 People stage a street parade in Los Angeles on Sept. 21, 2003, to celebrate 100 years of Korean migration to the United States. / Korea Times File |
Korea is one of the few countries that have large diasporas or overseas communities of their compatriots. Indeed, Koreans now live across the globe in large numbers. Some 72 million reside in Korea (North and South) and an additional 6 million live overseas, usually for generations.
Nowadays, there are four major overseas Korean communities. Some 2 million live in the U.S. and roughly the same number are in China (2.05 million and 2.04 million, respectively in 2001).
About half a million live in various post-Soviet states, largely in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Finally, 660,000 Koreans can be found in Japan.
Most of those people were born overseas and very often (indeed, in most cases) those overseas Koreans do not even speak Korean as their native language.
Still, there is a remarkable difference between Koreans and other ethnic groups that have traditions of widely dispersed global communities (Jews, Chinese or Armenians being the best known and most significant examples).
Communities of Jews or Chinese have existed across the globe for centuries, but for the Koreans the diasporic experience is relatively new. Until the 1870s no Korean was allowed to go overseas under the pain of death, and it seems that the prohibition was generally enforced quite well.
Things began to change in the 1870s when the old Joseon Kingdom was crumbling under foreign pressure and its ability to control its populace greatly diminished. People began to move overseas, looking for a better life or fleeing persecution at home.
The first country where Koreans began to settle down was Russia ― the first Korean villages there appeared in the 1860s, and within a few decades ethnic Koreans became an important part of life in the Russian Far East.
By the time of the 1917 Communist Revolution, some 100,000 Koreans resided in Russia, overwhelmingly in the areas along the border.
Soon afterward, in the 1880s, Koreans began to move to the area then known as Manchuria. In earlier eras, Chinese authorities did not allow permanent agricultural settlements there, but this ban was lifted in the 1880s.
Like their Russian counterparts, Chinese authorities usually welcomed the new arrivals, since Koreans had the reputation of being hard-working and law-abiding people whose presence was important for developing the large and then backward areas of neighboring countries.
In both cases, most of the migrants consisted of farmers who were attracted by the vast undeveloped lands of Manchuria and Russia. They were eventually joined by some anti-Japanese activists, but a majority of migrants were motivated by economics, not politics.
So, initially Koreans settled down in farming villages and did not interact much with the outside world. However, in a generation or two, their children began to move to the cities.
The drive for education survived in the community, and in nearly all countries of their settlement Koreans are among the best educated (and financially most successful) ethnic groups.
The migration to Japan was quite recent, since until the 1930s such movements were actively discouraged by the Tokyo authorities. In the early 1930s there were, for example, merely 50,000 Koreans in Japan.
However, from the mid-1930s the wartime conditions led to a great increase in demand for labor. Koreans began to move to Japan. Contrary to the common myth, only a minority was drafted and moved there against their will: far more people went by their own decision, attracted by higher wages.
By 1945, over 2 million Koreans resided in Japan. Most of them were manual workers employed for unskilled or semi-skilled labor.
After the collapse of the Japanese empire, most of them chose to go home, but some 700,000 stayed in Japan, laying the foundations for the zainichi or Korean-Japanese community.
Unlike China and Russia where, in spite of occasional bouts of suspicion and discrimination, Koreans were generally encouraged to join the mainstream (and did this eventually), in Japan they were ostracized until the 1980s.
One of the by-products of such an approach was the development of their unique association, known as Chongryon, dominated by North Koreans.
Recently, the centennial of Korean migration to America was celebrated with much pomp. Indeed, in 1902 a few thousand Koreans were recruited to work in the sugar cane plantations on Hawaii. However, this remained an isolated episode, not least because American public opinion was biased against Asian migration.
In 1965, the race-dominated bans were lifted and migration began in earnest. In no time the U.S. became the major destination for aspiring outbound migrants.
So, there are four countries which now have significant Korean communities: the U.S., the world's sole superpower; Russia, a former superpower; China, an aspiring superpower; and Japan, the world's leader in high-tech.
However, some Korean communities exist in smaller countries as well. There are Koreans in South America who moved there with the active support of Seoul in the 1960s and '70s when politicians believed that their country was too poor to feed its population. There are Koreans in Australia. Only Africa does not have a significant Korean population so far.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He has recently published ``The Dawn of Modern Korea,'' which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.
