books can reopen a dream, how music can hand you a friend group, and how a trumpet in school band can become a lifeline. Sam reflects on family expectations, on what his mother gives up when she loses language and mobility, and on the simple rituals like weekend fishing trips that help a family stay connected through big change. 

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Links to Stephen's incredible novels:

The Death Letter
The Bondage of Innocents

Transcript

Welcome To Cold Springs

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Stories from Cold Springs for a show about creativity and curiosity and the remarkable real-life characters behind the stories we tell. I'm Joy Stephen Bean, author, former physician, and educator. Popping your guide through the winding roads of this fictional Mississippi town. Each episode will sit down with storytellers, artists, and everyday eccentrics to explore the art, humor, and humanity behind their fascinating journeys. So settle in. Cold Springs always has another story to tell. Our guest today is a special person in my past life. In my past life, I used to be a high school chemistry and physics teacher. Our guest was one of my students. I would just point out as all teachers know, you teach a lot of students, you enjoy those who are very good students and do your work and all that, which Sam did. But the other thing about working as a teacher is by far, most of the time, you know very little about your students' personal lives, unless something comes along with a particular student, which happened to me that they had some troubles that I tried to help deal with. But Sam wasn't one of those. So I didn't know Sam very well, other than in my classroom. But it was a joy to know in my classroom. This goes back many years ago now. Sam, the thing I knew about him was obviously he was Asian, and I don't know if I asked him directly or if I asked one of his friends or another teacher. I knew he was a Korean heritage. Other than that, about his personal life, I knew not almost nothing, but really nothing. So we have crossed paths again here in our later lives for several readings. One is uh my writing as an author, and he he read my books and then he contacted me about the project that he has. And then I found out more about him and truly fascinating to me, me as a provincial little boy that grew up on a farm in Mississippi, and he grew up totally, totally different from the way I did. But he grew up with family, as I did. He grew up with certain expectations from his family, as I did. So even though looking back on it, there were a lot of differences in us, a lot of our basic qualities stemmed from our family and from expectations. With all that being said, my guest today is Sam Lee. Sam, welcome. Thank you for stopping by.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Thank you very much, Dr. Beam. This is the second time that I I connect with you. First time was when I was probably about 14 or 15, junior in high school, or maybe sophomore even. And here we are, talking again. So thank you again for inviting me. Truly my pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

And and thank you for agreeing to appear on our podcast. Well, Sam, I've kind of teased our audience with a little bit of your background, but I would like to start with your life in Korea. By the way, I will go ahead and say I think you were around 10 when you moved to the States. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. That's correct. So you must have a lot of memories from the years before you moved to the States.

A Teacher Reconnects With Sam

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Tell us about oh, so many things that we're just not aware of. How you lived, what the living situation was like, where you lived in Korea, what kind of community? Tell us about your family, not only your core family there, your parents and so on, but your extended family, and how it was to live in that Korean community that you lived in.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

I was born in Korea in a larger town of provincial capital called Kongju, and then mostly grew up in a port city called Mokpo. Both my parents were from Mokpo pre-war and post-war went different ways. They didn't know each other, and after they got back, they found each other and got buried. My dad's side of the family comes from an island at the southern coast of Mokpo. And he was a scholar, the village scholar, and a farmer. He did more of scholaring than farming, recall. My mom's side was all city persons. They had business in Mopo, and I grew up in post-war, not immediately post-war, but post-war Korea, where things were still very, very uncertain. And my childhood was memories are things like you would never consider to be normal here, which is they were a ten o'clock curfew at night. Guards would walk around with two sticks making a knocking sound, and you know you knew that uh that they were looking for people still out after ten o'clock. That's kind of environment that was normal to me until found out otherwise. I was youngest of three, oldest was a boy, six years older than me, and my sister is in between, four years older than me, and I guess I was the accident. I was an ambitious little kid because I could see my brother and sister doing things, and my parents, my mom used to tell me, yeah, you can't do that yet. So, well, why? That was the usual mode of trying to discuss what my options were. My dad was a professor, and in Korea, even now, you know, professor and scholars are respected. I guess we lived a little bit of a life of I don't know what you call it, I wouldn't call it fame, but uh we were revered more than common folks. So that was that was interesting to look back at.

Postwar Korea Family Life And School

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Uh, which were private. So how do you take an entrance exam for first grade? That was one of the interesting, you know, put the square peg in square hole, I guess. Very vague memory of that. My brother and my sister had gone through school already and kind of paved the way, so I needed a teachers already. It was uh associated school with the the college that my dad had founded. It was a good learning experience. A little bit of side note, uh I learned my timesables in Korean, and I still do them in Korean, believe it or not, uh, in my head, and I translate into English.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

So when you started first grade, was that like it is here? You had 20, 25 students in your class, self-contained classrooms, or how was the education system set up there?

SPEAKER_02 7:59

It was far larger class than here. I think our class consisted of a hundred students in five rows. And it was a different way of system. You would take periodical every nine weeks or whatever uh tests, and all the exam scores would be published, and whoever's at the top would be the class uh president of that class. And second, third, and fourth will get the row one, two, three, four, five, and so it was kind of a military type of organization of the uh serents.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Strictly a merit-based type system. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Marit-based, yeah. And that spurred on a lot of competition among the kids. And my mom was uh stay at home mom, and her way of pressuring us was to just ask us to the best we can. And if we disappointed her, she would never say anything and she'd just look at you, you know. They'll look. We tried our best, all three of us, I think, uh, you know, excelled somewhat in our courses and such. And then I stopped going to school in the middle of third grade due to childhood illness. So I was out for about a good nine months. And then during that time, my dad had decided to come to the United States. And he had worked with Americans before during post-war uh times. And one of the Americans wanted to sponsor him to come over. So for whatever reason, he decided to take him up on it, and uh he went to Peabody, Peabody College, I guess part of Vanderbilt now, for a master's in library science. Afterwards, he decided to take a job in Hattiesburg uh in a small Christian college called William Carey College, if you recall.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

We left Korea in late 70, late summer of 1970.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

And you were ten.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

I was almost ten. I had not finished fourth grade, and interestingly enough, they enrolled me in fifth grade when I came to the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Before we get further into that about your coming to the US. Share with us if you would, what was oh basic things like grocery shopping like for your mom there? Could she find everything she needed? Were there things that she would come home and say they didn't have it today? Those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Well, it's a little, I used to go to the market, and refrigeration was somewhat unavailable at the time of the Korea in regular households. So she would go to market every day to pick up stuff for meals, and I'll go with her. It would be one of those traditional markets that you may see in TV uh in uh Asian countries where wares are on the table and it's an organized place, and you have everything from fish, fresh fish, to meat to all the vegetables, different stands. That's how we got uh food every day, practically every day. And uh we ate traditional Korean food. It wasn't elaborate, but it was you know, good for us in that it satisfied our needs, but I wouldn't say they were luxurious items at all. I mean this is still post-war Koreas. Right. Things were limited.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

How did you get around then the buses or what was transportation like?

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Buses, mainly buses. And the port city was probably at that time about 100,000 people. Right now it's around 500,000 people. So there was a bus line. They call it microbuses. It wasn't a full bus, but it was one of those uh large vans, if I recall. And uh taxis who were left over uh jeeps. It's kind of interesting. So continuing on, uh after arriving in US, I entered as fifth grader with no English, a bit of a culture shock, well, a lot of culture shock. And before I came over, I used to tell my Korean friends, I'm gonna show those Americans. I'm a tough Korean kid, and I'll ask them, you know, if they give me that gibberish, I'll just tell them that you're speaking

Illness Sponsorship And The Move

SPEAKER_02 13:05

weird or something like that. Well, that completely changed, of course, when I landed here.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Did your were your Korean friends envious of you, or they were they glad they weren't going to America or what?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

They are they were envious because it was America supposed to be this wonderful place of beauty and and freedom and et cetera. And of course, everyone wanted to go, especially post-war Americans were seen as their saviors, or our saviors, I should say. So kids were kids. Way we played in Korea was not very different from the way I guess KISS played in the United States, except for when we moved to Hattiesburg, we ended up in near De William Carey, where the population was very old. So very few kids, if any at all. I think there were two my age within like a mile radius. So there was a bit of a shock as well. But uh I guess short is of it that uh once I started going to school, I picked up the language, and by the time I hit seventh grade, I could actually talk and understand enough to start reading. And how I got here, kind of skipping along, is when I was a kid, I always wanted to be a writer. And I thought that dream was over when we moved because I i English was not a natural language, and uh and going into the fifth grade meant that uh everybody supposedly has already gone through the grammar training and and understanding uh how to write and read. Well, I I skipped that step.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

How did you cope with going into a school where you didn't speak the language or extremely little of it? How did you make it through your school days?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

I guess kids are kids, so uh kids are resilient in many ways, but there were some really tough times. Especially I went to all black school. It was uh one of those right at the uh integration uh timing. So before they uh uh they were integrating high school levels at that point. And elementary school hasn't been integrated yet. So I ended up going to all black school. There's one other person who was non-black, and I got picked on because I looked different and I I I sounded differently, even if I when I try to talk, it sounded funny. So there were some dark times, at least uh at that time I felt like I want to go back. This is this is too tough. But I persevered, made some good friends, both black and white, along the way, and saw the world from a very different place.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

How did your older siblings cope? How did they do in unusual? Did they speak any English before they came?

SPEAKER_02 16:34

In Korea, you were required to take English from junior high in seventh grade and above. So my brother went through two years of uh high school, so sh he had you know a few years of learning English, but taught English by Korean English is uh very different than uh learning native English. I believe my sister only had one year or something. But uh personally is a word such that uh my sister accumulate accamulated assimilated quicker. So she she picked up her language probably the first and then I was the next one. And my brother at the time, older brother was going into tenth grade, and so it was tough for him.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Uh you you came, you were in the fifth grade, spoke no English, but and w it's understandable that hey, I'd I'd rather go back home than be here undergoing this. But something inside you or your parents,

Fifth Grade With No English

SPEAKER_01 17:55

your older siblings, whatever, something kept you going. What would you say kept you going? That's a good question. I think it was just a family unit, you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

And in later years I asked my parents, why did you bring us here? And my dad said, Well, we thought this would be best chance for you to succeed overall. You know, more opportunities. Whereas Korea was very, very competitive. I mean, back to the elementary school when your scores are published publicly, you know, and uh you tested for every uh you know, elementary school, junior high, and high school, and and college, of course. And he said, Well, we wanted to save you that trouble. I said, Well, I'm not sure if that's uh the right answer, but we'll take it. I think there were some other things going on in my family that uh uh needed to move out of the Korea s at the time, so let's leave it at that.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Well, I'm assuming your father spoke some English. He was a professor here.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yes, uh so he did speak almost fluent English because uh he had worked with Americans uh post-war. He went to Seoul National University, uh you know, a very poor background in uh in an island home. He was able to get into the top university, obviously, and uh uh he learned English through working with American Mission, who was one of the people who sponsored us to come over. So he was flown. But what about your mom? Did she speak any English? She did not and she never really did, which was a sore point for all of us.

SPEAKER_03 20:01

And uh she suffered quite a bit for us.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Both both in language as well as being less significant.

SPEAKER_03 20:15

Less significant how?

SPEAKER_02 20:18

She was very involved in social circles as well as community in Korea. Uh she in her own right was a strong person who would organize things and make sure that schools were do being run correctly, um to the extent that uh I think she used to scare some of my teachers. And then she comes over here and uh she can't even speak their language and she can't drive. Mobility's limited. Uh there's no public transportation to speak of at the time in Hasbro. Uh so uh she felt closed in. Uh so she she's the one who suffered the most, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

So you spoke Korean at home?

SPEAKER_02 21:10

We did. Until uh there was a transition in which uh my sister and I would speak English to each other and then pretty soon with my dad and my mom would just play along and meals were kinda interesting because usually dad would speak to us in English until he started talking to us in Korean, which said, Oh, we're in trouble now So we wanted to make sure that we didn't have him speaking uh uh Korean to us.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah, include your ma your mother. Okay. So made it to junior high, you're speaking better English now. What about uh uh the school that you were in in junior high?

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Was it did it did it changed any or uh it was a complete dramatic change because it it was integrated at that time, by the time I got to the seventh. So there were kids from all over, I guess, western side of the the Hattiesburg, and it was a quite a transition for me as well in that I got to see the non-black culture and and uh experienced that through just watching, if nothing else, and associating with uh making new friends. So I said, you know, it's almost uh two cultural steps. Uh first into US America and then secondly to the uh broader racial mix and uh social culture. And then I would say uh escap escaped Mississippi a third time, which takes me out of the uh after my college times.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

So was was there anything in your life in school that that happened

A Mother’s Loss Of Voice

SPEAKER_01 23:25

extracurricular activities or even at school that turned things a little bit for you so that you had more shared interest with friends?

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Yes, yes. I would say key was music and reading, two things. I started reading voraciously once I that broke through that English barrier starting around seventh and eighth grade. My first book was To Kill a Marking Bird. Which I my second book was believe it or not, Great Expectations. But anyway. Band, marching band, or I guess at that time, yeah, junior high band, was uh kind of the lifeboat out of the normal daily drudgery. And that's where I met uh a couple of my best friends. We're still friends after 50 years. So what instrument did you play? I was a trumpet player. Uh uh my two buddies are also trumpet players. So we used to compete against each other. So what grade? Seventh grade? Oh, we started in seventh grade. Seventh grade when you all played through uh senior in high school, and that was one of the things that kind of brought us together and also shared the love of music, so to speak. Not for, you know, martial band music, but just being able to share who was which band we're listening to, and etc. And we ended up starting a band, garage band. So it went pretty fun. Sorry. I think we started toying with the idea in ninth grade.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Um by the time we were seniors, we were pretty good. Good enough to try to get, you know, uh jobs and dance jobs in county schools and such.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

So what instrument did you play in the garage band?

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Guitar, and I picked up a little bit of keyboard when I was I took piano lessons in Korea when I was a kid. So I was able to read music. And there was a revolt against my mom who insisted I play violin like every Asian kid shoot. So I said after a year I said, no, I'm not doing this. I want to play piano like my sister did.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

So school itself academically you were doing pretty well then?

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Uh it took a few years, but by the time I was speaking and reading, I think I excelled enough to uh, you know, be in the top ranks. Uh I don't know about your class, physics class, but uh I think I did okay. Yeah.

Music Books And Lasting Friends

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Well you did I didn't fail it.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

You didn't come close to failing it. So we're late junior high, you're in the marching band, and you made some good friends. What about girls? Did you have a girlfriend?

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Uh well this goes into uh some of my uh what I wrote in my book, yes, which started as a journal uh project. But anyway, my dad and I used to go to go fishing down in Gulfport and Pascristian on weekends, and it was great. Uh at night we would uh fish and laugh and you know catch shrimp and cast for shrimp and all that. And I decided that hey, there are these other animals called girls, and they're kind of interesting. So I started uh I guess I started noticing probably in ninth grade, between eighth and ninth grade, wonderful things have happened.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Yeah, those girls they became real girls.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah. Before we get more into that, I did ask that question, but I want to back up. Fishing on the Gulf Coast, where did that come from? Was your was your father a fisherman? Did he do that for sport in Korea? How did that come about?

SPEAKER_02 28:07

One of his big hobbies in Korea was fishing. And his you know, art of fishing in Asia, with those uh bamboo poles specially made and and all that. And he would go fishing all night, you know, and uh camp out. I thought

Fishing Trips And First Crushes

SPEAKER_02 28:25

that was the most wonderful thing. And then when we came here uh to America, we found that there's this great ocean down there 90 minutes away. And I guess some friends took him fishing one weekend and he loved it. So he changed American style fishing with uh rod and reel, and we used to go out out to the uh piers at uh Pascristian and fish for crookers and redfish and flounders, and it was great. I had a great time. You would fish all night long. Yep. When the tides were coming in, and we'd come home on Sunday mornings or Saturday mornings or whatever, early, and you know, crash out and turn in our fish cast to mom.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

She knew what to do with it, huh? Yep. On one of those trips, a discussion about girls came up and uh oh I remember those years well uh myself. So between eighth and ninth grade, yeah, they they become different creatures.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

They blossom.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

They blossom. Of course as boys we don't blossom quite as soon. We just get gunky.