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Outlook: Black, Korean, stateless: A 'slickyboy’s' American dream, part 2

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Milton Washington

18/10/2022 GMT

Black, Korean, stateless: A 'slickyboy’s' American dream, part 2

BBC World Service - Outlook, Black, Korean, stateless: A 'slickyboy’s' American dream, part 2

An outcast from birth and a petty thief by seven, all Milton wanted was to find his dad

An outcast from birth, the child of a Korean sex worker and a Black GI, Milton was a sometime ‘slickyboy’, or thief, by age seven. All he really wanted was to find his dad.

Growing up as the son of a sex worker and a Black US soldier in South Korea in the '70s, Milton Washington was seen as an outcast, and "not Korean". He could not even get a birth certificate. Still, he was loved and protected by his mum, the two of them against the world. She told him his dad was in America, a land of flying cars and ice cream mountains - and that was where Milton wanted to be, too. Today, Milton's story continues, as he finally makes it to America and is adopted by a US family. Now in his fifties, he has begun to piece together his family history. 

There is a nail bar in the Bronx, New York City, where it is all about the bling. It is run by a talented nail technician called Jenny Bui, and it is where the rapper Cardi B comes to get her signature stiletto finger nails done. Jenny was born in Cambodia to Chinese parents, and has been on a challenging journey to get to where she is now. Tara Gadomski went to the nail bar to meet her, in 2018.

Corneille Ewango is now a celebrated conservationist in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the chief botanist of Okapi Faunal Reserve, but he started out as a poacher. In 2018, he told Jo Fidgen about the extraordinary measures he was forced to take to protect his research when civil war broke out.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: Laura Thomas

(Photo: Milton Washington. Credit: Milton Washington)

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