Korean Immigrants From Latin America

Korean Immigrants from Latin America explores the migration and resettlement experiences of Koreans from Latin America now residing in the New York metropolitan area. It uses interview data from 102 Korean secondary migrants from Latin America to explore the religious, familial, economic, and educational dimensions of their migration and resettlement processes in the U.S. As Korean and Latino immigrants share increasingly close interactions with each other in various urban settings, these Korean remigrants can serve as links between Korean and Spanish speakers as well as liaisons among diverse groups. This book shows a surprising degree of diversity within the seemingly homogenous Korean population in the U.S. and demonstrates the unacknowledged linguistic and cultural differences among them.

The Korean communities in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires were the first overseas Korean communities that the new Republic of Korea initiated and supported. The initiative was taken to relieve the economic suffering of the poverty-stricken country in the 1960s. Among South American countries that were open to Korean immigrants, Brazil and Argentina attracted the most, which included even undocumented Korean migrants from neighboring countries. The two Korean communities (about 45,000 people in Sao Paulo and 20,000 in Buenos Aires) represent almost two thirds of the Korean residents in Latin America. Over the years, global forces emanating mainly from East Asia, North America, and South America have affected the Korean communities. The intensity and directions of the triangular pulls and pushes have varied, reflecting changing global socioeconomic conditions. This has created tension and ambiguity among the Korean migrant and host communities. Looking at the two communities comparatively, the focus will be on the effects of the global pulls on Korean identity formation, community development patterns, integration efforts, social mobility, education for children, remigration, return migration, and relationships with the host communities. Wherever applicable, the experiences of Korean communities are compared with that of other East Asian communities, namely the Chinese and Japanese in Latin America.

This edited volume analyzes the Korean diaspora across the world and traces the meaning and the performance of homeland. The contributors explore different types of discourses among Korean diaspora across the world, such as personal/familial narratives, oral/life histories, public discourses, and media discourses. They also examine the notion of “space” to diasporic experiences, arguing meanings of space/place for Korean diaspora are increasingly multifaceted.

Brazinsky explains why South Korea was one of the few postcolonial nations that achieved rapid economic development and democratization by the end of the twentieth century. He contends that a distinctive combination of American initiatives and Korean agency enabled South Korea's stunning transformation. Expanding the framework of traditional diplomatic history, Brazinsky examines not only state-to-state relations, but also the social and cultural interactions between Americans and South Koreans. He shows how Koreans adapted, resisted, and transformed American influence and promoted socioeconomic change that suited their own aspirations. Ultimately, Brazinsky argues, Koreans' capacity to tailor American institutions and ideas to their own purposes was the most important factor in the making of a democratic South Korea.

Korean immigrants to the United States establish their own small businesses at a rate exceeding that of immigrants from any other nation, with more than one third of all Korean immigrant adults involved in small businesses. Kyeyoung Park examines this phenomenon in Queens, New York, tracing its historical bases and exploring the transformation of Korean cultural identity prompted by participation in an enterprise. Park documents the ways in which Korean immigrants use entrepreneurship to improve the quality of their lives, focusing on their concerns and anxieties, as well as their joys. The concept of "anjong" is crucial to the lives of first-generation Korean Americans in Queens, Park explains. The word may be translated as "establishment," "stability," or "security," and it identifies a particular concept of success through which Koreans make sense of the American ideology of opportunity. What they seek is not great wealth or social position but rather the creation of their own small businesses as a way of realizing the American dream. The pursuit of "anjong" is important enough to justify changes in gender and kinship relations, resulting in the rise of a Korean American women-centered and sister-initiated kinship structure. Commitment to the concept has also inspired a different understanding of class, ethnicity, and race, and stimulated new religious ideas and practices.

No one will soon forget the image, blazed across the airwaves, of armed Korean Americans taking to the rooftops as their businesses went up in flames during the Los Angeles riots. Why Korean Americans? What stoked the wrath the riots unleashed against them? Blue Dreams is the first book to make sense of these questions, to show how Korean Americans, variously depicted as immigrant seekers after the American dream or as racist merchants exploiting African Americans, emerged at the crossroads of conflicting social reflections in the aftermath of the 1992 riots. The situation of Los Angeles's Korean Americans touches on some of the most vexing issues facing American society today: ethnic conflict, urban poverty, immigration, multiculturalism, and ideological polarization. Combining interviews and deft socio-historical analysis, Blue Dreams gives these problems a human face and at the same time clarifies the historical, political, and economic factors that render them so complex. In the lives and voices of Korean Americans, the authors locate a profound challenge to cherished assumptions about the United States and its minorities. Why did Koreans come to the United States? Why did they set up shop in poor inner-city neighborhoods? Are they in conflict with African Americans? These are among the many difficult questions the authors answer as they probe the transnational roots and diversity of Los Angeles's Korean Americans. Their work finally shows us in sharp relief and moving detail a community that, despite the blinding media focus brought to bear during the riots, has nonetheless remained largely silent and effectively invisible. An important corrective to the formulaic accounts that have pitted Korean Americans against African Americans, Blue Dreams places the Korean American story squarely at the center of national debates over race, class, culture, and community. Table of Contents: Preface The Los Angeles Riots, the Korean American Story Reckoning via the Riots Diaspora Formation: Modernity and Mobility Mapping the Korean Diaspora in Los Angeles Korean American Entrepreneurship American Ideologies on Trial Conclusion Notes References Index Reviews of this book: Blue Dreams--a poetic allusion to the clear blue sky that Koreans see as a symbol of freedom--is a welcome exploration by outsiders into the vexing and largely invisible Korean-American predicament in Los Angeles and the nation. [Abelmann and Lie 's] colorful interview subjects offer sharp observations. --K.W. Lee, Los Angeles Times Reviews of this book: An informed and thoughtful examination of Korean immigration to the United States since 1970...[Abelmann and Lie] show that even in a period as short as twenty-five years, there have been successive waves of differently motivated, differently resourced Korean immigrants, and their experiences and reactions have differed accordingly. --Michael Tonry, Times Literary Supplement Reviews of this book: [The authors'] transnational perspective is particularly effective for explicating Korean immigrants' behaviors, activities, and feelings...Interesting and readable. --Pyong Gap Min, American Journal of Sociology Reviews of this book: Beginning with a poetic book title, the authors recount in depth as to how the 'Blue Dreams' of the Korean-American merchants in East Los Angeles had shattered in the midst of [the] 1992 riot that turned out to be 'elusive dreams' in America...The book not only portrays the L.A. riot surrounding the Korean merchants, but also characterizes diaspora of the Koreans in America. The authors have also examined with scholarly insights the more complex socioeconomic and political underplay the Koreans encountered in their 'Promised New Land'. --Eugene C. Kim, International Migration Review

Since their arrival in the 1960s, Korean immigrants in Argentina have been massively involved in the garment industry. Nevertheless, despite their decades-long concentration in the same sector, over time they have reshaped their motivations and business styles throughout the twists and turns of the host country’s junctures. Applying rigorous immigrant entrepreneurship theories, yet wary of orthodoxies, Kim examines the intriguing paths which Korean entrepreneurs have taken to develop their businesses in the Argentine garment industry amidst complex, frantically volatile social and economic circumstances, and argues for the application of a new approach that combines existing theories with historically contextual perspectives. This unique case study on Korean immigrant entrepreneurship in Latin America represents a significant milestone in the fields of migration and Korean studies and a substantial contribution to bridging the gap between the North, where such inquiries abound, and the South, where the history, settlement, and current status of Korean immigrants have been notoriously under-examined.

The Los Angeles riots shattered Korean immigrants’ naive belief in the American dream. As many as 2,300 Korean shopkeepers lost their lifetime investments in one day. Korean immigrants had struggled for years to become economically independent through small businesses of their own. However, the riots made them realize how fragile their economic base is because their businesses are dependent on the impoverished, oppressed, and rebellious classes. In On My Own, In-Jin Yoon combines an intimate fieldwork account of Korean-black relations in Chicago and Los Angeles with extensive quantitative analysis at the national level. Yoon argues that a complete understanding of the contemporary Korean-American community requires systematic analyses of patterns of Korean immigration, entrepreneurship, and race relations with other minority groups. He explains how small business has become the major economic activity of Korean immigrants and how Korean businesses in minority neighborhoods have intensified racial tensions between Koreans and minorities like blacks and Latinos. “A groundbreaking study of Korean-black relations. Yoon’s insights on immigration, entrepreneurship, and race relations significantly enhance our understanding of urban racial tensions.”—William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

This in-depth look at one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the Pacific Northwest provides a much-needed overview of the Korean American experience as well as moving personal anecdotes. Graphs offer information about Korean immigration patterns over time, while black-and-white portraits reveal the people behind the statistics. The Korean American Historical Society is a nonprofit organization founded in 1985 to enrich the collective memory of Korean Americans by collecting, maintaining, and transmitting their stories.

The story of how one ethnic neighborhood came to signify a shared Korean American identity. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Los Angeles County's Korean population stood at about 186,000—the largest concentration of Koreans outside of Asia. Most of this growth took place following the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which dramatically altered US immigration policy and ushered in a new era of mass immigration, particularly from Asia and Latin America. By the 1970s, Korean immigrants were seeking to turn the area around Olympic Boulevard near downtown Los Angeles into a full-fledged "Koreatown," and over the following decades, they continued to build a community in LA. As Korean immigrants seized the opportunity to purchase inexpensive commercial and residential property and transformed the area to serve their community's needs, other minority communities in nearby South LA—notably Black and Latino working-class communities—faced increasing segregation, urban poverty, and displacement. Beginning with the early development of LA's Koreatown and culminating with the 1992 Los Angeles riots and their aftermath, Shelley Sang-Hee Lee demonstrates how Korean Americans' lives were shaped by patterns of racial segregation and urban poverty, and legacies of anti-Asian racism and orientalism. Koreatown, Los Angeles tells the story of an American ethnic community often equated with socioeconomic achievement and assimilation, but whose experiences as racial minorities and immigrant outsiders illuminate key economic and cultural developments in the United States since 1965. Lee argues that building Koreatown was an urgent objective for Korean immigrants and US-born Koreans eager to carve out a spatial niche within Los Angeles to serve as an economic and social anchor for their growing community. More than a dot on a map, Koreatown holds profound emotional significance for Korean immigrants across the nation as a symbol of their shared bonds and place in American society.