Koreans That Immigrated To America

I wrote this paper for my ETH 125 class 1st week assignment. It is a 6 page, 1,231 word research paper. It includes 4 citations.

Koreans That Immigrated to America

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Koreans That Immigrated to America

Six years ago in 2001 the United States Senate mostly due to the efforts of the National Association of Korean Americans (NAKA) passed the resolution recognizing a one hundred year anniversary of Korean immigration to America that was celebrated in 2003 ("A Brief History of Korean Americans").

Our community is rather large Ð'- it comprises about 3.6% of total US population and numbers about 1.3 million people including those of mixed blood, and Koreans live all over the United States with biggest concentration in states like California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington ("Korean Americans Population Data"). Despite this and also despite the fact that during this century our community has contributed greatly into various spheres of American life, which was mentioned in the resolution, Koreans have not assimilated and while they live in the US they mostly refer themselves as representatives of Korean nation.

In fact, the history of our immigration started even before 1903 with establishing in eighties of XIX century a diplomatic mission of Korea in the US. The first immigrants were political exiles and leaders of Korean independence movement. Among them are Philip Jaisohn, Ahn Chang-Ho and his wife Lee Hye-Ryun, Syngman Rhee, Yongman Park and others.

However, the first of the three major waves of immigration indeed took place between 1903 and 1905. The fist mass immigrants were several thousand Korean men who went to work as laborers on Hawaii's plantations. Then, the occupation of Korea by Japan in 1910 made further mass immigration impossible until the end of the Second World War and the Korean War that followed between 1950 and 1953.

After the war, the second wave of immigration took place. This time the immigrants were mainly women, who were married to American soldiers. It was an unexpected but rather natural phenomenon after the years of stay of American military forces in our motherland on the Korean peninsula. As after the civil war many children became orphans they were adopted by foreign parents, and many of them were Americans. So, adopted Korean children are along with military brides the representatives of the second wave of our immigration to the US ("A Brief History of Korean Americans").

The signs of non-assimilation could be observed already on early stages of our immigration. On the one hand, this happened because of government attitudes. Koreans were subjects to anti-Asian violence and various laws that limited their possibilities of employment and housing since the beginning of the century. This made Korean community more closed and locked in itself. On the other hand, we, Koreans, indeed tend to stick together. The military brides may be the example of how we keep in touch with each other on foreign land and maintain connection within our community. Despite the fact that they lived separately all over United States often in non-Asian neighborhoods, these women formed associations and groups of friendship that helped them not be lost and communicate with other Korean women that had similar destiny ("A Brief History of Korean Americans").

The representatives of the third wave of immigration now prevail among Korean Americans. The third wave started after the adoption of the Immigration Act in 1965, which made getting to America easier. There is a popular belief that members of our community are mostly small private entrepreneurs. Indeed, those are great in numbers. However, Koreans are also employed on low-status job like that on factories or like clerks. There are also many Korean doctors and engineers.

Our community has a number of characteristics that I think are worth mentioning. The first of them is relations with other nations and races, and first of all with African Americans. Of course, the history of African Americans in the US is much longer and their numbers are bigger, but to some extent our communities have much in common. Both we and African American differ from white American population by skin color. Koreans have also experienced segregation, though it was not that fierce. Namely because of housing segregation and impossibility to use the same services as white people African and Korean American found themselves in the same neighborhoods. Both immigrant communities remain rather closed, meaning it is hard to be non-member of the community while being a representative of the nation. Communities determine certain cultural peculiarities,