{"id":42116,"date":"2015-08-03T17:31:10","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T17:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42116"},"modified":"2017-05-29T19:43:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-29T19:43:01","slug":"interview-with-moogega-cooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42116","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Moogega Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview with Moogega Cooper<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

HalfKorean.com: An online community for mixed-race Koreans<\/a>
\n2013-04-10<\/p>\n

David Lee Sanders<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Moogega (\ubb34\uc9c0\uac1c) Cooper<\/a> was a top competitor on season one of TBS\u2019s reality competition show, King of the Nerds<\/em>. It premiered on TBS<\/a> in January 2013 and the season just ended in early March 2013.<\/p>\n

The King of the Nerds<\/em> premise: \u201cThe series will follow 11 fierce competitors from across the nerd spectrum as they set out to win $100,000 and be crowned the greatest nerd of them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although she did not win the competition, Moogega did place 5th overall and gained a considerable fan following from her involvement on King of the Nerds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Her \u201cday job\u201d is as a Planetary Protection<\/a> Engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory<\/a>, a NASA<\/a> field center. Although the job title may sound a little nerdy, it is quite an interesting and important job in relation to space research and exploration.<\/p>\n

We were able to cover some of Moogega\u2019s personal background, her professional career and, of course, discuss her King of the Nerds<\/em> experience and are pleased to present this interview.<\/p>\n

Please note that HalfKorean.com comments\/questions are in BOLD<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Background: The Basics on Moogega<\/p>\n

Where and when were you born, raised and currently reside?<\/strong>
\nI was born in 1985 in Southern New Jersey<\/a>. I was raised there until I was 10 years old. We then all moved to Virginia<\/a>. Once I finished graduate school in Philadelphia<\/a> I moved to southern California <\/a>for my job. I won\u2019t leave southern California at all because I love it here!<\/p>\n

How did your parents meet?<\/strong>
\nThey met in Korea<\/a>. My dad would go there several times to just hang out. He used to be in the military and would go back and forth. He met my mom through mutual friends. I kind of want to get a shirt made that says \u201cMade in Korea\u201d as I was definitely conceived there. They had a small ceremony in Korea and he then brought her back to the United States where they were married in the US…<\/p>\n

…Did you grow up around other mixed Koreans or people of mixed heritage?<\/strong>
\nWhat was very interesting was that because we were around a lot of military people, there were a lot of mixed heritage people. No one that was mixed exactly like me but I was used to growing up with a rainbow of people.<\/p>\n

Did you ever experience any identity issues while growing up?<\/strong>
\nA lot of people when they look at me and when I reveal to them that I\u2019m half Korean, they say that they don\u2019t see it at all and think that I\u2019m black. I get a lot of people that say that and they try to impose their own classification of my identity and I embrace both sides…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of people when they look at me and when I reveal to them that I\u2019m half Korean, they say that they don\u2019t see it at all and think that I\u2019m black. I get a lot of people that say that and they try to impose their own classification of my identity and I embrace both sides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,13743,8,20],"tags":[20615,20613,20612,20616,20614,20602],"class_list":["post-42116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-david-lee-sanders","tag-halfkorean-com","tag-halfkorean-com-an-online-community-for-mixed-race-koreans","tag-king-of-the-nerds","tag-moogega--cooper","tag-moogega-cooper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42116"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54071,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42116\/revisions\/54071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}