122. Jung Park, When the Fork in the Road Runs Parallel

Show Notes:

Jung Park, a Korean immigrant, faced a conflict between her passion for acting and her academic pursuits. She initially wanted to concentrate in visual arts but ultimately chose English and American Literature and Language, which she loved. Despite this, she was conflicted about pursuing his artistic dreams versus what was expected of her. 

Joining AFTRA and Going into Law School 

In her junior year, she auditioned for an open call search for an ABC after-school special about kids with HIV and AIDS, which led to her joining the Screen Actors Guild, renowned as "SAG-AFTRA."  After a year in Boston, she returned to California and had to choose between continuing acting, moving to LA, or going to law school. She auditioned for a talent agency in San Diego and was accepted into law school.

A Stand-up Comedian at Law School

While in law school, Jung began doing stand-up comedy in Sacramento and moved to San Francisco, working in law firms and doing stand-up comedy at night. She eventually opened her own law firm in San Francisco and took on numerous cases, including helping a Vietnamese woman avoid deportation for a felony she committed. Jung had wonderful mentors in law, including 70-year-old white men in plaintiff-side civil litigation. She turned down a position at a major law firm after being nominated for the American Ends of Court, which was a group of old white lawyers. Instead, she auditioned and got into a traveling theater program with Kaiser Permanente, which offered health insurance for actors.

Pursuing Acting and Leaving Law

Jung began her acting career in high schools, continuation schools, and juvenile detention centers, performing educational theater shows and counseling Q&As. She later moved to Southern California and focused on stand-up, sketch, and improv. She joined the La Troupe improv training program and worked at a plaintiff side civil litigation law office, where she worked on behalf of farm workers and other vulnerable individuals. In 2012, she grew tired of being a lawyer and opened a Speech and Debate Academy in Pasadena, California. The academy focuses on helping kids be empowered and find their voice. The academy has been around for 13 years and has participated in the Harvard speech and debate tournament. The pandemic hit, and Jung found fulfillment in coaching speech and running her business. She joined an acting class before the pandemic and enjoyed hobnobbing for coffee afterwards. However, during the pandemic, her teacher encouraged her students to start TikTok accounts and post videos related to their work. She had a sketch idea developed in their sketch writing class, which was set up as a GPS that tells driving directions with the Korean accent.

A Career Shift to Screenwriting  

Jung is now focusing on writing scripts and developing her content to elevate her unique voice. She has also joined Harvardwood, an organization of Harvard alums in the Hollywood industry, where she took a writing class and attended webinars. She is currently getting a director certificate through UCLA Extension and working on a couple of silly short films. One of her projects is a magical realism short story about an old Asian Tiger Mom visited by a mysterious pigeon. She plans to rewrite it as a short film script and act in it herself, as she can do the pigeon well. She is also considering renting out pigeons for TV or film to see how they move and what they could do. Jung grew up in the Mexican border town of Calexico, near Yuma. She talks about the transition to Harvard and experiencing culture shock. Her stand-up comedy often deals with her experiences growing up in a Mexican American border town and feeling more Latina than Korean. She talks about her family and how her father’s paranoia fueled a lot of jokes. She enjoyed her stand-up and has been considering writing new material or trying it out on America's Got Talent. Her last performance was a staged play reading for a Jewish Arts Council group in San Santa Barbara, which was a fundraiser. 

 

Influential Harvard Professors and Courses

Jung, a self-professed word nerd, was accepted into a special graduate seminar led by Phil Fisher, the head of the English department. The seminar focused on close reading of novels, a subject Park was deeply interested in. Fisher warned that few undergrads would be accepted, and Jung was accepted into the seminar, which she found to be a valuable learning experience. The seminar helped her understand the meanings of the first few pages of a novel and the larger work. She has since used this knowledge to teach English classes and writing skills to students, demonstrating the importance of close reading and analysis in academic pursuits. 

Timestamps:

03:15: Balancing Law and Art 

07:50: Transition to Acting and Comedy 

12:06: Establishing the Speech and Debate Academy 

14:09: Re-entering Acting and Social Media Success 

19:34: Current Projects and Future Aspirations 

Links:

Instagram handle: @momentswithjung 

TikTok handle: @momentswithjung

Linktree (shows links to all Jung’s sites): https://linktr.ee/JungPark

Speech and debate academy website for Nova 42: www.nova42.com

Short story Freebird that reached Top 50, Launch Pad Prose Competition 2024 ,and is on the Coverfly Red list as #13 Drama Short Story (Prose) in the past year:

https://writers.coverfly.com/projects/view/37d599e9-9323-4be6-8b60-d58eeb335c04/FREEBIRD

Jung’s IMDB profile:https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2575833/

Featured Non-profit:

The featured non-profit of this episode of The 92 Report is Generation recommended by Bonni Theriault who reports: 

"Hi. I'm Bonni Theriault, class of 1992 the featured nonprofit of this episode of The 92 Report is Generation. Generation is a global nonprofit that supports people to achieve economic mobility and a better life by training, placing and supporting them into employment. I have been a generation for the past six years, and am privileged to serve as the chief partnerships officer. You can learn more about generations work at www.generation.org and now here is Will Bachmann with this week's episode."

To learn more about their work visit: https://www.generation.org/