Lawyer Ilryong Moon, a member of the Fairfax County School Board, hopes other Korean Americans will follow his example and take public office. (By James A. Parcell – The Washington Post)

Official Wants to Involve More Korean Americans

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 31, 1998; Page A12

There is a prevailing image of Korean Americans in the Washington area: affluent grocers, dry cleaners or technicians who speak Korean at home, socialize among themselves and keep a low profile.

It's not a negative image, but Ilryong Moon, a Fairfax County School Board member, wants to change it.

"Many of us are living in self-imposed isolation," Moon said. "Korean Americans are doing fine financially. ... They take nice vacations and play golf, but they still think because they are a minority they cannot get into public life. They are wrong, and I am the proof."

Moon, 40, an energetic lawyer, was appointed to the board in 1992, then elected in 1995. Although there are more than 50,000 Koreans in the region, mostly middle-class U.S. citizens or permanent residents, Moon is the first to hold public office.

"I did it to set an example for my sons," ages 6 and 10, he said. "I want them to live here as full-fledged Americans ... to not let skin color or accent be a limitation. Somebody had to step out and show younger Korean Americans you can't hide behind a wall forever. I happened to be the first one, but I hope I'm not the last."

Moon immigrated from South Korea with his family at age 17. His father never learned more than a few words of English and is an auto mechanic. But at T.C. Williams High School, where he was then one of the few foreign-born students, teachers took him under their wing, tutoring him each morning before classes or making vocabulary lists for him to memorize. He also played Bingo to improve his English.

"I felt badly about my heavy accent until one teacher took me to the office of the principal, who was from New England, and had him read, 'Go park your car,' " Moon recalled. "Then the teacher said, 'See? You're not the only one with an accent.' It made me feel better. I still have an accent, but I survived."

Moon went to Harvard University and the College of William and Mary Law School in Virginia, and now deals primarily with Korean American business clients. When he joined the School Board, some Koreans wanted him to press the interests of their children, but he resisted.

"I was elected by all the people in the district," he said. "I wouldn't let any group, including Koreans, be treated unfairly, but I wouldn't do it at the expense of any other group either."

Moon's board service means that he rarely gets home for dinner with his sons and wife, a music teacher at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in the District.

"I miss my boys, but they are very proud of me," he said. "I constantly tell them to do their best, and they know I'm doing mine. And usually I can get home in time to give them both a big hug."

By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 31, 1998; Page A11

Getting to the United States was the easy part of Martina Portillo's journey. The hard part has been living here.

Since coming to Washington in 1988, she has bounced from one low-paying housekeeping or office-cleaning job to the next. She has not seen a daughter she left back in El Salvador or her mother. When her father died three years ago, she was unable to attend the funeral.

Portillo, 37, worked her way up to a $6.15 hourly cleaning job – three hours at one building in the afternoon and five hours at another at night – but with no benefits and, for several years, no vacation pay.

In June, the cleaning company fired her when she called in after a day shift to say she was too sick to work that night. She gets housecleaning jobs through a relative, but that work is spotty and pays less.

Portillo, who illegally crossed the border from Mexico and is seeking political asylum, has suffered physical and emotional abuse from some of her boyfriends here. She and her U.S.-born daughter, Yeni, now 9, were homeless for eight months after one man brought back a wife from El Salvador and kicked them out.

Life here, says this short woman with large brown eyes, has been la bendicion, a blessing, and la perdicion, a curse. "It has been really hard: a young child, the snow, being a single mother. Even if you have a job, you can't get ahead because of the rent."

Five years ago, Portillo moved into her own two-bedroom Columbia Heights apartment in Northwest Washington. She has a new companion and a boarder who help pay the $500 rent. Her living room is filled with religious icons and pictures of her other daughter, Andrea, now 19, the daughter's baby, Carlita, and other family members she hasn't seen in almost 10 years.

She is unskilled, uneducated and unable to speak English. But here, she said, she has a better chance of supporting herself and Yeni – and helping her mother and Andrea. "My mother is a widow," Portillo explains in Spanish. "With the little that I make, I send her $100, sometimes $75 a month." Back in El Salvador, "I wouldn't have 10 pesos to give her."