Life Story: Paik Kuang Sun, aka Mary Paik Lee (1900-1995)

Paik Kuang Sun was born in 1900 in the Korean Empire. Her parents were Christian, and Kuang Sun was baptized by an American Presbyterian minister. In 1905 her family was displaced by the Japanese occupation of Korea. They moved to the United States territory of Hawaii, where her father, Paik Sin Koo, did agricultural labor and preached. Sin Koo was not able to make enough money to support his family, but in traditional Korean culture women were supposed to stay in the home, so he refused to allow his wife, Song Kuang Do, to take a job. Instead, Sin Koo sent letters to friends asking for advice.

A family in Riverside, California encouraged Sin Koo to join them there. He had to borrow money to pay for the family’s passage to San Francisco in 1906. When their ship arrived, a group of young white men were waiting on the dock to taunt and harass all of the new arrivals. After making their way through the hostile crowd, the Paik family boarded a train to Riverside. 

At only six years old, Kuang Sun found herself trying to settle into her third new home and culture. The town of Riverside was segregated–only white people were allowed to live within the town’s borders–so the Paik family took up residence in an immigrant settlement outside of town. The living conditions in their new home were very poor. They lived in a single-room shack with no indoor plumbing, only one window, and no gas or electricity. Sin Koo took a job in the nearby citrus groves, and still would not let his wife work. Eventually, the family’s financial situation became too dire for Sin Koo’s resistance to continue, and Kuang Do took a job cooking for the men working in the groves. 

Religion was one of the ways Kuang Sun and her family created community and stability for themselves. They joined together with other Christians every Sunday to read and discuss the Bible. There was no minister, so there were no formal services, but Sin Koo preached from time to time. When Kuang Sun was about ten years old, her parents finally paid off their moving debt and moved their family to a two-family home in Claremont. After five years living in a small shack, Kuang Sun thought their new home was huge. Sin Koo got a new job as a janitor. Kuang Sun and her brother made extra money for the family by doing laundry for their neighbors.

Unfortunately, the Paik family’s prosperity was short-lived, and over the next several years they were forced to move multiple times. Each time, Kuang Sun’s parents hoped to find more secure work opportunities, but most of the work they found was temporary. The quality of their housing varied. In one house, every time Kuang Sun needed to take a bath, she had to heat water outside and bring it indoors. Sometimes the family had little food, and Kuang Sun experienced physical pain due to hunger. Her parents both believed that God was leading them on their journey to find work and a place to live. Their faith kept them optimistic about the future.

When Kuang Sun was eleven years old, she took a job cleaning a house for one dollar a week. Later, she took a job cleaning her school for twenty-five cents a day. Kuang Sun used some of her earnings to buy the books she needed for school, but the rest went towards supporting her family.

Kuang Sung lived too far away from the nearest high school to commute every day. When the time came for her to attend, she found employment as a domestic servant in exchange for meals and a room closer to the school. On Sundays, she also attended the local Presbyterian church. The church noticed that Kuang Sun had extensive knowledge of the Bible, and offered her a job teaching Sunday school. Kuang Sun was the first Asian person many of her students had met.

At the end of the school year, Kuang Sun moved with her family to a new town called Willows. In Willows, the Paik household became a center for community worship and religious education. When community members asked her father for advice, Kuang Sun interpreted for him. 

Kuang Sun got sick during the Great Flu of 1918. She survived, but her doctor would not allow her to return to school because she was malnourished and her eyes needed rest. This ended Kuang Sun’s dream of earning a high school diploma. Around this time, a friend introduced Kuang Sun to a man named Hung Man Lee. Most people called him H. M. Kuang Sun and H. M. got married on January 1, 1919. 

In 1921 the Lees moved to Los Angeles, where H. M. owned a successful fruit stand. They rented a house with five bedrooms, a real bathroom, a gas stove, and a backyard. For Kuang Sun, it felt like the first “real house” she had ever lived in. The couple had three sons together.

After eleven years of financial stability, the Great Depression wiped out the Lee family’s savings. They were forced to sell their fruit stand and take farming jobs. Kuang Sun was sad to return to agricultural work, but it was the best option available. Together, Kuang Sun and H. M. made enough to support their children and care for some members of their extended family.

In addition to economic challenges, Kuang Sun and her family faced an increase in anti-Asian discrimination. Employers routinely paid Korean workers less than white workers. Many businesses in L.A. were segregated, and proudly displayed signs saying “For Whites Only.” Matters got worse after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. After the attack, Kuang Sun was often accosted with racial slurs and many people wrongly assumed that she was Japanese.

In 1950 Kuang Sun and H. M. left farming and looked for a new place to live. But their search was complicated by housing discrimination. In time they saved enough money to buy an apartment building. Over many years, they grew their interest in the real estate industry. 

Kuang Sun and H. M became US citizens in 1960. As part of the process, Kuang Sun legally changed her name to Mary. H. M. passed away in 1975, and her eldest son died in a plane crash in 1976. When the worst of her grief passed, she took a job as an interpreter at a Korean senior center. She worked there for ten years.

Mary published her autobiography, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America, in 1995, five years before she died. Her autobiography remains an important firsthand account of Korean immigrant life in the early 1900s.

• Presbyterian: One of the Protestant Christian denominations.
• Protestant: The Christian communities that separated from the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation.
• Great Flu of 1918: A deadly flu that caused a global pandemic in 1918.
• Sunday school: An educational program for children to instruct them about their religion.