Youn-Kyung Kim, associate professor of merchandising, includes her daughter, Jessica, in her shopping research.

Youn-Kyung Kim: Refusing to give up on her dream

After only a semester in America as a student in the Midwest, Youn-Kyung Kim wanted to go home.

Kim, currently a UNT associate professor of merchandising, came from Korea to further her education, but her broken English brought an overwhelming isolation.

"Because of the culture shock and the language barrier, I felt so inferior," Kim says.

Often people were impatient and intolerant with her struggle to use a language she had only practiced in classrooms.

But education turned a foreign land into her new home.

Kim excelled in research and academia, moving her closer to her childhood dream of becoming a professor.

"I was asked to be a teaching assistant at Ohio State University and it was the hardest semester of my life — taking courses and teaching," she says.

She was forced to overcome many of her fears about speaking English.

"After teaching that first class I saw that it's not impossible, that I could succeed in this country," she says. "I began to have confidence in me and to believe my dream of being a professor with a promising future could happen."

She taught at several universities, focusing her research on consumer behavior, especially in minorities, before coming to UNT almost 10 years ago. It was here that she created the best part of her life — her family: her husband, Jin-Kee Hyun, and 3-year-old daughter, Jessica.

"Jessica is my life," Kim says, glancing up at a big picture of her little girl smiling with a shopping bag in hand. "It's amazing how your priorities change. Research and consumer behavior was my life, and I'd spend hours talking about it, but now my family is everything."

But she still tries to combine her two loves. It's just nice to go shopping with Jessica, she says, and the two have made a tradition of enjoying Italian food as part of their shopping excursions.

"She loves shopping with me, but I think she mainly comes because she knows she can eat mommy's pizza and spaghetti afterward," Kim says.

Looking back on it all, Kim says she couldn't imagine the United States not being home. She makes an effort to give her daughter the best of both cultures, Korean and American, but so much has come from taking a risk and giving new things a try.

Now, whenever Kim encounters students feeling the same frustrations she did as a newcomer to the United States, she never misses a chance to tell them to give America a shot.

"I tell them, ‘Don't make up your mind yet,'" she says. "‘I was just like you and so much changed for me in just a little bit of time.'"

BY RUFUS COLEMAN rcoleman@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue:

• UNT System Board of Regents approves sale of bonds to finance new residence hall
• UNT participating in plan to reduce Dallas Independent School District dropouts
• Acting associate dean named to help lead UNT College of Engineering
• Academic brochure redesign available
• UNT using UNT Dallas Campus name for System Center
• Institutional Review Board: Protecting human subjects in research
• UNT seeking nominations for annual alumni awards
• Pohl addresses Faculty Senate
• Awards presented to staff, faculty members at luncheon
• Faculty Senate chair calls for faculty to participate in university governance

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