SuChin Pak

SuChin Pak (, born August 15, 1976) is a South Korean-born American television news correspondent and podcaster, best known from her early days working for MTV News. She joined MTV News as a correspondent in May 2001. Life and career Born in Seoul, South Korea, Pak immigrated along with her parents to California when she was five years old. She grew up in Union City, California, a suburb southeast of San Francisco. Her parents own a small restaurant in downtown Oakland, California. Pak never planned on a career in television. While attending James Logan High School, she volunteered for the YMCA program Youth and Government, an organization aimed at involving and educating young people in the political process. She was also a member of the school's forensics team, in which she did expository speaking. In 1992, she placed 8th in the state of California. She was interviewed for the news by KGO-TV, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco for the show Straight Talk 'N Teens. The program director for another station happened to see the piece and approached her to host the teen-based magazine show First Cut on KRON, the then-NBC (now MyNetwork TV) affiliate in San Francisco. This "after-school job" became Pak's introduction to the entertainment world. Her first big interview for the show was Ice-T. While attending the University of California, Berkeley as a political science major, Pak was once again discovered, when the producer of a PBS science show called Newton's Apple saw a tape of her. Following graduation, she was approached by ZDTV, a cable network devoted to technology and the Internet. After a year working on Internet Tonight, a daily half-hour show at ZDTV, she was recruited to be a correspondent on KRON. Looking to move on from San Francisco, she sent in a tape to the start-up cable network Oxygen. After a year-long audition process, she was hired as a host for the show Trackers and moved to New York City. From there, MTV spotted her and she was soon the first Asian face of MTV.