- From Hollywood, to sports, to civil rights,
Korean Americans have had a huge impact in the US.
It's as if Korean culture has always been a part of America,
but, in reality, the Korean community
has endured war, exclusion, and famine
to make it in this country,
so let's look at the three most significant waves
of Korean immigration to the US.
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Hawaii, land of beaches, luaus, tropical food,
and some of the very first Korean immigrants
to the United States,
but why Hawaii? (record scratches)
Well, there were both push and pull factors.
First, the push factor from Korea.
At the turn of the 20th century,
famine and political turmoil forced people
to leave their country for survival.
Second, there was the pull factor from the US,
the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
This was the first law that legally excluded
a group of immigrants from the US
solely based on nationality.
The ripple effect of the Exclusion Act?
A labor shortage, and these new Korean immigrants
were tasked to fill that void.
Some of the first Korean immigrants
arrived as plantation workers.
By then, the US had annexed Hawaii
and was extracting its tropical resources.
By 1905, more than 7,000 Koreans were in Hawaii
to work on pineapple and sugar cane plantations.
These Korean laborers experienced
similar anti-Asian sentiments
that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act,
despite being of a completely different nationality.
That is called racism.
Not long after, the Immigration Act of 1924
set quotas on immigration from different regions.
It favored a handful of countries from Western Europe
and pretty much excluded all of Asia and Africa.
During this time,
Korean and Asian immigration took a nosedive,
but then war changed everything.
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In 1950, the Korean War started.
This was also called the Forgotten War in the US,
forgotten in part because it was overshadowed by big wars,
like World War II and the Vietnam War,
but it certainly wasn't forgotten by Koreans.
The second wave of Korean immigration
is directly tied to this war.
Like any war, the history is complicated,
but it was basically fought between
the US-backed forces in the South
and the communist China-backed forces in the North.
The war resulted in the peninsula
being divided into today's North and South Koreas.
It also introduced the immigration
of Korean war brides to America.
They're women who marry American soldiers
during a time of active service.
The War Brides Act,
which first came about during World War II,
allowed these servicemen to bring their foreign wives,
children, and adopted children to America.
This meant that they were able to bypass
that 1924 quota system I mentioned earlier,
the one that limited immigration from Asia and Africa.
The story of Chol Soo Lee,
a Korean American civil rights icon,
also intersects with this history.
- [Chol Soo Lee] I was born out of wedlock during the Korean War,
and sadly for my mother,
she was disinherited from her family,
so she married an American soldier and left for America.
- Over a few decades, nearly 100,000 Korean war brides
came to the US, as well as over 300,000 Korean adoptees,
but even with the War Brides Act,
the number of Korean immigrants didn't change significantly
until the immigration quota was finally lifted.
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The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
replaced the quotas by country of origin.
It expanded immigration preference
to people who had families in the US
or were considered highly skilled and educated workers.
- [Lyndon B. Johnson] This bill says simply,
that from this day forth,
those wishing to immigrate to America
shall be admitted on the basis of their skills
and their close relationships to those already here.
- The law transformed the makeup of America,
including Korean America.
From 1960 to 1980,
the number of Korean immigrants grew from 11,000 to 290,000.
An increase of more than 2,000%,
but today, even though the racist immigration laws
that shaped Korean immigration are gone, racism is not.
Asian Americans, including Korean Americans,
are facing a new wave of terror,
a rise in Asian-targeted violent hate crimes.
A 2022 report found that anti-Asian hate crimes
increased by more than 300%
in a single year during the pandemic.
This fear-based violence is unfortunately reminiscent of
an era leading up to the exclusionary immigration laws,
but today, the Korean and Asian American community
are coming together and demanding justice.
If you want to learn more about Asian American history,
I highly recommend you watch this documentary,
"Free Chol Soo Lee".
There's more info in the links below.
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