15
Q and A
Lion gave the lecture in English, and Mrs. Bu, a woman from church who’d once worked at the UN, helped them out with consecutive translation.
At the end of the fifteen-minute break, Yun rang the wood-handled brass bell, and parents returned to their chairs.
Remarkably, only a dozen people had left, and those seated in the back rushed to take the empty chairs in the front.
Parents sat patiently, nursing their paper cups of urn coffee while balancing paper plates of gimbap on their knees.
The mood in the room grew serious, as if they were sitting for exams. Mido, Yun, and Peter now sat close to the stage and waited for Lion to take questions.
Wearing one of his white button-down shirts that Yun ordered from a catalogue by the stack and blue jeans with his dark-gray running sneakers, Lion looked like an undergraduate.
He’d made a concerted effort to look less like a high school musician and had even worn his wire-rimmed eyeglasses instead of contacts.
Since childhood, people had praised Lion for his physical features, and at thirty-two years old—tall, doe-eyed, tanned, and now a successful business owner—he was treated by parents with great deference, which he found alternately discomfiting and normal.
He’d never aspired to what most people wanted—status, money, power—but he understood that the world conditioned his hagwon students to crave these things in excess and to gain them via education.
He felt the need to show them another way.
Every time he met with his students, he could hear their worry, anxiety, and brokenness.
Especially his teenagers. It was as if they’d caught a virus and developed a chronic illness.
Never had he given a lecture in front of five hundred Korean and Korean American parents and had it translated into formal Korean.
While Mrs. Bu translated his remarks, Lion had the unusual opportunity to study his audience’s faces carefully.
He was able to observe his audience react twice to the same message.
What was clear to him was that the parents listened with great intention and understood the substance of what he was saying; however, he could tell that they did not want to believe him.
When Lion opened the floor to questions, a man he didn’t recognize raised his hand.
“The gentleman toward the back wearing the red windbreaker.” Lion motioned with his right open palm, trying not to point at anyone.
He’d grown up in a Korean family and attended Korean church all his life, but now and then he could make an etiquette error in speech or gesture.
Often, especially at church, when he was with his fellow elders, he was more deferential than necessary to avoid giving offense.
It was too easy to give slights or annoy one’s elders unintentionally, and in this room, Lion and the tutors were younger than every single parent, which made him extra careful.
Mido, wearing her old brown cardigan over a blue dress with white Keds, had gotten up from her seat and stationed herself at the left side of the room with the wireless handheld microphone. Tracking Lion’s line of vision, she handed the man the mic.
The man in the red windbreaker rose from his seat and covered his mouth with his hand, paused, then removed his hand before speaking. He cleared his throat and took another moment.
“Thank you for your words, Teacher. I’m going to speak Korean if that is okay.
” The man bowed and the translator nodded.
The man paused again, looking worried. “I’ve heard from other parents that it’s more difficult for Asians to be accepted into Ivy League colleges.
I read in the Korean newspaper that race is not considered because of prop 200-something in the California public universities, but private schools don’t want too many Asians.
Is that true? How much better does my child have to be to get into an Ivy League school?
My child is not a legacy or an athlete. For example, based on what you’re seeing, what scores will be needed for next year? ”
Lion had been concerned that this lecture might turn into a college admissions conversation, which he had no interest in.
There were numerous qualified hagwon owners and private college counselors who gave those talks regularly.
Tonight was not for marketing Fortress. Lion did not want more students, and the more he insisted on limiting enrollment, it seemed, the more parents wanted to send their children to his hagwons.
Lion took a deep breath and smiled.
“I want to thank all of you for attending tonight, and I want to make this clear. I felt entitled to ask you for your very rare free time because I’m concerned about how our students and their peers are doing.
Our students at the hagwons—both Exodus and Fortress—enjoy coming to our locations.
You can ask them. As you know, I am very fond of your children.
I’m grateful for them. However, it’s clear to me that they are under too much pressure, and I thought that if all of us could change our mindset, perhaps examine where this pressure is coming from, then perhaps the children could have better lives.
I feel certain that they would flourish as well.
I’m interested in improving their childhoods, so they can become strong and well-adjusted young adults. ”
The man scratched his head and sat down. He raised his hand again for a second, then thought better of it and turned to his wife, who pulled down his sleeve to keep him from asking a follow-up.
Sobin and George rolled their eyes. Their eldest two children had been accepted into Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania respectively, but they’d been rejected from other Ivies, where their wealthier White peers had been accepted, although their daughter and son had had far better applicant profiles.
Sobin and George had not graduated from Ivy League schools.
Sobin had gone to UC Irvine, and George had graduated from Berkeley.
Sobin whispered to her husband, “You’d think that Elder Lion Han would be more forthcoming about what’s really going on. Why can’t he just admit that Asians have to be much better than everyone else?”
“Leave it alone. He doesn’t want to answer it,” George said. The guidance counselor at their children’s expensive private school had told them that their first two, Cindy and Joe, had a fair shot at the very top schools, and in the end, each had been accepted into at least one Ivy.
Sobin and George’s two younger children attended a relatively new private school that catered to mostly wealthy White children and Asians.
In their respective grades, there were no Latino or Black children.
However, there were enough students in each class whose parents had attended highly selective colleges and universities, and some were known to be very significant donors.
Over time, Sobin and George had learned the mechanics of American college admissions and done as much as they could to boost their children’s chances, and even when they knew the system wasn’t fair or transparent, each rejection their children had received from the Big Three—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—had stung, leaving an ugly scar rather than a soft bruise that could heal.
The rejections incensed Sobin and George, who believed that the only unfortunate thing for their beautiful and hardworking children was having been born to parents without an HYP school degree.
In his mind, if George had studied harder as a young teenager, then his children could have received HYP offers, especially since they were rich parents.
Knowing now how legacy admissions worked, he would have written big checks each year and dangled even bigger ones if needed.
If his older kids had gotten in, he would have donated as much as possible to ensure that the younger ones had their shot.
Like her husband, Sobin believed that this was the least a wealthy parent could do without breaking any laws—What wouldn’t a parent do to help their child? she asked.
For an alumnus, donating generously wasn’t bribing.
It was entirely legal and desired by the schools since it justified the mounting costs of education, and the generosity of alumni provided financial aid for those who could not pay full freight.
Big donations also paid for buildings and important research.
Who could argue with that? George and Sobin did not.
They would have loved the opportunity to be more generous.
If one of theirs could have attended Harvard, they would have paid tuition for another child.
Buy one, get one free, George joked to his wife.
However, they were not alumni. To Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, you’re a nobody—that’s just how it works, a private college counselor had explained.
Unless they were generous billionaires. If they could give, say, eight figures, Harvard might take notice.
There were ways to donate significant sums to the schools if you knew someone, but they did not.
Besides, to HYP, full tuition for another child was not a significant gift if offered by a nonalum; this was explained to them by people who knew better.
There was no point in arguing about the past, Sobin said.
They had two more children who needed to get into Fortress—which never seemed to have open spots—and Sobin had explained to her husband that the two younger ones would need a lot more attention in their essays, because they were not interested in academics.
They were good athletes but still wouldn’t be recruited by the best schools.
The last thing Sobin and George were going to do was attend this crowded meeting for the most in-demand hagwon in Orange County and offend the owner, Lion Han, who was a do-gooder and idealist.