Joseph was born on the border of Kentucky and West "by God" Virginia, where the Hatfields & McCoys feuded for generations over a razorback pig. He is the son of an immigrant from Seoul, Korea and a Catholic nun / former beauty queen (Miss Welch WV) from the coal mining hollers of West Virginia.
His father, Kim Hak-Lim, was a South Korean POW left for dead after being marched to exhaustion by North Korean troops. His grandmother, who had secretly followed behind, found his father in a cave subsisting on insects and nursed him back to health. His father eventually became a surgeon and was one of the first wave of Korean doctors to immigrate to the US. During his post-residency he met Shirley Jean Daugherty and they married shortly after she left the convent.
