David M. Reimers

New York University

WORKING PAPER

The Legacy of the Korean War

The Korean-American Immigrant Experience

The first Koreans to set foot on American shores did so in the 1880s when a few students and traders arrived. A handful of others went to Washington, DC, following a treaty negotiated between Korea and the United States that led to the establishment of a legation. In addition a few political refugees came to the United States after the failure of a reform movement in Korea. Some Koreans such as Syngman Rhee were both exiles and students. Rhee studied at several American universities and eventually received a PhD from Princeton University. The total of such pioneers was small, no more than a few dozen, and of course merchants and students usually returned home.

Larger Korean immigration was tied to the expansion of the Hawaiian plantation economy and the American response to other Asians. The Chinese Exclusion acts, beginning in 1882, barred most Chinese immigrants and made employers look elsewhere for laborers, especially if they owned and ran sugar plantations in Hawaii. The owners found them in Japan and to a much lesser extent in Korea. The initial wave of Korean immigration occurred from 1903 to 1907 to Hawaii, but it was a relatively small movement, numbering only 7,226 persons. When most immigration from Japan was barred by a Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907-1908), that restriction also applied to Korea because Korea was under Japanese domination. In response some Koreans returned home. Yet a loophole enabled Japanese and Korean women to arrive. Korean wives, numbering over 1,000, entered Hawaii until legislation enacted in the 1920s banned further immigration of these women. The wives were often "picture brides" who had not seen their husbands until they disembarked in Hawaii. They were draw by stories of great prosperity. "I heard in Korea that Hawaii was a paradise. People spoke of clothing that grew on trees, free to be picked, and abundance of fruits and all kinds of food....I heard only of prosperity and wealth on the islands," one woman remarked. Some were shocked to find that their husbands were considerably older than they had been let to believe by the photos the men sent. "He came to the pier, but I see he’s really old...He was 45 years old, 25 years older than I am. My heart sunk." Once in Hawaii, the women often worked along side their husbands but were also expected to perform the regular duties of maintaining the household. Because many men were much older than their husbands, some "picture brides" found themselves young widows with a family to support. After 1924 when most Asian immigration was finally barred, merchants and students could still come to America, but their numbers were not large.

Why did these Koreans head for Hawaii and who were they? Until halted by the Gentlemen’s Agreement, over ninety percent were young men recruited to work on the islands’ plantations. Practically all women coming in this initial movement from 1903 to 1907 were wives of the male immigrants. Later, as noted, women arrived and changed the gender ratio of Koreans; about twenty percent of the immigrants were women by the 1920s. Some of the men had wives in Korea, and they sent money home to support their families. A few married non-Koreans. Eventually a number of Korean plantation workers returned to Korea, but some 3,000 Korean men in the islands lived in a bachelor society.

Korean immigrants held a variety of occupations in Korea. Unlike most Japanese and Chinese immigrants many came not from rural areas but from cities. They faced one thing in common with so many immigrants: limited economic opportunities and even poverty at home. Consequently, they were eager to seek their fortunes abroad. Historian Ronald Takaki quotes one immigrant as saying, "The country had been passing thorough a period of famine years....My occupation as tax collector barely kept me from starvation’s door as I traveled from village to village."

Their lack of experience with cane planatations meant little to planters who had contracted with them to work on Hawaiian sugar plantations. The planters were eager to find low wage laborers to cut cane and not to join forces with other Asians to form labor unions. In part because some Koreans had been urban dwellers to begin with, they did not like being plantation workers. They sought a better life on the mainland or in the cities, "to start their own businesses." Koreans believed any enterprise was an improvement over the harsh conditions in the cane fields. But racism blocked them from acquiring more lucrative employment. As a result, urban Koreans opened and operated small businesses, selling groceries or general merchandise. These largely "mom and pop" enterprises required family labor, little capital and long hours. In addition to the retail trades, they also made shoes, clothing and furniture, using skills they had learned on the plantations. Historian Wayne Patterson believes that in spite of the obstacles they faced, the Koreans eventually fared well in the urban centers of Hawaii.

After restriction some Koreans left Hawaii for the West Coast and especially California, but the 1940 United States census found fewer than 2,000 Koreans on the American mainland. West Coast Korean immigrants were also predominately males. In California they worked as domestics, farmers, gardeners, and janitors. As early as 1911 they began vegetable farming in Nebraska. One group pooled their "resources to lease 1,300 acres for experimental beet production." Another group in Utah operated a melon farm. However, most farmers were migratory laborers, moving from field to field harvesting different crops. A few operated small stores catering to the ethnic community. Many of these occupations were also followed by other Asian immigrants.

A disproportional number of Koreans were Christians, perhaps as high as forty percent, much like those of the mass immigration of post-1965. This was not an accident, as Christian missionaries played a role in immigration process. The missionaries acquainted Koreans with American goods and culture. Horace Allen, the American secretary to the United States legation, encouraged Koreans to journey to Hawaii in order to improve their financial situation and to offset the Japanese domination of plantation labor in the islands. Allen, through the efforts of American missionaries, was successful in convincing a few Korean Christians to head east. One minister, George Heber Jones, was especially persuasive. In December, 1902, on a boat headed for Japan on its way to Hawaii, one half of the prospective immigrants were members of Jones’s church. When they landed in the islands they became the first to arrive there to work on the plantations.

Churches were important institutions for the immigrants; but Korean immigrants, while small in numbers, were nonetheless interested in ending Japanese control over their native land, and they organized groups to work for this end. The nationalistic movement split into several factions, the most important one headed by Syngman Rhee who traveled the world to win the independence of Korea from Japan. The future president of the Republic of South Korea had his opportunity to lead Korea when he became an aide to Lt. General John R. Hodge, the commanding American general of the United States occupation forces. A few others returned to Korea with Rhee, but most Korean immigrants and their children remained in the United States, including Hawaii.

The second generation did not necessarily share the nationalistic views of their parents. One young Korean put it, "So far I have read very little about my parents’ native land. I have never felt a sense of pride in knowing about my parents’ native land but I have pity and sympathy for them." A desire to be American, however, did not spare either the children nor the parents from the racism of the West Coast.

These early contacts between the United States and Korea did not lead to a major immigration for the simple reason that Japan and the United States government severely limited it. Korea still had some contact with the United States, because some Koreans had relatives who had emigrated and a few had even met them when the latter returned to visit or live in Korea. After Korea became independent in 1945, Korea could now control the emigration of its people from Korea. However, there was a stumbling block: American immigration laws. According to legislation passed by Congress in the nineteenth century, only "white persons" and people of "African descent" were eligible for naturalization. Once the courts decided that all Asians (except Filipinos who were nationals) were aliens not eligible for citizenship, in the 1920s Congress simply banned from entry all persons ineligible for naturalization..

During World War II, as a gesture of support for a wartime ally, Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion acts and granted China an immigrant quota of 105 annually. The law also permitted Chinese immigrants in the United States to naturalize and allowed Chinese-American citizens to bring their spouses and minor children to America without regard for the quotas. A number of Chinese immigrants in the United States quickly became citizens and brought their families from China. Additional legislation gave special immigration rights to those women married to United States servicemen and about 6,000 Chinese women entered under this "war brides" legislation. In 1946 Congress gave an annual quota of 100 to both India and the Philippines, and exempted from the quotas immediate family members of United States citizens.

Advocates of these measures stressed the foreign policy implications of the laws, but the growing racial toleration in the United States after World War II also played a role. Still, over 70,000 first generation Japanese and a few thousand Koreans were not granted the right of naturalization and immigration quotas until passage of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act of 1952. Although that measure retained the national origins system, it did grant all Asian immigrants the right to become citizens and did give all Asian nations small immigration quotas. The total number allotted from Asia, a region called the "Asia-Pacific Triangle," was only 2,000, excluding immediate family members of United States citizens. No one thought that there would be a major increase in immigration from either Japan or Korea; rather the law was a symbolic token that recognized the amazing military record and loyalty of Japanese Americans in World War II. It was passed due to the lobbying efforts of the Japanese Americans Citizens’ League and liberal organizations. In retrospect, the supporters who looked at Japan were correct; since that date and further liberalization of immigration law only four to five thousand immigrants have entered annually from Japan, most of whom were married to United States military men. These women were permitted to immigrate in spite of the small yearly quota allotted Japan from 1952 to 1965 (of only 185) because, as noted, wives and minor children of United States citizens were not counted as part of the quotas.

As for Koreans, little thought was given to Korea let alone Korean immigration until the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Even then it did not appear that Korean immigration would be significant. In 1950 only ten Korean immigrants were recorded by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 32 the next year and 127 in 1952 when the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act was passed. Then the numbers grew, but slowly at first. While the war raged over 500,000 troops served in Korea, and tens of thousands of American soldiers have been stationed there since 1953. When they married Korean women, they began a new immigration channel. Korean "war brides" constituted the largest single share of the newcomers during the first years of renewed immigration, and since that time Korean women have continued to marry GIs and follow them when the soldiers were reassigned to the United States or elsewhere. Between the outbreak of the war and 1965, when a new immigration law was passed, over 15,000 Koreans entered the United States, 40 percent of whom were married to United States citizens, mostly soldiers. As in the case of Japan they were permitted to migrate over the quota of 100. Data after 1968 is less precise, but Daniel Lee, working with American and Korean figures estimated from that from 1950 to the mid-1990s "some 90,000 Korean women have immigrated to America as wives of U.S. soldiers." At least one scholar has used a higher figure of 100,000.

Marriages to American military personnel are by no means limited to Korea. Wherever American troops have been stationed, GIs have married foreign women and brought them to the United States. Thus the Philippines, Thailand (during the Vietnam War), Vietnam, Japan and the NATO nations have produced a sizeable number of such immigrant women, and they help account for how nations such as the Philippines and Korea can exceed the 20,000 annual limit.

The importance of wives of servicemen who became immigrants cannot not be limited to their numbers alone. In 1965 Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act, which overturned the national origins provisions of immigration law and substituted a system based on family unification, occupations, and refugee status. Each nation received an annual quota of 20,000, excluding immediate family members of United States citizens, which of course kept the exemption for military wives. In addition the new law permitted the immigration of parents of United States citizens to arrive without being counted as part of the quota of 20,000. The Hart-Celler Act was believed to be a small reform quantitatively. The law permitted 290,000 immigrants annually, not counting spouses, minor children and parents of U.S citizens. That figure was only slightly larger than the actual number of immigrants arriving in the early 1960s. It was not passed to increase Asian immigration significantly, but rather to increase the number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe nations.

The family unification provisions were allotted 74 percent of the slots. Among them, the fifth preference received 64,000 places for brothers and sisters of United States citizens. It was the largest preference, which prompted some commentators to call the new law the "brothers and sisters act." Thus once Korean women became United States citizens they could sponsor their siblings as well as their parents. The siblings in turn could later sponsor others. The snowball effect of chain migration was now written into law. Lee estimates, for example, that military brides were directly and indirectly responsible for a significant number of immigrants, which he claims amounted to 40 to 50 percent of all Korean immigrants since the passage of the Hart-Celler Act.

A smaller flow of immigrants, but related to the stationing of American troops in Korea, were Amerasian children and Korean orphans. Amerasians were children fathered by American servicemen and left behind by returning troops. In some cases they were abandoned. Some were later adopted by Americans. In addition thousands of children lost their parents during the conflict, and American GIs adopted some of them. As Korea underwent industrialization and urbanization after 1950, some children, mostly girls, were abandoned. One of the first agencies to establish a Korean adoption program was founded by Harr Holt and his wife, who brought back eight orphans and Amerasian children. The couple then founded an organization specializing in the adoption of Asian children. The Americans adopting Korean infants were generally white middle class Protestant Americans often living in rural areas. Helen Zia says that 140,000 Korean children were adopted by Americans from the Korean War to the late 1990s, a figure that is too high. It is closer to 100,000 Korean children, still a substantial number, and in 1960s the children amounted to 40 percent of the total Korean immigration to the United States.

Between 1955 and 1977 roughly 13,000 such orphans were adopted by Americans, and in the late 1970s and the 1980s about 3,000 Korean orphans were adopted annually by American citizens, which amounted to 60 percent all foreign-born children adopted by US citizens during those years. The number of Korean adoptees peaked in 1986 at 6,150, after which the number and share of orphans who were Korean declined. In 1991 the number of foreign-born children adopted by United States parents was 9,000; it reached 18,000 in 2000, of whom 1,794 were from South Korea. Only 62 Chinese children were adopted in 1991, but China quickly became the leading exporter of orphans adopted by American citizens with Russia in second place. Thus overall, adopted children and military wives were the spearheads for renewed Korean immigration for years after 1950, even when the 1965 changes went into effect in 1968.

The Korean War made many American officials and citizens notice Korea, a country that they had only been dimly aware of prior to the date. It also made Koreans more eager to learn about and study in the United States. Since 1945 American goods and culture have spread throughout the world, including the former communists nations after 1989. American products and TV programs have international consumers and followers. Korea has not been exempt from this expansion of American culture. Indeed, because of the stationing of American troops the nation has had ample opportunities to be exposed to American culture. The goods sold in the American PXs and American radio and television broadcasts can hardly be missed in South Korea since the 1950s. Many Koreans are employed by American firms and the military and had even closer contact with things American. In addition, in traditional immigrant fashion, those who went first encouraged and even financed relatives and friends to follow. At first, reports, letters and visits encouraged many Koreans to emigrate to the United States. But after 1990 these reports became negative and discouraged middle class educated Koreans from leaving home. Studies indicate that working class Koreans were the ones most interested in immigration during the 1990s.

Illsoo Kim reports that Koreans had their own sources about life in America. A series of newspaper articles turned into a popular book called Day and Night of Komericans: A Visit to Korea in the United States became a best seller in the late 1970s, "not only because it dealt with the national issue of Korean emigration to the United States but also because it provided prospective emigrants with essential information as to how they might prepare themselves...in the new land."

To learn more about the United States and upgrade their educations, hundreds of thousands of students have studied in American institutions of higher learning. The Korean students learned about the American educational system and occupational opportunities because of the American presence in Korea. From 1953 to 1980 over 10,000 Koreans attended American universities. According to Pyong Gap Min most of the first students arriving in the 1950s were sponsored and aided by American servicemen. About three quarters of them stayed after completing their studies and received a green card to work in the United States. In all Professor Min noted, "Many Koreans who came to the United States as students between 1950 and 1964 currently have professional occupations in the United States, including teaching positions at colleges and universities."

With a quota of only 100 it was difficult for students to become immigrants upon completion of their studies, if one were not married to a US citizen. However, the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which provided the bulk of its slots for family unification, was also important for new Korean occupational immigration. The law set aside two categories for occupations, those with skills in demand in the United States. One of the general categories included medicine.

The Hart-Celler Act was not the only piece of legislation enacted in 1965 that pertained to immigration. The same year Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid, both of which placed increased demands on American hospitals, physicians, nurses and other medical professionals. Americans also demanded more high tech medicine, which was expensive. As a result hospitals, especially those in inner cities and rural areas, looked abroad for new doctors and nurses. They were interested in finding relatively low wage professionals and located them in nations such as India and the Philippines. India and the Philippines furnished many of the doctors and Jamaica and the Philippines furnished nurses. While congress cut back on the importing of foreign-born physicians in 1978, many urban hospitals continued to have shortages of nurses and they were permitted to search abroad to satisfy their needs. They continued to do so. Koreans have been among the nations sending medical personnel to the United States after 1965, as nurses, doctors and pharmacists. Between 1966, after the law was passed and 1979, when the rules were tightened by Congress for physicians, 13,000 Korean doctors, nurses and pharmacists won green cards.

The migration of medical professionals to the United States was not simply the lure of American money. Changes in Korean medicine, which prompted the migration, were not unrelated to the war. Western medicine was introduced to Koreans in the late nineteenth century by American missionaries. Horace Allen, the diplomat who was also a physician and Presbyterian minister, founded the Severance Hospital and the Severance Union Medical College, which eventually became major medical facilities in Korea. The Japanese also introduced Western style medicine, based on German examples, into Korea. One school in particular, the Seoul National University Medical College was the most important one sending its graduates to the United States. According to Illsoo Kim the Korean War accelerated Western medicine in Korea, and Korean physicians and nurses were in great demand during the violent war years. For example, it was in those years that antibiotics were first introduced in Korea. Moreover, exchange programs enabled some young Korean medical professionals to study in the United States at medical schools or hospitals. As Kim relates, "Thus, once the United States Immigration Act of 1965 opened the door to the immigration of professional, skilled workers, South Korea was ready to send a large number of medical workers to the United States." The share of Korean immigrants using the occupational preferences declined in the 1980s but once established, the medical professionals could send for their families under the family preferences of immigration law.

Not all highly skilled and educated Koreans were able to satisfy the requirements of the occupational preferences. Many were college graduates but lacked medical training, language skills, or the particular background needed for an occupational greencard. Or they encountered prejudice in the American labor market and had difficulty in obtaining licenses, some of which required American citizenship. Arriving under family unification preferences, many opened small businesses so well known in the Korean immigrant community in American cities and suburbs.

Whether related to the Korean War or somewhat independent of the conflict, Korean immigration to the United States increased after 1950 and especially after passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. Over 750,00 were recorded by the INS arriving between 1950 and 1998, amounting to over 30,000 annually in the 1980s. After that the numbers dropped, averaging only 17,000 during the 1990s.

Unlike the turn of the twentieth century, few Koreans have settled in Hawaii, and that state is no longer an important center for them. But for those who chose the mainland, like so many Asian immigrants, the west coast is the main destination. California claims the greatest number with Los Angeles’ Korea Town being the largest single urban Korean settlement in the United States. About one fifth of the entire Korean-American population lives in the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area. Like other immigrant groups, however, they have also dispersed through out the United States, with important centers in New York and Chicago. Koreans are not always segregated into distinct neighborhoods in spite the existence of Korea Towns. Los Angeles’s Korea Town, for example, is only 15 percent Korean. While many other Koreans are their neighbors, they also live in areas with many other Asians, or the most successful reside in predominately white prosperous communities such as New Jersey’s Bergen County or New York’s Westchester County.

Whether directly connected to the war or to other migration factors, Koreans, as have all Asian immigrants, have experienced success and problems as new immigrants. The "war brides" difficulties often began before the migration to America. The women met American GIs through working for the PXs or agencies of the United States government. Yet the initial contact with soldiers has often occurred in the "camptowns," close to military bases. "Camptowns" included small operations selling goods to the soldiers but also bars, clubs and houses of prostitution, which gave them their unsavory reputations. Bruce Cummings has called the militarized prostitution of the "camptowns" the "most important aspect of the whole relationship (between the United States and South Korea) and the primary memory of Korea for generations of young Americans who have served there." The American military’s main concern was to keep venereal disease in check, not necessarily to close the brothels themselves.

Given the reputation of the "camptowns," many Koreans disapproved of the women who worked there and rejected Korean "camptown" women who married American military personnel as nothing more than prostitutes. Women who married African-American soldiers had the additional problem of dealing with racism whether in Korea or when they went to the United States. Ji-Yeon Yuh’s study of Korean women married to American soldiers revealed a difficult adjustment for the women. Many did not have an adequate knowledge of English and they were simply unprepared to cope with American culture. For the women isolation on military posts was trying as was dealing with American society generally. It is no surprise that some of these unions ended in divorce. The divorce rate among war brides is not known, but the divorce rate for Korean Americans is higher than in Korea. Nor is spousal abuse unknown among these women. Such abuse was not limited to Korean women with non-Korean husbands, however; it also occurred when the husbands were Korean.

Of the postwar Korean immigrants, medical professionals who arrived before 1980 have had the most success in the United States. These are the Korean immigrants with the highest incomes, homes in high status white suburbs, and the purchasers of expensive American consumer goods. They are also able to visit their homelands because they have the funds to do so. Yet they have generally entered the low-paid medical practices and were often recruited by hospitals in the inner cities and had to pass tough American language and licensing exams. Nurses, of course, have not been as successful as the doctors. Other professionals served the immigrant community by offering legal advice, selling real estate, issuing insurance and providing banking.

Compared to blacks, Vietnamese, and Latinos, Koreans have relatively high incomes, but. they lag behind many other Asians and whites. Moreover, Koreans as a group are well educated, and whites with similar educations do better than Koreans. Because so many were in small business the census may underestimate their actual incomes. At the same time, Koreans operating small businesses work longer hours than most immigrants and native-born Americans. It requires long hours and multi workers for Korean families to be as well off as they are. Nor can the factor of Korean poverty be overlooked. While Korean-American unemployment is low, the poverty rate, according to the 1990 census, is above that of whites and Americans generally.

To look at the Korean-American experience is to examine two aspects: self employment and religion. Self employment has been the main economic feature of Korean immigrants and sets them apart from most other immigrants. On study found that in Los Angeles, 53 percent of male and 36 percent of female Koreans were self-employed. Another third of the men found jobs in Korean ethnic businesses, which meant that only one fourth of employed Koreans worked for non-Koreans. A survey done in the 1980s in New York City found that 61 percent of the husbands and 51 percent of the wives were self-employed, and they employed other family members as well. The most well known businesses are of course the greengroceries in American cities. In Los Angeles alone Koreans ran 2,800 grocer-liquor stores in 1990. Others place the figures even higher, and one source claims that the number of Korean-owned grocery stores in the United States in the 1990s was approximately 25,000. A few were begun by Korean immigrants who came from South America, but most were started by immigrants directly from Korea. Taking over fruit and vegetable stores, often in predominately black neighborhoods, formerly run by Jews and Italians, Koreans have found an economic niche and have often pooled their funds and been willing to work the required for a profit by these enterprises. Operators of groceries get up a dawn, or in some cases earlier, at four A.M., head for centers of produce distribution, return to their stores and labor into the evening selling the produce.

While the Korean presence is especially noticeable in New York City and Los Angeles, Korean entrepreneurs have opened stores in cities and towns ranging from El Paso, Texas, the Washington, DC, area, and Palisades Park, New Jersey, and they have branched out operating other small businesses. While Los Angeles claimed the largest number of Korean shops in its "Korea Town," Palisades Park, a much smaller town, could boast several hundred Korean-run shops. The Annandale community just outside of the nation’s capital reported in 1999 that Koreans ran "16 beauty salons, 10 weekly newspapers, nine acupuncturists, eight women’s clothing shops and two bridal shops." More recently nail saloons started by Korean women but sometimes taken over by men, have appeared especially around New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. In New York City and the surrounding suburbs, the Korean-American Nail Salon Association estimated that 4,000 nail salons were run by Koreans in 2001.

One commentator noted in 1993 about Korean-run dry cleaners in San Jose, California, "There are more dry cleaners here than in Korea." But dry cleaners were at first shunned by Koreans as being too expensive to start and run. More recently, however, the advantages of dry cleaning establishments have attracted Koreans. Such stores can be operated in safer neighborhoods in the suburbs and operate with regular hours, not the 72 hour week required by greengroceries.

If they could not find fellow ethnics to employ, Korean entrepreneurs hired non-Koreans. In New York City and elsewhere, the employees were essential for keeping their businesses open for 24 hours. These employees were mostly Latinos, Mexicans in California and Mexicans in New York City as well as other Latinos. Conflicts have developed, and several Korean owners have faced union drives. Trade unions insisted that Koreans violated the labor laws on working conditions and pay and set up pickets in front of several stores. The owners claimed that they were not violating the law and said they had to stay open at all hours in order to make a profit.

Ethnic disagreements involving Koreans and Latino employees were minor compared to those between owners and customers in predominately African-American neighborhoods. These conflicts have sometimes erupted into boycotts instigated by black leaders, who claimed that the greengrocers were rude, unwilling to employ blacks in their businesses, and exploited their communities. The first major boycott occurred in New York City in 1982. It was organized by an African-American nationalist group. Other boycotts followed, and some ended in violence and forced the closing of the stores.

The greatest shock experienced by Korean-American businesses came in the 1992 Los Angeles riot: "Everything about life changed for Korean Americans on April 29, 1992. When the smoke cleared from the three-day uprising in Los Angeles, 54 people had died and some 4,500 shops were reduced to ashes," according to Helen Zia. Owners complained that police protection was lacking, that the loss of revenue forced them out of business, and that hundreds of Korean businesses were destroyed. The Los Angeles riots were not limited to blacks and Koreans alone; rather many Latinos were also involved in the violence. In spite of efforts to restore the Korean Los Angeles community, many merchants closed their doors because of the riot. Four years after the upheaval nearly one quarter of Korean owners had ceased to conduct business in Korean Town, and Korean leaders claimed that they were continuing to leave, finding better locations elsewhere in the city. Korean and African-American leaders formed organizations to ease tensions between the two groups had only mixed success.

Of course, in small Los Angeles shops as elsewhere the owners were also subject to robbery, and several were killed. But it was not violence., boycotts, robbery alone that forced some Korean businessmen and women to give up on running their stores and return to Korea in the 1990s. Seventy hour work weeks and the labor of both husbands and wives were required to return a profit, and in some cities there were simply too many stores competing with one another. In the early 1990s Korean leaders estimated that 1,600 Korean-run stores went bankrupt. In New York City the number of greengrocers dropped from 5,000 in 1993 to 4,000 three years later. Women who ran nail saloons were faced with the question, "Just how many nail saloons can operate profitably in one neighborhood." In New York City, Koreans operated 80 percent of the nail saloons in 1995.

Some Korean immigrants found employment working for Koreans. A 1986 survey of Los Angeles found that 30 percent of employed Koreans worked for their fellow ethnics. Usually recent arrivals, they lacked the capital to open their own stores. Without being able to communicate in English, working for other Koreans was often the only employment available. Of course, such positions required long hours at relatively low pay. The workers hoped to gain experience, learn English, and accumulate capita, sometimes with the assistance of other Koreans, to open their own business. Such mobility was becoming more difficult in the 1990s as competition increased and conflict erupted in urban neighborhoods. Some ethnic businesses could not operate profitably even with the whole family working in the stores, at least part of the time. To meet this challenge Koreans moved from areas like Korea Town in Los Angeles to neighborhoods that were safer and promised a profit and less crime.

In spite of their high rate of self employment or working for other Koreans, like so many immigrants, Koreans have found low wage employment working for non-Koreans. The jobs were easy to obtain for Korean women. In Los Angeles in 1980 25 percent of Korean women held jobs, most of which paid little. Some of these women were operators in garment shops where knowledge of English was not required. Some of the garment shops were run by Koreans, an estimated 700 in Los Angeles and 350 in New York City, and they utilized cheap family labor or employed other Korean women. Most of the employees in the Korean-run garment factories were not Koreans; rather they were Latinos.

Another position open to new immigrants with little English was in chicken processing plants. The Washington Post found in 1999 that Koreans were laboring along the "chicken trial," in jobs usually held by Central Americans and Mexicans. Koreans, even those of middle class background, were willing to take these jobs in order to get into the United States. Securing chicken plant employment meant paying middle men a fee in exchange for working. Often the immigrants did not realize how dreadful processing plant employment was, but it enabled them to obtain a greencard. During 1999 the U.S. embassy in Seoul reported that it issued 360 visas for Koreans to labor in the industry.

The adverse experiences of so many immigrants no doubt played a major role in discouraging immigration after 1990. After averaging over 30,000 in the 1980s Korean immigration totaled 25,430 in 1991 and 18,734 in 1992, the year of the Los Angeles riots. It dropped further during the rest of the decade, averaging about 17,000 or only half of the 1980s years. Clearly Koreans were showing less desire to go to the United States. Indeed, many returned home in the 1990s. According to the Korea Times, Chicago, 6,487 Koreans returned to Korea in 1992. Improved politics and a growing Korean economy also played roles in inducing the return migration.

A few Koreans did not even wait for legal opportunities to migrate to the United States. Government officials claimed in 1996 that 50 Koreans were crossing illegally each month from Canada to the United States. They arrived in Canada as visitors and they allegedly paid smugglers thousands of dollars to cross the border, particularly the barrier separating British Columbia and Washington state. Once in the United States they were taken by truck to Seattle, and from there to other American cities. The actual number of undocumented aliens was not known in spite of the INS’s estimates, but it was very small compared to the numbers from Latin America. When the INS located nearly one million deportable people in 1989, only 7,347 were Asians and Koreans amounted to only a handful. In 1998, the INS found fewer than 100 deportable Korean immigrants. Moreover, the number of undocumented Koreans receiving amnesty under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was small, only 5,455 of a total of 1.8 million. When the agency estimated the undocumented population to number five million in 1996 only 30,000 Koreans were included in the estimate.

Overall, Korean women were more apt to work for wages than other were American women generally. Studies of Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles revealed that 75 percent of Korean immigrant wives worked for pay while the figure for American women generally was roughly 60 percent in 1993. Women, whether working in family enterprises or in garment shops or other positions, were still expected to run the family household. Educated women fared better than others in sharing household tasks with their husbands, but studies indicate that Korean women had a larger burden of housework than American women generally.

While earning a living has required long working days, Koreans have nonetheless found time to form ethnic associations. Business organizations have provided one forum for pooling knowledge and even money, especially in view of the fact that Koreans are not necessarily ghettoized in housing. Cultural groups, newspapers, and Korean television have also served the Korean communities. But the most important immigrant institutions have been the churches, and to speak of Korean Americans is to speak of Protestant Christianity. Religious life is the second main feature of Korean immigration. Prof. Min noted about New York City, "Go to any part of New York City where a sizable number of Koreans live and you are bound to find many Korean churches." The Korean Churches Directory of New York said in 2000 that nearly 600 Korean churches served the metropolitan area. Min concluded, "In both their number and their social functions, Korean churches are the most important ethnic organizations in the New York Korean community." In Chicago another survey found that there was one Korean minister "for every 69 Korean adult residents." Only 20 percent of Koreans in their homeland are Christians but half of those coming to American are estimated to be Christians, mostly Methodists and Presbyterians. Authorities also believe that a considerable number of the others become members of Protestant churches after they settle in the United States; some surveys estimate that 70 percent of Koreans are members of churches. The churches themselves not only provide a faith, but also many programs to aid the newcomers and remain vital for the cohesion of the Korean community.

While the adult generation strives to maintain a Korean identity, the second generation does not necessarily favor Korean over American culture. How Korean immigrants raised their children depended upon their education, occupation and income. Children born in the United States also had a different experience than those born in Korea and entering as teenagers. But regardless of the land of birth, Korean parents expected their children to do well in school. Many Korean adults were considered to have a passion for educated children. Because so many of the best schools in the United States were located in well-off suburbs, the parents made special efforts to live in these communities. The children were also apt to take music lessons after school and to attend classes and programs designed to raise grades and the SAT scores. In 1995 the Korean-language yellow pages listed ten special cram schools in the New York City area. Nancy Foner told about an extraordinary case of aiding children in their educational endeavors, "Chinese and Korean parents put intense pressure on their children to excel and often make enormous personal sacrifices to ensure that they get a good education. An extreme example is a Korean woman who believed that by fasting she would help her children get into a selective New York high school." In this case she was successful; each of two children won places in the city’s Bronx Science High School. In short the children were expected to be part of a controversial "model minority." Certainly the children were doing well; Asian Americans generally were overrepresentated in the elite colleges, public schools, and universities. In New York City, where Korean students constitute only one percent of the school population, they are 15 percent of students at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science; both schools were among the elite New York City high schools. Such success carried with it strong psychological pressures and also charges that elite institutions were discriminating against Asian Americans. The U. S. Civil Rights Commission studied the charges and did not come up with firm data, but indicated that Korean students were being admitted at lower rates than white students with similar grades and scores. Blacks and Latinos were also admitted with lower scores, and when the University of California at Berkeley and other California colleges universities dropped affirmative action for Latinos and blacks, fewer were admitted than before at Berkeley and more Asians found places. In addition, many elite colleges gave preference to the children of alumni, a category that favored whites. Finally, elite colleges also favored athletes, which also worked against Korean and Asian students.

Not all Korean students were doing well in school, and some dropped out of high school to join Korean gangs, which were omposed of young men engaged in anti-social behavior. They first appeared in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 20 years later in New York City. One scholar said that 150 gang members existed in Los Angeles in the 1980s, with another 150 involved with juvenile delinquency. How many young men were actually gang members was not known, but in the 1990s the National Conference for Community and Justice held a national forum to discuss Korean gang life and especially the young men who were involved in drugs and crime. Eui-Young Yu found in Los Angeles that gang members were often the children of working-class parents and many came from broken homes.

The future of Korean immigration depends on both the political and economic life of Korea and the opportunities available in the United States. However, there is not an absolute correlation with economic conditions in the United States. The good years of the American economy in the 1990s were a period of decreasing immigration from Korea. The difficulties of making a living in small business in the United States and the violence and prejudice Koreans experienced, even in a booming economy, served to deter the large scale immigration of the 1970s and 1980s. Of course conditions at home also play a major role in the migration process.

The future of the Korean-American community is slowly shifting to the hands of the children coming of age after the 1980s. The Korean community in the United States is still largely foreign born, but as the second generation and the 1.5 generation (born in Korea but migrating to the United States at an early age) matures, the children will increasingly define the future of the Korean-American community. Korean youth in America have resisted some of the pressures for assimilation that all immigrant children face. They have, for example, relatively low rates of intermarriage and have strong attachments to Korean churches. Most of the second generation expresses little interest in the self employment of their parents with the long hours and sometimes dangers involved. Unlike many parents, the children speak English, which gives them greater opportunities.

American society has become much more tolerant since World War II. While the post-1950 Koreans have experienced prejudice and violence, they have many more opportunities than the first wave arriving between 1903 and 1907. Yet ethnic tension remains a reality of American life. The 1992 Los Angeles riot prompted some Koreans to return home and deterred others from arriving, but it also induced Koreans to organize politically. Thus far their small numbers and sometimes lack of citizenship have given them little political clout, although Jay Kim, a conservative Californian Republican, was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1992. He served several terms in Congress, until he was defeated for renomination in 1998. Koreans will no doubt begin to become more active and learn the values of coalitions in order to have more say over their lives.

The Harry S. Truman Library and The Eisenhower Library are two of ten Presidential Libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration.