(watch 2:20-3:30)
I’m a huge fan of a Korean show K-Pop Star, an Korean version of American Idol. Every episode have such intensity when the judges make very critical comments on participants’ singing ability. One day, there was a cute,” Americanized ” looking boy named Mackay Kim, walked to the stage with a guitar and began to sing a song he composed by himself. His voice and guitar playing sounded attractive enough. After his performance, judges began to ask him some questions, of course, in Korean. He had some difficult time to answer them back. He passed the first, second, and third rounds with English songs. For the fourth round, he was teamed up with two other participants and had to sing a Korean song. The show aired a scene showing how much he struggled to read and pronounce Korean correctly. He is an Korean American, born and raised in San Diego, California. I began to wonder what made him want to try out for an Korean singing audition program rather than ones in US like American Idol? This question eventually motivated to research about some patterns of transnational movements of Asian Americans and possible reasons behind the patterns.
Constant Movement of Asian Americans 