Korea’s 1st American Korean lawmaker eyes key role in immigration policy

July 9, 2024

SEOUL – A loud, booming voice bellowed throughout the room in the National Assembly members’ office building in western Seoul. As he spoke with The Korea Herald, switching between fluent English and Korean, Rep. Ihn Yohan of the ruling People Power Party pointed to a Hanja idiom framed and hung on the wall of his office that translates as: “There is no place where more milk and honey flows than Suncheon.”

The city of Suncheon, the largest in South Jeolla Province, holds a special place in Ihn’s heart. It’s his hometown, and it’s where he plans to spend his retirement.

“The culture of hospitality in the Jeolla area is very similar to the hospitality in the Southern United States,” he said in an interview on Friday afternoon.

As reflected in his remarks, Ihn, 64, is one of a kind. Born in South Jeolla Province in 1959, he spent his childhood there after his father Hugh Linton, a US Navy officer and a 1950-53 Korean War veteran, decided to settle down in Korea to serve as an American missionary. Ihn’s paternal great-grandfather is Eugene Bell, who was also an American missionary who first arrived on the Korean Peninsula in 1895.

Continuing the family legacy that is deeply associated with Korea, Ihn is a doctor and the first Westerner to pass South Korea’s notorious medical license exam.

He is now the first-ever American Korean lawmaker in South Korea, where political circles are run by and dominated by ethnic Koreans, after being recently elected in the April 10 general elections.

Yet, Ihn is eyeing another major role to add to his ever-expanding resume: first-ever chief of the planned immigration agency, a key policy on the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s agenda.

“It is incredibly important to launch the