Original article in Korean is at this link.

A top star and a judge, both middle-aged, have joined hands in Korea and America to overcome the difficulties of being mixed-race. They have spent over 50 years of life in different places but when they meet their faces seem both similar and different.  54-year-old singer In Soon-yi, the child of a Korean mother and a black American father who was serving in the Korean war, and 56-year old Judy Draper, a Korean-American judge, met at a restaurant in Bangbae-dong, Seoul, on the 20th. Their meeting was arranged after the Ministry of Foreign affairs and Trade (외교통상부) brought Draper to Korea on the 17th after she became a well-known Korean-American after being made a circuit judge in St. Louis, Missouri. Judge Draper, who brought her multicultural son with her, came to know In Soon-yi when she learned were both doing similar work at the Pearl S. Buck Foundation Korea (한국펄벅재단) and requested that the Ministry arrange a meeting.

A spokesperson for In Soon-yi said that “as soon as in Soon-yi met Judge Draper they embraced… As mixed-race Koreans they each overcame discrimination and never gave up, working to be treated fairly, and each was touched by that.”

Judge Draper moved to Sacramanto, California in 1959, she was four years old. Later she graduated from the University of North Carolina and then Harvard Law School, and since 2004 has been in the St. Louis courts. Judge Draper said after meeting In Soon-yi that “mixed-race people feel that they never fit in 100% in either society… When I see In Soon-yi, who found happiness even when she was lonely and hurt, I feel very proud.”

According to a spokesperson for In Soon-yi, on the 22nd in the Yongsan Art Hall in Seoul she held a concert and invited Judge Draper. And at Judge Draper’s request she sang ‘Amazing Grace’.