That spring, Ward and his mother, Young He Ward, visited South Korea for the first time since Ward was a baby nearly 30 years earlier. They were mobbed by television cameras and gawking fans. They were honored by the South Korean president.
“I got more love there than I did in the States,” Ward said.
Ward was only starting to understand the underlying hypocrisy. Biracial children in South Korea recognized it instantly.
“They liked someone because he is famous,” So said. “If you are not famous, they are very cold. So I was happy, but also bitter.”
It represented, however, a slow turn toward tolerance.
“Nobody thought this problem was so serious in Korea,” said Jin Roy Ryu, the chairman of a multinational metals company, Poongsan Corp., and of the South Korean branch of Pennsylvania-based Pearl S. Buck International, which has provided social services to biracial children in South Korea since 1965.
“We’re a closed society, and no one really talked about it,” Ryu said. “But Hines came, and it really brought the issue to the center.”
Living in an Asian American community I see a lot of Asian magazines. I remember after he won the Superbowl MVP he was the cover story of a Korean American magazine. The next month on the letters to the editor page they printed letters of people indignant about a Black person and not a Korean being featured in their magazine
