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Award-winning Korean American actor Steven Yeun has made a career of pushing the boundaries of what people think is an “Asian American” character. Having made an awards sweep for his starring role in the Netflix series “Beef,” Yeun broke into the entertainment scene over a decade ago battling the undead as the lovable and surprisingly tough Glenn Rhee on AMC’s “The Walking Dead” in 2010. He followed up that successful seven-season run with roles in independent films “Sorry to Bother You” and “Minari,” and Korean movies like “Burning” and Netflix’s “Okja.”
In an intimate conversation with Daniel Dae Kim hosted by the Sunrise Collective at the Sundance Film Festival, Yeun discussed identity and balancing his professional career with his personal life. The event was a perfect pairing of two Korean American actors who both got their starts on cult favorite television shows and successfully pivoted to other projects.
How To Act Asian American
Asian Americans are used to occupying this space of being neither American enough nor Asian enough, neither Black nor white, both oppressed and oppressor. We are often made invisible, ignored, and overlooked. We are taken for granted and not properly appreciated. Kim recalled resonating with what Yeun once said: “Being Asian American means caring about everyone else when no one cares about you.”
Both Yeun and Kim “represent” Asian Americans (in particular, Korean American cis-gender men) in the roles they choose and portray on-screen. When Kim asked Yeun to share his thoughts on how he puts his identity into his work, Yeun confessed, “Identity is a struggle for me. And I think that is the place to land with it, ultimately, is [to] be in struggle with it.”
Yeun further explained that there is a difficult battle to navigate between what is or is…
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