Koreans In America

Discusses the history, culture, and religion of the Koreans; factors encouraging their emigration, and their acceptance as an ethnic group in North America.

Surveys the immigration of Koreans to America from 1903 to the present time and identifies the contributions of individual Koreans to American life and culture.

Examines the history of Korean immigration to the United States, discussing why Korean immigrants came, what they did when they got here, where they settled, and customs they brought with them.

Korean Americans: A Concise History tells the untold stories of the pioneering immigrants, the newly discovered tale of the first Koreatown USA, and about the first Korean aviator. The textbook conveys the Korean American experience by highlighting important moments, people, and incidents that defines this small community. The book takes readers on a journey starting with the beginning of Korean immigration to the United States, to present day issues, trends, and identity.

Contains essays by U.S. scholars and activists from a variety of fields on topics relevant to the study of Korean Americans.

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.