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Prior to the seventeenth century, encompassing more than two and a half centuries, Korea held firm to the tradition of non-reciprocity with countries other than China due to its devastating history of being invaded by neighboring countries. Such invasions included the Japanese invasions of 1592 and 1597 and the Manchu invasions of 1627 and 1636. Due to their closed borders, Korea became known as the “Hermit Kingdom” (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008). It wasn’t until 1875 that Korea had no choice but to accept foreign relations and sign the Treaty of Kanghwa of 1876 with Japan, to their disadvantage (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008; Kim 1980). This treaty allowed Japan to appropriate Korea’s right to foreign trade and brought Korea’s self-imposed isolation to an end, eventually making way for other unequal international treaties with Western powers. Japan formally claimed Korea as its protectorate, to the disgruntlement of Korea’s people, after winning the two major battles of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. Both of which were fought on the Korean peninsula (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008).
The beginnings of Korean relocation to America started with Horace N. Allen, a Protestant medical missionary and a diplomat from the United States, taking advantage of the socioeconomic crises of the early 1900s, brought on by massive natural disasters of famine and drought, to convince King Kojong to permit Koreans to begin immigrating to Hawaii to work on plantations. Allen, along with other recruiters, looked to farmers who had lost their main source of income and had relocated to port cities such as P’yŏngyang and Inch’ŏn in search of employment as their best recruiting opportunity with little success (Eunjung and Wolpin 20...
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...n its freedom from Japan in 1945, a standing that was continually threatened by the Cold War. Post-World War II, the contention between the Soviet Union and the US turned the Korean peninsula into a war zone from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953 when the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. In Korea, the Korean war is refered to as ‘Yugio’ (literally June 25) as it marks the date upon which the North Korean army crossed the US military planners’ dividing line known as the 38th parallel (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008).
Works Cited
Healey, Joseph F. 2014. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Kim, Key-Hiuk. 1980. The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Kwon, Hyeyoung, and Chanhaeng Lee. 2009. Korean American History. Los Angeles, CA: Korean Education Center.
Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally, economically, and structurally through his growing entrepreneurship. Lee, on the other hand, devoted herself not only to her husband’s business but also to the Korean American society. By investing her time in the Korean Methodist Church and the efforts of its associated societies, such as the Methodist Ladies Aid Society and the Youngnam Puin Hoe, Lee made a worthy contribution to the emergence and existence of Hawaii’s Korean American community.
Schwartz, Stuart, and Craig Conley. Human Diversity: A Guide for Understanding. 14th ed. New York: McGraw-Hills Primis Custom Publishing, 2000. 3-7. Print.
Kottak, Conrad Phillip and Kayhryn Kozaitis 2012 On Being Different, Diversity and Multiculturalism in the North American Mainstream, 4th edition, McGraw Hill Press, New York: Chapter 1.
Schaefer, R. (Ed.). (2012). Racial and ethnic groups. (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Schaefer, Richard, T. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 12th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.
Aboard the S.S. Gaelic, the first ship to bring Korean immigrants to the United States, there were only 102 men, women and children (Chow). However, over the next two years, over seven thousand Koreans moved to Hawaii (Kim, 367). Most were young men who came to look for a new life on the sugar cane plantations that needed labor. These plantation workers had hard lives, working to save money to bring their families over from Korea or in hopes of someday returning to their homeland.
In 1905, the agreement between the United States and Japan, known as the Taft- Katsura Agreement, drastically changed the Korean Peninsula’s inhabitants livelihood. This agreement
Despite the fact that this was the age of Western imperialism and gunboat diplomacy, Korea failed to erect a large standing military and navy. Instead of uniting under the banner of protecting Korea’s sovereignty, some officials were more concerned with protecting their own privileges. Robinson wrote “The lack of consensus in domestic politics…inhibited any program to gather
Koreans were under Japanese rule for a long time. It was officially signed as a colony on August 22, 1910, but Japanese had been planning this annexation from 1876 the Japanese-Korea treaty of amity. Japanese plan of annexation started with this treaty. This treaty allowed Japanese to come to Korean harbors freely and this marked the end of Korea’s status as a protectorate of China. Also later on October 8th, 1895, Japanese minister Miura Goro plotted the assassination of Empress Myeongseong. With the assassination, Japanese were able to control the economy and military power and made the Koreans sig...
Schaefer, R. (Ed.). (2012). Racial and ethnic groups. (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education
Rothenberg, P. 1998. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Issues in race, ethnicity, and gender: selections from the CQ researcher.. (2002). Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.
Korea has undergone many conflicts that brought political and social upheavals which greatly affected their quest towards modernization and unification. During the mid-7th centuries when Korea is just starting to shape its own national identity, there is already a series of events that caused several changes in the livelihood of the early settlers of the Korean peninsula. These events including the wars between the three kingdoms Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, the spread of the Chinese influence (Sinicization), and the formation of alliances between the East Asian nations such as the Tang dynasty of China allied with Silla, and the Yamato kingdom of Japan allied with Baekje changed the people’s perception of Korea as a nation because of the influence of different emerging cultures. Religion is also one of the main contributors that made Korea a subject for change because it allowed the acceptance or assimilation of different cultures from the East and the West. These changes continued up to modern times when Korea is struggling to achieve modernization and reunification brought by the plight of war and political conflicts. The vast history of Korea is the key in understanding their transitions throughout the ages.
Korea gained independence from Japanese colonial rule in August of 1945 and also the division of Korea into the republic south and communist north in the 38th parallel. South Korea then was under the United States occupation from l945-48. Before the United States occupation South Korea had already organized a central People’s committees and established the Korean People of Republic (Memorial Foundation). Nevertheless, United States did not recognize any of the provisional or republic government. The United States refused to do so until there had been an agreement among the western allies. In 1954, there was a Mutual Security Agreement signed between the United States and South Korea, which states that they agreed to defend each other in the event of outside aggression (Memorial Foundation). South Korea has been under military authoritarian regime from 1961-1979 under President Park Chung Hee and from 1980-1992 under President Chun Doo Hwan. The Kwangju uprising occurred in May of 1980 after the collapse of the first milit...
The Korean War explicitly portrayed the atrocious battle between both the North and South side which gave the United Nations its military role for the first time, thus expanding the war from a domestic to an international scale. Sometimes called “The Forgotten War”, the Korean War was mainly overshadowed in historical terms by the conflicts that occurred before and after it, World War II and the Vietnam War. The Korean War had raged for years without a true resolution and after years of battles, even the compromise that was made was not a complete one. The current situation regarding North and South Korea is quite volatile. In order to apprehend the Korean War, one has to look at events that took place before the war, how the war was conducted and the aftermath of the War.