Interview with Hongja White
Speaking in Korean from her apartment in New York, Hongja White, who gathered the first members of the Korean Women’s Association in her Tacoma home in 1972, remembers the lonely and beaten military wives she fed and sheltered there, the kimchi she sold to keep the group going, the clam and chicken plants where Korean women worked, and the marriage she left because she kept taking women in.
Background
Hongja White (홍자 화이트; born Kim Hye-jung, 김혜정) grew up in Gwangju, South Korea. She began inviting Korean military wives to her home, feeding them and taking in women whose husbands beat them, and in 1972 that circle became the Korean Women’s Association. She later moved to New York, where she lived for more than 40 years.