Support My Korean Immigrant Parents

My mom and dad at our wedding, on September 20, 2020, in Brooklyn, New York. Eloise Photography.

Dear friends, followers, and supporters of Greg, me, and our family,

My incredible friend Melody Liao created an emergency fund to raise money for my parents, who are in dire need of financial support right now.

For those of you who don't know, my dad has been battling late-stage cancer for the last two years. On July 1, 2020 — three months into the global pandemic, and the day after his 60th birthday — my dad was diagnosed with Stage 3B Lung Adenocarcinoma. In March 2020, shortly after the pandemic hit the U.S., he had a really bad cough, shortness of breath, and chest pains, so he went to a clinic to see if he had COVID-19. The doctors found a large mass on the upper part of his right lung, and after doing multiple biopsies, they concluded that it was, indeed, cancer. We were in Virginia with my parents when they found out, so we received the news together. I knew my parents were not equipped to navigate the complicated mess that is the U.S. healthcare system. And I also knew their English language skills were not good enough to give them the ability to properly advocate for themselves, let alone fully understand what was happening to my dad's body. The day we found out my dad had cancer, Greg and I made the decision to put our music careers on pause and become my parents' full-time caregivers. We wanted to help them battle what we all knew would be the most difficult part of their lives.

My mom, dad, Greg, and me taking a selfie before going in for chemotherapy at the INOVA SCHAR Cancer Institute in Fairfax, Virginia.

From 2020 to 2021 — for two full years — Greg and I drove back and forth between New York and Virginia every single week. We drove down to Virginia from Monday through Friday, and we drove back to New York on the weekends. We took my dad to every doctor's appointment, we sat with him through every chemotherapy transfusion, radiation session, and immunotherapy treatment, and we translated and advocated for him every step of the way.

The cancer treatments were incredibly hard on my dad's body. He lost all of his hair. He vomited from the chemotherapy. He couldn't walk because he was in so much physical pain. He had to go to the emergency room on multiple occasions. Since August 2020, my dad has completed two rounds of chemotherapy (a total of 10 transfusions), two rounds of radiation (a total of 40 sessions), and one round of immunotherapy (a total of 24 transfusions). I will never know the full extent of the pain he has had to endure over the last two years. But he is, and has always been, a fighter. During the first half of 2021, when my dad was on his biweekly immunotherapy regimen, all of his scans kept coming back normal, so we thought we were in the clear.

On November 1, 2021, after a year and a half of battling cancer as a family, we received the devastating news that my dad's cancer had metastasized to his brain and his left lung, advancing his cancer from Stage 3B to Stage 4. One of his brain tumors was in his cerebellum (the middle of his brain), and the second tumor was wrapped around his auditory canal (the passageway that connects his ear to his brain). The tumor that was wrapped around his auditory canal was pressing against nerves that control his hearing, facial mobility, and balance, so in addition to receiving the Stage 4 diagnosis, my dad also lost complete hearing in his right ear. The right side of his face was also beginning to droop, indicating that he was losing facial mobility of the right side of his face. In December 2021, right before the holidays, my dad received a second round of radiation to ablate his brain tumors, and that treatment was successful. But unfortunately, his hearing loss and loss of facial mobility are incurable. Since January of this year, he has been on a new targeted treatment, specifically created for Stage 4 Lung Cancer patients, called Capmatinib. It's a medication that targets his particular mutation of lung cancer, all throughout his body, and he takes that twice daily.

My mom, dad, Greg, and me, taking a selfie in my dad’s Toyota Tacoma truck, on our way to chemotherapy.

In addition to the burden of cancer, my parents have also been facing massive financial burdens that have been exacerbated by COVID-19.

In 2018, they lost their entire life savings, saved over the course of 30 years, to the exploitative landlord of their laundromat business — a business they owned for ten years. Their landlord swindled my parents out of a $2 million investment — an investment my parents were only able to afford by pulling out a second mortgage from their house. In 2018, after a five-year-long legal battle, they lost all their money, and to pay off their second mortgage, they had to sell their house.

During the same time that they owned their laundromat, they also rented a space to run a dry cleaners business. Their landlord at that business also exploited them, and in February 2020, they took my parents to court, legally obligating them to pay $82,000 for back-rent, in addition to fees and interest.

These two massive financial blows have had devastating impacts on my parents’ present circumstances, as they cannot receive approval for low-income housing until they pay their landlord. In addition to fighting cancer, my parents are fighting a legal standstill where they are trapped by this $82,000 debt to their landlord. My mom has been working at a bakery inside a Lotte, a local Korean grocery store, to cover their daily expenses.

My parents and me, when I was approximately three or four years old. Circa 1991 / 1992.

My parents are the last people that would ever ask for money. They don't even know this gofundme exists, and if they did, they would insist that they don't need help from anyone. In Korean culture, there is nothing more shameful than being a burden. But the truth is: my parents are the furthest from being a burden. They are two of the strongest people I know.

Both of my parents were children born to North Korean refugees in the aftermath of the Korean War and the Japanese Occupation. My dad was the youngest of four, and both of his parents escaped North Korea by boat during the war. His dad was disabled and was unable to work, so he grew up dirt poor in the countryside of Pyeongtaek / 평택, a small farming town in Gyeonggido / 경기도. My mom was the second of four, and she grew up in Seoul / 서울. Both of her parents escaped from Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, during the war. Her dad left his mother and four younger siblings behind, never to see them again. My mom’s dream was to become an opera singer, but right before she graduated from high school to go to college, her parents’ textile business went bankrupt, so she made the difficult decision to prioritize her two younger brothers’ educations over her own.

In 1986, at the age of 26, my dad immigrated to the U.S., in search of a better life. In 1987, he and my mom met, after a year of communicating across oceans through letters. In 1988, I was born, and two years later, in 1990, my mom and I immigrated to the U.S. to join my dad. Ever since they arrived in America, they have literally done nothing but work themselves to the bone, every single day, in the hopes that, if they just worked hard enough, it would all pay off, and they would one day achieve their American dream.

My family at our wedding. Eloise Photography.

My parents are the kindest, most loving, hardest working people I know. I am who I am because of them. Throughout my entire life, they have worked dozens of labor-intensive, low-income jobs, just to put food on our table, put clothes on my back, and give me all the opportunities that were never afforded to them, for reasons completely outside of their control. Occupations, wars, political corruption, poverty, immigration, language barriers, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, immigrant exploitation, and generational trauma, all played vital roles in the place they find themselves today.

My parents did not get here because they're lazy. They were exploited by a broken, corrupt system and powerful, predatory people. They worked hard every single day, doing backbreaking labor, as laundry workers, deli owners, dry cleaners, high school lunch servers, and janitors, just to make ends meet and serve their communities. They worked harder than anyone I know to try to achieve the elusive American dream. But after 35 years of sacrificing all of their time, youth, energy, blood, sweat, and tears, they are living in a poorly lit, cramped, one-bedroom apartment, and they are living off of food stamps and Medicaid. To be living in the level of poverty they're living in right now — after all the work they've done — is criminal. Immigrants who come to this country and willingly work all the high-labor, low-wage jobs that none of the white, English-speaking people want to take, deserve far better treatment than this.

You don't owe my parents anything. But if you want to swing the pendulum of justice back in their direction, please consider donating to their emergency fund today. If you want to support two 60-year-old Asian American immigrants, who have literally done nothing but work their asses off for the last 35 years, donate to their emergency fund today. If you want to support my mom and dad, who were exploited by people who desired money and power over equity and integrity, please consider donating to their emergency fund today.

My parents would be forever grateful for your radical act of generosity. Greg would be forever grateful for your radical act of generosity. And I would be forever grateful for your radical act of generosity.

I am tearfully writing these words in my local coffee shop. Thank you for reading them.

With love,
Jieun