Korean diaspora
The Korean diaspora consists of around 7.3 million people, both descendants of early emigrants from the Korean Peninsula, as well as more recent emigrants from Korea. Around 86% of overseas Koreans live in just six countries: the United States, China, Japan, Canada, Vietnam
and Uzbekistan. Other countries with greater than 0.5% Korean minorities include Brazil, Russia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia. All of these figures include both permanent and temporary migrants. Outside of Continental and East Asia, there are sizeable Korean communities have formed in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Terminology
There are currently a number of official and unofficial appellations used by the authorities of the two Korean states, as well as a number of Korean institutions for Korean nationals, expatriates, and descendants living abroad. Thus, there is no single name for the Korean diaspora.The historically used term gyopo has come to have negative connotations as referring to people who, as a result of living as sojourners outside the "home country", have lost touch with their Korean roots. As a result, others prefer to use the term dongpo. Dongpo has a more transnational implication, emphasising links among various overseas Korean groups, while gyopo has more of a purely national connotation referring to the Korean state. Another recently popularized term is gyomin, although it is usually reserved for Korean-born citizens that have moved abroad in search of work, and as such is rarely used as a term to refer to the entire diaspora.
In North Korea, Korean nationals living outside Korea are called haeoe gungmin, whereas South Korea uses the term jaeoe gungmin to refer to the entire Korean diaspora. Both terms translate to "overseas national".
History
Before the modern era, Korea had been a territorially stable polity for centuries. Significant migration out of Korea did not begin until the late 19th century.Japanese and Portuguese slave trade
During the 1592–1598 Imjin War, tens of thousands of enslaved Koreans were taken from Korea to Japan, with the first shipment being taken in October 1592. Some were allowed to return to Korea, but many were made to stay in Japan, with the famous example of Korean samurai Wakita Naokata. Some were made saints in the 17th-century. The Portuguese then sent some of them elsewhere, namely Portuguese Macau. A community of several thousand Koreans formed near the Church of Saint Paul. Others were sent to Manila in the Spanish Philippines, at least one to Goa, and likely one to Ambon Island, where he died in 1623. An António Corea was taken to Florence and Rome, and is possibly the first Korean to set foot in Europe.The international trade of Korean slaves declined shortly after the end of the Japanese invasions due to a number of prohibitions from various Japanese, Catholic, and Spanish and Portuguese colonial authorities. Despite the near halt in their export from Japan, their labor continued to be used.
Rise
Large-scale emigration from Korea began as early as the mid-1860s, mainly into the Russian Far East and Northeast China; these emigrants became the ancestors of the two million Koreans in China and several hundred thousand Koryo-saram.Korea under Japanese rule
During the Japanese colonial period of 1910–1945, Koreans were often recruited or forced into indentured servitude to work in mainland Japan, Karafuto Prefecture and Manchukuo, especially in the 1930s and early 1940s; the ones who chose to remain in Japan at the end of the war became known as Zainichi Koreans, while the roughly 40 thousand who were trapped in Karafuto after the Soviet invasion are typically referred to as Sakhalin Koreans. According to the statistics at Immigration Bureau of Japan, there were 901,284 Koreans resident in Japan, of whom 515,570 were permanent residents and another 284,840 were naturalized citizens.Aside from migration within the Empire of Japan or its puppet state of Manchukuo, some Koreans also escaped Japanese-ruled territory entirely, heading to Shanghai, a major centre of the Korean independence movement or to the already-established Korean communities of the Russian Far East. However, the latter would find themselves deported to Central Asia in 1938.
After independence
Korea gained its independence after the Surrender of Japan in 1945, after World War II, but was divided into North and South. Korean emigration to the United States is known to have begun as early as 1903, but the Korean American community did not grow to a significant size until after the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of 1965. Between 1.5 and 2 million Koreans now live in the United States, mostly in metropolitan areas. A handful are descended from laborers who migrated to Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A significant number are descended from orphans of the Korean War, in which the United States was a major ally of South Korea and provided the bulk of the United Nations troops that served there. Thousands were adopted by American families in the years following the war, when their plight was covered on television. The vast majority, however, immigrated or are descended from those who immigrated after the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 abolished national immigration quotas.After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, ethnic Koreans in China, Joseonjok in Korean and Chaoxianzu in Mandarin Chinese became officially recognised as one of the 56 ethnic groups of the country. They are considered to be one of the "major minorities". Their population grew to about 2 million; they stayed mostly in Northeastern China, where their ancestors had initially settled. Their largest population was concentrated in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin, where they numbered 854,000 in 1997.
Europe and other parts of the Americas were also minor destinations for post-war Korean emigration. Korean immigration to South America was documented as early as the 1950s; North Korean prisoners of war chose to emigrate to Chile in 1953 and Argentina in 1956 under the auspices of the Red Cross. However, the majority of Korean settlements occurred in the late 1960s. As the South Korean economy continued to expand in the 1980s, investors from South Korea came to South America and established small businesses in the textiles industry. Korean immigrants were increasingly settling in urban centers of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, although return migration from South America back to Korea has ensued since then.
In the 1970s, however, Japan and the United States remained the top two destinations for South Korean emigrants, with each receiving more than a quarter of all emigration; the Middle East became the third most popular destination, with more than 800,000 Koreans going to Saudi Arabia between 1975 and 1985 and another 26,000 Koreans going to Iran. In contrast, aside from Germany and Paraguay, no European or American destinations were even in the top ten for emigrants. The cultural and stylistic diversity of the Korean diaspora is documented and celebrated in the work of fine-art photographer CYJO, in her Kyopo Project, a photographic study of over 200 people of Korean descent.
Emerging trends in emigration from Korea
South Korean media reports on the riots increased public awareness of the long working hours and harsh conditions faced by immigrants to the United States in the 1990s. Although immigration to the United States briefly became less attractive as a result of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, during which many Korean American immigrants saw their businesses destroyed by looters, the Los Angeles and New York City metropolitan areas still contain by far the largest populations of ethnic Koreans outside Korea and continue to attract the largest share of Korean immigrants. In fact, the per capita Korean population of Bergen County, New Jersey, in the New York Metropolitan Area, at 6.5% as of 2022, is the highest of any county in the United States, including all of the nation's top ten municipalities by percentage of Korean population per the 2010 U.S. census, while the concentration of Korean Americans in Palisades Park, New Jersey, within Bergen County, is both the highest density and percentage of any municipality in the United States, at 53.7% of the borough's population in 2022.Since the early 2000s, a substantial number of affluent Korean American professionals have settled in Bergen County, which is home to North American headquarters operations of South Korean chaebols including Samsung, LG Corp, and Hanjin Shipping, and have founded various academically and communally supportive organizations, including the Korean Parent Partnership Organization at the Bergen County Academies magnet high school and The Korean-American Association of New Jersey. Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey, within Bergen County, has undertaken an ambitious effort to provide comprehensive health care services to underinsured and uninsured Korean patients from a wide area with its growing Korean Medical Program, drawing over 1,500 ethnic Korean patients to its annual health festival. Bergen County's Broad Avenue Koreatown in Palisades Park has emerged as a dominant nexus of Korean American culture, has been referred to as a "Korean food walk of fame", with diverse offerings, incorporating the highest concentration of Korean restaurants within a one-mile radius in the United States and Broad Avenue has evolved into a Korean dessert destination as well; and its Senior Citizens Center in Palisades Park provides a popular gathering place where even Korean grandmothers were noted to follow the dance trend of the worldwide viral hit Gangnam Style by South Korean "K-pop" rapper Psy in September 2012; while the nearby Fort Lee Koreatown is also emerging as such. The Chusok Korean Thanksgiving harvest festival has become an annual tradition in Bergen County, attended by several tens of thousands. In January 2019, Christopher Chung was sworn in as the first Korean mayor of Palisades Park and the first mayor from the Korean diaspora in Bergen County.
Bergen County's growing Korean community was cited by county executive Kathleen Donovan in the context of Hackensack, New Jersey attorney Jae Y. Kim's appointment to Central Municipal Court judgeship in January 2011. Subsequently, in January 2012, the New Jersey Governor Chris Christie nominated attorney Phillip Kwon of Bergen County for New Jersey Supreme Court justice, although this nomination was rejected by the state's Senate Judiciary Committee, and in July 2012, Kwon was appointed instead as deputy general counsel of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. According to The Record of Bergen County, the U.S. Census Bureau has determined the county's Korean American population – 2010 census figures put it at 56,773 – has grown enough to warrant language assistance during elections and Bergen County's Koreans have earned significant political respect. As of May 2014, Korean Americans had garnered at least four borough council seats in Bergen County. Described as a historic event, the US$6 million Korean Community Center opened in Tenafly, New Jersey in January 2015, aimed at integrating Bergen County's Korean community into the mainstream.
With the development of the South Korean economy, the focus of emigration from Korea began to shift from developed nations towards developing nations, prior to repatriation back to Korea. With the 1992 normalisation of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, many citizens of South Korea started to settle instead in China, attracted by business opportunities generated by the reform and opening up of China and the low cost of living. Large new communities of South Koreans have formed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Qingdao;, their population is estimated to be between 300,000 and 400,000. There is also a small community of Koreans in Hong Kong, mostly migrant workers and their families; according to Hong Kong's 2001 census, they numbered roughly 5,200, making them the 12th-largest ethnic minority group. Southeast Asia has also seen an influx of South Koreans. Koreans in Vietnam have grown in number to around 30,000 since the 1992 normalisation of diplomatic relations, making them Vietnam's second-largest foreign community after the Taiwanese. Korean migration to the Philippines increased in the early 2000s due to the tropical climate and low cost of living compared to South Korea, although this diaspora has declined since 2010; 370,000 Koreans visited the country in 2004 and roughly 46,000 Korean immigrants live there permanently. Though smaller, the number of Koreans in Cambodia has also grown rapidly, almost quadrupling between 2005 and 2009. They mostly reside in Phnom Penh, with a smaller number in Siem Reap. They are largely investors involved in the construction industry, though there are also some missionaries and NGO workers. Koreatown, Manhattan in New York City has become described as the "Korean Times Square" and has emerged as the international economic outpost for the Korean chaebol.