Maridon hosts 'Taste of Korea'
Pega Crimbchin, 81, of Cabot suffered unimaginable horrors.
An orphaned servant girl in Seoul, South Korea, at the outbreak of the Korean War, Crimbchin survived being caught in two different military assaults on the city, a stint in a Communist boot camp for women and a 100-mile walk in minus 20-degree weather and a future without food, family or hope.
Today, she has seven children, 20 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Her daughter, Katie Schell of Irwin, has written a book about her mother's life, “Love Beyond Measure: Memoirs of a Korean War Bride.”
Crimbchin is part of a small Korean community in Butler County.
Out of Butler County's 183,862 residents, 215 are Korean, according to the Pennsylvania State Data Center in Harrisburg, using data taken from the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau's Decennial Census Summary.
The median age of the county's Korean population is 34.4, according to the center, and 211 live in households, which, according to John R. Maurer, the data center's office coordinator, are defined as habitations that aren't group quarters such as college dorms or military barracks.
Households could be families living together, roommates or single individuals.
Maurer said the county's Korean residents are part of the 1,838 county residents deemed Asian. This includes East Indians, Chinese and Japanese.
“Demographically, they don't make up a large percentage of the population,” said Mauer.
Jo Dublin of Prospect, who prepared the Korean dishes during the Maridon Museum's recent “Taste of Korea” event, said she knows of 20 to 30 Korean families in the area.
Dublin came to this country from Korea in 1987 and cooks Korean meals once a month for an international student dinner in Slippery Rock.“I go to a Korean church in Youngstown (Ohio), a Korean Methodist Church,” she said. “But we get together once or twice a year.”The Korean community in Butler County is into its second generation, said Betty Anderson, who taught Asian history at Butler County Community College before she retired in 2003.They are assimilating, Anderson said. “I'm first generation myself. You know, there's no question that I am 100 percent proud of my (Dutch) heritage, but I'm American. I think the Koreans feel this way as well.”Assimilation is more difficult for Koreans, said Kang-Yup Na, a religion professor at Westminster College in New Wilmington College, who gave the introductory lecture at the start of the Maridon event last month.“I'm 1.5 generation myself,” Na said. “I was raised partly in Korea until 10 then we moved to Tennessee.“It's a complicated question,” he said. “It depends on where one ends up. For instance, if I'm a Korean immigrant and I come to Los Angeles, New York, Chicago or Atlanta, there's a large existing Korean population. There's a multitude of Korean churches, restaurants and cultural centers.“You can assimilate without shock,” he said.“But in an area like this, there's hardly any Korean community to speak of. There's no one to celebrate the holidays with,” Na said.“You might stick out because you look East Asian,” he said.“Today, when you meet a white man, a black man, a Hispanic man, you wouldn't ask questions that indicate that you think the might not be from this country,” he said. “You wouldn't say 'You speak English very well,' or 'Where are you from?'“It's a big challenge, this self-awareness. It can create identity issues for young people,” Na said.
