The Korean American Shorts Festival New York (KASFNY) is a small, intimate festival meant to showcase and celebrate work by Korean American directors, producers, and actors, traditionally underrepresented in mainstream media. Our aim is to help provide an arena where audiences and artists in the filmmaking community can converge to creatively and critically discuss Korean American cinema. Its the first New York shorts festival focused exclusively on Korean American filmmakers, themes, or actors.

We see the Korean American experience as a distinctly American experience that needs to be distinguished from the Korean experience. That is not to say the that the two are mutually exclusive, but that they start in different places

The 2007 festival will be held in conjunction with other planned celebrations in New York for Korean American Day

The U.S. Congress has designated January 13 as "Korean-American Day." Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia, and Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, sponsored the resolution. The "Korean American Day" would be celebrated on January 13th. In the year 1903, January 13th marked the arrival of the first Korean immigrants to America.

Korean Americans, like the waves of immigrants that came to the United States before them, have taken root and thrived in this country through strong family ties, community support, and hard work. The influence of Korean Americans may be observed in all facets of American life, including, but not limited to, entrepreneurship, the arts, and education. The resolution also noted that members of the Korean-American community served with distinction in the U.S. armed forces during World War I, World War II and the Korean War. It also noted many other contributions of Korean-Americans in sports, medicine and the arts. The Korean-American community has been seeking such a designation since 2003.