In the 1970s, a Korean woman, Sonia Suk, set about on a long journey to bring the first glimpse of Korean representation to Disneyland — among the dolls of its iconic ride about global unity.
“It always bothered me there was no Korean doll in it,” she wrote in her memoir. It “seemed wrong.”
Suk, a former Los Angeles city commissioner and real estate developer who helped found Koreatown, wanted to see South Korea represented at the powerful cultural institution by adding a doll in traditional Korean clothing to It’s a Small World.
“To her, this would be a powerful statement of Korea’s place in the global order and acknowledgment of Koreans everywhere. In short, it was a signal of their inclusion and arrival on the world stage and the American multicultural mosaic,” said Shelley Lee, a Brown University professor of American studies.
A Korean doll has been dancing with the animatronic children of the world since 1986.
Fast forward to the present day, Disney California Adventure — for the first time — dressed Mickey and Minnie Mouse in hanboks, traditional Korean attire, for its Lunar New Year celebration that runs through Feb. 16.
Sally Kim, 50, who visited Disneyland with her husband and daughter, said seeing Mickey and Minnie in the hanboks stirred up more emotions than she expected.
“I think everyone wants to be seen, heard, represented and included, but especially people who are from a different culture,” said Kim, a Fullerton resident. “Seeing Mickey and Minnie wearing hanboks … healed a part of me from when I was younger when being Korean wasn’t as accepted and when I was just considered another Asian.”
For Buena Park resident Eunice Kim, it’s a long-awaited cultural milestone.
“I think it speaks a great deal about how far the Korean immigrant community has come in the US,” said Eunice Kim, who also recently made the trek to the Anaheim theme park.
Korean culture was far from mainstream when she was growing up, Kim said, so it was easy to feel like her heritage didn’t quite fit in with what was considered “normal” in American society.
“I kind of feel joy in the sense that, nowadays, the kids that are going through elementary, middle school or high school, are able to fully be themselves, express their culture and share that with their friends, and they’ll be receptive of that,” she said. “That’s something that we didn’t really have growing up.”
Like many children of immigrants, she had the “lunchbox moment” of shame, she said, bringing cultural food to school and feeling embarrassed to open it in class for fear it would “stink up” the room.
“It’s so cliche, but it’s true,” Kim, 32, said. “Every aspect of being open with who we are, bringing culture into school or into the workplace — you shy away from it. The whole notion of assimilating into a new culture is that there’s also a factor of erasing your own culture or tradition.”
From 1976, around the time Suk was working to add a Korean doll to It’s a Small World, to 1990, the Korean diaspora was one of the largest immigrant groups in the US. It included Catherine Eum’s parents, who arrived in New York in the early 1980s, where Eum was then born. When Eum was 4, they moved to California, and she now lives in Orange County with her own family.
As a high school student, Eum said she looked to Asian Americans in pop culture for inspiration, but they weren’t Korean — such as Lucy Liu, a Chinese American actress, for her prom makeup, and Claudia Kishi, a Japanese American character from the “Baby-Sitters Club” book series, for style ideas.
“I never thought we’d get to this point,” she said, adding it’s refreshing to see people now appreciate what she’s always loved, though sometimes on the “down low,” especially as a kid.
That isn’t the experience her daughter is having.
“My daughter, she asked to take doenjang-jjigae (a Korean stew made with fermented soybean paste) to school,” Eum said with a laugh. “Never in a million years would I have asked my mom to pack me that.”
Through Feb. 16, visitors can try a variety of Korean fusion dishes at Disneyland, including spicy gochujang (red chili paste) chicken tacos, a peach makgeolli (rice wine) cocktail, bulgogi (marinated beef) pizza and a brown sugar milk tea with brown sugar syrup inspired by hotteok, a Korean pancake filled with a brown sugar, cinnamon and nut filling.
Eum, who dressed her kids in nearly identical hanboks to Mickey and Minnie for the occasion, called it surreal to see this as “their norm.”
“For me, it didn’t seem real,” she said, “for my kids, it’s been a big part of their lives.”
Eunice Kim, the Buena Park resident, said she’s never seen so many park visitors — families, couples, siblings and friends — dressed in hanboks.
“It made me reflect back on the times that I’ve come to Disneyland growing up, and how I wished that the representation could have been there,” she said.
But, she added, it’s a welcome testament to how much more visible Korean culture has become in the mainstream.