The Korean American Bar Association of Southern California (KABA) is an association of attorneys and law students that serves the Korean American community and promotes the interests of Korean-American attorneys throughout Southern California. KABA assists the Korean-American community in gaining access to the legal system through such services as monthly pro bono legal clinics. In addition, KABA publicizes issues important to the Korean-American community at large, promotes the advancement of Korean attorneys in the judiciary and the political arena, assists law students through the funding of scholarships and career panels, and promotes networking among Korean-American attorneys and law students.

About the Korean American Bar Association

Before 1980 there was no KABA simply because there were not many Korean American lawyers.

True, a few KA attorneys practiced in Southern California, such as Daye Shinn who represented Susan Atkins, a follower of the notorious Manson gang; Alfred Song who represented the Monterey Park area in the California Senate for many terms, leaving a legacy of a score of consumer protection bills to which his name is still attached; Harry Kim of Torrance, and of course, our own Howard Halm who had served as the President of JABA long before he headed KABA because there was not yet a KABA ready for his leadership.

There may have been others who were second- or third-generation KAs active in the 1960s and 1970s, but not many are known. As to the first-generation Korean-American lawyers, again, there were only a few at the time. There were Ki Young Shim of Chicago, Sam Paik and the late Kenneth Chang of Los Angeles, and Hak Joon Paik of Monterey County, who all passed the bar in the late 1960s. Hak Joon Paik served as a Superior Court Judge in Monterey County before his recent retirement, and Judge Chang was on the Los Angeles Superior Court bench before his untimely passing in 1981. Still, there was little demand for Korean American attorneys because there were so few Koreans living in the United States.

Things started to change in 1965 when the recently changed immigration law took effect. Before 1965, only 200 Koreans per year were allowed into the United States. After the laws were changed, the annual quota was enlarged to 20,000 per year, and Korean immigration started in earnest in the late 1960s. With the rapid growth of the immigrant population, the need for lawyers who could speak the Korean language and understand the culture also increased. Answering the call of the community, a few first-generation immigrants started to attend law school at night, while keeping full-time jobs. The pioneers who made such mid-life career changes include Bill Min (junior high school teacher), Young Youhne (chemical engineer), Chai Byun (Caltech-educated engineer), Tong S. Suhr (professor of journalism) and Myron Kim (professor of English literature).

That handful of first-generation attorneys, joined by second- and third-generation ones such as Wilma Sur, Estelle Chun, Art Song, David Y. Kim, Christopher Kim and Richard Ruger started to get together once in a while at the Dragon Restaurant on Vermont to swap war stories and to exchange professional information, or sometimes just because they were lonely. And KABA was born.

Thus, KABA was born of necessity. If its beginning was not spectacular, its growth has been. With the aging of our community by one generation, the second-generation sons and daughters of the immigrants started to come out of Ivy League and other prestigious law schools around the country during the mid-1980s. In the 1990s, the number of KA attorneys increased geometrically as more than 200 new admittees were added to our ranks each year. A conservative estimate puts the current number at more than 1,300 KA attorneys in Southern California alone! Accordingly, the handful of Korean attorneys at the beginning has grown over a hundred-fold in just in two decades. If KABA were a ticker symbol, it would be one of the hottest stocks as its growth curve has been shooting straight up. Look out World, here we come!