In 1976, a boy was born in Seoul, Korea, the youngest of three and the only son of Paul Jin Kim and Cecilia. When that boy was five in 1981, his family moved to the United States. and settled in Anchorage, Alaska. This was the beginning of the American journey for Steven Kim.
When Kim’s family came to the United States his mom and dad were both undocumented immigrants, his family he says, “Had been broken because of the immigration laws at the time didn’t recognize my grandmother, who had raised me and my sisters from birth. The laws didn’t recognize her as being a member of our household. It took her over a year to rejoin us.”
In Anchorage, Steven Kim attended kindergarten, where he says he remembers learning how to speak English as a second language. Early childhood memories, Kim says, “Are filled with riding bicycles with my sisters and other children from the housing development that we lived in, in the Alaskan summers late into the night where the sun doesn’t set until past bedtime, and digging snow tunnels in the winters where the skies glow under the northern lights.”
By the time Kim was entering the third grade, his family’s immigration status changed. His dad found an employer who was actually willing to sponsor them to get a green card. But that employer was in Dallas, Texas. So Kim’s family uprooted from Anchorage, and he says, “Experienced our second culture shock and moved to a new country within a country.”
From the age of nine until Kim graduated high school, he grew up in the Dallas, Fort Worth parts of North Texas.
“You can imagine that unlike today where Korean pop culture is widely known and even celebrated, growing up in the 80s and the 90s in North Texas in my skin had its challenges,” Kim says. “I struggled to fit in. I felt that I didn’t belong at times, that my countrymen and my fellow Americans didn’t fully see me as one of them. We faced prejudice, blatant ugly racism,and demeaning treatment.”
Kim’s Mom and Dad, he said, “Leaned into those stereotypes that this country had of Asians at the time. Although they knew nothing about dry cleaning, they became dry cleaners.”
Kim’s mom also worked in garment factories and sewed garments he says, “For nickels and dimes for every piece she sewed.”
Growing up, Kim and his family didn’t have much. They were a family of six that started out in a two-bedroom apartment. He wore hand-me-downs, and he said, “Literally pinching pennies. By all measures, we were poor. But I never knew that growing up because I was bubble-wrapped with so much love. My parents instilled in me the importance of an honest day’s work and there is dignity in work..They taught me through their audacity to conquer the challenges of moving to a country where they didn’t know the language and showed us all that with hard work, faith, grit, and a little bit of luck that dreams can come true.”
Kim was also raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and in his formative years he says he was taught to seek social justice and to think critically by the priests of the Catholic Order of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits who ran an all-boys college preparatory high school in Dallas, that Kim had attended. The school motto, Kim says, “Was to be men for others, to live intentionally in the service of others.”
Kim says it was his Jesuit foundation that brought him to Boston 30 years ago to attend another Jesuit institution, Boston College. At Boston College, he studied English literature, and he says he eventually went on to law school but never forgot his Jesuit foundation to live as a man for others.
Kim started out his legal career as a law clerk for the justices of the Massachusetts Superior Court, before going to work as an Assistant District Attorney in Boston. But as an ADA, Kim said, “Doing that work I came to realize in my early career that my values and life experiences were actually better suited to advocate for those on the other side of the aisle. I started a private practice.”
“My proudest professional achievements for the last two decades have come as a private bar advocate for the Committee for Public Counsel Services representing indigent criminal defendants in the courts of the BMC, especially in Roxbury,” said Kim.
Shannon Laughlin, a Judge Advocate with the Military Division of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has known Kim both professionally and personally for 25 years she says, “Stephen is also a patriot.” Laughlin added, “Demonstrating duty and selfless service, and at the same time, he is an inclusive, open advocate, not afraid to stand up for the marginalized or different. And how do I know that? Because we served together for years as judge advocates in the Massachusetts Army National Guard.”
In addition to being a lawyer, Kim is also a proud veteran who served honorably on active duty in Afghanistan with the Judge Advocate General’s Corp. in the U.S. Army National Guard.
Following the attacks on 9-11, Laughlin who was beginning her 3L year. was in the reserves. She was pulled out of law school and deployed overseas, and she said. “Stephen volunteered at that time to enter the Massachusetts Army National Guard. He had so many other opportunities right in front of him, and yet he set those aside to volunteer to defend his country and his commonwealth.”
Laughlin talked about how in her 28 years of military service, she had seen a lot of different types of officers, and said, “While all of them deserve praise for what they’ve sacrificed in order to protect our freedoms, Stephen wasn’t just one man who punched the card. He was a different kind of officer. He was an officer who, within two months after getting married, volunteered to go to Afghanistan so that the other officers in our group who had children, who had already deployed, so that they wouldn’t have to go. Stephen Kim leaned forward and showed his dedication, putting himself in harm’s way when he was nowhere near the top of the list to do so.”
Kim holds three degrees from Boston College, including his B.A. in English, a Master of Arts in Higher Education Administration, and his J.D.
On March 21st, a boy who had been born in Seoul, Korea, the son of a dry cleaner and garment worker was nominated by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey to sit as a judge on the Boston Municipal Court.
“My story is one of love, but above all else it is a story of hope and service,” Kim said. “I have lived my adult life by intentional design in the service of others and with great reverence for the ideals and those yet unfulfilled promises of our country. The BMC is a very unique court where people who walk through those doors have struggled with poverty, discrimination, with trauma, and many other stresses. I believe that not only can I empathize with those individuals but that I can connect with them on a personal level because I have walked in their shoes.”
The Governor’s Council, an elected panel with final approval power over judgeships in Massachusetts, confirmed Kim, and on Wednesday, Governor Healey swore Kim in as an Associate Justice of the Boston Municipal Court.