About

Kyeyoung Park is a Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies at UCLA. She is a sociocultural anthropologist whose lifelong scholarly interest centers on the question of inequality, social justice, social change, and social movement. Her research heavily focuses on culture in motion and migration, particularly cases involving displaced people and their relations to political economy, critical race and ethnic studies, transnationalism, and globalization. She has authored the book 'LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos after Civil Unrest' (2019), which develops neo-Marxist scholarship with intersectional analysis to examine multi-racial and ethnic tensions in South Central Los Angeles, defining axes of inequality related to race, citizenship, class, and culture. Her first book, 'The Korean American Dream: Immigrants and Small Business in New York City' (1997), won the Association for Asian American Studies’ Book Award and explores why Koreans gravitate toward small businesses, demonstrating how structural imperatives influence gender, kinship, family, politics, and cultural beliefs. Park has co-written and co-edited several books and special journal issues on topics including Korean-American ethnic relations, economy, and transnational communities. Her current research projects include Korean immigrant communities in Latin America and the transnationalism of second-generation Korean Americans. She has held academic positions at Princeton University and was a fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation. Her educational background includes a Ph.D. from City University of New York in 1990.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• History
• Anthropology
• Medicine
• Gender studies
• Gerontology
• Genealogy
• Library science
• Media studies

Selected publications

• Korean American Families in Immigrant America: How Teens and Parents Navigate Race by SumieOkazaki and NancyAbelmann New York: New York University Press, 2018. 237 pp.

  American Anthropologist · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Library science
  PublisherDOI

• An Analysis of Institutional Problems in and Improvements Needed for Storm and Flood Damage Research Utilization

  Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation · 2019-11-30

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In recent times, the need for storm and flood damage prediction has increased due to frequent storm and flood damage in the country. The Ministry of Interior and Safety has proposed a storm and flood damage prediction system to actively develop damage prediction technologies. This research aims to increase the utilization of Korean damage prediction technology from the research project by identifying the institutional problems in this utilization due to existing legislature limitations, and deriving measures to solve them. The participating researchers in the project were interviewed through a survey to unearth institutional difficulties that hinder utilization and identify improvement measures. This research proposes the following institutional improvements: First, existing damage calculation methods should be changed to the Korean methods, and second, the basic data for storm and flood damage prediction should be included in the DB, or the data management period should be extended.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos after Civil Unrest

  2019-08-22 · 7 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  In LA Rising, Kyeyoung Park revisits the Los Angeles unrest of 1992 and the interethnic and racial tensions that emerged. She examines how structural inequality impacted relations among Koreans, African Americans, and Latinos. Park explores how race, citizenship, class, and culture were axes of inequality in a multitiered "racial cartography" that affected how Los Angeles residents thought about and interacted with each other and were emphasized in the processes of social inequality and conflict--back cover

• Analysis Of Latino-Korean Relations In The Workplace

  2017-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction. Emigration and immigration. The case of South Korea

  Urban anthropology and studies of cultural systems and world economic development · 2014-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• An Analysis of Latino-Korean Relations in the Workplace: Latino Perspectives in the Aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest

  Amerasia Journal · 2012-01-01 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size This article is part of the following collections: Reflections on the L.A. Civil Unrest: Thirty Years after 4/29/1992

  PublisherDOI

• The Intimate University: Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation by Nancy Abelmann

  American Anthropologist · 2011-11-25

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Sources and Resources of Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurship

  Critical Sociology · 2010-08-17 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Koreans in the United States

  2005-01-01 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Book Review: Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America

  International Migration Review · 2005-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Stanley P. Azen

  1 shared

• Gelya Frank

  1 shared

• Leslie Blackhall

  University of Virginia

  1 shared

• Minsuk Kim

  Pusan National University

  1 shared

• Sonia Ryang

  1 shared

• Vicki Michel

  Loyola Marymount University

  1 shared

• Yejin Seo

  1 shared

• Sheila T. Murphy

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• The Association for Asian American Studies’ Book Award