Rastall worker Yun Park a ray of sunshine

With enthusiastic high-fives, butterfly hairclips and an unsparing smile that lights up her eyes, Yun Park, everyone’s favorite Rastall card-swiper, can turn that frown upside-down after a hard morning of class. Despite the many hardships in her life, Park has a very optimistic outlook on life that she aims to spread to people around her, including CC students.

“Many people come to work and don’t want to work, always complain. I happy by make people happy. I wake up happy because it’s my day. Life is short,” she said.

Park was born in Gunsan, South Korea (in a year she refuses to disclose to CC students). When she was just two and a half her mother died, and because in Korea it was thought that a single father could not properly raise girls, Yun and her older sister Hyun spent their early years on her grandparents’ cabbage farm in the countryside. Her grandparents were poor and they lived in a modest cabin, which she has fond memories of. “Still I miss that cabin house…I love that house,” she says wistfully. When she was 11 years old, Yun and her sister returned to live with her father in Gunsan, but when she was 19, he died from a heart attack. 

In 1982 her sister made an offer she couldn’t refuse – to move to the United States. Yun’s sister was living in Boston while her husband was working at Fort Carson and invited Yun to live with them. There, Yun went to a school for foreigners to learn English. “Like Sesame Street,” she says of the school, “It was fun every day, and free.” However, moving to a country where she knew hardly anyone, the language, or much about the culture was not always fun. “When I came to this country, very difficult. I cry a lot, but was strong…strong. You got be strong,” she said. 

It wasn’t until she was on a vacation with some friends in Colorado that she fell in love with the mountains and decided to move to Colorado Springs. She first worked as a cashier at the Peterson Air Force Base. 

In 1989 her life took a sharp turn when she was shopping at a Korean grocery store and a Korean woman asked her if she had ever gone to a Christian church. Yun responded that she hadn’t, she had been raised Buddhist, and the woman recommended the Presbyterian Acape Church to her. A couple weeks later Yun said she went, and soon became a devoted Christian. It was through this church that Yun also met her late husband. 

Yun quit her job at the Peterson Air Force Base because of the strange hours of her shifts and began working at CC as a cashier at Rastall in 2001. She said under Sodexo some of her coworkers would bully her and would blame anything that went wrong on her, but under Bon Appétit things are better. 

After many years of living in the United States, Yun is very proud to be an American. She said that this is her country now and no longer considers Korea home. She has gone back twice, but said there is “nobody there…I’d rather go to Europe…not much feeling for Korea…when I go there even I’m stranger there too.” 

She said she loves American culture, though she does have a few qualms about it. In America, Yun dislikes the cultural way of calling siblings by their names rather than “sister” or “brother” and the “teenager kissing everywhere.” She also believes American families are not generous enough to each other.

“Korean culture we don’t borrow each other, we just give. I don’t have, I give. Even 30, parents give them pocket money. American culture — borrow,” she explained.

It’s clear that Yun does have some nostalgia for home, as she loves to cook rice and Kimchi as well as other Korean food. She also raised her four children in many of the traditional Korean ways, and is very proud that one of her granddaughters, four-year-old Maya, speaks Korean. 

Although Yun’s husband passed away last year, Yun is not lonely. 

“This is my time…don’t have to cook,” she joked. She spends her free time between Maya and church, the two main joys in her life. If you ask Yun about her church now, her eyes light up, and she will tell you she goes every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. 

Yun also cares about the CC students, and it shows. 

“I love them, I love them all. Sometimes when they don’t have money I wish I could pay, they’re not my children, not my grandchildren, but I am proud of them,” she said. “They are a part of my life. I try to make them happy as they come in the door.”

Yun is aware of the many hardships in her life, but she has grown very strong because of it. 

“Climb up, fall down, climb up, fall down, the right thing, just do it,” she said. “I tell my children that. The sun rise tomorrow.”