31 Oct I Am Korean American 2.0 launches, adds focus on Entrepreneurs, Musicians

It would be cool to see sites like this for every Asian ethnicity: I Am Korean American, a site launched a year ago for Korean Americans to share in their own words about themselves and their sense of identity, has just expanded. The site is now inviting KA entrepreneurs and musicians to submit their photos and stories about how they found their careers, as a way to inspire other Korean Americans to follow the same path.

They’ve just launched the 2.0 version, with the new sections for Entrepreneurs and Musicians. These sections don’t have any content yet. Here’s what the founders say about the new sections:

The Entrepreneurs section requires participants to answer specific questions about how they started their business, what they learned, and advice they can share with others. The aggregation of such content will result in a database of knowledge that can inspire and educate potential entrepreneurs. The Musicians section allows musicians to upload their music video and/or up to two tracks to give readers a sampling of their talent. This section will eventually showcase the broad range of musicians in the Korean American community and also help musicians gain more exposure through the site.

The site is hosted by Barrel, a creative agency based in New York that’s run mostly by KAs. The agency has worked with some cool solar and energy companies, educational institutions, fashion companies and arts organizations. Pretty talented bunch!

I Am Korean American is clearly a labor of love and passion. The content is short, engaging and inspiring. Not surprisingly, given the number of Korean adoptees who grow up in the US, there are many stories of KAs who’ve been raised by non-Korean families. It’s a cool testament to their strong sense of self that they’ve found their way to IAKA to post their stories.

You can read more about the site on the IAKA Posterous blog.

(Aside: for those of you who haven’t checked out Posterous, it’s an insanely easy way to set up a blog and share links, photos, videos, whatever. I’ve launched one as an adjunct to Nikkeiview, where I post about Pop Stuff in general.)

Like I said at the beginning, I think it would be great to see this kind of site set up for other Asian American groups. There is one for hapas (mixed race Asians) called Hapa Voice that I blogged about recently.

Anyone want to step up and host one for Japanese, Chinese, Pacific ZIs;anders, Filipinos, Cambodians, Hmong, South Asian, Vietnamese, Burmese, and on?