$4.2 million Korean performing arts center opens in Wheeling

The president of the Wheeling-based Korean Cultural Center of Chicago recalled Saturday the lunch meeting he had with a Schaumburg business owner in 2019.

It didn’t matter who was picking up the check for the meal; Yoon Tae Kim was asking for a much bigger one for the organization’s envisioned performing arts center.

“I humbly asked for $1.5 million, and he immediately said, ‘Yes, I’ll do it for you.’ And that was a dramatic moment,” Kim said.

That seed money — from Byoung In Suh, president of BISCO, a Schaumburg-based medical device manufacturer for the dental industry — ignited a fundraising and grant-writing blitz, helping the nonprofit secure more than 150 other pledges and donations large and small. The organization also landed government funding in two countries: a $600,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant, and a $150,000 Overseas Koreans Foundation grant.

Every financial contribution represented “miracle after miracle,” Kim said, that led to Saturday afternoon’s grand opening of the BISCO Hall Performing Arts Center — the organization’s long-envisioned hub to promote Korean culture and activities.

The $4.2 million, 8,800-square-foot theater and event space — in the middle of the cultural center’s office complex campus at Palatine and Wolf roads — is the organization’s new gem that Kim dreams will become the “Carnegie Hall of the Midwest.”

“We didn’t think that it is even possible, but we made it, and it’s because of all of your support,” Kim told an audience of donors and supporters inside the new hall, which has capacity for up to 400 movable chairs and banquets for up to 250.

Saturday’s ribbon cutting and celebration marked the biggest event at the center since its grand opening in 2011. The organization’s leaders had been searching far and wide in Chicago and the suburbs for somewhere to put down roots when they found the 32,000-square-foot campus in the shadow of Chicago Executive Airport.

It’s become a particularly ideal location, officials say, with more and more Korean Americans moving to the North and Northwest suburbs.

Younghee Kim Kang, one of the organization’s founders and a one-time president, said it was always the community’s desire to have a performing arts center.

Up until Saturday, they’ve made do with a series of five interconnected buildings that regularly host more than 80 classes and programs related to Korean culture, a museum and gallery with Korean artifacts and rotating exhibitions, and a library of more than 10,000 books.

With the new two-story building — built in place of a smaller building the organization tried to renovate but tore down last year instead — officials plan to host everything from music and dance to theater and weddings.

“This place stands for our vision and commitment to enriching the cultural and educational landscape of the Korean American community,” said Suh, the major donor whose company name is affixed to the building. “We hope this space becomes a vibrant hub for creativity, inspiration and unforgettable experience for years to come.”

Among the dignitaries attending the building’s opening Saturday were Junghan Kim, the consul general of the Republic of Korea in Chicago; U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, and Wheeling Village President Pat Horcher.

Horcher said no other organization in town has received federal grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He noted it’s just as rare for a local group to have artifacts on loan from Chicago’s Field Museum, as the cultural center does for its newest exhibition, “Symbolism in Korean Art and Culture.”

“Any group of people would have looked at the creation of a cultural center and a building as an accomplishment. They would have been satisfied,” Horcher said of the opening 13 years ago. “But the Korean Cultural Center of Chicago keeps growing. … You have a vision that does go beyond this generation, and seeing that that continues.”