Grace Kim

Meet Grace Kim, our Playmate of the Month for November 2008. She’s our first Korean Playmate, with long, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes. She was raised in a traditional Korean family, and to have an appreciation for the arts – her mother was a calligrapher, her father a violinist, and her brother a classical pianist. She got her bachelor’s in English from UCLA and master’s in education from Cal State, and taught elementary school for two years before she landed a gig in public relations with Activision, publisher of Guitar Hero. Less than two months in, Grace decided to go to the Playboy Mansion’s Halloween Party, and she sent us a photo in a bid to get in the door. “The next day, I got an email,” she says, “asking me if I wanted to be a Playmate.” Grace shot a test in October, and three weeks later, we asked her to do a full pictorial. “I had to call in sick for five days,” she said. “It wasn’t fair to me or my boss, and I knew that I had to leave Activision.” She and the company parted on good terms – she’s much happier as a Playmate, going to dinners and parties at the Mansion, and still plugs Guitar Hero in the press. “Before I made Playmate, I was working on a book about dating in Los Angeles,” says Grace, “but after that, my focus changed. I wanted to give back.” Grace is back at UCLA, where she studies psychology, and she’s working on a book about addiction and recovery. “That’s my real passion,” she says. When she’s not at school, she spends time with friends and family – she has four video game consoles, and bonded with fellow Playboy model Jo Garcia over their love of first-person shooters. She loves to go out for traditional Korean food, like kalbi, beef short ribs, or kimchi, spicy cabbage, but also loves American Thanksgiving. “As a second-generation Korean from Los Angeles, I have the best of both worlds,” she says. We couldn’t agree with her more.