The first Korean immigrants came to the United States in the last years of the nineteenth century as Hawaiian sugar plantation workers or students of higher education. However, their numbers were very small, estimated at fewer than 100. Between 1903 and 1905, some 7,200 Koreans arrived in Hawaii to work on sugar plantations for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association. The vast majority of them were single men, and their arrival was soon followed by about 1,000 Korean women called "picture brides," because their marriages had resulted from exchanging photographs. That first wave of Korean immigration was heavily promoted not only by labor recruiters but also by American missionaries in Korea, who billed Hawaii as a Christian paradise. In fact, about 40 percent of those Korean immigrants were Protestants, while few people in Korea were Protestants at the time.
The first wave came to a sudden halt. In 1905, upon making Korea a protectorate, Japan shut down the Korean Emigration Office. The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 between the United States and Japan restricting Japanese immigration applied to Koreans as well by default, and the U.S. Congress enacted highly restrictive immigration acts in 1920 and 1924. As a consequence, few Koreans immigrated until the late 1940s. The 1910 U.S. census reported 4,994 Korean immigrants, and the 1940 census reported 8,562, most in Hawaii and California.
The majority of those early immigrants engaged in agriculture as tenant farmers, growing rice, fruits, and vegetables, and many women worked in domestic service. A small number took up mining and railroading. By the early 1910s, a few "rice kings" and fairly large farm entrepreneurs had emerged, and by the 1930s, some successful restaurants, groceries, and other small businesses had appeared around Los Angeles. By the 1940s, a small group had become professionals, entering medicine, science, and architecture. Nevertheless, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, most Korean Americans had to eke out a harsh living owing to linguistic and cultural barriers, the prevalent perception of the "yellow peril" during the Progressive Era, and the rampant racial bigotry of the 1920s. Until 1952, the U.S. government denied first-generation Korean immigrants the right to become naturalized U.S. citizens, and California enforced discriminatory educational, tax, licensing, and leasing policies. Over time the third-to fifth-generation Korean Americans scattered all over the country, where most intermarried and led middle-class lives in the larger society.
A second wave of Korean immigrants consisted of some 20,000 Korean women, who married U.S. servicemen and immigrated to the United States between 1945 and 1965, the children of U.S. servicemen, and war orphans. The second wave was largely a by-product of the U.S. military rule over Korea (1945–1948) and the Korean War (1950–1953). A small but growing number of Korean professionals who had originally arrived as students became permanent residents and U.S. citizens. As of 1965, an estimated 100,000 Korean Americans lived in the United States. Yet a major and sustained influx of Korean immigrants did not occur until 1968, when the Immigration Act of 1965 took effect with an epoch-making provision for family reunification. Subsequently, the Korean American population grew by leaps and bounds to about 1.3 million at the beginning of the twenty-first century. After reaching its peak in 1987, Korean immigration slowed down, largely due to a dramatic rise in living standards in Korea between the 1970s and the 1990s but partly on account of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
Most of the newcomers after 1975 came to the United States in pursuit of better economic opportunities, political or social freedom, or professional aspirations. A vast majority of the adults were college-educated with an urban middle-class background. Although about 20 percent became professionals in academia, medicine, science, engineering, finance, and so on, a great majority entered various lines of small business. Most notably, Korean Americans owned about 25 percent of the laundry and dry cleaning businesses across the country and a large number of groceries and delicatessens in New York City. Working long hours on hard jobs, six or even seven days a week, often in inner cities and minority neighborhoods, almost 70 to 75 percent of these newcomers turned to their ethnic Christian churches for practical needs of all kinds as well as spiritual rejuvenation and fraternal association, much as their predecessors had in Hawaii and California in the early decades of the century.
On the other hand, while they often mixed with fellow Korean immigrants, joined local Korean immigrant meetings or alumni clubs, ate Korean food, watched Korean television and videotapes, read Korean newspapers and magazines, listened to Korean music, and checked out Korean Web sites, first-generation Korean immigrants put much emphasis on the acculturation and education of their children. As a result, most of their American-born children earned college degrees, and many attended graduate or professional schools. They landed financially secure jobs, but frequently at the expense of their Korean language and cultural heritage.
With the growing number of old-timers and the increasing financial security of most Korean immigrants, the Korean American population after the 1980s began moving gradually but visibly away from urban centers and traditional ethnic enclaves to middle-class suburbs around the country. In the 1990s, the average household income of Korean American families was substantially higher than that of white American families. Politically, the majority of first-generation and a large proportion of second-generation Korean Americans, owing to their overriding concerns for financial security, evangelical Christian faith, and law and order, leaned toward the Republican Party. This preference is despite the fact that they have long benefited from the immigration, civil rights, Korean policies, and broader political and social climate more often supported by Democrats.
Bibliography
Kim, Hyung-chan, and Wayne Patterson, eds. The Koreans in America, 1882–1974. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana, 1974.
Patterson, Wayne. The Korean Frontier in America. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988.
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore. Boston: Little, Brown 1989.
