5).
During this time, settling in the United States meant many benefits to the Korean-American. It meant they no longer had to put up with Japanese imposed laws where traditional Korean language and culture was prohibited. In many cases, they could not even use their sur names. It meant they did not have to be made slaves in their own country. Literature suggests as Seong Woo Lee and et al. write that Korean-Americans benefited from migration more than their Asian counterparts because they saw opportunity (609). They saw opportunity in the forms of small business and education. With this in mind, this could be on reason why out of all the Asian immigrants, Koreans seem most prepared for American life (Lee et al. 609). They have already suffered the humiliation of Japanese colonization. in-Jin Yoon writes of the Korean migration "America is viewed as an open and fair place, whereas South Korea is viewed as a closed and unfair place for those who do not have social connections" (48). It can be hypothesized that many left because of economic opportunity for not only business opportunities but also educational opportunities. Both have a direct relationship on the success of the Korean-American experience. Because Japan was so oppressive in eradicating Korean culture by restructurizing Korean schools to imitate the Japanese educational system (Weinburg 76), the hardship to come to America did not seem so bad. They were also pushed by economic factors due to poverty and famine. The incentive to have warm food in the belly, probably motivated many Korean-Americans to succeed at their own business (Yoon 50).
Analysis
According to Won Moo Hurh much of the Korean-American experience is defined by their ability to strike it out on their own. It is the impact of "small business activities that transforms the immigrant life" (228). At this time a great portion of the Korean-American population is engaged in entrepreneur activity or at least "30-40% of immigrant workers" (Hurh 228). Much of this can be attributed to their close relationships built on church but also their personal need to better their situation. This is done by being successful in business and education. Both means result in the Korean-American being able to provide for their families and that is something that could not be done in their homeland.
Korean immigrant views of America, shaped as they were by United States cultural influences and official anticommunist South Korean education, differed radically from that of many poor people in the communities they served: unaware of the shameful history of oppression of nonwhite immigrants and other people of color in the U.S., they regarded themselves as having arrived in a meritocratic "land of opportunity" where a person's chances for success are limited only by individual lack of ability or diligence. Having left a homeland where they foresaw their talents and hard work going unrecognized and unrewarded, they were desperate to believe that the "American dream" of social and economic mobility through hard work was within their reach.
Most of the newcomers had underestimated the communication barriers they would face. Their toil amounted to only a pile of gestures and the English they tried to speak changed and turned against them as they spoke it. Working 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week, they rarely came into sustained contact with English-speaking Americans and almost never had time to study English. Not feeling at ease with English, they did not engage in informal conversations easily with non-Koreans and were hated for being curt and rude. They did not attend churches or do business in banks or other enterprises where English was required. Typically, the immigrant small-business owners used unpaid family labor instead of hiring people from local communities. Thanks to Eurocentric American cultural practices, they knew little or nothing good about African-Americans or Latinos, who in turn and for similar reasons knew little or nothing good about them. At the same time, Korean shop owners in South Central and Koreatown were affluent compared with the impoverished residents, whom they often exploited as laborers or looked down upon as fools with an aversion to hard work. Most Korean immigrants did not even know that they were among the many direct beneficiaries of African-American -- led Civil Rights Movement, which helped pave the way for the 1965 immigration reforms that made their immigration possible.
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