Six-time Emmy winner Eun Yang, 47, has been anchoring the news desk each weeknight since April on NBC4’s News4 at 4 and News4 at 6 after 12 years making mornings brighter on News4 Today, the region’s top-rated a.m. show. The University of Maryland alum grew up in Silver Spring and attended Paint Branch High School, and now lives in Washington, D.C., with her entrepreneur husband, Robert Kang, and their three teens.
Part of how I got to where I am is just the nature of who I am as a person. I’m very curious. I see things and hear things and experience things and wonder: What’s going on there? Who is that person? Why does she get to do what she does? Why did he say that, and what does it mean? Those sorts of questions came to me from a young age, and my inquisitive nature led me to this field. I’m curious. I want to know why things are the way they are. I want to get to know somebody. I feel like when I get to know somebody, I really want to know why they made the choices they did, because I really believe everyone has a story.
I come from an immigrant family. I didn’t think I could be a television news anchor. My parents are immigrants from Korea. They worked extremely hard, sacrificed so much, and while I knew that broadcast journalism was something I was interested in in my heart, it wasn’t practical in my parents’ eyes—or, to be honest, in my eyes. It was like saying you wanted to be a rocket scientist, right? It just seemed out of reach for so many reasons. When it came to applying for a [college] major, I considered going into political science or something that would lead me to law school, something more practical in my parents’ eyes. The summer after graduating high school, I kept asking myself, What do I want to do? And nothing else filled my heart with desire like journalism, and I decided, I’m going to go for it.
I told my parents I was going to study journalism, and it was very tough for them. They looked at me like I was crazy. My parents were blue-collar workers. My mom worked in a factory; my dad was a mechanic and owned his own shop—hardworking immigrants, working six, seven days a week, who did not go on vacation and did not complain. They found gratitude through all of that.
I knew it was a tough choice, but I was going to work my butt off. I needed to make sure that the choice I made would be true to myself, that I would honor myself, but at the same time honor my parents and make them proud, too. That connection is very strong for me. I really felt the strong need and duty to make my parents proud.
Do I feel fortunate and blessed? Yes, and I use the word “lucky” sometimes, but I have worked very hard. Yes, I’ve had an incredibly unique and interesting path. But if you look at that path, it’s not paved with gold. I have busted my butt and paid my dues to get to where I am. And I don’t regret the path that I took.
This story appears in the July/August issue of Bethesda Magazine.