Chan Hie Kim Collection: The retired Professor of the Claremont Theological Seminary donated his substantial collection of books, journals, and extensive archival records. The collection is especially rich in Korean American church history, Korean church history, Korean democratization, and Korean history and humanities.
Joseph Cho Papers: Dr. Cho was a former mayor of the City of Cerritos, journalist (publisher of the Korean Street Journal), entrepreneur, and public servant. Jiin Park, the Korea Foundation Intern to KHL, created finding aids for this collection of 9 boxes and published at: https://archives.usc.edu/repositories/6/resources/3006. Covering mostly the 1980s-2010s, the collection covers a range of topics, including the City of Cerritos, Korean-American history, businesses, churches, Korean unification and democratization movements, etc. Of particular note is one box of manuscripts given to him while he was studying at the Yanbian University, China. The manuscripts include Korean folk songs of Northeast China (570 pages), Korean Independence Movement fight songs collected from the region (1018 pages), and biographies of two Korean Independence activists in Manchuria (218 pages).
Steven Sok Yol Lee: A former journalist for Tonga Ilbo from 1960s to 1976, he covered early presidency of Park Chung Hee, negotiations for the South Korea-Japan normalization treaty of 1965, and South Korean military deployment in the Vietnam War. He immigrated to the US in 1976 following Park’s crackdown on the freedom of the press, which targeted, in particular, the Tonga Ilbo. We published the finding aids for this collection: https://archivesspace.usc.edu/resources/3031/edit#tree::resource_3031
Yung-chol Kim (Kim Yŏng-ch’ŏl) Collection: He was a political prisoner in Aoji prison under Kim Il-song (김일성)’s communist regime before he escaped by joining the American Army as part of the UN Forces during the Korean War. Then he came to the United States to study at Drew University where he obtained a Doctor of Ministry in 1975. He pastored several Methodist churches in New Jersey and California. Throughout his life in the U.S., he actively supported South Korean political prisoners, democratization, human rights, and unification movements. We published the finding aid for this collection: https://archivesspace.usc.edu/resources/3022/edit#tree::resource_3022
AMemorandum of Understanding with the National Aviation Museum of Korea was signed in February of 2020 for resource sharing. USC provided a number of items about Korean American pilots who were trained to fight the Japanese during the colonial occupation for permanent display at the Museum. Its grand opening was on July 5, 2020.