Dosan Media Dosan Media
Flip in dark round glasses with a grey moustache and long grey hair, in a pale seersucker suit and a plaid tie, standing against dark rocks and a pale sky
Philip Ahn Cuddy

The shore

Philip “Flip” Ahn Cuddy

Grandson of Dosan, and the one who keeps his record straight.

저는 외교관이 아닙니다.

저는 파수꾼입니다.

Part 1 · The Family

The family’s watchdog

Flip is the grandson of Dosan Ahn Chang-ho and Helen Ahn, and the son of Susan Ahn Cuddy. For more than forty years, he has made sure Dosan’s story is told the way it happened.

He doesn’t see himself as a diplomat. He calls himself a watchdog.

A young woman in a white blouse embroidered in red, seated, smiling, and a young man in a pale shirt behind her with his hand on her shoulder, in a room with venetian blinds
His parents, Susan Ahn Cuddy and Frank Cuddy.

Part 1 · The Family

Cracking Japan’s codes

Both his parents fought Japan in World War II. His father, an Irish American who spoke fluent Japanese, and his mother, Susan Ahn Cuddy, broke Japan’s military codes for the U.S. Navy. After the war, both kept watch on Japan at the National Security Agency.

Two shirtless teenage boys, one in a white cap, bent over a white surfboard on a driveway beside a parked car
Flip made his first surfboard at 15. He was better at riding them than making them.

Part 2 · The Water

Where it started

As a boy he caught crabs on the beach with his grandmother. At 12 he was surfing in Waikiki. By 15 he was sweeping floors in a California surf shop, learning to fix and shape boards.

Two men and a woman standing behind two seated men at a hotel bar, the camera’s date stamp reading 91 5 26
Jeju, 26 May 1991: the Jeju Shilla Hotel bar after surfing, with his friend from Maui, who is 6' 5".
A man in a white T-shirt and cap points at a projected slide with a photograph and a map, an audience in front
Telling the Jeju story at the Wave Park seminar, 2021.

Part 2 · The Water

Surfing comes to Korea

In 1987, at the opening of Independence Hall, a film showed perfect waves off Jeju. He tracked them down to Jungmun beach and flew in with a friend from Hawaii.

Customs at Gimpo took the boards. Nobody had seen one before, and they thought drugs were hidden inside. A family friend, Korea’s Justice Minister, got them released.

On 25 May 1991, he paddled out at Jungmun. No one had surfed in Korea before him.

Flip laughing in the water in a black wetsuit and a blue cap with an old-English A, one hand on a white board with blue stripes
Flip in the ocean
A surfer crouched on a yellow board as the lip of a dark green wave throws spray over him
Rock, the 1990s

Part 2 · The Water

A life on the water

He went on to judge contests, lead the Malibu Boardriders and run the Eddie Aikau Foundation in Honolulu. Today he advises the World Surf League in Korea, O’Neill Korea and Siheung Wave Park.

A man in sunglasses leaning on a yellow truck at sunset, a longboard with an orange fin tied on its roof, the sea and a headland behind
Moniecito, ’84
A man in a yellow T-shirt and floral shorts giving a shaka beside a green wood-panelled station wagon
Mazza woody, 1946 Ford
A man in a cap standing beside a blue soft-top longboard twice his height, in front of a white garage
14 April 2022
A man with long grey hair and sunglasses in a Team O’Neill T-shirt and an Aloha Life cap, an O’Neill wetsuit across his knees
25 April 2025
A man in a white T-shirt and cap signs a paper at a table while young people in masks stand around him
Signing autographs at Wave Park, 2021.

A life on the water

Part 3 · The Record

Seoul, 1973

His uncle Philip brought Helen home to Seoul to rest beside Dosan. The park was bare ground then. Flip was there, and helped cover his grandmother’s grave with soil.

Two men in suits side by side in a hotel hall; the camera’s date stamp reads 92 2 28
Luke Im, Hilton, Dosan Academy. Date stamp 28 February 1992

Part 3 · The Record

Keeper of the family papers

Helen Ahn began saving the family’s papers in 1902. Flip has guarded them since 1984, and since 2004 he has managed her collection at Korea’s Independence Hall.

For the same museum he transcribed 1,500 of Homer Hulbert’s letters. He was also the first director of the Korean American National Museum.

Every family document on this site comes from him.

Flip and Christine hold up a large black-and-white portrait of a woman in a naval uniform, in front of a wall of framed paintings, a scroll, a tiger and blue-and-white vases
Flip and Christine in front of the wall in their house that holds Dosan-related artifacts

Part 3 · The Record

The wall at home

Flip and Christine.

Flip on a sandstone shelf above the surf, a longboard under his arm with a taegeuk and the Korean flag's trigrams painted on it
Flip Cuddy
A man in a suit speaking at a lectern marked with a university emblem, under a purple banner in Korean dated 2013.11.8
Yonsei University, 8 November 2013: Dosan’s honorary diploma. Flip arranged it, in a suit and tie, after working on it since 2009.
Two men in suits shake hands on a stage under a purple banner in Korean dated 2013.11.8, a Korean flag at the left
Yonsei University, 2013

Part 3 · The Record

Defending the name

He got Yonsei University to award Dosan an honorary diploma in 2013, and helped turn Dosan’s handwriting into a typeface in 2023.

When someone sells a false Dosan, like Riverside’s “first Koreatown,” he answers in public, with the documents.

Part 3 · The Record

Closing the door on Harvard

A Harvard law professor claimed the “comfort women” had been voluntarily employed. Flip pulled the family archives from Harvard and told its president why:

“Allowing employees to think they can hide behind academic freedom freely spewing such pointed false opinions about Comfort Women indicated Harvard is no place to deposit any of my archives.”

A talk in a bright room under a slide reading “Suggestions for Popularizing Surf Culture in Korea”; on the table a Wave Park name card reads Philip Ahn Cuddy
Wave Park
A smiling man in an Aloha Life cap behind a laptop at a lectern carrying the Wave Park logo
Keep Surfing

Part 4 · Passing It On

The next generation

For decades he has spoken to young Korean Americans at universities in California, Hawaii and Korea, and at national student conferences. For ten years he ran essay contests for students in Los Angeles.

History only survives if the next generation knows it.

A smiling man in a grey jacket and red tie with a medal on a yellow and navy ribbon, people standing behind him outdoors
Flip Cuddy
Two longboards standing in a glass case in a lobby, against a wall with a black-and-white photograph and the characters 島山
The display case, Siheung Wave Park

Part 4 · Passing It On

Liberation Day

Korea has twice put him on the field on 15 August, the day it marks its independence. In 2024 he threw the first pitch for the Hanwha Eagles. In 2025 he sang the national anthem and took the first kick at a Jeonju Hyundai match.

A man in a white Eagles baseball jersey and cap winds up to throw a ball, the date 8 15 2024 across the top
First pitch, Hanwha Eagles, 15 August 2024
A man in a green jersey raises an arm on a football pitch before a full stand, a large screen above showing a waving man in a suit
First kick, Jeonju Hyundai, 15 August 2025

Liberation Day

More photographs

  • A smiling woman in glasses and a white sleeveless top ladling food at a banquet table, beside a smiling teenage boy in a floral shirt giving a thumbs-up, a wall of woven matting behind them
    Flip and his mother at the Moongate, 1970, working a banquet in the family business. He was 15, the age he made his first surfboard, and had been washing dishes there since he was 12.
  • A black-and-white photograph of four people at a restaurant table crowded with Korean dishes: a young woman, a tall older man in a dark jacket, an older woman and a young man
    The Cuddy family at his mother’s 70th birthday, Woo Lae Oak, Los Angeles, 1985.
  • A black-and-white photograph of a long banquet table of older women and men seated and eating, seen from the end of the table
    Halmoni’s birthday at the Moongate. Flip is in the very back, between his cousin Lindy Kim and his sister.
  • A surfer in a red and blue shirt turning on a yellow board across the face of a green wave, spray behind him
    Flip surfing.
  • A surfer on a white board turning at the top of a curling green wave, a swimmer lying on the water in front
    Flip surfing a roundhouse cutback.
  • A man in a brown jacket and a yellow bib speaking into a microphone on a city street
    Sewol Ho event, Los Angeles.
  • A surfer in a dark vest crouched on a blue board at the foot of a breaking green wave, spray all around
    Flip surfing, summer 2019.
  • A surfer in a dark vest standing on a blue longboard on a small green wave, a leash trailing behind him
  • A man in a light blue shirt and a young man in a white T-shirt standing side by side in front of a dark wall, above a banner with two logos
    Flip with Kanoa at Wave Park.
  • Six people in suits and a wedding dress sitting close together on a white sofa in a wood-panelled room, a vase of white flowers on the table before them
    His sister’s wedding to Harry Gittes.
  • Two men standing side by side indoors, one in a pale pink shirt and one in a floral shirt holding a grey jacket over his arm
  • A man in a floral shirt and glasses and a standing woman in a black jacket study a large map spread on a desk beside a lamp and a computer, the camera’s date stamp reading 03 10 11
    Dosan Hall, October 2003.
A surfer in a black wetsuit riding a longboard along a clean green wall of water, seen from the bluff through out-of-focus brush
Flip, 2020

Flip

Philip Ahn Cuddy

Grandson of Dosan Ahn Chang-ho and Helen Ahn (Yi Hye Ryon).

Son of Susan Ahn Cuddy.

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