In his new animated series, “Mike Tyson Mysteries,” the former heavyweight champion will solve cases with the help of a talking pigeon, a ghost, and his cartoon character's adopted Korean daughter.
The actress Rachel Ramras voices the character of Yung Hee, an 18-year-old high schooler, getting ready to apply for college. In a trailer for the series released by Adult Swim, it is revealed that Tyson’s character adopted the teen after she was abandoned outside of his home.
“Who is my mother and why did she leave me on Mike Tyson’s doorstep when I was a baby?” Yung Hee wonders in the trailer. “Probably because she didn’t want you. There! Mystery solved,” the pigeon replies. Needless to say, this isn’t a cartoon geared towards children.
Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, there have been over 200,000 children adopted from Korea to families living in the United States, Europe and Australia. Despite that, there have been very few Korean adoptee characters in popular culture.
The Associated Press reports that Tyson did not know Ramras’s character was Korean until they appeared together to promote the series at Comic-Con last week, noting he had thought up until that point that she was Chinese. He also made it a point to clarify that he "never adopted a Chinese girl in real life."
