I join with Yong Soon's wide circle of devoted friends and family with a deep sense of loss, admiration and love. I first met Yong just after her MFA exhibit at UC Berkeley. Our paths crossed ever since, the last time when she was circling back with friends and family visiting home ground in Monterey and she stopped by with long time artist friends Robin Kaneshiro and Paul Steuerwald. I'm looking at a few photographs. When Yong took her first teaching job at Athens Ohio, we packed into her blue VW bug in Berkeley and drove across county together. Seeing Yong in the driver’s seat setting out on a new adventure seems emblematic to me of her forging new paths throughout her life, heading out, for instance, to trace diasporic routes. Another photo is from an early print-in-progress of her mother in Korea wearing a Hanbok dress, on the back of the print is a letter in pencil matching the folds. And a third photo is from a studio visit with Yong in Tribeca, where she was working on "American Friend". Her work has always been exploratory, ground-breaking, fierce and generous. All of her work and life connects community, reconfigures history and identity. Her life continues in these beautiful efforts. The loss is profound but so is the love rising to meet her.

Yong Soon, I feel so much indebted to you and your influential support of our Asian American art community in LA. Our art collective Tomorrow Girls Troop was so lucky to be one of them. I am still grateful of your warm generosity to open your house up to host our fundraising event and to give us a firm support, opening our art performance in front of the 'Comfort Women' statue in Glendale. The last image I have of you was us bumping into each other at Kim's Home Center during the pandemic. I was so happy to see you. As a much younger female Korean immigrant artist myself, your existence gave me a strength and grace. You will be always missed with great love.

I will always remember Yong Soon's generosity, courage and grace -- as a teacher in the early 1990s at UCI and as a friend and colleague. She will be sorely missed but her work will live on.

It was an honor to know you at UCB as a sister grad art student. I will always remember you on our shared birthday...April 29. May your beautiful light continue to shine on us.

Yong Soon Min

I had the honor of working with Yong Soon Min when she created the World of Flowers for the Flushing Queens Public Library.
This was for the NYC Percent for Art program.  She was a gracious kind spirited
Modest and talented artist. One of my favorite artists to know.  I will always cherish those memories.  With sympathy to her family and friends.  Cathie Behrend nyc

Yong Soon deftly orchestrated her two cultures and illuminated their merger in her important art. She was a mainstay of her Asian American community and remained one of the most kind and modest friends imaginable.