01/10/2026
๋ง์ดํด๊ณผ ์ ๋ ์ด๋ฒ ์ฃผ๋ง ์กฐ์ง์์ฃผ ๋๋ฃจ์ค์์ ์ด๋ฆฐ ๋ฏธ์ฃผํ์ธํ์ด์ฐํฉํ(๋ฏธ์ฃผ์ด์ฐ) ์ 31๋ ์์ ์ผ ์ดํ์ฅ ์ทจ์์์ ์ฐธ์ํ๊ฒ ๋์ด ํฐ ์๊ด์ด์์ต๋๋ค. ํนํ ์์ ์ผ ํ์ฅ๋์ด ์์นด๊ณ ์ถ์ ์ด์๋ผ๋ ์ ์์ ๋ง์ดํด์๊ฒ๋ ๋์ฑ ๋ป๊น์ ์๋ฆฌ์์ต๋๋ค.
์ด๋ฒ ํ์ฌ๋ ์ด์ฌํ ๋ฐ ์์์ดํ์ ํจ๊ป ์งํ๋์์ผ๋ฉฐ, ๋ฏธ๊ตญ ์ ์ญ 50๊ฐ ์ฃผ์ ์๋ 180๊ฐ ํ์ธํ๋ฅผ ์ฐ๊ฒฐํ๋ ๋ฏธ์ฃผ์ด์ฐ์ ๋ฆฌ๋๋ค์ด ํ์๋ฆฌ์ ๋ชจ์ด๋ ๋ป๊น์ ์๊ฐ์ด์์ต๋๋ค. ์์ ์ผ ํ์ฅ๋์ ์ง๋ 11์ 3์ผ ์ค์๋ ์ 31๋ ํ์ฅ ์ ๊ฑฐ์์ ๋น์ ๋์ด ์ฐ์์ ์ฑ๊ณตํ์
จ์ผ๋ฉฐ, ์ด๋ 30๋
๋ง์ ์ด๋ฃจ์ด์ง ์ญ์ฌ์ ์ธ ์ฌ์ ์ด์์ต๋๋ค.
์์ ์ผ ํ์ฅ๋์ ์ ๋
์ฌ์์ ๊ณต์ฝ ์ค์ฒ์์ํ๋ฅผ ์ฆ์ ๊ตฌ์ฑํ๊ฒ ๋ค๊ณ ๋ฐํ์๋ฉฐ, ์ฌ์ ์๋ฆฝ ๊ฐํ, ํ๋ฏธ๋๋งน ๊ฐํ, ๋ฏธ์ฃผ ํ์ธ๋ค์ ๊ถ์ต ๋ณดํธ์ ์ ์ฅ, ๋ํฌ์ฌํ ํตํฉ, ์ฐจ์ธ๋ ์ก์ฑ, ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ํ์ธ์ฌํ์ ์์ ์ ๋ฆฝ์ ๋ฐ๋์ ์คํํ๊ฒ ๋ค๊ณ ์ฝ์ํ์
จ์ต๋๋ค.
๋ํ ์ดํ ๋์ ๋ง์ ํ์ฅ๋๋ค๊ณผ ์ง์ญ์ฌํ ๋ฆฌ๋๋ถ๋ค์ ๋ง๋ ๊ต์ ํ ์ ์์ด ๋งค์ฐ ๋ป๊น์ ์๊ฐ์ด์์ต๋๋ค. ๋ง์ดํด์ ํธํ
๊ณผ ํ์ฌ์ฅ ์ฌ์ด๋ฅผ ์ค๊ฐ๋ฉฐ ์ฌ๋ฌ ๋ถ๋ค์ ์ฐจ๋์ผ๋ก ๋์๋๋ ธ๊ณ , ๊ทธ ์ฌ๊น๊ณผ ๋ฐฐ๋ ค์ ์ ๋ ์ง์ฌ์ผ๋ก ๊ฐ์ฌํ์ต๋๋ค.
๋ค๊ฐ์ค๋ 1์ 13์ผ ๋ฏธ์ฃผํ์ธ์ ๋ ์ ์๋๊ณ , ์ฐ๋ฆฌ๋ 123๋
์ ํ์์ด์ ์ฒซ ๋ฐ์ ๋๋ ํ์ธ ์ด๋ฏผ์๋ค์ ํฌ์๊ณผ ์ฉ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๊ธฐ์ตํ๋ฉฐ, ์ค๋๋ ์๋ฆ๋ค์ด ๋ฏธ์ฃผ ํ์ธ์ฌํ์ ๋ฟ๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ ๋ค์ ํ๋ฒ ๋์๊ธฐ๊ฒ ๋ฉ๋๋ค. ์ด ๋ ์ ๋ฏธ๊ตญ ์ฌํ๊ฐ ์ฐ๋ฆฌ์ ๋ฌธํ์ ์ ์ฐ์ ๋ ๊น์ด ์ดํดํ๊ณ ์กด์คํ๋ ์ค์ํ ๋ ์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํฉ๋๋ค.
์ด๋ฒ ํ์ฌ๋ ์ ํฌ ๋ถ๋ถ์๊ฒ ๋งค์ฐ ๋ป๊น๊ณ ์์ง ๋ชปํ ์๊ฐ์ด์์ต๋๋ค.
Michael and I attended the inauguration ceremony of Seo Jeong-il, the 31st President of the Federation of Korean Associations in the Americas (FKAA), held this weekend in Duluth, Georgia. It was truly an honor for us to be there and to support President Seo. Michael was especially happy knowing that President Seo is originally from Chicago, which made the occasion even more meaningful for us.
The inauguration was held alongside meetings of the Board of Directors and a Special General Assembly, bringing together leaders from across the United States. The Federation of Korean Associations in the Americas is an umbrella organization that connects 180 Korean associations across all 50 U.S. states. President Seo was elected in the 31st FKAA presidential election on November 3, successfully winning a second termโsomething that has not happened in 30 years.
In his New Yearโs address, President Seo pledged that the 31st FKAA administration would immediately form a committee to carry out its campaign promises. He also committed to strengthening financial independence, reinforcing the U.S.โKorea alliance, protecting and expanding the rights and interests of Korean Americans, promoting unity within the Korean American community, nurturing the next generation, and enhancing the status and influence of the Korean American community.
It was also wonderful to meet and connect with so many respected presidents and community leaders. Over the two days, Michael kindly gave many people rides between the hotel and the event venues, and I am deeply grateful for his generosity. He truly represented the spirit of Americaโsupporting one another and serving our community with love.
As we approach Korean American Day on January 13, we are reminded how important it is for the broader American community to understand and honor our Korean heritage. This day commemorates the courage and sacrifices of the Korean immigrants who first arrived in Hawaii 123 years ago, laying the foundation for the beautiful Korean American community we have today.
It was a meaningful and unforgettable experience for us.