Korean-American Doctor Sees Hope in the Slums

Korean-American Doctor Sees Hope in the Slums
Joan Jeung /Yonhap
Korean-American pediatrician Dr. Joan Jeung has been living in California's crime-ridden East Oakland area for over a decade, devoting herself to community volunteer activities. "Because the whole community is caring for each other, I don't think it's that dangerous here," the 39-year old says. Some 25 percent of residents in the neighborhood of East Oakland where she lives with her husband Russell (47) and their son Matthew (6) subsist below the poverty line. The couple moved into this area in 1999 and have been helping to fight poverty and violence through medical volunteer work as well as after-school tutoring, mentoring and missionary work as members of the New Hope Covenant Church there. Jeung also works as a pediatrician at the Frank Kiang Medical Center, a new satellite clinic of Asian Health Services for Asian immigrants with limited English skills. After graduating from Harvard University with a degree in sociology, Jeung became involved in after-school activities for children in the slums of Washington D.C. and felt that was her calling. She then went to the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, and gained a master's degree in social medicine from UC Berkeley. The reason she went to the medical school was to facilitate her volunteer work. In East Oakland, Joan met Russell, who was a graduate student in sociology doing a field research about young Asian gangs, and the two later married. Russell studied at Harvard, Stanford and UC Berkeley, and is currently an assistant professor in Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. "Although many youngsters drop out of school in this area, it's encouraging that more and more students finish high school and go to university thanks to tutoring and mentoring," says Jeung.

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