From Washington DC, this is the Korean American Perspectives, a new podcast presented to you by the Council of Korean Americans.

Abraham Kim

Welcome to another episode of the Korean American Perspectives. My name is Abraham Kim, Executive Director of CKA and I’m here with my co-host Jessica Lee. How are you doing, Jessica?

Jessica Lee

Good. Thanks, Abe.

Abraham Kim

We have another exciting episode talking with Dr. David S. Kim. He’s the Associate Clinical Professor at UCLA and at Cedar-Sinai Medical Group. And Bennett Kim, the Managing Principal of Big Rock Partners and Chief Executive Officer at Sun Bay Senior Club. I’m particularly interested in this episode because the power of interdisciplinary thinking, when two people, two Korean Americans had a great idea. They had a conversation about a problem in their community, the Korean American community, to be specific. And as a result of this conversation, Bennett went on to help start the Sun Bay Senior Club, which I believe opened last month in June. But this interview was actually with Jessica and these two gentlemen back in April. And it’s really a fascinating conversation about how two very important and bright individuals who are trying to solve a problem, saw a problem and had this conversation and went on to find a solution for senior care. So I’ll turn it over to you, Jess.

Jessica Lee

Well, thanks Abe. I think this is a really important way for our community to see that there are so many things that we can do as individuals. I mean, David Kim of course is an OBGYN and a medical doctor and happened to know Bennett and had shared this concern that he had about middle-income elderly Korean American seniors who are going to have a really tough time finding affordable and a fun and innovative setting for them to spend time with friends. And so Bennett being an expert in the real estate space really ran with this idea and culminated in the creation of Sun Bae Senior Club, which as Abe noted, just opened last month. And so there’s a lot that we will be talking about in this episode– not just on senior care and housing, but also how Dr. Kim, as a medical professional, help found a community organization called Korean American Health Coalition that really addresses the education gap and the knowledge gap within our community on the resources that are available. So I hope you enjoy this episode and we’ll go right into the interview now.

Jessica Lee

My name is Jessica Lee and this is Korean American Perspectives, a new podcast series by Council of Korean Americans where we meet interesting Korean Americans who are doing interesting, innovative things in our community as well as dive into issues of the day. Today I am joined by Dr. David S. Kim and Bennett Kim. Dr. David Kim is an Associate Clinical Professor at UCLA and Cedar-Sinai Medical Group. He’s also the founder of Korean American Health Coalition, which we will talk about during this episode. Bennet Kim is Managing Principal at Big Rock Partners and also the Chief Executive Officer of Sun Bae Senior Club. So thank you David and Bennett for joining. It’s great to be here with you in LA. So David, maybe we can start with you. So obviously as a CKA member, you’ve seen the ways in which the Korean American community have become more civically engaged and interested in national issues, which is a positive thing. But something that I think we haven’t really done good enough of a job is to educate ourselves around healthcare issues, health policy. We’d love to hear from you, David, on why you decided to found Korean American Health Coalition and, you know, maybe set the stage for health equity issues that affect us here in LA.

David S. Kim 

Thank you for that question. About 10 years ago, year 2010, I moved here from Hawaii. I was working at University of Hawaii when I moved here. I thought, well, there’s so many Koreans here. There must be organizations taking care of health care issues because healthcare disparities, at least I think amongst Korean health professionals, were kind of aware of the disparities that exist. And then when I arrived here, I talked to different groups but no one was really working on it. Even the physician professional groups, they were more professional organizations that were networking amongst themselves. And when I approached a lot of different types of Asian American or Korean American nonprofits, they just said, well, we don’t really, we don’t really do healthcare. Now there are certain nonprofit healthcare delivery organizations and I think they do a really good job focused on what they’re trying to do. But I just didn’t see someone tying all the community groups together because to make real change, I think you really need to have a platform where the community’s united. And I used to wonder because when I was in an academic medicine for most of my time up until recently, and I always wondered, well look at the Latino organizations, African American communities, the health are deliveries are pretty good. There’s a good system in place. And I just thought, why are we so unorganized, why don’t we have things together? And then I forgot who it was, but someone pointed out to me. It didn’t just happen. It was federal government, state, local governments that put funding in that developed the systems that developed detachment areas that actually have social workers that reach out. And we just have none of that because we are just a small percentage of the population.

David S. Kim 

So I thought in LA that would be different because you know, we have a more noticeable presence here. But then I realized we didn’t. I think the healthcare professionals are so busy seeing patients and they’re not used to providing any kind of organizational leadership. So I sort of did it out of necessity. I was President of the Korean American Graduate Medical Association, which is one of two Korean American physician associations. And as president, I started up the first Korean American health conference for the community. And as I did that, I started the coalition, partly as a way to have a continuing platform and to get all these different nonprofit groups who are interested in health care together to support the conference. I kept the platform and the organization going because, you know, I was only going to be president for two years. And so I wanted to still be able to put on the conference, still be able to, you know, our mission was basically, it still is to make a measurable improvement in healthcare outcomes in Korean Americans. So that was the main reason.

Jessica Lee

That’s exciting. I mean, I have to say, many CKA members are either medical professionals themselves or otherwise pay very close attention to what’s going on in conversations, whether it’s on the Affordable Care Act or things that are happening more locally in their cities. And you know, this is an issue where as you said, unless there is some sort of external pressure from communities, the government simply will not be willing to allocate the resources needed. And so I think the role that you’re playing and the institution that you’re setting up through the coalition is vital and has always been the missing piece.

David S. Kim 

Well, you know, it’s not even them being pushed. It’s interesting, when I brought up some of these issues with different public officials, they just said, “Oh, we had no idea.” 

Jessica Lee

Education.

David S. Kim 

Right. So I used to think in a sort of accusatory way, like our community’s not being held, but then as I investigate a little bit more, at least in Los Angeles, they just weren’t aware of it. And just, you know, I think the Korean community and Asian American community in general, they don’t put a lot of demands on the public funds, on the elected for some sort of results. It’s just not something that culturally, traditionally, that we do. But as soon as I bring up some of these issues, a lot of them are actually very eager to partner up with us. And so I think they’re used to partnering up with individual groups and nonprofit groups that deliver services to certain parts of the population. But that’s very different than some sort of strategic, systematic way of looking at healthcare for the approach of a community.

Jessica Lee

I think that’s fair. And having been on the receiving end of some of the community outreach initiatives when I was working on Capitol Hill, I think that’s exactly right. It’s not so much that you’re pressuring them and threatening them, but you’re educating them and giving tools even as simple as a one pager with key data points that they can use in speeches or op-eds. So I think that’s right. And that’s certainly a role that nonprofit organizations can play. So Bennett, I want to turn over to you and hear a little bit more about how you got started. There’s a lot that I want to get into, regarding your passion about providing senior housing and thinking more innovatively about housing in general. Can you kind of introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today?

Bennett Kim

Sure. Let me see. So where do I begin? I’ve done real estate my entire life, starting even in college and worked for various real estate groups, either doing development or investments at Disney, Merrill Lynch, Oak Tree, Apollo. And then in 2006, my boss who was from Apollo at that time, we decided to split off and form our own investment fund. And we had been doing everything at that point. We had been doing office retail, hotels, apartments, pretty much every type of real estate there is. And after the financial crisis, our money partner actually went down for other reasons. And so we actually needed to reinvent ourselves. We couldn’t do the same things anymore. It was a different time in fundraising was very challenging.

Bennett Kim

So we decided, we looked at our track record and the thing that performed the best, and we were looking at the demographic trends, and the things that were the most opportunistic would be senior housing. So around 2000, I want to say like 2010, we decided to only focus on senior housing at that point. We started doing deals in Florida where my partner was living at that time. And since then we’ve been doing a bunch of big, real senior housing developments that consist of different levels of acuity within the senior spectrum, so independent living, assisted living and memory care primarily.

Jessica Lee

So something that stood out to me as I was doing research for this interview was your involvement, and I think you’ve really been a driving force in what will soon become Koreatown’s first premium all day senior club. And so I’d love to hear a little bit more about how you decided to start somebody senior club and what that means to you.

Bennett Kim

So it was actually David’s idea. And I actually I love telling this story because I say that David came to me and said, “Hey I have no idea” because he knew that I was doing senior housing. And whenever friends come to me with different ideas, I’m usually dismissive and I’m like, “Oh, what does David know? He’s only a doctor. Doctors don’t know anything.” But he actually had a really good idea. He said, “Okay, what about not necessarily going big, not buying anything, or building anything but just leasing space and taking care of seniors during the day.” And I actually found that pretty intriguing because I’d been gone to senior housing conferences for the past 10, 15 years. And every year they say the same thing. They say the wealthy are fine because they have the money. And then there are solutions for low-income seniors. It’s the middle-income folks that are really going to get screwed over the next 20 to 30 years, just because it’s becoming so unaffordable.

Bennett Kim

And so when David came up with this idea, I was like, you mean daycare? It sounds kind of simple, but I need to look into it and so I started Googling things and found out that there was a national association and a conference for this kind of stuff called NADSA, National Adult Day Service Association. And it was in Indianapolis and I decided to go that year. I saw how fragmented the industry was and there were no large companies that were focusing on this. It’s primarily driven by nonprofit organizations and the average operating margins were negative so people were just kind of stumbling through this, trying to figure out how to make this work so David and I kept on talking and we figured that there was a huge opportunity here to do things the right way and to scale things appropriately.

Jessica Lee

And David, feel free to chime in. I’m sorry I neglect her pivotal role in thinking about this. I think in reading the Korean senior care resource guide for this year, the LA edition, it’s really clear that the adult day programs and senior housing, I mean these are all the things that people probably don’t know where to find more information about. So to kind of pull it together and make it accessible I think is a tremendous contribution in of itself. But kind of sticking to this idea of a senior club and of senior housing more broadly, what is your sense of, since you conceived the idea, where are we today?

David S. Kim

You know, I think I did it from a personal perspective of just the idea of how do I take care of my mom in the future? And when I looked at, we talked about this earlier, there’s just sort of the generational difference that makes it difficult because a lot of what is set up is not really set up for Korean Americans. Socially, culturally sensitive sorts of services, even though we’re in Koreatown. So while there were some of the services available, like Bennett was saying, they were more for people who are very low-level socioeconomic or very wealthy, although the wealthy is not for the Korean Americans, they’re kind of set up outside of Koreatown. So I was just interested in…I mean, the baby boomers are all retiring. How do we as a community, and as a society, take care of all these people who are going to need some sort of services? And I was thinking actually not medical services as much as socialization and community and when they can’t drive and you can’t leave them at home because you’re afraid that it might burn the house down. How do we create some sort of community environment that might be outside of church, which is very big in the Korean community, and that’s outside of the people who are healthy enough to go to country clubs, golfing? It’s not necessarily that population that we’re looking at. So these were just different ideas I had when we were throwing around. And then when I looked into it, Bennett is like an expert on all this, that’s why I was speaking to him. He’s the one that educated me quite a bit on this. But when I just looked into all this, anyone who looks at this, there’s just not very many options out there.

David S. Kim

Usually when all of a sudden you really need to take care of it and do it, there’s no resource guide. There’s nothing that helps you with it and you’d be surprised. A lot of these adults senior daycare programs, they don’t really have websites. It’s funny, when I went to some of them, they weren’t even interested in helping me. And I said, why aren’t you interested in helping me? They said, oh you can’t get in any way because there’s such a long wait list. So, even if you wanted to get into to these programs, and most of them were very bare bones, like literally just folding tables and chairs, it was just kind of depressing and I just really thought, you know, my mother and my family’s parents, they just deserve better than something like this. And I just thought, is there something that could be done? I knew Bennett would be the one to be able to tell me if it’s something that can be done or not done.

Jessica Lee

So Bennett, can you kind of fast forward and kind of tell us where things are now?

Bennett Kim

Sure, well actually, if I could talk a little bit more about when we were doing our whole feasibility study and just doing our homework and trying to figure out whether or not this made sense. I ended up visiting maybe about 20, 30 of these… so actually let me rewind a little bit. When I was at that conference, what I found out was–

Jessica Lee

When was the conference again?

Bennett Kim

This was two years ago that I went, but it’s once a year. And it’s a conference for all types of adult day services and about 500 people or so attended that particular year. And one thing that I learned was that each state handles everything differently. So for example, like the state of Michigan, there’s no regulation, there’s no licensing. And so the state of California in, I would say maybe if I had to guess about 70% of the other states, separate out adult day services between medical and social uses. In the state of California, about, I would say if I had to guess, 90 to 95%, do the medical version because that’s the only way you get Medicaid reimbursement. In the state of California, we call it Medi-Cal. And there’s some, there’s a lot of structural problems with the whole system and it was very noticeable when I started visiting these things. So the first thing that I noticed as David was mentioning, it doesn’t look that great. You walk in and it looks like a high school cafeteria with folding tables and chairs and everyone’s cramming a bunch of people into a small facility and they’re just playing Bingo all day long. And I noticed that they ended up closing. They all closed around like 1:30 or 2:00 PM. And I thought that was kind of odd. So I started looking at the whole Medicaid policy and Medicaid reimburses $76 per day, per person. Now in order to get that reimbursement, all you need to serve, among other things, you need to serve two and a half meals. So they serve breakfast, then a snack, then lunch and then they close because the largest operating expense is labor. The three largest operating expenses are labor, rent, and food. And so by closing up early, you save. But it’s not their fault, right? I mean it’s like Medicaid will not reimburse them any more money.

Jessica Lee

Unless you have other resources.

Bennett Kim

Yeah. And so I’m thinking though, it’s not really a care business, it’s more like a Medicaid reimbursement business. And so if you want to treat people with dignity and care for them the entire day and try to provide a solution for family members who act as caregivers who need to actually work from 9 to 5, as, you know, your typical job of an accountant or a dentist or anything where you have to work all day. You can’t put your parent in into one of these facilities because they close up shop at two o’clock. So what are you going to do? That’s where we thought, okay, there’s an opportunity here to go private pay. And we’re not going to go through the Medicaid route and we’re going to try to figure out whether we can provide a solution for the… they show that 75% of the people actually don’t qualify for Medicaid. So the middle-income people who do not qualify for Medicaid, they don’t really have a cost-effective solution unless they’re willing to spend $4,000 to $5,000 a month sticking their parents into assisted living.

Jessica Lee

Wow. So I understand that Sun Bay Senior Club is going to be opening soon.

Bennett Kim

Yes, we’re going to be opening in a month.

Jessica Lee

Right. So can you tell us about the location and whether registration has already begun?

Bennett Kim

So it’s right in the heart of Koreatown. It’s on Olympic Boulevard, near Normandy. The nearest cross street is actually Kingsley and Ardmore. We’ve taken 8,000 square foot from the retail floor of an apartment complex that was just built. So it’s a brand new building and we’re doing the build out in a very upscale fashion right now. So we’re hoping to be opening in a month or so and we’ve intentionally decided to wait until we do the marketing, until we get a little bit closer to the opening date, just because we want to be able to give tours to people. Right now, what we say is that it’s hard for people to understand what we really are just because it doesn’t exist. So I always give the example of when Walt Disney decided to open up Disneyland. When he did that, theme parks in general– I mean there were no true theme parks. There just amusement parks and amusement parks were typically county fairs. There was a lot of crime, you know, they were dirty. And so when Walt Disney said that we’re going to open up something different, it was hard for people to understand what it is. And so we’re kind of faced with that same challenge where we’re trying to do something much more different than what exists today. And so in order for people to understand what we are, I think we really need to tour them through the physical space, cause it’s hard to do with just renderings or sketches or just pictures of what the furniture is going to be like.

Jessica Lee

It’s hard to convey the look and feel of something without actually showing it.

Bennett Kim

And the service component of it as well.

Jessica Lee

Right. I was intrigued to see that you’re going to have bilingual staff, which I think is so important because one of the things that my parents deal with, for example, is the language barrier and though they’ve lived in this country for 30 years, they still like reading Korean newspapers and watching Korean news and there is this sense of loneliness that prevails when you don’t feel like you can communicate with the outside world and you become more drawn inward, I suppose. And so the community that you’d be creating there not only combats that sense of loneliness, but it also gives people freedom to interact and get the services they need because they can speak in Korean as much as English. So that’s really great. How many seniors can you accommodate?

Bennett Kim

Our capacity is 120.

Jessica Lee

And this is an all day program, right?

Bennett Kim

So we’re going to be open up a from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

Jessica Lee

To your point earlier about schedules and someone like me or you, we can actually work and also pick them up.

Bennett Kim

Yeah, and we have a completely different incentive than a lot of these Medicaid facilities that are getting a flat fee, a flat reimbursement of $76. So for them, the only way they can make a profit is to cut expenses because they’re never going to get more than $76 per person. For us, we need to make sure that we create a great experience because eventually people will be willing to pay for a better experience. So for us, it’s not about thinking about cost savings, but creating an environment where people feel like they’re comfortable and they’re taken care of and then, and that they’re entertained as well.

Abraham Kim

What a great interview, Jessica, so far. I’m taking away two important points from your talk with David and Bennett. I’m surprised that there’s a lack of resource guide for services provided for adults senior care program. I would imagine there’s something available like that, but I’m surprised there’s nothing like that. And two, the importance of how we need to better educate not only our officials but the mainstream community about the needs, the health needs of our Korean American community. How about you Jess?

Jessica Lee

Yeah, I think that’s right. On the point you just made on the lack of.. part of it is that the communities we’re trying to reach, the elderly, often don’t speak English and the services they use, like adult senior daycare centers, don’t have websites. And so there’s a data-desert that one enters, I suppose, in this context. But on the broader point that I think Dr. Kim was making on our community’s healthcare needs and how we healthcare outcomes for Korean Americans by educating ourselves on the resources available, which is exactly why the Korean American Health Coalition started, I think that’s such an important point because I can’t think of a resource guide that I would give my parents or myself to understand what sort of a hospital and other cares are available for Korean Americans and people for whom English is not their first language. So I think Dr. Kim’s organization, Korean American Health Coalition, really provides an important tool for us.

Abraham Kim

Well, Jess, I look forward to the next part of this interview. I think there’s an important conversation about the culture of preventative care in the Korean American community. I found that particularly insightful. I’m excited to hear your conversation with the two of them. So let’s get right back to our interview.

Jessica Lee

So I’d like to kind of look and visualize a future that doesn’t exist right now, but that I believe we should strive for, which is a world in which the initiatives and things you’re doing here in LA are seen in other major cities with large Korean American populations and that policy makers who make decisions on behalf of our community are sensitive and educated on these matters. What do you think are ways that we can get there? Is it more national convenings, where we really learn from each other? How do we support more people like you who are doing this type of work in a city as large as LA, where Korean Americans are obviously a huge part of this society? So let’s imagine what the future might be. Do you have any thoughts, David? I want to start with you and then hear from Bennett.

David S. Kim

Well if we had to construct something from scratch, maybe not from scratch but what doesn’t exist. If I look at the way modeling for, let’s say women’s healthcare because I’m an OBGYN doctor, there’s a national organization and they help educate, lobby, take positions and then they have sort of the resources and the guides and infrastructure and staff. And then that’s brought to the state level, and each state’s a little bit different on their own state laws and their own needs. But then the state sort of membership, cause the national membership is broken up into different districts, then they go ahead and take that and then they’re able to execute, roll that out at more of a state level. And then there’s a more local sections that are called and then those officers can then execute at that level. So I think some of the barriers, especially with healthcare professionals, is they generally have an idea of what we need to do. Like if you talk to any Korean American physicians and their specialty, they know exactly what needs to be done in terms of trying to improve outcomes for Korean Americans relative to their medical specialty. But that’s very different than, okay, well there’s now marketing and PR and now there’s connecting and communicating with political leaders and then there’s a strategy and there’s a position. All that stuff happens in the U.S. for a lot of important issues and for different organizations that are trying to push what they want to see change. I just think that we’re very fragmented and the people are busy. So I think a lot of the nonprofit leaders that do this or political leaders that do this, they don’t necessarily know the healthcare issues completely. In healthcare, people don’t have the expertise or the time to do the grassroots level development strategies in the platforms.

Bennett Kim

On the senior side, whether it’s senior housing or senior care. For the past several decades, there’s been a disagreement as to whether it’s medical or health hospitality, whether it’s healthcare or it’s hospitality. And of course, all the people who are the providers, they want to say there’s some element of healthcare to it, but a lot of the policymakers don’t want to be using taxpayers’ money to fund things like assisted living, for example. And so whether it’s housing or daycare, if you’re taking care of somebody, is that really considered hospitality or healthcare, right? If you look at the different types of care that’s being provided, in some cases it’s easy to label, like a skilled nursing is definitely considered healthcare. Now things like memory care, where it deals with dementia or Alzheimer’s, that’s actually classified in most states under assisted living, you get the same type of licensing as assisted living. So when you’re taking care of somebody who has memory care issues, Alzheimer’s dementia, that’s actually for the most part considered not reimbursable by Medicare in many situations. People look at that as just providing oversight for a senior and there’s this huge push from policy side. I think the whole industry has been trying to lobby Washington in terms of trying to figure this thing out. Studies have shown that assisted living and daycare do provide much more health benefits than people have originally thought and it extends people’s lives and it would reduce a lot of the other insurance costs.

Jessica Lee

Is there any one particular issue that kind of keeps you up at night? Like something that you fear is coming that could disproportionately affect Korean Americans? Maybe because they’re self-employed and so they are not getting health insurance. Taking off your OBGYN hat and really looking at the macro level… when you think about health policy and health insurance, access to healthcare, is there anything in particular, David, that stands out as something we should be watching closely?

David S. Kim

Yeah, I think it’s unique to Korean Americans as opposed to let’s say Koreans in Korea. I think a lot of it is due to the lack of engagement or interest in preventative health screenings. So for instance, in Korea they’re much better for screening for gastric cancer, for breast cancer, than they are here. And there’s just something about the Korean, this is from my own personal experience, we immigrated here in 1971. There’s something about the Koreans who came over in the seventies and eighties that have a different mindset. The ones that are still in Korea, the government, once they sort of ruled out more of a national healthcare system by 1999, they really had a push for preventative healthcare so there was just a big campaign and I think a lot of people get pretty good healthcare. I think the Korean immigrants have come over, one, they weren’t getting health insurance and would just spend cash money when they had a problem or go back to Korea for health care if they need it. But there is sort of this mentality that I get a sense from just being in the healthcare field and being involved with Korean American health that in our community, especially amongst immigrants, there’s not an idea of preventative screening and preventative care. There’s more of an idea of there’s nothing wrong until you can see there’s something wrong and then you get the care– but by that time you’ve kind of missed the boat. So I think it’s no accident that in the U.S., Korean Americans amongst Asian groups have the lowest breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, and lung cancer screening. I mean, pretty much everything, lowest rates of HPV vaccination. These are all things that can have a huge preventative impact in terms of future disease burden.

Jessica Lee

So there’s a cultural element and something that’s preventing our parents’ generation.

David S. Kim

It’s cultural and specific to the Korean Americans that immigrated around that time period. If you talk to Koreans in Korea, I feel like it’s a little bit different. There’s something about the government having done the public relations and marketing and telling everyone they need to get their screening in and they get it done. But here in the U.S., I think it’s just different. The Koreans wait until there’s something noticeably wrong and then they go ahead and they get some sort of medical attention.

Jessica Lee

Someone who’s in the CKA membership, Dr. Lucy Nam of Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia —

David S. Kim

That’s where I trained. I trained at George Washington but we spent a lot of time at Inova Fairfax.

Jessica Lee 

Dr. Nam has talked a lot about gastric cancer in particular as something that, if you detect it earlier, you have a higher chance of survival and that this is something that for a variety of reasons should be fascinating and — maybe we tease out in another episode — where we’re just not detecting it soon enough.

David S. Kim

Yeah, well it’s not just that. I think gastric cancer is so uncommon in the U.S., it just happens to be very high in Japanese and Koreans. So insurance usually doesn’t cover endoscopy for screening, where you put a camera down your throat and look inside. In Korea, you get screened every two years automatically but in the U.S. the insurance won’t pay for it because it’s just not something that pops up. I mean, most general surgeons don’t have the experience to do those surgeries either. It’s just not that common, but it is common, more common in Koreans, who have the highest prevalence of any ethnic group there is. That’s why with my Korean patients, I say anytime you have any kind of stomach pain, just tell your primary care doctor you want endoscopy. Because then that’s more likely to trigger the insurance to cover it. But you know, in Korea they’ll actually routinely screen you and they’ll just do it every two years and then that’s why they have much better survival rates for gastric cancer than we do.

Jessica Lee

Bennett, can you talk a little bit about the ways in which your work intersects with healthcare? Obviously we’re talking about our older population where things like taking their medicine or access to hospital are so important. How do you think about healthcare and how that affects perhaps Korean Americans that you deal with?

Bennett Kim

Well, my experience before was more on the real estate side, so that this is actually the first time I’m actually delving into the operations of the business. And one of my concerns is that we’re trying to understand the idiosyncrasies of Korean culture when it comes to how people deal with medical issues and their parents and seniors. One concern that I have… In doing all this, people were asking, can we do focus groups to get a better understanding, can you do market research? A lot of this, it’s still unclear in terms of what the data says, right? So for example, whether or not there’s enough demand for something like this, we know that we can interpolate certain data that there’s definitely demand for free stuff, right? When, when I say free, I mean that Medicaid pays for it. And then there’s demand for the private pay. We know for a fact that almost all of the middle-income assisted living facilities within a two mile radius are full with a waitlist. We know that there are people who are willing to pay that amount. So the idea is, can we get people or is there a demand for people who would pay a fraction of the price of assisted living, but you just don’t get a bed and you need to figure out that solution whether or not you sleep with a family member or we can think about things like remote monitoring? Other things in terms of Korean behaviors, specific to the Korean culture that we’re trying to get a better handle is… I mentioned the pricing to a couple people and the pricing right now, it starts at $59 a day and it scales up with different packages you can buy. But if you don’t factor in the weekends, then it comes to roughly around $1,500 a month. And you know, people mentioned, it’s kind of like the same price as childcare. But a lot of my Korean friends have told me is that Korean families are willing to invest a ton of money in their kids, but not necessarily their parents. And it’s kind of a sad state of our society but they think of their kids as an investment; that whatever dollars they put into it, it’ll eventually reap the rewards of a better family and that they’ll be happier, but they’re almost giving up on their parents because they’re thinking of their parents as on their way out. And that’s just kind of, you know, what we’re trying to change. We’re trying to change that behavior to it’s time to reward our parents. It’s time to reward that generation for making all the sacrifices for us to live.

Jessica Lee

This is great. Well I learned so much in this brief conversation. Thank you so much. I want to end by asking both of you if you have any parting thoughts or advice that you can give to CKA listeners as well as non-health professionals who find all this really interesting and personally meaningful. What can we do to be better informed and to play a more active role in the solutions?

David S. Kim

Well CKA has a lot of very important powerful members. For whatever reason, there just hasn’t been, I wouldn’t say interest, but there just hasn’t been a commitment to healthcare and in any of the conferences, meetings and it’s not that I think people are not interested, it’s just not as familiar to people who are more business, lawyers, political advocates, just not something that they’re used to. And there are doctors but certainly we’re not a majority in the group. So I think that incorporating some sort of health policy is a starting point. And also what would be great, I think for any organization, including the coalition, which we’ve put together and haven’t always been great at executing, is just having an overall strategic plan. In five years, what are one or two or three things we would like to see happen? And if that’s the case, if five years from now we say that is going to be done, it’s hands down, done. It’s gonna be taken for granted. What did we have to do today, five years earlier to start moving towards that goal?

Bennett Kim

You know, I would say just trying to get the community educated in terms of what their options are, right? Because in terms of senior care, people just don’t think about it until they actually need it. And so what we’re seeing is that by the time people need to figure out a solution, they’re very emotional, they haven’t planned in advance, both financially and strategically in thinking about how the whole family is going to be affected. So if anything, I think one thing that we would want to do is try to get people to understand what the consequences are, and to understand what potential solutions are.

Jessica Lee

Right.

David S. Kim

You know, that’s a very good point.We have a resource guide, which is a starting point, but when people have children, they’re planning out their 529 investment for college, their preschool, their nanny, preschools, private school, public school, wherever you’re going to be. It’s almost interesting if the coalition could work on a staged kit of what happens with each sort of milestone that naturally happens as our parents get older. What would be the next steps? What would the preparation and the groundwork you would lay for that, for each of those steps, the way it’s laid out there for raising your children?

Bennett Kim

The thing is, it’s kind of fun to think about your kids’ future, but it’s sad to think about your parents.

David S. Kim

That’s exactly right. You don’t want to think about it, right?

Jessica Lee

Yeah. And how they will be when they’re 80, when they’re 90.

David S. Kim

Right, right. You don’t wanna think about those things. Exactly.

Jessica Lee

Right, yeah. Well, this was fascinating. I wish we had more time, but I hope this at the beginning of more educating and also learning about these issues that affect every single one of us who have parents or care about healthcare, about how Korean Americans in this country could better be informed to have more resources guided for them. So this was Dr. David S. Kim of Cedar-Sinai Medical Group and UCLA and also the Founder of Korean American Health Coalition and Bennett Kim, who is not yet a CKA member but is well known to most of us, Managing Principal at Big Rock Partners and the Chief Executive Officer of Sun Bay Senior Club. Thank you both for joining me today. Thank you.

Abraham Kim

Well Jess, I think that was a very poignant point of how this interview ended, reminding us how it’s so easy and fun to think about our kids’ future. But when we think about our parents and their future, especially in their eyes, they get older and older. We don’t think about them as much and as they’re getting into their 80s and 90s. And so I think that’s an important point to end this interview where we need to probably think more about our parents and their future.

Jessica Lee

Yes. I think for Korean American elderly, our parent’s generation and folks who are becoming older, we forget their contributions and how they helped us, their kids and their grandchildren, get to where they are and I think there’s so much more we can do to honor their contributions and sacrifice. So I’m really pleased that we were able to cover such wide-ranging topics during this interview. In our next episode, we will be interviewing Sylvia Kim with whom I dive into this issue of investing in our community. Sylvia is the chief innovation officer of the Asian Pacific Community Fund and is spearheading a major national philanthropic initiative from Southern California.

Abraham Kim

We hope you subscribe on our website for this podcast or you can subscribe on any of the channels that you get your podcast from — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify.

Jessica Lee

We want to thank our producer, Kevin Koo for all his help in making our podcast series possible. And we look forward to your tuning in in two weeks for our next episode. Thank you.