[BillyMac]

Milton Lee, the Nets’ director of basketball operations from 2010 to ’14, housed the Korean guard Daesung Lee in his New York apartment while Daesung Lee trained to prepare for the 2017 G League draft. They were introduced by Kiwook Kim, a Nets season-ticket holder from South Korea.

Although Daesung Lee played one year with the Erie BayHawks of the G League before returning to South Korea, renewed hope surrounds the Davidson sophomore Hyunjung Lee, who was second on the Wildcats in scoring this past season.

Eugene Park, the N.B.A.’s senior manager for elite basketball talent identification, scouted Hyunjung Lee at the league’s 2017 Asia Pacific Team Camp, then invited him to the N.B.A. Global Academy program for select young talent. In the off-season, Hyunjung Lee trains in South Korea with Brian Kim, who recently coached the G League’s Grand Rapids Drive and is another Park disciple.

Park, who also plays pickup basketball with Milton Lee, wrote in an email that while he holds the same standard for every player he scouts, he keeps “a close eye on grass-roots basketball competitions in Korea with the hope of identifying more Korean prospects” to potentially recruit to the Global Academy.

Davidson forward Hyunjung Lee was the Wildcats’ second-leading scorer in the 2020-21 season, raising hopes that he can find a place in the N.B.A.

Park added that more basketball employees of Korean heritage would “showcase a more complete picture of our history.”

The news media and education systems in the United States have long struggled to properly characterize the depths of the Korean-American experience, the diversity of which is evident in the family histories of Park and his colleagues.

Yim’s ancestors were among the first Koreans to come to the United States, arriving in 1905 and working as pineapple farmers in Hawaii. Scott was one of an estimated 200,000 children placed for adoption after wars and their resulting economic turmoil devastated the Korean Peninsula during much of the 20th century.

Milton Lee said his father had escaped North Korea during the Korean War, never seeing his mother or sisters again; he immigrated to the United States and became a doctor. Arnold Lee, an assistant trainer with the Chicago Bulls, saw parallels between his family’s journey and the story told in the Oscar-nominated film “Minari.” His father was in his 20s when he visited America in the 1980s and decided to move here, looking to escape the financial uncertainty that gripped South Korea as it struggled to establish a democracy after decades of coups and military rule.

“I hope others find strength in these Korean-American journeys and use that to propel out of their comfort zone,” said Marshall Cho, the boys’ basketball coach at Lake Oswego High School in Oregon. Cho, who previously worked in the N.B.A.’s Basketball Without Borders program, co-founded the Kimchi Family speaker series on YouTube to highlight the stories of Korean Americans in basketball.

Rachael Joo, a professor at Middlebury College whose research focuses on how the sports media connects South Korean and Korean-American communities, called Korean N.B.A. employees “mavericks” for not having played professionally yet still breaking into a field dominated by former athletes.

Because of their lack of playing experience, many Korean Americans in the N.B.A. say they have experienced impostor syndrome at various stages in their career.

“Every day I feel like, do I really belong here?” said Arnold Lee, who has worked for the Bulls since 2016.