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During the Korean War (1950-1953), the second wave of Korean immigrants moved to America. What started as an ideological conflict in the Cold War period became a national calamity killing nearly 55,000 people. During this period, approximately 15,000 Koreans immigrated to the United States.
Korean Americans (Korean: 한국계 미국인) are Americans who are of full or partial Korean ethnic descent. The majority of Korean Americans trace their ancestry to South Korea . The term Korean Americans (also rendered as Korean-Americans ) usually encompasses citizens of the United States of full or partial Korean descent.
Learn about the history of Korean Americans from 1882 to 2003, covering three major waves of migration and their contributions to U.S. society and Korea's independence. Explore the stories of pioneers, leaders, and activists who shaped the Korean American community.
Historians commonly refer to the first period of recorded Korean history (53 B.C. -668 A.D. ) as the Period of the Three Kingdoms. These kingdoms were Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla. Toward the end of the seventh century A.D. Silla conquered Koguryo and Paekche and united the peninsula under the Silla dynasty.
- Overview
- Acculturation and Assimilation
- Language
- Family and Community Dynamics
- Religion
- Employment and Economic Traditions
- Politics and Government
- Individual and Group Contributions
- Media
- Organizations and Associations
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Known to its people as Choson (Land of Morning Calm), Korea occupies a mountainous peninsula in eastern Asia. Stretching southward from Manchuria and Siberia for close to 600 miles (966 kilometers), it extends down to the Korea Strait. China lies to Korea's west, separated from the peninsula by the Yellow Sea. Japan lies to its east on the other si...
Like all immigrants arriving in the United States, Koreans have had to make major adjustments to live in a country that is vastly different from their homeland. Coming from a traditional society greatly influenced by the Confucian principle of placing elders, family, and community before the individual, Korean immigrants struggle to make sense of t...
Virtually every citizen in North and South Korea is an ethnic Korean and speaks Korean. Spoken for over 5,000 years, the Korean language was first written in the mid-fifteenth century when King Sejong invented the phonetically-based alphabet known as hangul("the great writing"). The King created the alphabet so that all Korean people, not just the ...
Historically, the family-kinship system was an extremely integral part of Korean society. The male head of a household played a dominant role, as did the oldest members of the family. Parents practiced control over their children's lives, arranging their marriages and choosing their careers. The eldest son was responsible for taking care of parents...
Throughout Korea's long history, religion has played a prominent role in the lives of the its citizens. A variety of faiths have been practiced on the peninsula, the most common being shamanism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Shamanism, the country's oldest religion, involves the worship of nature; the sun, mountains, rocks, and trees each hold sacred...
Early Korean immigrants living on the West Coast were restricted from many types of employment. Discriminatory laws prohibited Asian immigrants fromapplying for citizenship, which meant that they were ineligible for positions in most professional fields. They took jobs with low pay and little advancement potential, working as busboys, waiters, gard...
Koreans have a general distrust of central governments. Historically, individual citizens have had little power in Korea and have suffered through scores of tragic episodes at the hands of other governments controlling the peninsula. As a result, most Korean immigrants come to America unaccustomed to participation in the democratic process. Discrim...
EDUCATION
Margaret K. Pai (1916–) taught English at Kailua, Roosevelt, and Farrington high schools on theHawaiian island of Oahu for many years. Her father, Do In Kwon, immigrated to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations in the early 1900s. Her mother, Hee Kyung Lee, was a picture bride and met and married her husband in Hawaii at age 18. Since retiring, Margaret Pai has been writing short Hawaiian legends, poems, and personal reminiscences, including The Dreams of Two Yi-Men(1989), a vivid account o...
FILM, VIDEO, TELEVISION, THEATER, AND MUSIC
Peter Hyun (1906– ) worked in the American theater for many years. He was a stage manager for Eva LeGallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York, director of the Children's Theatre of the New York Federal Theater, and organizer and director of the Studio Players in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During World War II, he served as a language specialist in the U.S. Army. After settling in Oxnard, California, he taught English to immigrant students from Asia. He is the author of Man Sei!: The Makin...
GOVERNMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTIVISM
Herbert Y. C. Choy (1916– ) became the first Asian American to be appointed to the federal bench in 1971. Educated at the University of Hawaii and Harvard University, he practiced law in Honolulu for 25 years. He served as attorney general of the Territory of Hawaii in 1957 and 1958 and continued his law practice until President Richard Nixonappointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Grace Lyu-Volckhausen comes from a family of female activists. Her mother and grandmother were members of org...
PRINT
Korean Culture. Published quarterly by the Korean Cultural Center of the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles. Contact:Robert E. Buswell, Jr., Editor in Chief. Address:5505 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90036. Telephone:(323) 936-7141. Fax:(323) 936-5712. E-mail: kcc@pdc.net. Korean Studies. Journal addressing a broad range of topics through interdisciplinary and multicultural articles, book reviews and scholarly essays. Contact:Edward J. Shultz, Editor. Address:Journals Depa...
RADIO
FM-Seoul. News programs broadcast in both Korean and English. Affiliated with Korean Timesand KTAN-TV. Address:129 North Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90004. Telephone:(213) 389-1000. Fax:(213) 487-8206. KBC-Radio. Contact:Jung Hyun Chai. Address: 42-22 27th Street, Long IslandCity, New York 11101. Telephone:(718) 482-1111. Fax:(718) 643-0479. KBLA-AM (1580). Korean broadcasts around the clock, seven days a week. Contact:Ron Thompson. Address:1700 North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles,...
TELEVISION
KBC-TV (Channel 28). Contact:Dave Kang. Address:5225 N. Kedzie Ave., #200, Chicago, Illinois 60625. Telephone:(800) 236-0510; or (773) 588-0070. Fax:(773) 588-8750. Korean Broadcasting Corporation (Channel 53). First East Coast television company owned and operated by Koreans. Contact:Priscilla Ahn. Address: 42-22 27th Street, Long IslandCity, New York 11101. Telephone:(718) 426-5665. Fax:(718) 937-0162. Korean Cultural Television. Contact:Seung Ho Ha. Address:111 West 30th Street, New York,...
M. Y. Han at Duke University has an extensive list of links to Korean and Korean American interest websites (http://www.duke.edu/~myhan/C_KAWWW.html), including organizations and media. Coalition for Korean American Voters, Inc. Founded in 1991, this nonprofit, nonpartisan, volunteer organization promotes voter registration andeducation of Korean A...
Learn about the history and culture of Korea, a peninsula in eastern Asia, and its relations with the United States. Explore the origins, challenges, and achievements of Korean Americans, who trace their ancestry to the Korean peninsula.
A chronological timeline of Korean American history compiled by students from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. According to the website, the chronology "explores significant social, political, economic, cultural, and professional milestones in Korean American history."
While Koreans migrated to the American-occupied islands of Hawai’i in the early 20th century as sugar plantation laborers, Japanese imperial rule (1910–1945) and racially exclusive immigration policy curtailed Korean migration to the United States until the end of World War II.
