All this to make her share of the rent for a small place she shared with roommates in Jersey. Young continued job hunting t, getting jobs at restaurants, jewelry shops, even illegally hawking her art in New York’s famed Union Square. Touching down in 2007 with just $80 and a student visa to study English, the 22-year-old made a beeline for Korea Town in midtown Manhattan, searched for jobs in a Korean newspaper and talked her way into work at a local nail salon the very next day.ĭespite the language barrier, she wouldn’t stop there. They say if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere, and bonafide hustler Young took the motto to heart. “New York is an artist’s city,” says the Chugye University graduate, “so it just made sense.” Young was able to land a partial academic scholarship to an art university where she continued honing her craft until she was ready to flee to her personal promised land:New York City. She didn’t fly under the radar though when it came to her talent: increasingly renowned among teachers and classmates for her ability to sketch, draw and paint, Young began winning prizes and other awards for her work, even using the sales of amateur pieces to help buy basic necessities. My teachers suspected I was poor because there were things I couldn’t pay for, but for the most part I think I flew under the radar.” I’d also get hand-me-down-clothes from church and create my own fashions, or at least I tried to.
“When my family didn’t have access to a shower I would clean up at public restrooms every morning. “I may have been homeless with no money, but I was always clean and fashionable,” says the self-taught tattoo queen whose come a long way to now ink high-profile clientele and eager fans of the drama-filled show, “Black Ink”. Young did her best to blend in with other, more privileged kids, even as she and her family moved around into church basements, abandoned houses, and even a shipping container, throughout her teenage years. So I kept it all a secret, as best I could.” They treat the less fortunate like shit, so I couldn’t talk to anybody about how I was living –not even my best friend.
“No matter how hard you work, it is hard to break away from poverty -nobody gives you an opportunity. Young recalls the cultural reaction to her family’s suffering with clarity: “Korea is a materialistic country,” confides Young, now owner of the marquee Diamond Tattoos shop in New York City’s glitzy Times Square. Young’s mom, an artist herself, was consistently unable to provide and care for her children and members of their community refused to offer assistance. Using her natural talent - art - to overcome years of poverty, homelessness and abuse, and witnessing that of her mother and sister, at the hands of her father, alongside her mother and sister, Young managed to escape. A native of Seoul, Korea, Young Bae’s childhood reads like a painful chapter of “Oliver Twist”.
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