Mia Giambalvo

Mia Giambalvo is a highschool sophomore at Larchmont Charter School. She’s been going to school in Koreatown for about 4 years. She has taken an active role in improving the community. She is very involved in her school’s Community Service committee and is a member of the Girls Build LA club which works on different projects to help the neighborhood. She has been working as a waitress at the Solheim Lutheran Retirement Home in Eagle Rock during this COVID-19 Pandemic. She volunteered there many times before officially getting a job. She hands out meals for the residents and helps out in the kitchen. It has proved to be a very meticulous and important job amid the pandemic as most of the residents are at risk. …

On Hee

On Hee Hwang is a 49 year old mother of a UCLA college-graduate son and a daughter who is a senior. She is the co-owner and works as a hairstylist at Tiji Hair Salon, which is located in Koreatown. She immigrated to the United States with her family from Ulsan, South Korea, and has been living in Koreatown for the past decade. Her hair salon was closed for the past two to three months due to pandemic. However, she reopened for the first time in the past three weeks, but needs to close her salon again due to the rising number of COVID19 cases.
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Chaerin

Chaerin is a junior at New Covenant Academy in Koreatown. She was born in Ulsan, Korea, but came to Koreatown, Los Angeles when she was three years old. She has been living in Koreatown for 13-14 years, but she does not know the history and the background of Koreatown. She is very interested in photography because she loves taking pictures of her family members, friends, food, and herself. She is a starting setter on the school volleyball team and she loves dancing to K-Pop and Hip-Hop music. She has been a member of a dance team for four years and won many competitions. In the future, she hopes to become a pediatric nurse.
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Abigail

Abigail is a rising senior at LACES in Mid-City, Los Angeles. She has been a staff writer for her school paper for three years now and is now the copy editor and page editor for the paper. Abigail has lived in Koreatown for her entire life. She has a passion for baking, reading, and creative writing. She’s fluent in English and Korean and has been taking Spanish at her school for four years now. She’s the President of BRIDGE, a high-school volunteering program at KYCC and she also works at Sul & Beans, a dessert cafe in Koreatown. In the future, she hopes to go into Communications or Political Science.…

Sally

Sally is a sophomore at the Larchmont Charter School in Los Angeles. She is currently the head of the first Journalism club at her school and the editor of the yearbook. She has taken many classes involving photography and filmmaking. She is very politically active and partakes in various service activities. She tries to limit her impact on the environment by being a pescatarian and thrifting clothes to continue to fuel her love of fashion. Some of her favorite things include rain, sunsets, scented candles, and the beach. She hopes to find an intersection between political journalism and photography for her future career. Unlike other participants in this project, Sally hasn’t been a part of the Koreatown community for long. But now, Koreatown has become a big part of her life, making her experience in Koreatown unique and different from others.…

Cailey

Cailey Beck is a rising senior at New Covenant Academy and lives in Little Bangladesh, Koreatown. As an extremely introspective girl, she loves to read, study the world, and learn about global issues. She’s involved in a wide array of extracurriculars, such as being a writer/editor for New Covenant Academy’s newspaper, The Husky Herald; a secretary in the student council; a starter on New Covenant Academy’s Varsity Girls Volleyball Team; and a member of the yearbook committee. In her free time, Cailey enjoys writing for her blog, working on short stories or scripts, watching movies, and reading. She hopes to attend UC Berkeley and wants to major in Philosophy.…