Rose Pak

Pak was born in Henan, China, on November 27, 1947. She received a Catholic education while growing up as a refugee in Portuguese Macau and British Hong Kong after her father, a businessman, had died in the Chinese Civil War. When she was 17, she received a scholarship to attend the San Francisco College for Women and in 1972, earned a master's degree at the Columbia School of Journalism. she returned to San Francisco in 1974 to work for the San Francisco Chronicle (as its first female Asian American journalist), a job that she left after eight years to become a full-time social activist. ==Political career==

Pak's first objective as an activist was to organize a campaign to save the San Francisco Chinese Hospital from closure. Both projects broke ground in 2013. She won a ballot measure about the issue in 1987, but after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the freeway, her objections were overturned. According to Claire Jean Kim, Pak and Chinatown power broker Pius Lee were "famously at odds." In 1996, Pak lobbied for the appointment of Fred H. Lau as the first Asian American head of the San Francisco Police Department. She threatened to withdraw support for the S.F. Giants' proposed Pac Bell Park if Mayor Brown didn't fire a political consultant hostile to Lau. In 2015, Pak and her ally Ed Lee had a falling out over Lee's choice of Julie Christensen as a replacement appointment to the Board of Supervisor instead of Pak's protege Cindy Wu. Pak went on to support her former longtime adversary Aaron Peskin against Christensen in the supervisor elections for District 3 (which includes Chinatown) later that year. Aaron Peskin ended up defeating Julie Christensen. In the annual Chinese New Year's Parade, Pak was known for her outspoken comments about local politicians as they were passing by the central grandstand. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Pak's quips "ranged from humorous to mean, but they were almost always pointed and pertinent to Chinatown’s interests". Political ties to the People's Republic of China Pak was an overseas executive director of the China Overseas Exchange Association (COEA), a united front organization overseen by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO), at the time under the State Council of the People's Republic of China. At various times she spoke out in favor of the Chinese government's views, e.g. in 2012 calling all "overseas Chinese" to "defend the homeland” in the conflict about the Diaoyu Islands, and in 2008 opposing a resolution of the SF Board of Supervisors that criticized China for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and other repression measures, passed on occasion of the 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay reaching San Francisco. As revealed in a 2018 Politico report after Pak's death, among U.S. intelligence officials "there were widespread concerns that Pak had been co-opted by Chinese intelligence". These also extended to her work in organizing many "junket" trips to China for leading Bay Area politicians, exposing them to surveillance and recruitment efforts (although there is no evidence Pak directly participated in such efforts herself). She died in San Francisco on September 18, 2016, aged 68. == Legacy ==

On the reopening of the Chinese Hospital at the end of April 2016, the city renamed an alley in Chinatown just east of the new tower in her honor to "Rose Pak's Way ". On August 20, 2019, the Board of Supervisors for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency voted to rename the Muni Metro Chinatown station to "Chinatown–Rose Pak station." The issue had been deferred from an earlier meeting in June, when the Board split 3–3 on the renaming proposal due to one board member's absence. In March 2017, the city planted a ginkgo biloba tree in Pak's honor in Saint Mary's Square. On the first anniversary of Pak's death in September 2017, the president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and other local leaders announced the launch of the "Rose Pak Community Fund", initially with $600,000 in donations, aimed at supporting health care, education, affordable housing and culture. ==See also==