By Kevin Polowy When Anderson .Paak appeared last August on the popular podcast Drink Champs, he regaled host N.O.R.E. about his travels to South Korea and love for its famed local spirit soju. The host, however, needed some clarification: “But you’re not Korean yourself?” It’s a question the 40-year-old hip-hop-soul sensation, born Brandon Paak Anderson, has heard his whole career. He is, in fact, one-quarter Korean. His mother was part of the Korean War’s baby boom, born in the country to a Korean woman and African American sailor in the U.S. Navy, abandoned in an orphanage with her brother, and later adopted by a Black naval construction worker in Compton, California. Paak, who grew up 60 miles north of Los Angeles in Oxnard, has never hidden or downplayed his Korean heritage. Quite the opposite. It’s right there in his middle-turned-last name, and in the tattoos covering his left arm, which include a Korean flag and an era-appropriate bomber plane. It’s just taken folks a while to catch on.…