|
|
Article: Korean Americans
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
KOREAN AMERICANS
KOREAN AMERICANS.
The first Korean immigrants came to the United States in the last years of the nineteenth century as Hawaiian sugar plantation workers or students of higher education. However, their numbers were very small, estimated at fewer than 100. Between 1903 and 1905, some 7,200 Koreans arrived in Hawaii to work on sugar plantations for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association. The vast majority of them were single men, and their arrival was soon followed by about 1,000 Korean women called "picture brides," because their marriages had resulted from exchanging photographs. That first wave of Korean immigration was heavily promoted not only by labor recruiters ...