Transnational Cultural Flow from Home: Korean Community in Greater New York 9781978827172
Transnational Cultural Flow from Home examines New York Korean immigrants’ collective efforts to preserve their cultural
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Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
1 • INTRODUCTION
2 • THE KOREAN COMMUNITY IN GREATER NEW YORK
3 • TRANSNATIONAL CULTURAL EVENTS HELD IN THE KOREAN COMMUNITY IN 2001 AND 2014
4 • KOREAN-LANGUAGE SCHOOLS
5 • THE MOVEMENT TO PROMOTE KOREAN TO AMERICAN SCHOOLS
6 • KOREAN FOOD
7 • KOREAN CULTURAL FESTIVALS AND PARADES
8 • KOREAN TRADITIONAL PERFORMING ARTS
9 • KOREAN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC AND DANCE PERFORMANCES
10 • CONCLUSION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
REFERENCES
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Citation preview
TR ANSNATIONAL CULTUR AL FLOW FROM HOME
TR ANSNATIONAL CULTUR AL FLOW FROM HOME Korean Community in Greater New York
p yong g a p min
rutger s uni v er sit y p r ess
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Min, Pyong Gap, 1942– author. Title: Transnational cultural flow from home : Korean community in greater New York / Pyong Gap Min. Other titles: Korean community in greater New York Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022009355 | ISBN 9781978827141 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978827158 (hardback) | ISBN 9781978827165 (epub) | ISBN 9781978827172 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Korean Americans—New York Metropolitan Area—Social life and customs. | Korean Americans—New York Metropolitan Area—Ethnic identity. | Korean American arts—New York Metropolitan Area. | New York (N.Y.)— Civilization. | United States—Civilization—Korean influences. Classification: LCC F128.9.K6 M574 2023 | DDC 305.89570747/1—dc23/eng/20220728 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009355 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2023 by Pyong Gap Min All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Chapter 3 was previously published in Sociological Perspectives 60, no. 6 (December 2017): 1136–1159 with the title “Transnational Cultural Events among Korean Immigrants in the New York–New Jersey Area.” Reprinted with permission. Chapter 5 is a revised version of an article previously published in Ethnicities 18, no. 6 (2018): 799–824 with the title “The Movement to Promote an Ethnic Language in American Schools: The Korean Community in the New York–New Jersey Area.” Reprinted with permission. References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www.rutgersuniversitypress.org Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations vii
1 Introduction
1
2
The Korean Community in Greater New York
15
3
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community in 2001 and 2014
32
4
Korean-Language Schools
53
5
The Movement to Promote Korean to American Schools
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6
Korean Food
95
7
Korean Cultural Festivals and Parades
113
8
Korean Traditional Performing Arts
133
9
Korean Contemporary M usic and Dance Performances
154
10 Conclusion
173
Acknowledgments 187 Notes 189 References 191 Index 209
v
ABBREVIATIONS
AKSA aT EWSIS FKLC KAAGNY KBS KCC KCCI KCGC KEC KLA KLF KPA KRB KSAA KTPAC MBC NAKS OKF PPHS RMHS SBS SNS
Association of Korean Schools in America Korean Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation East-West School of International Studies Foundation of Korean Language and Culture in USA Korean American Association of Greater New York Korean Broadcasting System Korean Cultural Center Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry Korean Cuisine Globalization Committee Korean Education Center Korean Language Association Korean Language Foundation Korean Produce Association of New York Korean Radio Broadcasting Korean School Association in America Korean Traditional Performing Arts Center Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation National Association of Korean Schools Overseas Koreans Foundation Palisades Park High School Ridgefield Memorial High School Seoul Broadcasting System social network services
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TR ANSNATIONAL CULTUR AL FLOW FROM HOME
1 • INTRODUCTION
The Paradox of the Korean Community’s Increasing Integration IN New York and Increasing Cultural Linkages to Korea It has been about fifty years since the first wave of post-1965 Korean immigrants arrived in Greater New York in the early 1970s. Korean immigrants in the area w ere economically segregated, concentrating in retail and service businesses in minority neighborhoods from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. Korean grocery and produce retail store owners had severe conflicts with customers in Black neighborhoods in New York City and white suppliers at Hunts Point Produce Market (Min 1996, 2008a). They also had numerous conflicts with city government agencies that regulated small business activities. Korean immigrant husbands and wives often worked together in family-owned businesses with one or more additional Korean employees. Thus, approximately 80 percent of Korean immigrant adult workers participated in the ethnic economy, either as small business owners or as employees of Korean- owned businesses (Min 1996: 48). The economic segregation of most Korean immigrants in small businesses led to their social segregation as well. Korean immigrants also had few transnational contacts with their homeland before the 1990s. Although Korean Airlines established a direct flight from New York City to Seoul in 1978, few immigrants in the area at that time could afford to buy a ticket to visit their relatives and friends in K orea. I left Korea in 1972 for further study in the United States and made my first visit back in 1985, when my father passed away. Although Korean immigrants had access to ethnic dramas and popular songs in the form of videotapes and CDs, only a few popular singers/ dancers from K orea visited New York before 1990. Thus, immigrants h ere were highly segregated from both mainstream New York society and their homeland before 1990. However, helped by the 1990 Immigration Act, many Korean immigrants with professional and managerial backgrounds have found occupations in the mainstream economy since the late 1990s. Also, a growing number of 1.5-and second-generation Korean American adults have obtained professional, managerial, and administrative occupations in the mainstream economy, especially in finance companies, in New 1
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York City since the early 2000s (Min 2011). The 2000 U.S. Census indicated that only 5 percent of U.S.-born Koreans and 7 percent of 1.5-generation Koreans in Greater New York were self-employed, compared to 28 percent of first-generation Korean immigrants (Min 2008a: 95). In addition, Korean community leaders have been engaged in active political campaigns to get Korean candidates elected as city council members and higher levels of legislative positions in the area. As a result, about fifteen Korean Americans currently serve as council members of small townships in Bergen County, New Jersey, with two Korean Americans elected as mayors and another second-generation Korean elected as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018 (author interview with Jongmoo Cho, 2019). Paradoxically, whereas the Korean community in the area has been gradually incorporated into mainstream society since the early 2000s, it has been also increasingly linked to South Korea, helped by strong transnational ties. Korean immigrants in the area have maintained increasingly stronger social, economic, and other types of transnational ties to their homeland. However, their transnational linkages to Korea have impacted their cultural lives here more significantly than any other type of transnational connections (Min 2017). Korean immigrants in the area eat Korean food for nearly every meal and are able to purchase ingredients for a wide variety of Korean dishes from Korean supermarkets. They can also buy all types of Korean food as well as breads, pastries, and teas in Korean restaurants and bakeries. Moreover, they can also watch performances by visiting artists and entertainers at Korean festivals and other community venues. Even more significantly, they can watch Korean m usic and dance performances through Korean transnational TV programs or via digital streaming. There has been a gradual increase in the cultural linkages of Korean immigrants to Korea over the past five decades. But there was a turning point in the period between the mid-2000s and early 2010s in an almost full access of Korean immigrants to cultural products made in K orea. The digitalization of the media and the emergence of social network services (SNS) and smartphones since the mid-2000s have enabled immigrants and their c hildren to have access to music/dance perfor mances, cultural festivals, TV dramas, and other cultural products made in the home country through computers, smartphones, and/or SNS e very day. These internet technology innovations arose in the mid-2000s and have had a major impact on immigrants’ lives since the early 2010s. Th ese radical changes have had a significant positive effect on different types of immigrants’ transnational practices, including transnational social movements (H. Lee 2021; Min 2021a) and many Korean adoptees’ return migration to the home country (E. Kim 2010). But they seem to have had the most significant effect on the cultural lives of Korean immigrants and their children’s ethnic identity. These paradoxical changes, combined with immigrants’ increasing integration into the host society and their much closer relationships with the home country, are not limited to Korean immigrants but are applicable to other major immigrant groups.
Introduction 3
Recently arrived Korean immigrants may not appreciate the benefits of and accessibility to ethnic cuisine, music, and dance performances, partly because they are more familiar with American culture in Korea and because they had much stronger cultural connections with their homeland upon their arrival h ere. But older Korean immigrants who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s appreciate the positive changes in our quality of life very much. In a way, they feel like they live in two places, New York and Seoul, e very day. Since Korean immigrants and second- generation Koreans are strongly linked to mainstream society individually and throughout the community, they are in a much better position to affect New Yorkers with Korean culture than they were three or four decades ago. The ability of recent immigrants to enjoy ethnic cuisine and ethnic music/dance performances from the time of their arrival challenges the important assumption of the classical or neoclassical assimilation theory, that new immigrants usually go through feeling culturally uprooted. The fact that older Korean immigrants have felt uprooted at the time of their arrival here but have been increasingly able to enjoy ethnic cuisine and ethnic music/dance performances also challenges the assumption of the same theory, that the gradual acculturation of immigrants is likely to reduce their ethnic cultural traditions. However, social scientists who have studied contemporary immigrants have focused on their acculturation and socioeconomic integration; immigrants’ ethnic cultural practices and their effects on American society constitute one topic that researchers have neglected. Dozens of books focusing on immigrant groups’ adaptations to American society have been published. But few of them have described the impact of immigrants’ cultural components on American society (Foner 2001; Hirschman 2013; Jimenez 2017). In particular, no one has paid special attention to the fact that members of many immigrant groups have experienced the paradoxical phenomenon of increasing homeland cultural influence, combined with increasing incorporation into mainstream society. Many immigrant groups, especially Korean immigrants, currently take bicultural and binational orientations, with their children holding a strong ethnic identity. Post-1965 immigrant groups, largely consisting of Hispanics, Asians, and Carib bean Blacks, entered the United States with a high level of racial stratification. Thus, the predominant majority of these immigrants and their children belong to minority groups. As racial minorities, they encounter barriers to their socioeconomic attainment, settlement, and political empowerment. However, they have great advantages over the earlier white immigrant groups at the turn of the twentieth century in preserving their ethnic cultural traditions. Th ere are several impor tant contributing factors to their advantages. More strictly speaking, the Korean immigrants who have come to the New York area since the mid-2000s are likely to have great advantages regarding practicing and preserving Korean cultural components and promoting them to New Yorkers over those who came here in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Major Contributing Factors to Immigrants’ Transnational Cultural Ties to the Homeland To illustrate my theoretical perspectives summarized above, I elaborate below on each contributing factor to the advantages of post-1965 immigrants, especially post-2000 immigrants, for transnational cultural linkages to the homeland. I discuss five major contributing factors in the following subsections. Technological Advances and Emigrant States’ Reactive/Proactive Policy Technological advances in air transportation, the media, communications, and the internet have gradually strengthened post-1965 immigrants’ transnational linkages to their homeland. Scholars of post-1965 immigrants began to pay close attention to the phenomenon of immigrants’ cross-border linkages to their homeland in the early 1990 (Glick Schiller 1999; Glick Schiller et al. 1992). Th ere are different forms of immigrant transnational ties: social, economic, political, cultural, religious, and health care–related. By virtue of transnational media and social network services, immigrants’ cultural transnational ties to the homeland are more salient than the other forms. Most contemporary immigrants depend upon transnational ethnic media for news and cultural programs (D. Kim 2018; Levitt 2002). Many immigrant groups in the New York area organize annual cultural festivals in which dancers and singers from their home countries perform. However, most previous studies of immigrant transnationalism have focused on social, economic, and political linkages with their respective homelands (Faist 2000; Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007; Portes 2001; Portes et al. 1999; Waldinger 2013) but have paid l ittle attention to cultural transnational ties. Only one article discussed immigrants’ cultural transnational ties to the homeland (Itzigsohn and Saucedo 2002) before I published a comprehensive article that examined transnational Korean cultural events held in Greater New York (Min 2017). All major immigrant groups benefit from transnational ties in preserving their cultural traditions thanks to technological advances. But some benefit more than others by virtue of their home countries’ active efforts to facilitate their expats’ transnational ties. Their home governments have differential financial resources and make various efforts to strengthen their emigrants’ cultural ties to the homeland and their ethnic identity. Many scholars have shown that a number of countries have established dual citizenship programs and taken a number of other political measures to facilitate their emigrants’ cross-border linkages to the homeland (Gamlen 2008; Guarnizo 1998; Hollifield 2004; Jones-Correra 2001; Smith 2006; Waldinger and Fitzgerald 2004). But they have neglected to pay attention to emigrant states’ efforts to help their emigrants preserve the ethnic language and cultural traditions in their host countries. As I will show in chapters 4, 5, and 7, Korean government agencies have financially supported Korean-language schools and courses in public schools and Korean festivals. Moreover, we will find in chapter 3 that the Korean government
Introduction 5
has established many heritage education summer programs for young overseas Koreans. The Korean government has financially supported Korean immigrants’ cultural activities and second-generation Koreans’ heritage education partly to enhance the Korean national image and partly to enhance their ethnic identity (Lee et al. 2019). In this book, I consider technological advances and the Korean government’s reactive and proactive policy as two major contributing factors to Korean immigrants’ strong transnational cultural linkages to Korea. Uninterrupted Immigrant Stream (Replenished Ethnicity Theory) In addition to the two major f actors discussed above, t here are three other important contributing factors. One is the uninterrupted stream of immigrants since 1965. White ethnic groups have achieved high levels of assimilation into U.S. society since the early 1930s b ecause immigration from European countries nearly came to an end in the 1930s and 1940s. In contrast, as Tomas Jimenez (Jimenez 2010, 2017; Linton and Jimenez 2009) has shown, large-scale Mexican immigration to the United States without interruption in the 1940s and 1950s allowed multigenerational Mexican Americans to “replenish” their ethnicity with ethnic culture, social networks, and identity. He also has indicated that the availability of many Mexican immigrants helped multigenerational Mexican Americans marry Mexican immigrants cross- generationally, resulting in the reduction of Mexican Americans’ intermarriages. As with Mexican immigration, the post-1965 immigration stream has continued for over fifty-five years, and there is no sign that it w ill end anytime soon. The five largest contemporary Asian immigrant groups (Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Korean) and other Caribbean and Latin American immigrant groups in the United States have advantages in retaining their ethnic cultural traditions over generations partly b ecause of their numbers and partly b ecause of the continuity of their immigration streams since 1965. In particular, Chinese and Indian communities have demographic advantages for cultural and ethnic retention over other Asian communities b ecause of phenomenal increases in the numbers of annual immigrants (70,000–85,000 Chinese and 60,000–70,000 Indian immigrants) during recent years. Since adult immigrants constitute the majority of their populations, they can replenish their communities with ethnic cultural and social networks. Post-1965 Korean immigration peaked between 1976 and 1989 with over 30,000 annual immigrants. But numbers have decreased significantly since the early 1990s, remaining below 20,000 during most recent years (see table 2.1 in chapter 2). Thus, the Korean community has a demographic disadvantage compared to Chinese and Indian immigrants in retaining their cultural traditions over generations, but they have an advantage over the Japanese community in size. Since only several thousand Japanese have immigrated to the United States annually, the majority of Japanese immigrants and second-and multigenerational Japanese Americans have intermarried with other cultural groups (Min and Kim 2009), resulting in more than half of Japanese Americans being multiracial.
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The presence of a large number of immigrants has had a positive effect on ethnic preservation, not only demographically but also through immigrant leaders’ active roles in creating mechanisms for heritage education. Korean immigrant community leaders have made g reat efforts to transmit the Korean language and culture to the next generations. Moreover, not only has the post-1965 legal immigration stream remained uninterrupted, but increasing numbers of foreigners have visited the United States and stayed as temporary residents. They include international students, employees of U.S. branches of foreign corporations, trainees and visiting scholars, and H-1B temporary visa holders. These temporary residents maintain stronger transnational ties to their homeland than formal green card immigrants and naturalized citizens. These temporary residents have refreshed immigrant communities with the culture of the homeland. By paying special attention to immigrant leaders’ active role in heritage education and temporary residents’ neutralizing effect on Korean Americans’ cultural assimilation, I expand the replenished ethnicity theory originally developed by Jimenez ( Jimenez 2010, 2017; Linton and Jimenez 2009). Strong Ethnic Heritage and Cultural Organizations The fourth major contributing factor to immigrants’ preservation of ethnic language and traditions is the presence of strong ethnic organizations, including ethnic language schools and cultural organizations (Breton 1964; Portes and Schauffler 1994; Zhou and Li 2003). The Jewish community has established many heritage education organizations in the community, including summer camps and the Birthright Israel program (Beck 1965; Freidenreich 2010; Pomson and Schnoor 2008). Among contemporary immigrant groups, Chinese immigrants have established many nonreligious ethnic language schools in various Chinese immigrant communities (Fan 1977; Wang 1996; Zhou and Li 2003). As I w ill show in chapter 4, the Korean community in Greater New York has established about 150 weekend Korean schools focusing on Korean language, culture, and history. In maintaining the homeland language and culture, Korean immigrants have advantages over other Asian groups in terms of linguistic and group homogeneity (Min 1991; Min and Kim 2009). Compared to other multilingual Asian immigrant groups, such as Filipinos, Indians, and Chinese, Korean immigrants speak only one language. Moreover, unlike these other Asian immigrant groups, Korean immigrants have neither significant regional differences nor religious conflicts. Their monolingual background can facilitate the Korean language movement in two diff erent ways. First, it is much easier to promote the Korean language b ecause all Koreans speak the same language. Second, b ecause of their monolingual background and group homogeneity, Koreans can use their ethnic collective actions more effectively than other linguistically or religiously divided Asian groups in preserving their language and other cultural traditions. In addition to Koreans’ cultural and group homogeneity, Korean reactive nationalism also contributes to Korean immigrants’ efforts to intergenerationally
Introduction 7
transmit the Korean language and culture and promote them to New Yorkers. A number of neighboring superpowers—Mongolia, a series of Chinese dynasties, Japan, and Russia—have invaded and politically subordinated K orea throughout history. Koreans have developed nationalism in their resistance to these foreign invasions and political subordinations. Korean nationalism in a modern form was developed largely during Koreans’ resistance to Japanese colonization (1910–1945). I call this defensive or reactive nationalism to distinguish it from the rightist aggressive nationalism. During colonization, Koreans w ere forced to use the Japanese language and adopt Japanese customs and manners. As I w ill show in chapters 4 and 5, older Korean-language leaders in the New York area emphasize the preservation of Korean language and culture partly because of their memories of the Japanese government’s attempt to annihilate them during the colonial period. The U.S. Government’s Multicultural Policy Finally, the U.S. government’s multicultural policy is a major contributing factor to the preservation of immigrants’ cultural traditions. The dominant U.S. social policy up to the early 1960s was “Anglo-conformity,” according to which immigrants and members of minority groups w ere required to replace their language with English and their cultural patterns with those of British or European origins (Gordon 1964: 88–89). The English language was associated with being “American” and “patriotic,” whereas being bilingual was interpreted as a sign of disloyalty to the United States ( Jaret 2002: 51–52; Portes and Rumbaut 2014: 216–217). One of the main functions of public education in the pre-1960s era was Americanizing the children of immigrants in their language and cultural practices. In the 1950s and 1960s, few Asian immigrant parents could speak English fluently and w ere familiar with American customs. Nevertheless, they made their c hildren learn to speak English and practice American customs at home to promote the c hildren’s survival in American society (Park 2014: 35–38). However, since the late 1960s, all levels of government and local school districts have gradually changed policies toward minority members and immigrants from Anglo-conformity to cultural pluralism (Goldberg 1994). Multicultural America expects different immigrant groups to bring their unique cultural traditions to the multicultural table (Kurien 2007). The impact of multicultural policies is most salient in public schools. Public schools have tried to increase racial, ethnic, class, and gender diversity in curricula, textbooks, tests, teachers, and extracurricular activities (Banks 2004). Local governments and neighborhoods have encouraged ethnic festivals, parades, food festivals, and multicultural perfor mances and exhibitions. Today, school boards and administrators in the United States consider bilingualism as an asset. As I will show in chapter 5, school boards and principals in public schools in Greater New York are willing to add any foreign language to the curriculum when they find enough students to study it and enough financial resources to offer it. Since New York City is also the global center of the performing and fine
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arts, the Korean community in the area may be able to publicize Korean food, cultural performances, and festivals to New Yorkers more effectively than in Southern California, the largest Korean population center in the United States. In this research I use the efforts of Korean immigrants to preserve and promote Korean culture as the dependent variable and the five contributing f actors as inde pendent variables (contributing f actors). However, conducting research on Korean cultural preservation and promotion is important because it has very positive effects on Korean immigrants’ and their c hildren’s adaptations to American society. First of all, preserving and promoting ethnic culture contribute to the perpetuation of the ethnic community and help members to take bicultural orientations. Moreover, the preservation of ethnic language, culture, and identity has positive effects on mental health, school performance, and resistance to racial prejudice and discrimination (Portes and Rumbaut 2014: 244–259; Zhou 1997; Zhou and Bankston 1998).
An Analytical Model of Korean Immigrants’ Efforts to Preserve and Promote Korean Culture Figure 1.1 provides an analytical model to explain the efforts of Korean immigrants to successfully preserve and promote Korean culture in the New York area based on the previous theoretical discussions. In this model, I use five independent variables reviewed in the previous theory section. I consider Korean immigrants’ increasing cultural linkages to Korea as an intervening variable and their successful efforts to preserve and promote Korean culture as the final dependent variable. Four of the five major contributing factors have both direct effects on Korean immigrants’ successful preservation and promotion of Korean culture and indirect effects by strengthening Korean immigrants’ cultural linkages to their homeland. Only technological advances in air transportation, communication, and the internet have a direct effect on their stronger transnational linkages to the homeland but have no direct effect on their successful effort to preserve and promote Korean culture. But the indirect effect of technological advances during recent years is very powerful because technology has allowed immigrants to practically live in two countries, their host and home countries, in their everyday cultural lives. The other four contributing factors have direct effects on Korean immigrants’ increasing cultural linkages to their homeland, and by doing so indirectly influence Korean immigrants’ successful effort to preserve and promote of Korean culture. They also have direct positive effects on Korean immigrants’ successful efforts to preserve and promote it. For example, the emigrant state’s role directly facilitates not only Korean immigrants’ strong transnational cultural links with the homeland, but also their efforts to preserve and promote Korean culture. I have highlighted the emigrant state’s facilitating role and strong Korean ethnic organizations
Introduction 9 Technological advances
The emigrant state’s facilitating role
Korean immigrants’ strong transnational cultural linkages to the homeland
The uninterrupted immigration flow Strong Korean-language and cultural organizations
Korean immigrants’ successful efforts to preserve and promote Korean culture
The host city’s strong multicultural policy
figure 1.1. Analytical model of Korean immigrants’ successful efforts to preserve and promote Korean culture.
to show that these two factors are unique to the Korean group compared to other Asian immigrant groups.
The Need for the Study and Main Objectives Without a doubt, contemporary immigrants and especially their children have achieved high levels of assimilation to American culture since their migration to the United States. However, given the above-mentioned advantages for their cultural preservation, many large immigrant groups have preserved their significant cultural components and promoted some of them to American society. Thus, all post-1965 immigrants, especially those who arrived in the United States in the 2000s and after, have gone through two-way integration: to American culture and preservation of ethnic culture through transnational ties to their homeland. Nevertheless, social scientists who have studied contemporary immigrants have focused on their cultural and socioeconomic assimilation. Immigrants’ transnational cultural practices constitute one topic gravely neglected by researchers. Only a small number of researchers have indicated the impact of immigrants’ cultural components on American society (Foner 2001; Hirschman 2013; Jimenez 2017). Many researchers of immigrants have examined the retention of the m other tongue among children of immigrants using survey or census data (Alba et al. 2002; Kim and Min 2010; Lopez 1996, 1999; Lutz 2006; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Portes and Schauffler 1994; Schrauf 1999; Zhou and Bankston 1998). Since language is probably the most important component of ethnic culture, we need to examine the mechanisms of mother tongue retention among contemporary immigrants. However, there are not enough studies that have systematically examined mechanisms
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of mother tongue retention, including ethnic language schools. As pointed out above, several studies focus on ethnic language schools in Chinese and Korean immigrant communities (Wang 1996; Zhou and Kim 2006). There are a few studies of Jewish Americans’ heritage trips to Israel (Kelner et al. 2000; Saxe and Chazan 2008). But there is little information about how contemporary immigrant groups organize their heritage tours to the homeland for their children. The consumption of ethnic popular culture in the forms of ethnic cuisine, music/ dance, and festivals/parades is known to contribute to the maintenance of ethnic identity (Gans 1979; Tsuda 2016). However, only a few scholars of immigration (Austerlitz 1997; Feidenberg-Hebstein and Kasnitz 1994; Gabaccia 1998) have conducted research on the impact of immigrant groups’ popular culture on American cities. Technological advances have strengthened immigrants’ transnational linkages to their homeland. In particular, rapid improvements in communication technology and the internet have strengthened especially their cultural transnational linkages. However, as Hein (2006: 21) indicated, even these transnationalism researchers have neglected to examine immigrants’ transnational cultural activities. As previously stated, only one article examined immigrants’ cultural transnational ties to their homeland (Itzigsohn and Saucedo 2002) before the publication of my article (Min 2017). Transnational scholars have not agreed even on the definition of immigrants’ transnational cultural practices (Min 2017: 1142–1143). As has been pointed out, they have paid far more attention to immigrants’ economic, social, and political activities. Based on his survey data, Portes (2003) noted that only small proportions of high-class respondents engaged in political and economic transnational practices. He concluded that immigrant transnational theory is consistent with assimilation theory. However, the majority of his sample, regardless of their social class, is likely to have been engaged in transnational cultural practices. In addition to social scientists who have studied immigrants’ incorporation to American society, t hose who have studied Asian Americans have also neglected to conduct research on the newly emerging influence of Asian cultures in many American metropolitan areas. Several well-researched and informative books, mostly coedited, focusing on Asian American culture have been published (Dave et al. 2005; Ku 2014; Ku et al. 2013; Ma 2005; Nguyen and Nguyen 2007; Oren et al. 2016). However, a predominant majority of the authors who wrote book chapters for these edited books w ere in the fields of humanities: English literature, history, anthropology, media and communication, and drama/film studies. As such, many of them utilized ethnographic research without documenting particular Asian communities’ efforts to preserve and promote ethnic cultural traditions using personal interviews and statistical data. Sociologists and other social scientists in Asian American studies have neglected to examine Asian immigrants’ and Asian Americans’ efforts to preserve ethnic culture. They seem to have neglected it partly b ecause, strongly influenced by the colonialist thesis of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), they have focused on proving the cultural hegemony of white Americans and the latter’s prejudice against and stereo
Introduction 11
types of Asian cultural traditions. They may also have been discouraged to study Asian Americans’ ethnic cultural traditions because of the conservative implications of cultural interpretations, compared to structural interpretations. This book bridges a gap in research on contemporary immigrants by focusing on a topic that has been neglected in the field. Immigrants make efforts to preserve their ethnic language and cultural traditions as a group. Thus, we need to focus on a particular immigrant community to examine immigrant organizations’ collective efforts to preserve their cultural traditions and promote them to Americans. The primary objective of this book is to systematically examine how Korean immigrants in the New York area have made immense collective efforts to preserve Korean cultural traditions, transmit them to their c hildren, and promote them to New Yorkers. As noted above, the increasing transnational cultural linkages of the local Korean community to the homeland seem to have facilitated Korean immigrants’ efforts to preserve Korean cultural components and promote them to New Yorkers. Thus, I examine Korean immigrant organizations’ efforts to preserve and promote Korean cultural traditions historically in each chapter. Substantively, this book contributes mainly to the studies of Korean communities in the United States. Many books focusing on Korean immigrants/Americans have been published. But they have heavily focused on Korean immigrant merchants’ conflicts with other minority groups in the 1980s–2000s (Abelmann and Lie 1994; C. J. Kim 2000; N. Kim 2008; Min 1996, 2008a) and Korean immigrants’ and their c hildren’s religious practices (R. Y. Kim 2006; S. Kim 2008; Min 2010). Several books that examine U.S. Korean immigrants’ and Korean Americans’ transnational ties to the homeland have been published recently ( Jang 2018; D. Kim 2018; N. Kim 2010; H.-J. Lee 2021; Lee and Kim 2021). But only Jinwon Kim (2018) devoted one chapter to Korean immigrants’ transnational cultural activities. Although I use Korean immigrants in New York as a special case, I have thrown a wider theoretical net in this book. My secondary objective is to examine the roles of five major contributing factors that have facilitated the increasingly successful effort of Korean immigrants to practice, preserve, and promote Korean culture. As noted above, three major contributing factors are common to all major immigrant groups in New York: technological advances, uninterrupted immigration flows, and the host city’s multicultural policies. Two major contributing factors unique to the Korean immigrant group are the Korean government’s financial and technical support of immigrants’ efforts to preserve and promote Korean culture and the presence of strong ethnic language and cultural organizations in Greater New York. I discuss the roles of these contributing f actors in relevant places in different chapters.
Data Sources In most of my previous books I used multiple data sources, including statistical data, personal interviews, participant observations, and local Korean-and English- language newspaper articles. This book is also based on multiple data sources. In
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chapter 2, which focuses on Korean immigration and settlement patterns, I mainly use quantitative census data. But all of the other chapters are based on qualitative data involving my own participant observations, my own and my research assistants’ personal interviews, and Korean newspaper articles. My participant observations of Korean cultural festivals, language and cultural (dance and music) schools, restaurants, supermarkets, and business districts in Flushing (a neighborhood in Queens, New York), Bergen County, and K-Town in Manhattan were made between 2010 and 2020. In addition, my own participant observations before I started this project in 2010 are used throughout. Young Oak Kim and I conducted personal interviews with approximately sixty- five informants. They include principals (presidents) of Korean (language) schools and Korean dance/music schools, Korean public school teachers, leaders of Korean cultural and roots education organizations, managers of Korean supermarkets, and owners of Korean restaurants. Cultural organizations also include the Korea Society, the Korean Cultural Center, the Korean Education Center (KEC), the National Association for Korean Schools, and the Korean Language Association (Foundation). Each interview lasted between twenty minutes and one hour. I called several informants multiple times to update information over the ten years of research. We also conducted short interviews with about twenty non-Korean customers of Korean restaurants and supermarkets in Korean enclaves in Flushing, K-Town, and Bergen County, and combined information posted on websites for some of these Korean schools and Korean cultural organizations with personal interview data. As usual, I used informants’ real names with their permission as much as possible to make this book serve as a historical record of the Korean community in Greater New York. I used over a hundred articles in two local Korean-language daily newspapers— the Korea Times (New York) and the Korea Daily (New York)—published in 1980, 1982, 2001, 2014, and between 2010 and 2019 in descriptive historical information about Korean immigrants’ cultural activities. As w ill be discussed in more detail later in relevant chapters, we can use content analyses of Korean-language articles to effectively estimate Korean cultural performances and events in Greater New York b ecause they reported almost all Korean cultural events and provided photos and summaries of the events. I also used two dozen articles focusing on Korean immigrants’ Korean cultural activities included in local English daily newspapers—the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and Newsday. In addition, I used local Korean directories published in various years in estimating the increase in the numbers of Korean-language schools and Korean restaurants, supermarkets, and cultural organizations. Between 2013 and 2015, I also conducted a survey of 290 Korean immigrants in the New York–New Jersey area to examine consumption of Korean cultural products comprehensively. I used a quota sampling technique to select respondents roughly in proportion to the categories of Korean immigrants’ gender, age, education level, religion, and length of residence in the United States. The questionnaire
Introduction 13
included thirty-one mostly closed-ended questions. Consuming Korean cultural products included frequency of eating Korean food for dinner, frequency of shopping at Korean supermarkets compared to American ones, frequency of watching Korean TV programs and movies, favorite Korean-made music/dance programs on Korean TV channels or online streaming services, participating in Korean festivals, and participating in Korean transnational cultural events held in the local area and Korea. I present results of this comprehensive survey in various chapters of this book.
Organization of the Book This book consists of ten chapters, including the introductory and concluding chapters. Chapter 2 provides statistical and descriptive data on patterns of Koreans’ immigration to and settlement in Greater New York. It covers Korean ethnic enclaves and business districts in the Bayside-Flushing area in Queens and in four townships in Bergen County (Palisades Park, Fort Lee, Leonia, and Ridgefield) using statistics and maps. Also, it examines the Korean business districts in Manhattan. The presence of Korean immigrant enclaves has positive effects on Korean immigrants’ Korean cultural activities. Thus, data provided in chapter 2 are useful to discussions in substantive chapters focusing on particul ar Korean cultural genres. Chapter 3 provides definitions of transnational Korean cultural events that occur in Greater New York and Korean immigrants’ transnational cultural practices in the narrow and broad senses. It also discusses how to measure them. More significantly, this chapter analyzes Korean transnational cultural events that occurred in the Korean community in the area in 2001 and 2014. This is the key chapter to the book and will help readers to understand discussions of Korean transnational cultural events and transnational cultural practices in the ensuing chapters. Moreover, it w ill help researchers examine immigrants’ transnational cultural events and practices that occur in other immigrant communities. This book devotes two chapters to the Korean language. Chapter 4 examines in detail about 150 Korean weekend schools located in the New York area, focusing on their history, curricula, teachers, tuition, and extracurricular activities. It also introduces two major organizations that support Korean schools: the Northeast Chapter of the National Association for Korean Schools and the KEC, a government agency located at the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York. Chapter 5 examines the efforts of national Korean-language leaders to include the Korean language in the SAT II and to promote it in area public schools. It also highlights the extraordinary efforts of Korean-language teachers to attract students in public schools to their Korean-language classes. Chapter 6 focuses on Korean restaurants and supermarkets, the two major sources of Korean cuisine. It looks at the increase in the numbers of Korean restaurants, grocery stores, and supermarkets in different historical periods, especially in three major Korean ethnic business districts. The final section of the
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chapter examines in detail four Korean food festivals held in Greater New York in 2010. Chapter 7 examines major Korean cultural festivals held in Greater New York annually. It focuses on three major Korean cultural festivals: the Korean Parade and Festival held in Manhattan, the Korean Thanksgiving and Folklore Festival held in Queens, and the Lunar New Year Parade, co-organized by Korean and Chinese communities in Flushing. The final section of this chapter examines the successful Korean-Chinese coalition movement to make Lunar New Year a school holiday in New York City. Chapters 8 and 9 cover Korean music/dance performances, the most important genre of popular culture. Chapter 8 examines a small number of Korean immigrant music/dance artists’ performances for Korean and non-Korean events and the effort of some to teach younger Koreans traditional music/dance skills. I examine it partly by highlighting the extraordinary efforts and performing activities of two central figures and three other prominent figures. I also analyze local and transnational traditional Korean music/dance performances made in the New York area in 2019 based on articles published in two major Korean dailies. Chapter 9 examines Korean immigrants’ consumption of contemporary music and dance performances through transnational Korean TV programs historically and social networks more recently. It also analyzes local and transnational traditional Korean music/ dance performances in the New York area in 2019 using the same Korean dailies as the major data source.
2 • THE KORE AN COM MUNIT Y IN GRE ATER NEW YORK
The Korean community, with its fairly large population, is a necessary condition for Korean immigrants’ active cultural practices and the establishment of sufficient Korean-heritage schools and cultural institutions for the transmission of Korean culture to the younger generations. A large population is also critical for any Korean community’s ability to promote its culture to local residents. Moreover, Korean immigrants’ cultural practices are far more active and visible in Korean enclaves than elsewhere. Th ese facts indicate that we need to examine Korean population growth and settlement patterns in Greater New York. This chapter consists of four sections. The first section takes an overview of the growth of the Korean population in the area using immigration and census data. The second section examines the concentration of Korean immigrants in the borough of Queens and their establishment of Korean enclaves and business districts in the Flushing- Bayside area. The third section examines K-Town in Manhattan. The final section investigates the suburban movement of Korean immigrants and the establishment of Korean enclaves in Bergen County, New Jersey.
The Mass Migration of Koreans to the United States and the Growth of the Korean Population in Greater New York This section examines patterns of Korean immigration to the United States and the growth of the Korean population t here and in Greater New York. The Korean population in the United States was negligible before 1970—about 69,000 Koreans total (U.S. Bureau of Census 1972). The vast majority of pre-1965 Korean immigrants and their descendants w ere concentrated in western states, and especially in the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu. The history of Koreans’ immigration to the New York area goes back to the 1920s, when a small number of Korean students and independence movement leaders came to the area to attend college. But u ntil the early 1970s, Koreans had been almost 15
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table 2.1.
Proportion of Korean Immigrants Settled in New York and New Jersey, 1965–2019
Years
1965–1969 1970–1974 1975–1979 1980–1984 1985–1989 1990–1994 1995–1999 2000–2004 2005–2009 2010–2014 2015–2019
% Settled in New York and New Jersey
Number of Korean Immigrants
New York
New Jersey
17,869 92,745 148,645 162,178 175,803 112,215 75,579 89,871 125,878 109,486 94,258
— 12 9 10 11 14 12 9 10 14 13
— 4 3 4 4 6 8 7 8 5 5
sources: Immigration and Naturalization Service, Annual Reports, 1965–1978; U.S. Department of Justice, Statistical Yearbooks (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1979–2001); U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2002–2019).
invisible in Greater New York. A 1985 report by the Korean Association of New York indicates that t here were only approximately 400 Koreans in the New York area in 1960, a significant proportion of whom were students at Columbia University, New York University, and other area schools (Korean Association of Greater New York 1985: 54). The importance of Korean international students at Columbia University and other higher educational institutions for the Korean community in New York during the pre-1965 immigration period was demonstrated by two facts: (1) the Korean Church of New York, located across Columbia University, played the role of Korean community center before 1960; and (2) Korean student leaders established the Korean Association of New York in 1960 in Manhattan, with the student leaders elected as its presidents in the first three terms (Korean American Association of Greater New York 2010: 71–74). The current Korean community in Greater New York is largely a by-product of the 1965 Immigration Act, which abolished race-based discrimination in immigration to the United States. As table 2.1 shows, in the wake of the liberalized 1965 Immigration Act, the number of Korean immigrants legally admitted to the United States gradually increased in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By 1976, approximately 30,000 Koreans annually immigrated to the United States, and throughout the 1980s t here was an annual flow of over 30,000. In that decade, South Korea was the second- largest source country of Asian immigrants to the United States, following the Philippines. It is important to note that in the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. military involvement in South K orea brought an average of 3,000 Korean women to the United States each year as wives of U.S. servicemen (Min 2006a: 45).
The Korean Community in Greater New York 17
In addition to the close political and military ties between South K orea and the United States, four other factors contributed to the mass migration of Koreans to this country between 1965 and 1990. The low standard of living in K orea, closely linked to the lack of job opportunities for college graduates, was the major factor pushing Koreans to seek to move to the United States during that period. Political insecurity and the repression of freedoms by the military dictatorship between 1960 and 1987 was another push factor in those years. In addition, military and political tensions between South Korea and North Korea and fear of another war on the Korean Peninsula led many high-class Koreans to take refuge in the United States. Finally, extreme difficulties in giving their c hildren a college education in Korea due to excessive competition for admission and high tuition played an important role in the exodus of many Koreans to the United States (Min 2011). Table 2.1 indicates that the Korean immigration flow reached its peak in the late 1980s and began to decline in the early 1990s. Between 1992 and 2000, the annual number of Korean immigrants remained below 20,000. Economic conditions in South K orea were greatly improved in the early 1990s, with its per capita income rising from about $1,400 in 1980 to about $6,000 in 1990 and to approximately $10,000 in 2000 (Min 2006b: 15). Moreover, the improvement in South K orea’s political conditions through a popular election in 1987, ending the military dictatorship, was another factor that led most Korean international students to return to K orea after the completion of their graduate education in the United States. The annual number of Korean immigrants decreased significantly in the 1990s, dropping to 12,840 in 1999. But it began to increase beginning in 2000, and the annual number hovered around 20,000–25,000 in the latter half of the 2000s. Two major factors contributed to the slight increase in the number of Korean immigrants in the 2000s. One is the difficulty of college-educated p eople in finding a meaningful occupation in Korea, which pushed many of them to the United States for temporary work (through H-1B visas) or for graduate education. Another and perhaps more important factor b ehind the recent increase is the significant growth in the number of Koreans who initially arrived in the United States as temporary residents. In recent years, large numbers of Koreans have visited the United States for various purposes—to study, to obtain training and internships, to see family members and relatives, for temporary work, and for sightseeing. Many of them have changed their status to permanent residents. In particular, an exceptionally large number of Korean young p eople have come to the United States for further study. Korean international students in the 2009–2010 academic year numbered more than 72,000, the third-largest group next to Chinese and Indian students (Institute of International Education 2010). But the number has continued to decrease, dropping to about 40,000 in the most recent year (Institute of International Education 2018–2019) partly because Korean companies do not consider U.S.-educated employees as valuable as they did ten years ago. Pre-1965 Korean immigrants concentrated heavily in California, Hawaii, and other western states, but post-1965 Korean immigrants have dispersed much more widely
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table 2.2.
Growth of the Korean Population in the United States and the New York–New Jersey CMSA, 1970–2010
United States (A) New York–New Jersey CMSA (B) B as % of A
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
69,150 —
354,593 38,081
798,849 118,096
1,228,427 179,344
1,706,822 221,705
—
10.7
14.8
14.6
13.0
sources: U.S. Census Bureau 1972, 1983, 1993, 2002, 2013.
throughout the United States. In particular, a large population has settled in the New York–New Jersey metropolitan area. As shown in table 2.1, 9–12 percent of Korean immigrants legally admitted to the United States between 1970 and 1989 chose to reside in New York State. Another 3–4 percent chose New Jersey. By 2005–2009, 8 percent chose New Jersey while 10 percent selected New York (a decline from 14 percent in 1990–1994). These statistics reflect the increasing popularity of New Jersey’s Bergen County to Korean immigrants and their tendency to avoid New York City. The influx of Korean immigrants between 1965 and 2010 led to a steady but remarkable increase in the Korean American population in the United States and Greater New York. Table 2.2 shows that the Korean American population increased from less than 70,000 in 1970 to over 1.7 million in 2010, a twenty-five-fold increase during the forty-year period. The over 1.9 million Korean Americans in 2020 include approximately 380,000 multiracial Koreans (children of Korean-other intermarriages), which accounts for over 20 percent of all Korean Americans in 2020. Table 2.2 reveals that the Korean population in Greater New York increased from about 38,000 in 1980 to over 250,000 in 2020, constituting 13 percent of the Korean American population in the United States. As of 2020, Greater New York has the second-largest Korean population in the United States, next to the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Riverside area. Korean Americans in the Los Angeles area, numbering about 325,000, accounted for 22 percent of the Korean American population (Min and Kim 2013: 44). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Korean immigrants admitted on the basis of occupational preference (and their spouses and c hildren) constituted the vast majority of Korean immigrants to the area, as there were few Korean naturalized citizens who could sponsor their relatives through the family reunification pro cess. Two factors made possible the creation of a new Korean migration chain in New York in the 1970s. First, an expanding medical industry and the demand for health care professionals in the area attracted many Korean medical professionals (I. Kim 1981: 153–156; Liu et al. 1991). Korean and other Asian medical professionals filled vacancies in the peripheral specialties, such as family practice and radiology, and also in low-income minority neighborhoods that were not attractive to native-born white medical professionals (I. Kim 1981: 155–156; Rosenthal 1995).
The Korean Community in Greater New York 19
More than one-third of the 6,200 Korean medical professionals admitted to the United States between 1965 and 1975 settled in the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) (I. Kim 1981: 148–157). Second, many Korean international students who had studied at major East Coast universities moved to the New York area in the 1960s and early 1970s to find professional/managerial jobs or to start small businesses. They changed their l egal status to permanent residents in t hose years by marrying Korean nurses or through other mechanisms. In fact, most successful Korean business owners in New York today typically arrived three or four decades ago as international students to pursue their graduate education in the United States. Many started their businesses because their doctoral degree in the social sciences or humanities did not help them find prestigious, well-paying jobs. By the late 1970s, as Korean occupational immigrants and their spouses admitted in the late 1960s and early 1970s became naturalized citizens, they w ere able to sponsor their parents and siblings, who could enter as permanent residents. Thus, the earlier influx of Korean occupational and international student immigrants created an immigration chain that has perpetuated family-based migration of Koreans to the area. Korean immigrants in New York admitted on the basis of family reunification represent a more diverse cross-section of classes and occupations than the earlier professional and student immigrants. Still further changes in Korean immigrant patterns occurred as a result of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1990. The new immigration law raised the number of immigrants admitted on the basis of employment preferences, especially the number in specialty occupations (professional, technical, and managerial occupations). It made it easier for international students with a graduate education in the United States to change their status to permanent resident. In this way, the 1990 Immigration Act has helped to raise the class and occupational status of Korean immigrants, reversing the trend of the 1976–1989 period. Korean international students with college or graduate education in the United States have filled much of the immigration quota assigned to Korea.
The Korean Enclave in the Flushing-Bayside Area in Queens According to the 1990 U.S. Census, over 70 percent of Korean Americans in New York City were concentrated in Queens in 1990. Not only Korean immigrants, but also many other Asian and Hispanic immigrant groups, are highly concentrated in Queens, making it the most racially and ethnically diverse county in the United States (Min 2008a, 18). The concentration of Korean immigrants in Queens has moderated since 2000, but 64 percent of Korean immigrants in New York City still resided in Queens in 2010. Queens has attracted more immigrants than any other New York City borough since the enforcement of the 1965 Immigration Act. Large numbers of Chinese,
20 table 2.3.
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Population Changes in Queens Community Districts 7 and 11 by Race/Ethnicity, 1980–2019
a. Community District 7: Flushing, Murray Hill, and Whitestone PUMA; New York 1980 N
1990 %
N
2000 %
N
2010 %
N
2015–2019 %
N
%
Total 204,785 100.0 220,508 100.0 242,952 100.0 247,354 100.0 242,631 100.0 White 156,282 76.3 128,470 58.3 100,231 41.3 73,668 29.8 58,986 24.3 Black 9,580 4.7 9,348 4.2 6,874 2.8 5,512 2.2 4,623 1.9 Asian 18,222 8.9 48,765 22.1 87,450 36.0 122,094 49.4 130,623 53.8 Chinese 6,700 3.3 20,044 9.1 41,777 17.2 75,992 30.7 89,608 36.9 Korean 3,794 1.9 17,794 8.1 27,113 11.2 27,881 11.3 21,328 8.8 Indian 4,592 2.2 7,146 3.2 11,100 4.6 8,408 3.4 7,555 3.1 Others 3,136 1.5 3,781 1.7 7,460 3.1 9,813 4.0 12,132 5.0 Hispanic 20,045 9.8 33,130 15.0 40,976 16.9 41,164 16.6 43,179 17.8 All others 656 0.3 795 0.4 7,421 3.1 4,916 2.0 5,220 2.2 b. Community District 11: Bayside, Douglaston, and Little Neck PUMA; New York 1980 N
1990 %
N
2000 %
N
2010 %
N
2015–2019 %
N
%
Total 110,963 100.0 108,056 100.0 116,404 100.0 116,431 100.0 118,237 100.0 White 99,920 90.0 83,812 77.6 70,210 60.3 54,690 47.0 45,553 38.5 Black 2,385 2.1 2,216 2.1 2,289 2.0 2,400 2.1 3,155 2.7 Asian 4,406 4.0 14,502 13.4 30,804 26.5 45,777 39.3 53,270 45.1 Chinese 2,138 1.9 6,796 6.3 14,619 12.6 23,533 20.2 33,022 27.9 Korean 511 0.5 5,119 4.7 11,539 9.9 16,668 14.3 13,627 11.5 Indian 731 0.7 1,221 1.1 2,221 1.9 2,098 1.8 1,839 1.6 Others 1,026 0.9 1,366 1.3 2,425 2.1 3,478 3.0 4,782 4.0 Hispanic 4,161 3.7 7,341 6.8 10,357 8.9 11,676 10.0 13,876 11.7 All others 91 0.1 185 0.2 2,744 2.4 1,888 1.6 2,383 2.0 sources: New York City Department of City Planning, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 (compiled from https:// www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/index.page; The 2015–2019 American Community Surveys (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, U.S. Census Bureau (compiled from www.socialexplorer.com). note: Chinese include Taiwanese.
Indian, Columbian, Mexican, and other immigrants have established their enclaves in different neighborhoods in Queens. As shown in table 2.3, Asian Americans constituted the majority (54 percent) of the population in Queens Community District 7 encompassing Flushing, College Point, Whitestone, Bay Terrace, and Clearview, with white Americans comprising only 24 percent in 2015–2019. This district is the only area outside of the West Coast where Asian Americans make up the majority of the population. However, before Chinese and Koreans began to move to Flushing in the late 1970s, it was a predominantly white neighborhood with a small proportion of Blacks. According to census data, white, mostly middle-class Americans comprised 96 percent of the population of Community District 7 in 1970, with Blacks
The Korean Community in Greater New York 21
constituting only 3 percent (New York City and Zuccotti 1973). The establishment of many new neighborhoods in Long Island beginning in the early 1960s and the region’s financial crisis in the early 1970s pushed many white, middle-class families in Community District 7 to move to Long Island. According to my personal interviews with older Koreans in Queens, Flushing initially attracted them partly because it was much less crowded and offered more opportunities for businesses than other western Queens neighborhoods. The Korean informants and one of my Sociology Department’s colleagues, a longtime resident of Flushing, told me that there w ere many vacant signs on commercial buildings in downtown Flushing. As shown in t able 2.3, the proportion of white Americans t here decreased to 76 percent in 1980, with Asian Americans making up less than 10 percent of the population. Korean Americans, numbering about 3,800, comprised a smaller group than either Chinese or Indian immigrants in 1980. Both the Chinese and Korean populations increased rapidly in the 1980s, respectively numbering approximately 20,000 and 18,000 in 1990. Thus, it seems that Chinese and Korean immigrants had already established their enclaves in the Flushing area by 1990. In the next twenty-seven years (between 1990 and 2017), the Chinese population grew five and a half times, accounting for the majority (54 percent) of the district’s population in 2017. By contrast, the Korean population increased only moderately. Most recently, the Korean population decreased from 27,881 in 2010 to 21,328 in 2017. However, despite the numerical domination of the Chinese over Koreans in Flushing, the area is more important for Korean Americans than for Chinese Americans because of a much smaller Korean population size in the city. While important Chinese social service and empowerment organizations are located in Manhattan’s Chinatown, most major Korean ethnic organizations are located in Flushing. Major Korean ethnic organizations in Flushing include the Korean American Association of Queens, Korean Community Services (the largest Korean social service agency in Greater New York), the (Korean) YWCA, the Minkwon Center for Community Action, Korean American Civic Empowerment, the Korean American Family Counseling Service, and the Korean American Senior Citizens Society. Th ere are also approximately thirty Korean Protestant churches in Flushing alone. The largest Korean Catholic church is also located in Flushing. Of course, the most important aspect of the Flushing Korean enclave is a major Korean business district. Community District 7 is connected eastward to Community District 11, involving four neighborhoods in Eastern Queens. All four neighborhoods (Oakland Gardens, Bayside, Douglaston and Little Neck) have a more suburban flavor than downtown Flushing, which suffers from overcrowding and heavy traffic. Moreover, these neighborhoods have the best school district (District 26) in New York City. For these reasons, they have been popular destinations for Asian immigrants since the late 1980s. As shown in table 2.3, Asian Americans constituted 39 percent of the population in District 11 in 2010 and then 45 percent between 2015 and 2019. As in Community District 7, Chinese Americans make up the largest Asian group
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(n = 33,022 in 2015–2019) in Community District 11, with Korean Americans the next largest (n = 13,627 in 2015–2017). The proportion of white Americans in the district decreased from 90 percent in 1980 to 47 percent in 2010, and then further to 39 percent between 2015 and 2019. Asian Americans outnumber white Americans by a significant margin. Sharing not only cultural and physical characteristics but also neighborhoods, Korean and Chinese communities in the Flushing area have coordinated many cultural and political activities. For example, as will be discussed in more detail in chapter 5, the two communities have co-organized the Lunar New Year parade in downtown Flushing since the early 1980s. Both communities have also successfully coordinated the lobbying of local politicians to make the Lunar New Year a school holiday in New York City. Korean immigrants began to establish Korean businesses on Main Street in downtown Flushing beginning in the late 1970s. According to the Korean Business Directory in Flushing, published in 1983–1984 by the Association of Korean Merchants in Flushing, there were then about 125 Korean-owned stores in the area, with about 60 located on Main Street (Association of Korean Merchants in Flushing 1983–1984). Th ese businesses included clothing stores, retail stores, restaurants, produce and grocery stores, furniture stores, accounting firms, and medical offices. In the late 1980s, when Taiwanese and Hong Kong immigrants were actively developing their businesses on Main Street with the benefit of overseas capital, Korean immigrants gradually moved away from Main Street and began to develop businesses on Union Street, one long block east of Main Street (author interview with Jong H. Hong, 2012). By the early 1990s, Korean immigrants had developed Haninsanga (the Korean business district) on Union Street, extending about five blocks between Forty-First Street and Northern Boulevard. Since the early 1990s, the Korean business district has extended along Union Street northward up to Thirty-Second Avenue. Blocked from moving westward by the Chinese business district on Main Street, Korean immigrants have also extended the Korean business district for about eighty-five blocks (covering about two and a half miles) eastward along Northern Boulevard up to 220th Street in Bayside. Korean restaurants, markets, and other stores selling mainly Korean cultural products and services with Korean-language commercial signs are scattered on Northern Boulevard for eighty-five blocks eastward and dot Union Street for ten blocks between Forty-First and Thirty-Second avenues. Many Korean ethnic businesses have been established respectively on 149th Street, 162th Street, and Bell Boulevard from Northern Boulevard about five to eight blocks southward and northward. Since the Korean business district connects Flushing and Bayside along Northern Boulevard, I refer to it as the Flushing-Bayside Korean business district (Min 2008a: 40–41). Map 2.1 shows the Flushing-Bayside Korean business district, the largest Korean business district in New York. According to the 2019 Korea Daily Business Directory, published by Korea Daily, there are 123 Korean restaurants (including Korean-Chinese restaurants) in
map 2.1. The Korean business district in the Flushing-Bayside Area. (Map designed by Sejung Sage Yim.)
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Queens. Eighty-one p ercent of them (n = 105) are located in the Flushing-Bayside Korean business district. There are also seventeen Korean catering businesses (banchanjip or janchijip). Nine of the twenty Korean groceries and supermarkets in Queens are located in the combined business district. Almost all Korean bars, bakeries, and hair salons are also located there. Naturally, almost all (eighty-one) Korean herbal medicine shops and doctors’ offices are also located in the business district.
K-Town The proportion of Korean Americans in Manhattan has continued to increase from 8 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2000 and to 21 percent in 2010. Two major factors have contributed to the significant increase in the proportion of Korean Americans in Manhattan over the past three decades. First, many Korean international students from upper-middle-class families who attend college in the borough live in apartments in Manhattan. Second, many second-generation Korean Americans, including multiracial Koreans, who work for major corporations in Manhattan rent apartments there. As a result of the residence of many second-generation Korean adults there, many third-generation Korean c hildren live in Manhattan. Manhattan has no neighborhood where Koreans are residentially clustered, but there is an area where many Koreans are visible day and night and where many Korean stores with Korean-language signs are located. It is the area that was originally referred to as the Broadway Korean Business District (Min 1996: 39), which young p eople now commonly call K-Town. The district is a broad rectangle area covering Twenty-Third Street through Thirty-Eighth Street on Seventh through Fifth avenues ( J. Suh 2010: 167). There w ere approximately 400 Korean wholesalers and importers in the district according to my own research in 1992 (Min 1996: 39). They mostly sold Korean-and Asian-imported manufactured goods, such as wigs, clothing, bags, costume jewelry, and hair accessories. The heart of the district is the intersection between Broadway and Thirty-Second Street. In October 1995, the New York City government named the district Korea town and posted an official sign, Korean Way, at the intersection. The close relationship between the Broadway Korean Businessmen’s Association and the New York City Police Department seems to have inspired the city government to establish the “Korean Way” sign ( J. Suh 2010, 167). Korean immigrants began to develop the business district in the late 1960s with wholesale stores selling wigs, leather bags, hats, clothing, costume jewelry, and toys (Suh 2010: 165). Korean immigrants initially imported these manufactured goods mainly from South Korea, taking advantage of their home country’s export-oriented economy. However, as w holesale prices gradually rose in South Korea, they increasingly turned to China, India, and even South Americ a for supplies. The import and wholesale companies distributed Korean-and Asian-imported
The Korean Community in Greater New York 25
manufactured goods to Korean retailers not only in New York but also in other parts of the Northeast, as well as to Latino retailers. As many Korean import and wholesale companies became established in the district, Korean restaurants, bakeries, travel agencies, accounting firms, and law firms, mainly serving Korean wholesalers, mushroomed in the business district (Min 2008a: 41). In recent decades, the number of Korean-owned import and w holesale companies located t here has shrunk, from about 400 in 1992 to 250 in 2005 (Min 2008a: 40–41), and to 150 as of 2011. Intense competition with Chinese-and Indian- owned wholesale stores and rent hikes caused by urban renovations forced many Korean wholesale stores in the area to close and others to move to New Jersey. Chinese-and Indian-owned import and w holesale companies now outnumber Korean-owned companies in the district by a large margin (42). Thus, the dwindling presence of Korean-owned import and wholesale businesses no longer justifies calling the area the Broadway Korean Business District. However, the number of Korean restaurants and other culturally based businesses has increased exponentially over the past fifteen years or so; people have called the district K-Town since the late 2000s. Many businesses with Korean- language signs are heavily concentrated on the two blocks of Thirty-Second Street between Broadway and Madison Avenue. More Korean businesses have been recently established on Thirty-Third Street through Thirty-Sixth Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. According to the 2019 Korean Daily Business Directory, published by Korea Daily, sixty of eighty-six (70 percent) Korean restaurants in Manhattan were located in K-Town, as were four of the eleven Korean bakeries. K-Town (see map 2.2) attracts many non-Korean youngsters as well as Korean American youngsters. Many Koreans visit K-Town to meet their friends and relatives. Especially during evenings, large numbers of younger Koreans who work in Manhattan and international students who may or may not live in Manhattan visit K-Town for social gatherings in Korean restaurants and other entertainment places. For young Koreans, K-Town has become the symbolic capital of Greater New York. Many other young non-Korean groups visit K-Town at night because they too like Korean food and the youthful nightlife. Most Korean restaurants on Thirty-Second Street are full between 7:00 and 8:30 p.m. e very night, mostly with non-Korean young p eople—professionals and managers working for corporations in Manhattan, undergraduate and graduate students, and tourists. As night progresses, the proportion of young customers continues to increase. By around 10:00 p.m., about 90 percent of the customers in Korean bakeries, bars, and frozen yogurt shops in K-Town are young p eople, and approximately three-fourths are non-Korean customers. K-Town is significant not only for reinforcing or enhancing younger Koreans’ ethnicity, but also for publicizing Korean culture to New Yorkers. U ntil about twenty years ago, Korean food was relatively unknown to New Yorkers. But many young residents in Manhattan today are familiar with Korean cuisine through their visits to local restaurants.
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map 2.2. K-Town in Manhattan. (Map designed by Sejung Sage Yim.)
K-Town may be the only ethnic business district in the United States where young people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds visit every night.
Korean Suburban Enclaves in Bergen County, New Jersey, 1990–2020 One of the most conspicuous changes in Korean Americans’ settlement patterns in Greater New York that occurred between 1990 and 2020 was the suburbanization movement from Korean enclaves in Queens to suburban counties and an expansion of Korean business districts in Korean enclaves in Bergen County. The suburbanization of Korean Americans is a national trend we can see in the Los Angeles area and in other metropolitan areas as well (Min and Kim 2013: 48). About 60 percent of Korean Americans in Greater New York resided in the five boroughs of New York City in 1990, with the rest settled in suburban counties, especially in Nassau County on Long Island. However, census data indicate that the Korean American population in New York City experienced a small increase (29 percent) between 1990 and 2000, compared to a 66 percent increase in suburban areas. The level of the suburban movement of Korean Americans was much greater in the next decade. The Korean American population in New York City increased only by 14 percent between 2000 and 2010, compared to as much as 48 percent in suburban counties (Min and Kim 2013: 51).
The Korean Community in Greater New York 27
Several counties with a high concentration of the Korean population achieved radical growth in the 1990s and/or 2000s. The Korean population in Bergen County, New Jersey, recorded a remarkable growth rate of 130 percent in the 1990s and continued to increase by 57 percent in the next decade (Min and Kim 2013: 54). The Korean population in Nassau County increased from about 5,700 in 1990 to over 14,000 in 2010 (Min and Kim 2013). The Korean population in Rockland County witnessed a very high (64 percent) growth rate between 1990 and 2000 but achieved only modest (17 percent) growth in the next decade. Many older Korean immigrants have moved from New York City to suburban counties for better public schools and suburban amenities (Oh 2007). Once Korean residential enclaves with Korean business districts w ere established in Fort Lee and Palisades Park in Bergen County in the mid-1990s, these neighborhoods further attracted more Koreans from enclaves in Queens b ecause of the availability of many Korean restaurants and other businesses. In short, suburban Korean enclaves in Bergen County combined both urban amenities and ethnic conveniences. Jongmoo Cho, who had lived in Jackson Heights (Queens), moved to Palisades Park in 1991. When I asked him why he had moved to Bergen County, his response echoed the sentiments of many other Korean immigrants who had followed a similar path: ere are several reasons why I moved to Palisades Park in the early 1990s. Jackson Th Heights is too crowded with new immigrants and has a high crime rate. In contrast, Palisades Park or Fort Lee in Bergen County is more like a suburban neighborhood, with no crime and no fast-food stores, like McDonald’s. My friend said to me, “When your car stops on the street in Palisades Park, you can leave it for one day without locking it.” But in Jackson Heights, many people lost their cars, even if they locked them. Also, public schools are much better in Bergen County than in Queens. (author interview, 2012)
Many Korean immigrants with businesses in Manhattan chose Fort Lee and other neighborhoods in Bergen County because of the convenience of train and/ or bus transportation. Also, overcrowding and escalating commercial rents led many Manhattan-based branches of Korean firms and w holesale stores to move to Bergen County beginning in the 1990s. In a natural progression, Korean employees and business o wners who found themselves working in New Jersey moved there from Queens to be near their workplaces. Korean immigrants have established two suburban enclaves in Fort Lee and Palisades Park. As shown in table 2.4, census data indicate that there w ere only 388 Korean Americans in Fort Lee in 1980. But the number increased to 8,318 in 2010, accounting for 24 percent of the population in the township. There were even a smaller number of Korean Americans (n = 102) in Palisades Park in 1980, but the number rapidly increased to 10,115 in 2010.
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table 2.4.
Population Changes in Fort Lee and Palisades Park by Race/Ethnicity, 1990–2019
a. Fort Lee 1990
Total White Black Asian Chinese Japanese Indian Korean Others Hispanic All others
2000
2010
2015–2019
n
%
n
%
n
%
n
%
31,997 23,361 383 6,450 844 2,764 217 2,468 157 1,779 24
100.0 73.0 1.2 20.2 2.6 8.6 0.7 7.7 0.5 5.6 0.1
35,461 20,350 555 11,121 1,988 2,091 509 5,978 555 2,791 644
100.0 57.4 1.6 31.4 5.6 5.9 1.4 16.9 1.6 7.9 1.8
35,345 16,514 805 13,552 2,643 1,302 558 8,318 731 3,877 597
100.0 46.7 2.3 38.3 7.5 3.7 1.6 23.5 2.1 11.0 1.7
37,430 15,250 705 15,865 3,580 808 977 9,226 1,274 4,914 696
100.0 40.7 1.9 42.4 9.6 2.2 2.6 24.6 3.4 13.1 1.9
b. Palisades Park 1990
Total White Black Asian Chinese Japanese Indian Korean Others Hispanic All others
2000
2010
2015–2019
n
%
n
%
n
%
n
%
14,536 9,739 208 2,866 241 722 154 1,661 88 1,672 51
100.0 67.0 1.4 19.7 1.7 5.0 1.1 11.4 0.6 11.5 0.4
17,073 6,668 176 7,010 409 189 172 6,065 175 2,813 406
100.0 39.1 1.0 41.1 2.4 1.1 1.0 35.5 1.0 16.5 2.4
19,622 4,213 283 11,312 687 115 177 10,115 218 3,575 239
100.0 21.5 1.4 57.6 3.5 0.6 0.9 51.5 1.1 18.2 1.2
20,604 3,724 167 11,990 1,018 117 488 10,154 213 4,453 270
100.0 18.1 0.8 58.2 4.9 0.6 2.4 49.3 1.0 21.6 1.3
sources: The 1990, 2000, and 2010 U.S. Decennial Censuses and the 2015–2019 American Community Surveys (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, U.S. Census Bureau (compiled from www.s ocialexplorer.com). note: Chinese includes Taiwanese.
These statistics suggest that the Korean enclave in Fort Lee began to develop in the late 1980s, earlier than its counterpart in Palisades Park. We can also see that the Korean population in Palisades Park grew faster than that in Fort Lee in the next two decades. Th ese statistics also indicate that the trend of Korean immigrants’ influx to Bergen County came to an end roughly in 2010. As noted in table 2.4, the proportion of Korean immigrants settled in New Jersey has decreased from 8 percent in 2005–2009 to 5 percent in 2010–2019, whereas t hose who settled in New York increased from 10 percent to 13.5 percent during the same period.
The Korean Community in Greater New York 29
In addition to these two townships in Bergen County, we can find that large numbers of Korean immigrants had already moved to two other small townships, Ridgefield and Leonia, in Bergen County in 2010. By virtue of the small populations of these municipalities, Korean Americans comprised 27 percent of the population of Ridgefield and 26 percent of Leonia in 2010. Koreans are very visi ble in other Bergen County neighborhoods, such as Cluster, Englewood Cliffs, Harrington Parks, Ridgewood, and Tenafly. When the 2020 U.S. Census data becomes available, we may find that Korean Americans constitute 25 percent or more of the population in seven or eight townships in Bergen County. As a result of their demographic dominance, Korean Americans have major advantages in their political empowerment and cultural promotion in t hese Bergen County municipalities. They have taken advantage of Korean immigrants’ concentration for their community empowerment. Th ere are currently one or two Korean elected city council members and two or more school board members in each of the seven Bergen County municipalities, with a Korean American mayor in Palisades Park and Ridgefield. Also, in 2021, a second-generation Korean woman (Michelle Park) was elected as a New Jersey State Assembly member, representing a district combining four municipalities in Bergen County. As w ill be shown in chapter 5, Korean immigrant leaders have also taken demographic advantages in promoting the Korean language at Bergen public schools. They have also succeeded in getting three Korean “comfort w omen” memorials erected in the county (Min 2021a: 320).1 According to the Korean Business Directory, published in 1989 by Korean News, Inc. (currently the K orea Times New York, Inc.), there were two Korean restaurants and a Korean grocery store in Fort Lee. In addition, I have found two Korean nail salons and eleven Korean real estate offices. These data suggest that Korean immigrants began to develop a business district there at the end of the 1980s. The fact that there w ere already eleven Korean real estate agencies there suggests that Fort Lee had been recognized as a popular place of Korean residence already at the end of the 1980s. The same Korean directory shows that t here was only one Korean restaurant, one Korean grocery store, and one Korean real estate agency in Palisades Park. Data suggest that a Korean business district began to develop in Palisades Park a little later than in Fort Lee. The 2019 Korean Daily’s Korean Business Directory indicates that sixty of ninety- one Korean and Korean Chinese restaurants in Bergen County were concentrated in the Fort Lee and Palisades Park Korean business directs. Also, eight of fourteen Korean bakeries w ere located in the two Korean business districts. The level of concentration of these two key enclave businesses in the two Korean business districts is lower than in the Flushing-Bayside Korean business district. This difference is due mainly to the fact that Korean immigrants are also highly concentrated in other townships in Bergen County. Map 2.3 shows the Korean business district in Palisades Park, a suburban Korean enclave in Greater New York.
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map 2.3. The Korean business district in Palisades Park. (Map designed by Sejung Sage Yim.)
Summary and Concluding Remarks A small number of Koreans w ere settled in New York City in the first half of the twentieth c entury. However, the New York–New Jersey area has become the second- largest Korean population center in the United States. The vast majority of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans in Greater New York are post-1965 immigrants and their descendants. Korean immigrants in New York City had been highly concentrated in Queens by 1990, with the Flushing and Bayside Community Districts having become the major Korean enclaves. However, Korean immigrants in Queens began to move to suburban counties, including Bergen County in New Jersey and Nassau County in Long Island, around 1990. In particular, several townships in Bergen County have attracted many older Korean immigrants from Queens, new immigrants from Korea, and even Korean temporary residents. As a result, Palisades Park, Fort Lee, Leonia, Ridgefield, and other townships in Bergen County have become very important Korean enclaves. By virtue of the much smaller population sizes of these townships, Korean Americans t here have been far more successful in electoral politics and Korean cultural impacts than in Flushing and Bayside. Korean immigrants in Greater New York have established three ethnic business districts, the first in Flushing-Bayside, the second in Fort Lee–Palisades Park, and the third in K-Town. Large numbers of Korean restaurants, supermarkets, bakeries,
The Korean Community in Greater New York 31
and other businesses serving mainly Korean customers with related cultural products have been established in these districts. The number of Korean enclave businesses has continued to increase since 1990, while Korean-owned retail businesses in minority neighborhoods have continued to decline. As w ill be shown in later chapters, these Korean ethnic business districts have become the centers of Korean cultural festivals, with restaurants and other ethnic enclave businesses with ethnic signs becoming the mechanisms of preserving and promoting ethnic culture.
3 • TR ANSNATIONAL CULTUR AL EVENTS HELD IN THE KORE AN COM MUNIT Y IN 2001 AND 2014
As indicated in chapter 1, immigrants’ transnational ties to their homeland have become one of the popular topics in the field of immigration studies. Several books and numerous articles focusing on immigrants’ and their children’s transnational linkages have been published. The main reason that immigration scholars have paid great attention to transnational theory is that immigrants’ transnational linkages to their homelands have a strong effect on their lives as immigrants in host societies. However, most transnational studies have examined the economic and political forms of transnationalism and neglected to examine cultural transnationalism. While sociologists and political scientists have primarily examined Latino and Caribbean immigrants’ economic and political transnationalism, researchers in education and anthropology have tended to focus on transnational social ties (family and kin ties) of Asian immigrants, particularly Asian geese families in North America, using qualitative data.1 However, I have found only one article that focuses on immigrant cultural transnationalism (Itzigsohn and Saucedo 2002). Survey studies show that only small proportions of immigrants engage in political and entrepreneurial transnational practices (Portes 2001; Portes et al. 2002) and that immigrants’ political and economic transnational practices are highly associated with greater socioeconomic backgrounds (Portes 2001: 189). However, immigrants’ participation in local transnational music and dance per formances and food festivals is common regardless of their socioeconomic background. Considering the prevalence of immigrants’ access to different genres of home-country culture and its impact on their cultural lives and ethnic identity, conducting research on cultural transnationalism is very important. This chapter bridges the gap in research on immigrants’ transnational linkages by systematically examining Korean organizational transnational cultural events 32
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 33
using quantitative and qualitative data. I use the term “organizational” to indicate events organized by groups rather than individuals. In this book, I define Korean organizational transnational cultural events in two ways: (1) Korean cultural events held in the New York area in which one or more cultural specialists from K orea participate in performances, exhibitions, lectures, and so on, and (2) cultural programs held in Korea in which Korean immigrants and/or their c hildren participate. The former type of transnational cultural events involves the cross-border activities of cultural specialists from Korea to the United States, while the latter involves Korean immigrants’ and Korean Americans’ visits to Korea to participate in transnational cultural programs. When Korean immigrants and their c hildren attend these transnational cultural events, they engage in a form of transnational cultural practice. Immigrants and their c hildren can engage in transnational cultural practices individually by visiting Korea for the purpose of g oing on tours to cultural and historical sites. However, this involves expending a lot of effort and money, and traveling a very long distance. In most cases, Korean immigrants and their Korean American children take the more convenient route and engage in transnational cultural practices by attending transnational cultural events held in their local immigrant community. For this reason, analyzing Korean transnational cultural events organized in a local Korean community in the United States is more important than analyzing their attendance at them. Previous studies have shown that the children of immigrants have experienced a radical reduction in their active linkages to their homeland through visits (Kasinitz et al. 2008; Levitt and Waters 2002). But this study suggests that they are likely to maintain a fairly high level of cultural transnationalism by attending transnational cultural events held in the local area and watching cultural programs made in the home country through transnational ethnic media and social network services (SNS). In addition, this chapter has two additional objectives in connection with cultural transnationalism to serve as a foundation for future research. First, it conceptualizes diff erent forms of immigrants’ and their children’s cultural transnationalism. Second, it shows how we can measure different forms of cultural transnationalism using quantitative data. To show the prevalence of cultural transnationalism and the contributing factors, it is important to make a conceptual clarification of differ ent types of cultural transnationalism and to empirically measure them (Portes et al. 1999, 2002). My discussion of different genres of cultural transnationalism and their measurements in this chapter will be helpful to researchers interested in immigrants’ cultural transnationalism. All other forms of immigrants’ active transnational practices—whether social, economic, religious, or medical—are contingent upon their frequent visits to the homeland. That is why other forms of active transnational practices are limited to a small number of high-class immigrants (Portes et al. 2002: 293). In addition, since members of the U.S.-born second generation are less prone to make frequent visits to their ancestral homeland regardless of class status (Levitt and
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aters 2002), they are also less inclined to sustain active transnational linkages to W the motherland than their immigrant parents. However, immigrants and even many of their children can frequently participate in transnational cultural events held in host countries featuring famous singers, dancers, and other cultural agents from the home country. Moreover, they can regularly watch music/dance perfor mances and dramas made in the homeland through transnational TV programs, digital streaming, and SNS, which we can define as transnational cultural practices in their broad sense. This chapter makes an important contribution to transnational studies not only by providing a case study of transnational cultural events held in a particular immigrant community in two given years but also by showing how to conceptualize and measure different types of transnational cultural events and immigrant transnational cultural practices.
The Conceptual Clarification of Transnational Cultural Events Before discussing the conceptualization of cultural transnationalism, I need to make a distinction between the definition of transnationalism as a global phenomenon in economy, politics, social movements, culture, and so on, and its definition as immigrant transnationalism used by scholars of immigrants. The globalization of culture or “cultural diffusion” has long been studied by cultural anthropologists (Tomlinson 1999). However, this chapter is not concerned with the broad definition of cultural transnationalism (the globalization of culture). It is focused on immigrant cultural transnationalism, which refers to immigrants’ and their children’s transnational cultural linkages to their homeland. As noted in chapter 1, in the interest of globalizing Korean culture, Korean government agencies have made great efforts to promote Korean culture to New York, other major U.S. cities, and other countries. However, the efforts of Korean government agencies to promote Korean culture to New Yorkers are significant and fit into the definition of immigrant cultural transnationalism in this chapter because of the intermediary role of Korean immigrants, which results in a greater and more direct impact on their own and their children’s cultural lives.
A Review of Previous Studies Regarding Typology of Transnationalism and Discussion of Cultural Transnationalism Researchers of immigrant transnationalism have not only neglected to study immigrant cultural transnationalism; they have not even clarified its concept. Portes and his colleagues (Itzigsohn and Saucedo 2002; Portes 2001; Portes et al. 1999, 2002), who have greatly influenced sociological studies of immigrant transnationalism, have tended to put social and cultural transnational ties together into one form: sociocultural transnationalism. Many other researchers have followed
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 35
their classification of transnational practices into three major categories: sociocultural, economic, and political. Portes and his associates have used joining a hometown association, the “election of beauty queens and selection of performing groups in immigrant communities to take part in a hometown festival” as typical examples of sociocultural transnationalism. In their article focusing on Dominican immigrants’ sociocultural transnational activities, Itzigsohn and Saucedo (2002: 776) included “has participated in a hometown association,” “has sent money for projects in his/her hometown,” and “has participated in charity organ izations linked to his/her country of origin” as typical examples of immigrants’ sociocultural practices. Portes and his associates made an important contribution to sociological studies of immigrant transnationalism by making a typology and measuring three different types of immigrant transnationalism using survey data. But I critically review their studies here only for a more acceptable conceptualization of cultural immigrant transnationalism. I consider mere participation in these hometown associations without physically crossing borders as ethnic practices rather than immigrant transnational practices in the narrow sense. If a Dominican immigrant participates in a fundrais ing event to help their hometown, with the mayor actually present at the event, I would consider it as an immigrant transnational practice in the narrow sense. Moreover, participating in hometown associations, like participating in other ethnic organizations, reflects more of an ethnic social practice rather than an ethnic cultural practice. If participating in a donation campaign for a hometown involves more than merely transnational social ties, it would be more accurate to describe it as “civic-societal transnationalism”—a term that Itzigsohn and his associates used in one of their articles (Itzigsohn et al. 1999)—rather than as “sociocultural transnationalism.” In studies of immigrant transnational ties, Levitt and Jaworsky (2007: 139–140) and Faist (2000) discussed domains of immigrant transnational ties and devoted two or three pages to cultural transnational ties. Both articles emphasized “the mixing of cultural traits from the homeland and the culture of residence,” “hybridization,” and transformations of homeland cultural components as the central aspect of transnational cultural practices. Other scholars who take the social- constructionist view of culture have tended to emphasize hybridization, negotiations, and re-creations in discussing second-generation Americans’ perceptions of the homeland and its culture (Louie 2002; Ong 1999). The above-mentioned scholars have used a very broad definition of cultural transnationalism that includes immigrants’ and their c hildren’s emotional or symbolic ties to the homeland. Since the cross-border flow of culture, unlike transnational social and economic activities, involves transformations, re-creations, and negotiations of ideas, consciousness, and value, it is understandable that they emphasized hybridization as a central component of the second generation’s transnational cultural practices. But I find two major problems in their conceptual and theoretical discussions of cultural transnationalism. One problem is that what
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they consider as transnational cultural practices, with the exception of Louie’s second-generation Chinese young adults’ homeland tours (2002), are ethnic cultural rather than transnational cultural practices. The other main problem I find with their conceptualization of second- generation cultural transnationalism is that hybridity and transformations may not be the central aspects of second-generation cultural transnationalism. Without a doubt, second-generation Americans have transformed their homeland cultures in varying degrees. However, by virtue of technological advances in air transportation, contemporary immigrants can enjoy transnational performances and exhibitions because cultural specialists from the homeland can travel more easily to immigrants’ host cites of residence. Moreover, immigrants and even their children have access to music performances and TV dramas produced in the homeland in their original form in real time through ethnic media and the internet every day. Some second-generation Koreans in New York participated in auditions for K-pop star contests held in K orea while their parents and friends w ere watching their auditions in New York. In a major study of the second generation in the United States, Kasinitz and his associates (2002) demonstrated that “African American hip hop has been fused with East Indian or West Indian influences into new musical forms” in New York City. Thus, cultural hybridization occurs in the second generation and after, as they interact with members of other ethnic and racial minority groups. Several second-generation Koreans in New York City have established fusion restaurants, combining Korean with French, Mexican, and other cuisines. However, performers in K orea have already combined Korean folk songs with ballet or jazz to make them more palatable to the United States and other Western countries. For example, as w ill be shown shortly, a performing group in Korea mixed arirang, a Korean folk song considered the unofficial national anthem of K orea, with jazz and performed it in New York City in 2014. In fact, K-pop (Korean pop) is a hybrid mixture of Western sounds, including rap and R&B, with Korean lyrics, which is one of the reasons it is very popular across the world (Lie 2015). Since hybridization is neither limited nor central to second-generation Americans’ transnational cultural practices, researchers need to document their cultural hybridizations, such as the second-generation Koreans’ operation of fusion restaurants, with data. Conceptualizing Immigrants’ Cultural Transnationalism Based on my critical reviews of discussions of cultural transnational practices above, I have conceptualized organizational transnational cultural events or programs in the narrow meaning by paying special attention to the following three criteria: (1) they should be l imited only to r eally cultural events, not philanthropic events for a hometown and other related events; (2) they should include only transnational cultural events involving physical transborder activities and should not include merely ethnic events; and (3) they should include all or most genres of cultural events, including performing arts, fine arts, cuisine, food festivals, and
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 37
language and literature, to have a comprehensive definition of transnational cultural events and thus to examine the salience of cultural transnational practices for immigrant life. There are two main types of transnational cultural events or programs that immigrants and their children can attend or participate in. One type consists of events that ethnic or other organizations in an immigrant community organize by inviting cultural specialists from their home country. Music and dance perfor mances by singers and dancers and exhibitions of paintings by painters from the home country are two typical examples of organizational transnational cultural events that frequently occur in the immigrant community. When individual immigrants attend these performances or exhibitions, they engage in transnational cultural practices at the individual level. Although ethnic and nonethnic organizations in an immigrant community organize most of these types of transnational cultural events, it is also common for government agencies and cultural organizations in the home country to initiate t hese transnational cultural events to promote their cultural traditions to people in their host cities. Transnational economic activities usually involve movement from the settlement country to the home country, such as sending remittances to and running businesses in their home country. In contrast, in most cases transnational cultural activities move in the other direction, from the home country to the settlement country (Portes et al. 1999). Transnational cultural events usually occur in an immigrant community when cultural specialists from the home country visit the host city for performances, art exhibitions, or lectures. Immigrants and their children can participate in these transnational cultural events in the immigrant community without visiting their homeland. However, there are also many transnational cultural events that occur in the homeland and in which immigrants and their c hildren have the opportunity to participate. Government agencies, cultural organizations, and universities in the home country have organized a number of cultural programs for their overseas compatriots, especially to provide heritage education for the children of their emigrants during summer breaks from school. When cultural organizations in the home country, such as Korean literary, performing arts, fine arts, and calligraphy associations, organize annual competitions for literary and artistic awards, they usually prepare special categories of awards for their overseas compatriots. Not all transnational cultural events held in the home country are organized by homeland government agencies and cultural organizations. Some of the events are organized by ethnic organizations in an immigrant community. For example, as will be discussed later, t here are several Korean c hildren’s roots education organizations in the Korean community in Greater New York. These organizations have established heritage education programs to help groups of younger-generation Koreans visit K orea for heritage education. Each of these organizations selects a few dozen children or adolescents from the Korean community in the area each year and takes them to K orea for heritage education over the summer.
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I have summarized two types of transnational cultural events/programs. I have used the term “organizational transnational cultural events” because the hosting organizations in the U.S. immigrant community or in the home country organize the events. When Korean immigrants and their children attend these cultural transnational events, their attendance constitutes an individual cultural transnational activity. I consider the direct participation of immigrants and their children in transnational cultural events organized in the local immigrant community or in the homeland as the narrow definition of individual transnational cultural practices (activities). Korean immigrants and their children can also take tours to famous cultural and historical sites in Korea e ither individually or with some help from their relatives or friends in Korea. Th ese cultural tours should be also considered as individual transnational cultural practices in the narrow definition of the concept. Most Korean immigrants and a large proportion of younger-generation Korean Americans also watch Korean music and dance performances and Korean dramas through transnational Korea media or digital programs regularly. I define their indirect consumption of the homeland media’s cultural programs through ethnic media or online digital programs as the broad definition of immigrant cultural transnational practices. In the 1980s and 1990s, Korean immigrants mostly watched Korean movies on videotapes, but since the early 2000s, they have been able to watch Korean movies in select movie theaters in the settlement area. I suggest that Korean Americans watching Korean movies in the area should also be included in a broad definition of Korean transnational cultural activities. Measurement of Cultural Transnationalism As summarized above, conceptualizing cultural transnationalism is somewhat complicated, partly because of the presence of two different forms of organizational transnational cultural events and partly b ecause of nonorganizational individual transnational cultural tours to the homeland. However, measuring these different forms of cultural transnationalism is less complicated than conceptualizing them. First of all, we can measure the transnational cultural events that occurred in a major immigrant community and in the home country in a particular year using a content analysis of articles published in local Korean daily newspapers. Such papers cover a predominant majority of Korean transnational cultural events held in the area and in K orea. However, since they are likely to slightly underestimate the number of transnational cultural events, we can supplement this method with personal interviews with staff members of some important cultural and other major ethnic organizations in a major immigrant community. However, personal interviews alone cannot capture even most transnational cultural events b ecause the events are initiated and organized by different groups in both places, including cultural entrepreneurs. Readers may raise the question of how effectively ethnic media cover transnational cultural events that occurred in a major immigrant community or in the
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 39
home country in a particular year. Based on my research experiences, I know that two or three Korean-language dailies in Greater New York cover a predominant majority of Korean transnational cultural events that occur in the local area and in the homeland. Hosting organizations of such cultural events usually send photos of given events with their contents to the dailies to publicize their transnational cultural activities. Many readers may assume that local Korean ethnic newspapers can cover transnational cultural events that occur in the local area more accurately than those that take place in Korea. However, the vast majority of Korean transnational cultural events held in K orea are related either to younger-generation Korean Americans’ heritage education or to literary and other cultural award ceremonies for Korean immigrants from literary organizations or government agencies in Korea. As such, the host organizations in Korea have widely publicized these cultural events in U.S. Korean communities through ethnic daily newspapers to get as many participants as possible from major Korean communities. As a result, these types of events have been effectively covered by Korean ethnic newspapers published or distributed in the United States. Measuring transnational cultural events may be impossible for Asian Indian and Filipino ethnic communities, which do not have dailies covering these transnational cultural events. But Chinese and other ethnic communities, such as Dominicans, Jamaicans, and Mexicans, have their own ethnic dailies, and thus scholars can conduct research on their communities’ transnational cultural events. Measuring immigrants’ participation in transnational cultural events is easier than measuring organizational transnational cultural events. We can measure both the narrow and the broad definitions of transnational cultural practices in one survey. To examine their participation in transnational cultural events, we can ask respondents if they participated in different types of transnational cultural events held in the local New York area or in their home county last year and/or over the past five years. We can also include two or three questions to measure their nonorganizational individual transnational cultural practices, asking them how many times they took tours to cultural and historical sites in K orea over the past five years or so. We can conduct a survey of younger-generation Americans’ individual transnational cultural practices by asking similar questions. To measure the broad meaning of their transnational cultural practices, we can ask how often they watch Korean dance and m usic performances and Korean dramas through the local Korean media, SNS, and the internet. I have outlined how to measure two types of organizational transnational cultural events and three different types of individual immigrants’ and their children’s cultural transnational practices. But most research of the second generation’s cultural transnationalism has examined the experiences of the second generation’s heritage tours to the homeland using qualitative research rather than simply mea suring the frequency and duration of their tours using survey research (H. Lee 2013; Louie 2002; Min and Kim 1999; S. C. Suh 2020). Th ese qualitative studies have emphasized the big gap between the homeland government’s presentations
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of its history and culture and the second-generation participants’ reactions to them (H. Lee 2013; Louie 2002; Min and Kim 1999). In order to understand the quality of their experiences of heritage tours and a possible negative effect on their ethnic identity, we need these qualitative studies.
Korean Transnational Cultural Events Held in Greater New York In analyzing Korean immigrants’ transnational cultural events, I consider the following factors. First, I have classified transnational cultural events into five cultural genres: (1) Korean performing arts (music, dance, and movies); (2) Korean fine arts, including painting, calligraphy, ceramic arts, photography, and fashion; (3) Korean food-related events and food festivals; (4) Korean literature and language; and (5) others. I discuss transnational cultural events separately for differ ent cultural genres in separate subsections. In analyzing newspaper articles, I have also paid special attention to particular Korean organizations that have organized and/or sponsored transnational cultural events. In addition, I discuss the magnitude of the impact of each genre of cultural events in terms of the number of people who participate. Newspaper articles usually report how many people participated in different cultural events. Finally, and most importantly, in each section I pay special attention to changes between the two time periods in the total number and genres of transnational cultural events. Transnational m usic and dance performances as components of popular culture attracted much larger audiences than exhibitions of paintings or lectures on Korean literature. For this reason, counting the number of all kinds of events with equal weight cannot accurately measure the magnitude of transnational cultural events. Nevertheless, I have included different genres of Korean culture for a comprehensive examination of Korean transnational cultural events. When we measure Korean immigrants’ transnational cultural practices comprehensively, we have to ask several different questions related to different types of transnational cultural events to gauge the salience of cultural transnationalism among them. When analyzing data, I have discussed the difference in the size of attendees and the differential impact between popular cultural events and high-class cultural events. Total Number of Transnational Cultural Events Table 3.1 indicates that 103 Korean transnational cultural events were organized in the area in 2014. This means that there was about one event e very three or four days. Korean immigrants’ transnational cultural events are determined partly by the population size of the local Korean community and the convenience of air travel from the host city to the home country. The New York Korean community is the second-largest Korean community in the United States, next to Southern California, with about 240,000 Korean Americans in 2014. Korean Airlines and Asiana Airlines have provided direct flights from New York to Seoul for many
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 41
table 3.1.
Transnational Korean Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community in Greater New York, 2001 and 2014 Genre
Year
2001 2014
n % n %
Korean Performing Artsa
Korean Fine Artsb
Korean Food and Food Festivals
23 42 55 53
20 36 22 22
4 7 15 14
Korean Literature and Language
Othersc
Total
6 10 6 5
3 5 5 5
56 100 103 100
sources: Korea Times 2001; Korea Daily 2014. notes: a. Korean traditional and contemporary m usic, dances, musicals, plays, and ballets, and lectures about them. b. Korean paintings, ceramics, photography, and fashion shows, and lectures about them. c. Taekwondo demonstrations.
years. Without a doubt, a large Korean population size in the area and the conve nience of air travel between the city and Seoul have facilitated frequent transnational cultural events in the area. The second important reason for a large number of transnational cultural events in the area is the fact that New York City is arguably the global center of the performing and fine arts. As w ill be shown shortly, New York City and its surrounding areas are very desirable to many artists and arts organizations in Korea, and thus they specifically plan their trips around g oing t here to publicize and promote their work and talent. As shown in t able 3.1, Korean m usic and dance performances and exhibitions of Korean fine arts compose the two largest categories of Korean transnational cultural events. As w ill be shown in the next subsection, many of the events w ere initiated from Korea, e ither by the artists themselves or by their organizations or Korean government agencies, to enhance their artistic credentials and/or to promote Korean culture in New York City. Table 3.1 also shows that the number of transnational Korean cultural events organized in the area increased from 56 in 2001 to 103 in 2014, which is nearly a 100 percent increase. The Korean population has also increased from about 180,000 in 2001 to approximately 240,000 in 2014. The increase in the Korean population is likely to have partly contributed to the increase in the number of Korean transnational cultural events. However, I consider the greater advances in air travel, media, and communication technologies in 2014 than in 2001 as the major contributing factor to the significant increase. In the early 2000s, flying to Seoul from New York took about sixteen hours, due to a layover and transfer in Alaska. However, in the late 2000s, airlines began offering direct flights from New York City to Seoul, which shortened the flight time to thirteen and a half hours. Moreover, airfares in
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2014 were more affordable than in 2001, as international air travel became increasingly generalized. The round-trip airfare from New York to Seoul did not increase much during the period, costing around $1,100, although living costs rose greatly. In addition, by virtue of the development of smartphones and online resources, it is far easier for p eople to communicate with each other, compared to the early 2000s, which has facilitated organizing cultural events transnationally. Also, advances in media technologies have enabled Korean immigrants in New York to have full access to TV and news from K orea in real time. The combination of all of these positive changes in technology made it much easier to organize Korean cultural events transnationally in 2014 than in 2001. Performing Arts Events As expected, cultural events related to performing arts, including m usic, dance, plays, musicals, and movies, comprise the largest category in 2001 and 2014, with 23 and 55, respectively, accounting for 42 and 53 percent of total transnational cultural events. Transnational cultural events involving performing arts experienced a much higher rate (140 percent) of increase than other categories during the period. Dance and music performances accounted for the vast majority (45 out of 55 = 82 percent) of transnational cultural activities in the performing arts category in 2014. Four events included performances of plays, ballets, musicals, and so forth by cultural specialists from Korea. The remaining six events involved appearances in New York City by producers, directors, and/or actors of Korean movies at receptions and question-and-answer sessions with viewers following the conclusion of the film. The number of Korean performing arts events achieved a phenomenal increase between 2001 and 2014 partly b ecause Korean government agencies actively promoted them to New Yorkers using Korean immigrants as intermediaries. As will be discussed in chapters 8 and 9, performing arts associations or clubs in Korea or Korean government agencies initiated about half of the performing arts events to promote their performances and publicize Korean culture in the area. A performing group often gives two or three performances at different places on each visit to the area. Local Korean organizations or the Korean Cultural Center (KCC) in New York helped visiting performing groups from Korea by negotiating with theaters or other venues and taking care of other logistical matters. For example, two traditional performing arts associations in K orea, financially supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of the Korean government, brought a group consisting of two dozen Korean celebrity traditional musicians and dancers to the area to perform arirang and other traditional m usic and dance performances in March 2014 to commemorate arirang having been inscribed on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity Program by UNESCO. The group provided two rounds of performances; one was at Times Square in Manhattan and the other was at Queens College in March 2014 ( Jang 2014a; Ju Sarang Lee 2014a). I attended the performance given at Queens College. The majority of the 800 attendees w ere
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 43
Korean immigrants, but many Korean immigrants participated with their children and/or non-Korean friends. Encouraged by the popularity of K-pop and traditional Korean music and dance in Asia, Korean government agencies and Korean performing arts organizations have tried to promote them in the United States and Western counties during recent years. They have organized and sponsored tours of several performing arts groups to the New York area to promote Korean culture during more recent years. Korean ethnic organizations, mostly cultural groups, in the area organized sixteen of these fifty-five events (29 percent). Korean m usic and dance organizations provide major performances a few times per year for the Korean community. They usually invite at least a few celebrity performers from Korea, and in combination with the local organizations’ own members, the events feature all of the performers. For example, in October 2014, the Korean Performing Arts Center (KPAC) orga nized a Korean traditional music and dance performance at Symphony Space in Midtown Manhattan. I participated in the performance. The program included per formances by KPAC’s own members as well as famous performing artists from Korea, both separately and together ( Ju Sarang Lee 2014a). The majority of attendants (approximately 250) w ere Korean Americans. It is notable that many younger- generation Korean Americans attended the performance. Usually, U.S.-born Korean Americans are not very interested in traditional Korean music and dance, but this particular event was an English-language program that featured English translations of the songs, which made it more appealing to many U.S.-born audiences. Korean noncultural ethnic organizations arranged several transnational music/ dance performances in 2014 and invited celebrity singers and dancers from Korea to their Korean cultural festivals or other events. For example, the Korean Produce Association of New York has organized the largest Korean cultural festival, the Korean Harvest and Folklore Festival, in the area since 1982. I have attended the festival many times. In 2014, the festival incorporated transnational music and dance performances by featuring five celebrities from Korea (S. J. Suh 2014c). This transnational performance and another event, a K-pop singing contest, drew the largest crowds of spectators (a few thousand, respectively) among all programs during the two-day festival. Transnational m usic and dance performances can have a significant cultural impact on Korean immigrants and their c hildren, not only b ecause they occur in the Korean community frequently, but also b ecause they draw much larger Korean American and non-Korean audiences than exhibitions of artworks by Korean paint ers or photographers. As noted above, each performing event drew a few hundred to a few thousand spectators, predominantly Korean Americans. Korean traditional and contemporary music and dance performances, considered part of Korean folk culture, appeal to all p eople, regardless of their age, generation, or class. The number of transnational Korean music and dance performances further increased from forty-five in 2014 to sixty-one in 2019. As will be noted in chapter 9, by virtue of the global popularity of K-pop, most of the eighteen Korean K-pop
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performances in New York in 2019 w ere made by celebrity K-pop groups BTS, SuperM, and Monsta X, with some of them made at the invitation of U.S. media and performing centers. As also noted in chapter 9, twenty-nine Korean transnational traditional performing arts events in 2019 w ere mostly made possible by the invitation of the art groups or individual artists in Korea by Korean ethnic organ izations and the KCC. Transnational K-pop performances and many transnational traditional music and dance performances made in Central Park, Times Square, and large performance centers in Manhattan targeted the large general audiences without focusing on Korean Americans. Nevertheless, these highly publicized Korean music and dance performances in New York City have strengthened Korean Americans’ ethnic pride, regardless of whether they participated or not. Fine Arts, Calligraphy, Ceramic Arts, and Photography Table 3.1 indicates that there w ere twenty transnational Korean cultural events related to fine arts, including painting, calligraphy, photography, and fashion shows in 2001. The number of these cultural events increased to only twenty-two in 2014. While the number of Korean music and dance performances increased by two and a half times during the period, the number of fine arts exhibitions did not increase much, mainly b ecause Korean government agencies did not make much effort to promote them, as they did not comprise an important part of Hallyu (the growing popularity of Korean culture and entertainment). Transnational Korean fine arts events in the area mostly involve exhibitions of visiting artists from Korea. Some of these events took place at the galleries of the KCC and the Korea Society. In 2014, each organized two transnational Korean exhibitions at their own galleries. For example, the Korea Society exhibited engravings by thirty artists from K orea and another thirty Korean immigrant artists at the gallery for two months between June and August 2014 (Korea Times 2014b). In collaboration with the Korean Arts Society in Korea, it also co-organized an exhibition of Korean contemporary ceramics at its gallery in February 2014 ( Ju Sarang Lee 2014a). The KCC selected eight Korean painters from K orea and the New York area and exhibited their paintings at their own Gallery K orea for three weeks in September 2014 ( Ju Sarang Lee 2014c). Several different Korean arts and cultural organizations in the area organized exhibitions of paintings made by one or more Korean artists at Korean-owned galleries in the area or public places like Flushing Town Hall in Queens. For example, the Korean Cultural Heritage Preservation Association organized an exhibition of about thirty paintings at Flushing Town Hall. The exhibition, displayed for two weeks in August 2014, featured various scenes in Dokdo, a small island in Korea, by Kie-soo Park, a well-known painter in Korea (Chun 2014). The Lee Young Hee Museum of Korean Culture, which is located in K-Town, invited Jinsong Jang, a fine-arts professor at Seoul National University, for a lecture on the history of Korean fine arts on January 10, 2014 ( J. Kim 2014).
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 45
Government agencies or fine arts organizations in Korea sponsored and/or organized six transnational fine arts events held in the area in 2014 to publicize Korean paintings, ceramics, and fashion. The Korean Fine Arts Association arranged for fifteen galleries in Korea to exhibit about 200 Korean paintings, blueprints, engravings, and photos in the fifth Korean fine arts fair in the United States, held in the Hamptons, Long Island, for four days in July 2014 (Nonyo 2014). The Korean fine arts fair, sponsored by the Korean government’s Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, drew more than 10,000 attendees. Although the majority of participants were non-Korean, it also drew many Korean immigrants. Another transnational fine arts event involved a Korean painter’s exhibition of her paintings at Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea (S. Y. Kim 2014b). A Korean provincial government selected a local artist to exhibit her paintings in New York City. Compared to performing-arts events, there are far fewer fine arts exhibitions and related lectures. More importantly, they also have less of an impact on Korean immigrants’ overall transnational ties. Part of the reason is that, in general, fewer Korean immigrants and Korean Americans attend fine arts events than m usic and dance performances. Although art exhibitions usually last for longer than a week, small numbers of people go to look at fine art, with the exception of their openings. Big Korean fashion exhibitions in Manhattan draw many p eople, but they tend to target non-Korean audiences to globalize Korean fashions and are usually held in American galleries or other nonethnic public venues like the New York Public Library or Lincoln Center. Exhibitions of art, fashion, calligraphic, and ceramic works also have a limited impact on Korean immigrants b ecause, unlike music and dance, they attract a particular segment of the Korean American population—well-educated and artistically oriented p eople. Transnational Cultural Events Related to Korean Food As shown in table 3.1, there w ere fifteen transnational cultural events in the area involving Korean food in 2014. It is a g reat increase from four events in 2001. Almost all of these events reflect the Korean central and local governments’ efforts to promote Korean grocery items and food to Korean Americans and New Yorkers. In the past, Korea had heavily depended upon imports from the United States and other countries for meat and other agro-fishery products (i.e., agricultural and seafood products). However, in order to change the trade imbalance in this area, Korean government agencies have made great efforts to export Korean agro- fishery products to the United States and other countries since the late 2000s. Korean Food Foundation, a semigovernmental organization, was launched in 2009 in K orea to promote Korean food around the world. Korean central and provincial government agencies have tried to introduce Korean agro-fishery products to the U.S. market via Korean immigrants. The radical increase in the number of Korean-food-related transnational cultural events in the Korean community from 2001 to 2014 reflects the Korean government’s g reat efforts to promote Korean
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agro-fishery products and other Korean foods to New Yorkers through Korean immigrants during recent years. Seven of the fifteen food-related events in the area in 2014 w ere ceremonies promoting Korean agro-fishery products from specific areas in K orea at particu lar Korean supermarkets. Governors and other high-ranking officials from Korean local provincial governments, Korean community leaders originating from the local areas, and many Korean grocery shoppers participated in t hese events. I believe that t here w ere far more of these types of events than accounted for in the table because local Korean dailies failed to report many. Although the main purpose of these events is to publicize and promote Korean agro-fishery products, I still consider them to be transnational cultural events because they illustrate Korean immigrants’ preferences for grocery items originating from their home cities or counties with the governor and/or an official from the Korean local government participating. Following the full enforcement of the U.S.-Korea F ree Trade Agreement in 2012, the Korean government established the Korean Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation (aT), a semigovernmental organization, under the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs in 2013. The organization has focused on promoting agricultural and fishery products to foreign countries through its overseas branches. It has branches in New York and Los Angeles. Four of the food-related transnational cultural events in the area in 2014 w ere organized by the New York branch of aT, in close coordination with the ministry. For example, the New York branch of aT and the ministry co-organized a seminar on upgrading Korean food for Korean restaurant owners in Flushing and Manhattan for two weeks in September 2014 (S. H. Lee 2014). Several professors and experts on Korean food from K orea gave special lectures on the use of necessary ingredients to cook traditional Korean food, the management of Korean restaurants, and effective methods of publicizing Korean restaurants in foreign countries. They also organized the two-day 2014 Korean Food Festival at Times Square (S. H. Jo 2014). The festival included not only Korean food tastings and cooking demonstrations, but also performances of Korean music, dance, and taekwondo.
Korean Transnational Cultural Events Held in Korea This section examines transnational cultural events held in K orea in 2001 and 2014 and attended by Korean immigrants and/or their children. Although more Korean transnational cultural events took place in the New York area than in K orea, t here were still a significant number of transnational cultural events held in Korea. Th ese events significantly differ from t hose held in New York in the nature of the events, the organizers, and the generation of Korean Americans who attended them. A large proportion of transnational cultural events held in Korea (35 percent) are related to younger-generation Korean Americans’ roots education. Moreover, most
table 3.2.
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 47
Transnational Korean Cultural Events in K orea, 2001 and 2014 Category
Year
2001 2014
n % n %
Heritage Education for Younger- Generation Koreans
Literary Awards and Meetings
12 42 16 35
4 14 9 20
Other Awards
KoreanLanguage Teachers’ Training
Others
Total
3 10 11 24
5 17 5 11
4 14 4 8
28 100 45 98
sources: Korea Times 2001; Korea Daily 2014.
of these heritage education programs and other transnational events held in K orea were established and/or organized by government agencies and other organizations in Korea, while t hose held in the local area w ere mostly organized by Korean cultural and ethnic organizations or Korean government agencies located in New York City. Total Number of Transnational Cultural Events Held in Korea As shown in t able 3.2, forty-five transnational cultural events w ere held in K orea in 2014 and attended by Korean Americans. This number is a significant increase (60 percent) from only twenty-eight events in 2001, but much smaller than the number held in the New York area (n = 103). Most transnational cultural events held in the local Korean community were one-time cultural events created in 2014. In contrast, most transnational cultural events held in Korea were held annually under special cultural programs created by Korean government agencies or other cultural organizations. In the previous section, I classified transnational cultural events held in the local area in terms of cultural genres. However, it seems to be more effective to categorize t hose held in Korea by their purposes rather than by genre because Korean government agencies and other organizations in K orea had specific goals in mind in creating these activities. I classify them into five major categories: those related to (1) the younger Koreans’ heritage education, (2) literary awards and participation in literary meetings, (3) other awards (music/ dance, paintings/calligraphy, and K-pop auditions), (4) programs for Korean- language teachers’ training, and (5) others. Programs for Younger Koreans’ Heritage Education Birthright Israel is a well-known heritage education program for young Jews (18–32 years old) involving a free ten-day trip to Israel (Saxe and Chazan 2008). Whereas overseas Jewish diasporic communities provide funds for Birthright Israel, the Overseas Koreans Foundation (OKF), a Korean government organization, provides most of the funds for overseas Koreans’ heritage education. T able 3.2 shows
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that heritage education programs for younger-generation Koreans comprise the largest category of transnational cultural events held in K orea, accounting for about 35 percent of forty-one total events held in 2014. OKF has established four of the heritage education programs for overseas younger-generation Koreans, while other organizations created seven heritage education programs. OKF is a semigovernmental organization established in 1997 under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It has established many programs to link different overseas Korean groups to the homeland and has financially supported many overseas Korean ethnic organizations each year. One of the four heritage programs created by OKF is a weeklong heritage tour to Korea for overseas Korean secondary and college students (separately) in Korea in July every year. In 2014, OKF selected a total of 700 overseas Korean students from different Korean diasporic communities for heritage tours to important cultural and historical sites in Korea. Two hundred fifty students from North Americ a and twenty-three from the New York area w ere selected (Korea Times 2014c). OKF has created another homeland tour program for younger- generation Koreans called the Global Younger-Generation Korean Conference. This program invites about 150 very successful younger-generation Korean leaders in different fields and from different countries to a four-day conference held in Seoul in November to help them establish Korean social networks and to explore the possibility of their contributions to the homeland. One hundred twenty-six younger-generation Korean leaders from twenty-one different countries participated in the conference in 2014 (Korea Times 2014j). The conference also includes many first-class cultural performances for the participants. Gong Ju University in Korea, a national university, has a year-round heritage education program for overseas Korean c hildren. Although the Ministry of Education financially supports the program, it also charges the students reasonable tuition. Additionally, five Korean ethnic organizations in the New York area have established heritage tour and education programs in K orea for younger-generation Korean Americans from the local area. Most of these heritage education programs involve heritage tours to Korea during the summer break each year. T able 3.2 shows that there were twelve heritage education programs even in 2001, which indicates that most programs were established before 2001. TaLK (Teach and Learn in K orea) is a major government-supported program that combines heritage education for overseas Korean children with English teaching in Korea. The International Education Institute under the Ministry of Education established this program partly to meet the need for native English- speaking teachers in elementary schools in rural areas and partly to provide heritage education for younger-generation Korean college students and college graduates from English-speaking countries. The participants teach English in elementary schools located in rural areas in Korea. This transnational program is mutually beneficial both to the diasporic Korean young p eople, who want to make a stronger connection with their ancestral culture, and to young Korean elementary school
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 49
students, who are able to receive better English-language education from native English speakers. The first two weeks of the program consist of an intensive heritage education for the participants. A fter the heritage tours, they are assigned to elementary schools in rural areas to teach English. While teaching English, they can also take group tours to different cultural and historical sites on weekends with other participants in the program (author interview with director of Education Center in 2011; Korea Times 2014e). I believe this program was s topped in the late 2010s. Korean Experience Enterprise: Embracing K orea in My Heart is a major cultural heritage program for overseas younger-generation Koreans created by a nongovernmental organization in K orea. Namdo Gukakwon, a famous Korean traditional m usic and dance institute, runs a two-week heritage education program for overseas Korean children. This program focuses on enhancing overseas Korean children’s ethnic identity by teaching them Korean traditional dance and music performances (Korea Times 2014c). It includes tours to many local cultural sites and watching Korean traditional music and dance performances at theaters. While participants in this program have to cover their own airfare expenses, the host institute provides f ree housing and food. I w ill come back to this program in chapter 8. There are five heritage education programs in the New York area. The oldest and largest heritage education program for younger-generation Korean Americans is called Korean Youth Homeland Yeonsu (Korean Youth Homeland Internship). This program was created by the Korean American Youth Assistance Coalition in the area. It emphasizes strengthening younger-generation Koreans’ ethnic identity by teaching them Korean culture and history. The program provides eleven days of heritage education for eighth-and ninth-grade Korean American students in July e very year at Korea University, as well as tours to major Korean cultural sites and global companies (Korea Times 2014f). It selected seventy-eight Korean American students in the East Coast areas in 2014 for their heritage education in K orea. Most participating students paid for their own air transportation, while the organization covered airfare for about ten participants from lower-income families. The other four heritage education programs created by other ethnic organizations have similar goals but send smaller numbers of Korean children to Korea. Transnational Literary Awards and Participation in Literary Meetings Seven of eight transnational cultural events related to literary activities in Korea in 2014 were literary awards given by literary organizations and a government agency to Korean immigrants in the area. The only exception involved a Korean American novelist visiting Korea to read from her novel focusing on Korean themes (Korea Times 2014i). As the internet and other technological advances in communications have shortened the distance between Korea and overseas Korean communities, Korean literary associations and journals have gone global, encouraging
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overseas Koreans to participate in literary activities in Korea. Additionally, in the late 1990s, OKF and a university in K orea respectively established literary award programs geared especially toward overseas Koreans (Korea Times 2014m). Korean immigrants in the local area interested in Korean literary activities established the U.S. Northeast Korean Literary Association in 1989. Monolingual in Korean, they have published books, poetry collections, and literary articles in Korea. Many of them submit their literary works for awards in Korea. Several Korean immigrants in the area have received awards from each of five award programs in K orea (Korea Times 2014f, 2014h). When Korean immigrants receive a major award, they usually travel to K orea to receive the award at a ceremony. Others who are recipients of minor awards receive their awards from the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York (Korea Times 2014m). Other Awards The third category includes nine cultural award programs created by Korean cultural or government organizations in the areas of music and dance, painting and calligraphy, and photography. Five of the award programs involve Korean immigrants’ or younger-generation Koreans’ participations in Korean music and dance, painting and calligraphy, and photography contests held in Korea and getting awards. For example, several Korean immigrants in the area won awards in a photo contest organized by the Overseas Korean Foundation. Newspaper articles reported a few Korean American boys’ and girls’ participation in the weekly K-pop audition in Korea, which is televised by the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS). The K-pop audition, in which three major K-pop management companies select future stars through the weekly audition, is one of the most popular TV programs in Korea. SBS has organized a preliminary K-pop audition in Queens, New York, since the late 2000s. In most auditions, at least one Korean American participated. Having passed the preliminary audition in the area, some have participated in the main K-pop star audition. The other four transnational cultural events were awards ceremonies in which Korean immigrants and 1.5-generation Koreans w ere honored by Korean government agencies and other cultural organizations in Korea for their contributions to promoting Korean culture in their settlement countries. For example, Suk Park, a 1.5-generation Korean resident of the New York area, received the 2014 Dari Award from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism for promoting Korean dramas through his streaming website, DramaFever (Korea Times 2014g). The second transnational cultural event included in this subsection is the June 2014 selection of Su Yeon Park as one of the ten most influential overseas Koreans. She is director of the Korean Performing Arts Center in Manhattan. The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism selected her for this award for her promotion of Korean traditional music and dances in the United States (Korea Times 2014k). As a result of this recognition, she has worked closely with the Korean Cultural Service in New York in promoting Korean traditional performing arts and can participate in major events of Korean traditional performing arts to be
Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community 51
held in Korea. I w ill highlight her traditional Korean music and dance activities and achievements in chapter 8. Training for Korean-Language Teachers Five of the transnational cultural events held in Korea in 2014 w ere related to training for Korean-language teachers. Th ere are approximately 150 weekend Korean- language schools in the area. The Korean government provides partial financial support for most of these schools, covering 10 to 20 percent of their operating expenses. It also provides textbooks and technical support, including inviting selected numbers of Korean-language teachers to K orea through a few semigovernmental Korean-language organizations. One of the main forms of technical support is to provide a weeklong training session for teachers during the summer. One of the five training programs prepares teachers online. OKF has provided a Korean-language teachers’ training program for overseas Koreans since 1999. It invited 188 Korean-language teachers from fifty-nine countries for training in 2014. A fter an opening ceremony at a h otel in Seoul, the trainees moved to the campus of Yonsei University for training. Their training included a tour to Korean cultural and historical sites, plus a few traditional music and dance performances. The Korean Language Promotion Foundation established a separate training program specifically for Korean-language teachers at U.S. high schools. The nine-day training program took place at Seogang University in July 2014 (Korea Daily 2014b). A few teachers from the local area participated in each training program, and travel expenses for both programs w ere fully covered by the hosting organizations.
Summary and Concluding Remarks In the first two sections of this chapter I provided conceptualizations (definitions) of different types of immigrants’ transnational cultural practices and their measure ments. I made a distinction between the narrow and broad definitions of immigrants’ transnational cultural practices. I defined immigrants’ and their children’s participation in transnational cultural events held in the local area or in the home country as transnational cultural practices in the narrow sense. In addition, I defined their consumption of music/dance performances, TV dramas, movies, and other cultural products made in their home country through transnational TV programs and SNS as transnational cultural practices in a broad sense. Moreover, this chapter has comprehensively examined New York Korean immigrants’ Korean transnational cultural events or programs held in the New York area and in Korea by analyzing articles published in two major New York– area Korean newspapers. I found that 103 transnational Korean cultural events were held in the New York area in 2014, with another 45 Korean cultural programs held in Korea. The number of events held in New York in 2014 was much larger than in 2001 (n = 54). Technological advances in international transportation and
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communications during the thirteen-year period seem to have been major f actors in the increase. Thus, the immigrant transnational theory is most effective in explaining the g reat increase in the number of Korean transnational cultural events. About half of the 103 Korean transnational cultural events held in New York were initiated by Korean government agencies or other cultural organizations in Korea. Moreover, the predominant majority of 45 Korean transnational cultural programs held in K orea w ere established or financially supported by OKF or other Korean government agencies. Given these facts, the theory emphasizing the role of the emigrant state in immigrants’ active transnational cultural linkages to the homeland is also effective for explaining Korean immigrants’ and their children’s strong cultural transnationalism. The Korean government seems to have been highly motivated to initiate and financially support Korean immigrants’ heritage education in New York and in Korea partly to enhance the image of Korea and partly to strengthen Korean Americans’ ethnic identity. Readers w ill find many things discussed in this chapter in the l ater chapters. The emergence of smartphones, social media, streaming platforms, and other digital technologies during recent years has helped strengthen immigrants’ and their children’s transnational cultural ties to the homeland. We w ill find in chapter 9 that the majority of Korean immigrants watch Korean dance and m usic performances, dramas, and movies through transnational TV programs or digital technologies, whereas small proportions of them participate in transnational Korean cultural events in New York. In chapter 3, I defined the consumptions of immigrants and their c hildren’s homeland cultural products through the mediums of transnational TV programs or digital technologies as transnational cultural practices in the broad sense of the word. Nevertheless, they have a great impact on their cultural lives and ethnic identity. This indicates the significance of technological advances in communications and media (the immigrant transnational theory) for contemporary immigrants’ cultural lives in New York and other American metropolitan areas. I hope this chapter w ill help readers better understand my discussions in other chapters. Moreover, I hope this chapter will help other researchers interested in immigrants’ transnational ties to conduct research on cultural transnationalism using other immigrant groups.
4 • KORE AN-L ANGUAGE SCHOOLS
Culture is a broad concept that includes language, food, customs, values, performing arts, fine arts, and cultural festivals. Language is the most important element of culture b ecause all these other elements of culture are partly based on it. Accordingly, it is central to transmitting cultural traditions to their children that immigrants first of all transmit their language. However, it is far more difficult for the c hildren of immigrants to learn their ethnic language than to learn about other elements of popular culture, such as ethnic food, music and dances, and festivals. Accordingly, immigrant parents individually and immigrant communities collectively make g reat efforts to teach their c hildren the home language. Mother-tongue maintenance among the c hildren of immigrant families has long been a central topic in sociology and other related disciplines. Researchers have examined the determinants and consequences of mother-tongue maintenance using various theoretical frameworks. A predominant majority of the studies have used census and other survey data to measure use of m other tongue for native-born Americans (Alba et al. 2002; Kim and Min 2010; Lopez 1996, 1999; Lutz 2006; Portes and Schauffler 1994; Schrauf 1999). While scholars have examined mother- tongue use among the children of immigrants intensively, they have neglected to scrutinize the mechanisms that help them preserve their m other tongue and ethnic culture, mainly because few of them have examined the role of immigrant/ ethnic communities. This chapter examines how Korean immigrants in Greater New York have established and operate weekend Korean schools. It is divided into five sections. The first section clarifies terminologies of Sejong Hakdangs and Korean schools. The second section examines the establishment of Korean schools in the New York area in the early 1960s and 1970s, focusing on the Korean School of New York and the lifelong devotion of its founder, Byung-Yul Huh, to Korean ethnic education. The third section takes an overview of weekend Korean schools in Greater New York as of 2013. The fourth section provides detailed information about Korean schools’ students, curricula, special Korean cultural activities, teachers, and budgets, 53
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using several prominent examples of weekend schools. The final section looks at the role and activities of two national associations, the National Association for Korean Schools (NAKS), with a focus on its Northeast (New York and New Jersey) Chapter, and the Korean Education Center. In 2010 through 2013, I personally interviewed Sun Geun Lee and Byung-Yul Huh, the two most dedicated Korean-language teachers and ethnic education leaders in the United States, and several other principals of Korean schools for this chapter. I completed this chapter based on my interviews with them. But I became involved in a Korean-language edited book project focusing on Korean schools in Greater New York as one of four coeditors. The book, with the English title Korean Schools in the New York–New Jersey Area: Their History and Current Status, was published in April 2015 (Lee et al. 2015). The book includes essays written by principals and/or other staff members of fourteen major Korean schools in the area that provide history and current Korean educational programs. I have revised this chapter based on essays on the Korean schools. I updated information in this chapter in 2020 and 2021.
Terminological Clarifications Before I examine weekend Korean schools in detail, I need to clarify a terminological issue. The Korean government has established many full-time Korean schools through its King Sejong Institute Foundation in Asian, European, and Latin American countries. Sejong was the fourth king of the Chosun Dynasty, and he coordinated with several scholars to create the Korean alphabet, Hangeul, in 1443. The King Sejong Institute Foundation, a government branch of Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, established Sejong Hakdangs (Korean schools established in foreign countries) to provide an integrated educational system of teaching the Korean language and culture mainly for overseas Koreans scattered all over the world. The foundation started thirteen Sejong Hakdangs in three countries in 2007. But the number of the schools has rapidly increased, reaching 234 schools in 82 countries in 2021. Since Sejong Hakdangs have become very popular in many countries during recent years, they have selected a small proportion of new applicants during recent years. For example, the King Sejong Institute Foundation selected only twenty-six schools out of eighty-five applicants from forty-three countries in 2021 (King Sejong Institute Foundation 2021: 1–2). It is surprising that the number of the schools has greatly increased even during the pandemic years. The global expansion of Hallyu (the growing popularity of Korean culture and entertainment) and Korean companies over the past two decades seems to have mainly contributed to the expansion of Korean schools to the global world. According to the foundation, not only overseas Korean c hildren but also the local residents who are attracted to Hallyu or those who are seriously interested in working for local Korean companies attend Korean schools (King Sejong Institute Foundation 2021, 5). Several Korean schools in foreign c ountries
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have been established within local universities, while some other Korean schools established in local universities coordinate with designated universities in Korea. Since Korean immigrants in the United States can afford to establish their own Korean-language schools, there are only thirteen U.S. Sejong Hakdangs, with none having been established in Greater New York. Korean government agencies and scholars in K orea call these “Korean schools” b ecause they are full-time schools that provide the ethnic and national education in each settlement country. But they usually refer to Korean schools in the United States and Canada, established spontaneously by Korean immigrants, as “Korean-language schools,” prob ably because they are not full-time but weekend part-time schools, focusing on teaching mainly the Korean language. However, Korean-language leaders and teachers in the United States have insisted that these weekend Korean schools be called “Korean schools” b ecause they teach Korean c hildren not only the language but also history and many other things related to Korean culture, such as music and dance, taekwondo, calligraphy, and etiquette. Korean-language leaders have informed me that this difference in the terminology has contributed to some arguments and tensions at conferences held in Korea. In one extreme case, Hyun Joo Hwang, the principal of the largest Korean school in Greater New York, rejected results of a daily reporter’s interview with her conducted during her conference trip to Korea to be published in a daily if he called her school a “Korean language school” (Hwang et al. 2015: 108). She explained to him in detail why her and other weekend Korean schools in the United States should be called “Korean schools.” She told him he could not publish his interview with her if he used the name “Korean language school.” She said that the journalist accepted her request: “The reporter called me early morning and told me that my argument for the name of ‘Korean school’ was persuasive and therefore he would use it in his article, and thus I approved of publishing the results of his interview with me.” Following Korean-language leaders in the United States, I use the term “Korean schools” more often than “Korean- language schools.” But I also use “Korean-language schools” now and then to indicate to readers that they are not full-time Korean schools comparable to Sejong Hakdangs.
The Pioneering Korean Schools in the 1960s and Early 1970s ere are approximately 150 part-time Korean schools, which usually open on SatTh urdays or Sundays, in Greater New York. Th ese part-time schools mainly teach the Korean language, but they also cover other courses related to Korean culture and history, such as traditional dance and m usic, samulnori (Korean folk dance, percussion, and music), and taekwondo. This section offers snapshots of the first three Korean schools in New York City established in the 1960s and elaborates on
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one of them, the Korean School of New York, and the devotion of its founder, Byung-Yul Huh, to the Korean ethnic education for a half c entury. According to Kwang Ho Lee, in 1962 Hyunglin Kim, a Korean international student at Columbia University, started the first Korean School of New York at the Korean Church of New York, located across from Columbia University in Manhattan.1 The church was the first Korean Protestant church established in Manhattan in 1921. Persuaded by some of his friends who promised to establish a Korean center to be used as both a Korean school and a cultural center, Kim moved the school in 1965 to Jackson Heights in Queens, located between Seventy-Third Street and Woodside Avenue, where building costs w ere much lower than in Manhattan. The plan to establish the Korean center never materialized in his lifetime, but Kim, highly educated with two doctorates and two master’s degrees, was actively involved in r unning a vibrant Korean school by organizing students to celebrate the March First Korean Independence Movement Day with the nationalistic spirit (Korea Times 1977). He arranged students to sing Korean folk songs for a New York City radio station in commemoration of the two national holidays. After a Korean school moved to Queens in 1965, the Korean Church of New York established another school in 1966, which existed u ntil 1972. At that time, most members of the Korean Church of New York were Korean international students attending Columbia University and other universities in the area. The Queens Korean Church and Bible School established in April 1970 was chronologically the third Korean school established in New York City. As we can see from the name of the school, the church leaders established the Korean-language school mainly to teach immigrant children how to read the Korean-language Bible and sing Korean-language hymns. One of the teachers who taught in the school recounted that Sunday Bible school taught children the Bible and the Korean language at the same time in three kindergarten and elementary school classes (Lim 2015: 181). The church started a Saturday Korean school several years later. The fourth and probably best Korean school in the New York area was established in 1973 outside of the church by relocating the one established within the Korean Church of New York in Manhattan. Three elders of the church established the Korean School of New York at John F. Kennedy High School in Riverdale in the Bronx. They chose that area partly because it was located in the middle of three New York State counties (Manhattan, Queens, and Rockland) where Korean immigrants were concentrated at that time (Park and Huh 2015: 38). Byung-Yul Huh, who taught at the church-based Korean school in Manhattan between 1967 and 1972, served as its first principal. No immigrants at that time would have imagined that Huh (figure 4.1) would serve the Korean school for more than fifty years or that she would make the most important contribution to the Korean-language education for younger-generation Koreans. When I interviewed her in 2011, she was eighty-five years old and no longer
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figure 4.1. Byung-Yul Huh teaching in a Korean-language class in 1991. (Photo provided by
Byung-Yul Huh.)
the principal of the school, but she continued to teach there. She described the Korean-language program of the school: “The school started in May 1973 with about thirty students from twenty families. We offered four classes Saturday morning between 9:00 and 12:15. I served as the school principal and also taught the Korean-language classes. Seven other Koreans taught such subjects as Korean songs, calligraphy, taekwondo, and Korean dance.” The number of students at the Korean school continued to increase, as the immigration of Koreans to the New York area expanded in the 1970s and after. Huh told me that the number of students in the peak years was about 250, but that it had decreased during recent years. As of 2011, about 100 students had registered for the Korean school. The big drop in the number of students was due mainly to the decrease in the Korean population in the Bronx and the emergence of many other large Korean schools in suburban areas in Long Island and Manhattan. According to Jong-Kwon Park, the assistant principal of the school, many Korean parents living outside of the Bronx—Manhattan, Upstate New York, and Queens—brought their children to this first Korean-language school because of its reputation as providing authentic cultural education. Park also informed me that the students included several Korean adoptees, multiracial Koreans, and non-Korean students. In addition, the students included several third-generation Koreans whose parents do not speak the language well. Going back to Huh, she is important for Korean-language and cultural education, not merely because she served as the principal of and a teacher for the first major Korean school outside of a church. She has devoted more than fifty years, nearly her entire adult life, to the ethnic education of Korean c hildren, not only
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through her own school but also through the NAKS by writing several Korean- language textbooks. She studied for the master’s program in education at Peabody College for two years between 1959 and 1960. After returning to Korea she taught at an elementary school for four years, and in 1964 she returned to the United States and came to the New York area for another master’s degree in education. After completing her master’s program at Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan, she started to teach for the Korean-language program at the Korean Church of New York in 1967. When I called Jong Kwon Park in 2020 to get an update on Huh’s activities, I found that she had taught at the Korean school and served as director of its board until 2018 (at the age of ninety-three). She also helped establish the NAKS, the major association of Korean schools in the United States. She has written seven textbooks that have been widely used in Korean schools throughout the United States, and she has received many prestigious awards and certificates of recognition from the Korean government and private agencies for her numerous contributions to Korean-language and ethnic education. The main reason she decided to stay in the New York area after completing her second master’s program was her realization that second-generation Korean Americans needed language and cultural education to preserve their roots and identity. She recognized the importance of ethnic education for second-generation children, especially because she lived through the Japanese colonization of K orea (1910–1945): “I personally experienced the Japanese colonial government’s policy of annihilating Korean culture. The Japanese government did not allow us to use the Korean language in schools. The policy made us almost lose our language. I know how miserable it would be for a nation to lose its language.”
Influx of Post-1965 Immigrants and the Growth of Korean Schools Since the first Korean schools were established in the early 1960s and early 1970s, the number of schools in the area grew quickly, affected by the exponential growth of the immigrant population, probably reaching over 200 in the late 1990s. But many small schools established in Korean Protestant churches were closed in the competition. I classified Korean schools in the area by the type of organization that established them based on the list of Korean schools created by the Korean Education Center (KEC) in 2014 and personal interviews with many religious organizations and Korean-language leaders. As of fall 2014, there were 147 Korean schools in Greater New York (see t able 4.1). About 80 percent (n = 117) of them were established within Korean Protestant churches. Another 8 percent (n = 12) w ere formed by other religious organizations, Catholic churches (n = 8), or Buddhist temples (n = 4). Nine others (6 percent) were created by Korean ethnic organ izations, while another nine (6 percent) w ere established by local Korean residents, independent of any organizations.
table 4.1.
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Classification of Korean Schools in Greater New York by Type of Establishment Organization, 2014 Religious Organization
Protestant Church
Catholic Church
Buddhist Temple
Nonreligious Organization
Local Area
Total
117 (80%)
8 (5%)
4 (3%)
9 (6%)
9 (6%)
147 (100%)
sources: “The 2014 Korean Schools under the Jurisdiction of the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York,” posted on the home page of the Education Center of the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York; author’s communications with Suk Lee, former director of Korean Education Center, Sun Geun Lee, director of Korean Language Center of New York, and several Korean religious leaders.
Historically, not only Jewish Americans but many other white Christian immigrant groups have used their religious institutions to preserve their ethnic language and cultural traditions (Beck 1965; Freidenreich 2010; Sherrill 1969; Warner and Srole 1945: 160). Approximately 75 percent of Chinese immigrants do not have a religion, and even among small proportions of Chinese Christian and Buddhist immigrants, many of them do not actively participate in religious institutions (Min and Jang 2015). About 83 percent of Filipino immigrants are Catholics, but the majority of them participate in white American or multiracial Catholic parishes (Min and Jang 2015). Given the important role of religious institutions in providing the ethnic language and cultural education, Chinese and Filipino immigrant groups have disadvantages for their ethnic language education, especially compared to the Korean immigrant group. In order to help readers understand why there are so many religion-based Korean schools in the New York area and in other U.S. Korean communities, I need to provide some basic information about Korean immigrants’ religious preferences and organizations and their frequency of participation in religious institutions. Protestants and Catholics respectively compose approximately 20 and 10 percent of the population in South K orea, with Buddhists making up approximately 25 percent (Korean National Statistics Office 2005: 589). But roughly 60 percent of Korean immigrants attend Korean Protestant churches, with about 15 percent attending Korean Catholic churches (Min 2010: 52). The radical increase in the proportion of Protestants and Catholics among Korean immigrants is due partly to the selective migration of Koreans from the two Christian populations and partly to the conversion of more non-Christian Korean immigrants to Protestantism a fter their arrival h ere (Min 2010: 52–53). Th ere w ere approximately 450 Korean Protestant immigrant churches in the area in 2013 (Min 2008b) and approx imately twenty-five Korean Catholic churches and twenty-five Korean Buddhist temples. As noted above, most Korean Protestant churches are small in terms of their memberships and thus cannot establish a school due to the lack of students.
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However, medium-size and large immigrant churches have advantages over Korean Catholic churches and Buddhist t emples of similar sizes, partly b ecause their members attend religious institutions more frequently and partly because they have more financial resources by virtue of far greater offerings by members to Protestant churches than the other two types of religious institutions (Min 2010: 62). In addition, Korean Christian churches already have buildings and manpower for weekend schools. Most Catholic churches have established Korean ethnic communities in white Catholic churches. Given the above-mentioned advantages, we can see why about 80 percent of Korean schools have been established within Korean immigrant churches. One out of e very four Korean Protestant churches in the area has established a Korean school. The majority of the churches provide classes for about three hours, between 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. on Saturdays. Some Korean Protestant churches seem to have established Korean schools mainly because the senior pastors and church leaders consider it very important to provide the roots education to younger-generation Koreans. However, the majority of Korean pastors and church leaders are evangelical and thus try to prevent their churches from being nationalistic, which they consider incompatible with universal Christian values. Thus, most of those Korean Protestant churches with schools have established them partly to meet the needs of their own church members with school-age children and partly for evangelical purposes, especially to bring non-Christian Koreans to their churches. Some of these churches provide Korean-language education free of tuition. Moreover, Korean Protestantism has not incorporated many elements of Korean folk culture, such as music, dance, and cultural holidays. Most schools established within Korean Protestant churches have limitations in celebrating national and cultural holidays and teaching c hildren traditional Korean dances and music. There are twenty-five Korean Catholic churches in Greater New York. Four are physically independent Korean Catholic parishes. All others are Korean Catholic communities established within white Catholic parishes. But unlike Korean Protestant churches, Korean Catholic communities have large memberships b ecause they can establish a parish only through the approval of a local American Catholic diocese in the area. The largest Korean Catholic parish in the area, in Flushing, has approximately 4,000 members. Almost all other Korean Catholic communities have 200 or more members and thus are large enough to have a school. However, they are disadvantaged in establishing schools due to their limited financial resources since Korean Catholics give much smaller offerings to their churches than their Protestant counterparts. Moreover, Korean Catholic churches have less incentive for establishing schools b ecause they are less interested in bringing in other Koreans to their churches.2 That is why only eight of the twenty-five Korean Catholic churches have established schools. Results of the 2005 survey show that Buddhists compose only 7 percent of Korean immigrants in New York City, compared to 25 percent of the population in
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orea (Min 2010: 37, 72).3 Buddhists are underrepresented among Korean immiK grants, partly because of their lower-class background than the two Christian groups in Korea and partly because of the conversion of some Buddhist immigrants to Protestantism after immigration. Korean immigrant temples have difficulty in establishing schools, partly b ecause their members do not attend t emple regularly and partly b ecause few Korean adolescents attend temple due to their difficulty in following Buddhist rituals (Min 2009). Thus, only four of the twenty- five Buddhist temples in the area have established schools. There are nine Korean-language schools or programs established by various Korean ethnic organizations. One is Broadway Korean School (which changed its name to Manhattan Korean School in 2013), established by the Broadway Korean Businessmen’s Association of New York in 1984. Two other Korean schools are also located in Manhattan, one established by the KEC and the other by the K orea Society. The vast majority of the students are American citizens who are not ethnic Koreans. Another one is Woori Hanguk Hakgyo in Bergen County, established by the Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), the association of branches of Korean firms in the New York area. Two of them that focus on teaching adoptees the Korean language and identity are located in New Jersey. Another one is located in Flushing, established by Korean Community Services, the largest Korean social service organization in the area. Another one was established by the Education Center of the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York. This school teaches a small number of Korean adoptees. Korea Society, a nonprofit organization that has promoted friendly relations between the United States and South K orea and Korean culture for about fifty years, also provides three levels of Korean-language classes. The KCCI established the Woori School in Clifton, New Jersey, in 1992 for the ethnic education of their own c hildren. Since most members of Korean firms are expected to return home within three or four years, the Korean school teaches the same subjects as m iddle and high schools in K orea. Thus, this Korean school has a more comprehensive curriculum and more students (about 250) than other schools. I indicated in chapter 1 that contemporary Korean and Asian communities have many temporary residents who have stronger connections with the homeland than permanent residents with green cards and that their presence slows down their cultural assimilation. A full-day Korean school with a rigid Korean school curriculum established by the Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry in New York is one piece of the evidence for my argument. Nine Korean schools have been established and run independently of any Korean ethnic organization. Seven of these are unified schools representing partic ular areas, such as Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx, New Jersey, and Connecticut. As such, t hese schools are larger than most other Korean schools and have rich curricula. They also have advantages in recruiting students, hiring well-qualified teachers, and receiving funding. We already noted that the Korean School of New York, as the Korean school representing the Bronx, has a rich curriculum and
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extraordinary Korean cultural activities, led by well-qualified teachers. We w ill also see in the following section that the Korean School of New Jersey, representing Bergen County, has the largest student population (about 380) and offers a challenging curriculum and many extracurricular activities. I summarize in the following paragraphs three major changes made in Korean schools during recent years. First, they have achieved great improvements in the quality of the language and ethnic education provided. One major contributing factor to the improvement is that workshops for teachers, organized by the NAKS and its Northeast Chapter, are held two or more times each year and have helped teachers improve their techniques. Also, teachers now can use much better textbooks created in K orea or in the Korean community than those available in the 1980s. In addition, the better Korean schools have survived, as many smaller schools established within Korean Protestant churches two or three decades ago have closed. Also, Korean schools have become more formalized, with most holding formal admission and commencement ceremonies, organizing cultural perfor mances, and adding diverse cultural activities to their curricula, such as drums and dancing, samulnori, and traditional Korean paintings and calligraphy. Second, the number and proportion of students who are not children of Korean immigrants have greatly increased during recent years. Nevertheless, almost all principals and teachers of Korean schools are immigrants. The schools were established by Korean immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s mainly to provide ethnic education to second-generation Koreans. But the mismatch between principals/teachers and students in generation and racial and ethnic background has made it complicated to manage Korean schools and teach students. For example, Jong Kwon Park serves as the principal of the first major Korean school in New York City, located in Bronx, far from a Korean enclave. He said that about half of the eighty students in his school are third-generation, multiracial Koreans or non- Koreans whose parents cannot speak English. He talked about the difficulty in teaching the children with parents who cannot speak Korean: “It is difficult to teach them without second-generation Korean teachers because their parents do not speak Korean at home and do not understand Korean customs. We need to divide the students into many more classes in terms of the level of their Korean- language fluency and their age. However, fortunately, many Korean and non- Korean parents attend the class together to learn the Korean language. To motivate these children from multiracial and multicultural families to learn Korean, we need to emphasize how Korean can be practically useful to them, instead of emphasizing their Korean ethnic identity.” Third, closely related to the above change, the number and proportion of students who attend a Korean school more or less voluntarily have rapidly increased in recent years. Many 1.5-and second-generation Korean Americans reluctantly attended a Korean school in the 1970s and 1980s due to parental influence. But the global popularity of Korean culture (especially K-pop, Korean movies, and dramas) over the past ten years is likely to have motivated many Korean and non-Korean
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c hildren to attend a school to learn Korean language and culture. Korean schoolteachers told me that, in particul ar, the series Squid Game,4 which was popular in the United States and other Western countries in the summer and fall of 2021, contributed to an increase in Korean school enrollment that fall.
The Operation of Korean Schools To provide more detailed information about the sizes, curricula, teachers, bud gets, and other aspects of Korean schools, in this section I introduce several schools as examples. I first introduce a Korean school established within a Protestant church. Sarang Korean School was established within Sarang Korean Baptist Church in Edison, New Jersey, in 1990, only two years a fter the establishment of the church. Tae Myung Hong, an accountant, has served its principal since 1990, with Jane Cho, a Korean-language teacher at Palisades Park High School, serving as assistant principal. The school offers three hours of classes on Saturday mornings between 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. It devotes two hours to Korean-language education and one hour to students’ electives, such as samulnori, culture, music, history, and basic Chinese characters. The church is midsized, with a membership of approximately 150. However, the Korean school established by the church has grown into one of the largest in the area. As of fall 2013, about a hundred students, ranging from preschool to high school, registered in thirteen different classes. The principal told me that the children and adolescents attending the same church composed only a small proportion of the total student population, with the predominant majority coming from nearby neighborhoods in Edison. Seventeen first-generation Korean immigrants, mostly women, serve as teachers. In Korean schools in New York City, many Korean temporary residents, such as international students, serve as teachers. However, few temporary Korean residents reside in Edison. Thus, almost all teachers are longtime Korean residents. About half of the teachers are members of the church, with the others Korean residents from nearby neighborhoods. Most have full-time jobs outside of the Korean school. They include several public school teachers, including Korean-language teachers. To cover expenses for its operation, Sarang Korean School charges students $210 per semester. The Korean government, through the KEC, provides some financial support to cover a portion of the expenses. For Korean-language education, the school uses two kinds of textbooks: one published by the Korean International Education Association and the other by the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS. The KEC also provides free copies of the books published in Korea. In addition to offering regular Korean-school classes and electives on Saturdays, the school also organizes very sophisticated and authentic Korean cultural events and activities. First, it holds an annual athletic event, in which all students participate, in October at the church’s gymnasium. To make the event similar to the annual school undonghe (an athletic meet) in K orea for the students, it includes
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several traditional Korean games, such as picking up Korean cookies with their mouths while running and jumping through hurdles. The school also organizes a full-day Korean folk festival (minsok norimadang) around Lunar New Year. The games and activities include sebae (ceremonial bowing) to parents and elderly members of the church for New Year, samulnori, yut-nori (an old Korean board game that involves tossing four carved wooden sticks), jegi chagi (a Korean version of hacky sack), julneomgi (jump rope), and paengi chigi (a version of spinning tops). The principal said that this kind of multievent festival is possible mainly because each student’s parents organize one event. In addition, the school prepares several students to participate in three or four Korean-language and cultural performance contests sponsored by the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS each year. I asked the principal to comment regarding something that he believes to be important about his school that I had failed to ask about. Smiling, he responded, “When we started it in 1990, we had difficulty in running the school because there were not enough students. We advertised our Korean school to Korean immigrant parents in the neighborhoods, but they did not show much interest in the Korean- language program. However, nowadays we do not need to publicize it b ecause many Korean immigrant parents bring their children for registration. They believe teaching their children the Korean language is important because of the global Korean cultural influence. It is fortunate that learning the Korean language in the U.S. has become very popular” (author interview, 2013). Most schools within Korean churches are much smaller than Sarang Korean School in terms of the number of students, the diversity of the curriculum, and cultural activities. Moreover, most church-affiliated schools do not put as much emphasis on authentic Korean cultural or nationalistic elements as Sarang Korean School b ecause of the pastors’ evangelical position that “being too Korean and too nationalistic” reduces the sacredness of their churches. Tae Myung Hong, the principal of the school, as a major leader of Korean ethnic education in the area, puts more emphasis on providing authentic cultural education than other school principals within Korean Protestant churches. Among the twenty-five Korean Catholic churches in the area, St. Paul Chong Ha-Sang Roman Catholic Church was the first (established in 1973) and largest Korean Catholic church, with about 4,000 members (this number fell from about 7,000 in the late 1990s), located in the heart of Flushing. Kyung Wook Kim, a teacher at Cardozo High School, served as the coordinator of the Korean school. Sister Marie-Cordis Hong at the Catholic church served as principal. My description of the Korean school is based on my interview with Kim, the coordinator. The Korean school had approximately 200 students in its peak years, but by the time I interviewed the coordinator in 2011, the number had dropped to 140. It provides four classes between 9:00 a.m. and 12:40 p.m. on Saturday mornings. Korean- language and Korean history classes account for three of the classes. The remaining class is designated for cultural activities such as calligraphy, chorus, samulnori,
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and folk tales. The school has a samulnori team consisting of ten to fifteen c hildren. The members usually practice for one hour on Saturdays, but they have extra practice whenever they prepare for the church’s main events or participate in the New York samulnori contest. The Korean School at St. Paul Chong Ha-Sang Roman Catholic Church had twelve teachers, all of whom w ere paid for teaching on Saturdays. Almost all were either teachers of other subjects at public or private schools in Korea or Korean international students studying in New York City. Thanks to the abundance of well-educated Korean temporary residents, including international students, in Flushing, it is easy to find teachers. Each student paid a tuition of $200 per semester, but Kyung Wook Kim said that it was never sufficient to cover operating costs. The school received a small amount of money (about 10 percent of the annual budget) from the KEC, but the church provided the majority of the funds. When I asked him about the difficulties in operating a part-time Korean school, he said that the greatest difficulty was the shortage of Korean high school students: Since Korean high-school students have pressure to get admissions to prestigious colleges and universities, they show little interest in learning the Korean language and culture that are not related to their school curriculum. For this reason, there are few students in the eighth or higher grades who are enrolled in our Korean school. I think other Korean schools have the same problem. But it is important for Korean high school students to continue Korean ethnic education b ecause that is the life stage in which they develop their identity. When they move to college, many second-generation Koreans regret that they have not learned the Korean language and culture.
Won Buddhism, a denomination created in Korea in the early twentieth c entury, emphasizes Korean culture. Won Buddhist Temple of New York established the first and largest Korean school in 1982. Moreover, this school is most highly regarded among those established within Buddhist temples in the New York area. In 2010, when I interviewed the principal, Jin Eun-Park, the Korean school had about seventy students, from kindergarten through tenth grade. Many Korean immigrant parents who are not members of the temple send their c hildren to this school because of its high reputation. The school offers classes on Saturday mornings between 9:00 a.m. and 12:40 p.m. The classes consist of three subjects: (1) Korean language, (2) Korean history and culture, and (3) samulnori, talchoom (Korean mask dancing), and etiquette. Students pay $150 per semester, but the temple covers most expenses. Its thirty-five-member samulnori team is probably the largest in the area. The team’s performances are so good that it has performed twice for Asian Night at Citi Field, the home stadium of the New York Mets. Since 1989, the Korean-language team has organized the New York C hildren’s Folklore Festival, the largest festival for Korean children in the area. The festival
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has become a major New York Korean festival, with about 500 Korean and non- Korean children participants. The KEC and several other Korean community organizations have provided financial and manpower support for preparing the annual festival. Jin-Eun Park told me that he was most proud of this festival, in which not only Korean American but also other non-Korean children enjoy Korean folk games, K-pop, and Korean cuisine. I have personally participated in the children’s festival a few times. In the following paragraphs I introduce three Korean schools that have been established independently of Korean religious organizations. Two of them are located in Manhattan close to K-Town, while another is in Bergen County. The Broadway Korean Businessmen’s Association was established in 1978 by Korean importers and wholesalers, real estate agencies, and other business o wners in the Broadway Korean Business District. In 1983, the association started Broadway Korean School to provide ethnic education mainly to its members’ children. The information about the Korean school is based on my 2013 interview with Keun Soon Kim, who served as its principal until 2004. Since almost all Korean business owners in the Broadway Korean Business District lived outside of Manhattan, they brought their children to school on Saturdays for ethnic education. It was located in downtown Manhattan (Twenty-First Street between First and Second avenues). Initially, the school provided six hours of Korean ethnic education, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The subjects included Korean language, history, and culture, including m usic and dance, calligraphy, and taekwondo. The school arranged six hours of ethnic education for the convenience of the students’ parents, many of whom finished their Saturday workdays around 3:00 p.m. When second-generation Koreans operated the school, they changed its name from Broadway Korean School to Manhattan Korean School in 2011.5 More importantly, the generational status of its students has gradually changed over the past ten years or so, from 1.5-and second-generation Koreans to third-generation Koreans. A large number of well-educated 1.5-and second-generation Korean adults have found high-paying jobs in finance in Manhattan. Many of them reside in apartments there. Some of these second-generation professionals and managers now take their children to the school to teach them Korean language and culture. Kim said that the majority of the second-generation Korean parents do not speak the language fluently, but they want to teach their c hildren the language and culture. As a result, the majority of the students at Manhattan Korean School (about sixty in number) are third-generation Korean c hildren, with many being multiracial children of intermarried second-generation Koreans. The c hildren of second- generation Koreans could not stand studying six hours on Saturday.6 This is the only school in the area that provides ethnic education mainly for third-generation Korean Americans. Another nonreligious Korean school is the Korean Language Center. It was established in 1995 by Sun Geun Lee and his wife, Keun Soon Kim; two Korean
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schools related to the Center were closed in 2017. Since these Korean schools have some unique aspects, I have decided to introduce them in this chapter. The Korean Language Center was on Thirty-Second Street in K-Town. Keun Soon Kim re ported that not only second-generation and multiracial Koreans but also white and other ethnic Asian and European young professionals attended the school (K. S. Kim 2016: 124–125). U ntil 2008, about fifty students had attended two classes offered on Mondays and Wednesdays. However, since that time, the number of students has gradually dropped. Lee told me that second-generation Koreans voluntarily tried to learn Korean when they encountered racial discrimination at the workplace. Lee and Kim also established the Korean Heritage School of Adoptees in 2004 to expand language and cultural education for young Korean adoptees. As of 2013, his Korean Heritage School had four Korean adoptee classes: one elementary school, one high school, and two adult classes. Each class, consisting of a small number of students (three to eight students per class), involved intense Korean- language conversations and customs. He emphasized Korean etiquette, such as using two hands when giving something to parents and other adults and bowing to adults when greeting them. The students’ classes at the Korean Heritage School of Adoptees deserve a further introduction here. Lee and his wife taught these two classes Saturday mornings for three hours. He persuaded Korean adoptee students’ parents to take Korean classes, emphasizing, “Your children w ill respect you when they see you take Korean courses.” Almost all of the parents responded favorably by attending classes involving the Korean language, history, and customs. A fter classes in the morning, students, their parents, and their teachers regularly visited Korean restaurants, eating lunch together and watching how cooks made kimchi, mandoo, bean paste soup, and other dishes. Adoptee students and their non-Korean parents tried to make these traditional Korean dishes in their own homes. Some of these parents visited K orea during their c hildren’s summer breaks and w ere very excited about their own and their adoptee children’s “ability to read Korean- language commercial signs and to communicate with native speakers in Korean.” Altogether, Lee had ten Korean classes for two schools. The annual expenditure for these classes was approximately $100,000. Students’ tuition covered only half of the expenses (the remaining expenses w ere covered by board members). Lee also received $6,500 in financial support from the Korean government through the KEC. At the age of seventy-six, he spent about fifty hours per week teaching several classes on Monday through Saturday for the Korean Language Center and the Heritage School. His wife also spent many hours per week teaching together with him, but he said that in terms of their own monetary compensation, they made less than minimum wage. Responding to my question of how he had been able to continue his Korean schools with such financial difficulty, he commented, “I have been teaching the Korean language and culture for a long time. Despite meager monetary
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compensations, I have enjoyed it. But I do not think any younger-generation Korean will inherit my Korean-language schools u nless the financial situation has been significantly improved. Most likely I have to close the schools when I retire” (as stated earlier, Lee and his wife w ere forced to close the two schools when he retired at age eighty-one in 2017). As he had worried, he could not find a second- generation Korean who could inherit the school, which shows the importance of having enough dedicated immigrants for heritage education. Lee also contributed to Korean-language education through the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS. As w ill be discussed in the next section, he initiated several programs through the NAKS, including a children’s festival, a teachers’ program, and Korean School Teachers’ Appreciation Night. Third, Lee also made a contribution to the promotion of the Korean language to American schools through the Korean Language Association and Korean Language Foundation in the New York Area (see chapter 5 for details). Since his retirement, Lee has continued to work for the Korean Language Foundation. Finally, I introduce a major regional Korean school established in Bergen County, New Jersey, the heart of the Korean community in Greater New York at present. The Korean School of New Jersey was established in 1983 when there were not many Korean immigrants in Bergen County. It has rented dozens of classrooms of Tenafly M iddle School on Saturdays and several classrooms of Closter M iddle School on Fridays. It is the largest Korean school in the area, with 380 students and thirty-four teachers as of 2021. It is a democratically run school that is financially supported by forty local board members and managed by students’ parents, teachers, and board members (author interview with Hyun Joo Hwang, 2016). It has a very rigid Korean curriculum that emphasizes Korean history, culture, etiquette, and ethnic identity. It is one of only two Korean schools in the area with a choir. Hyun Joo Hwang, the principal of the school since 2009, is a 1.5-generation Korean American who came to the United States at the age of sixteen. She has taught at an American elementary school for many years in addition to her duties as principal. She said that as a 1.5-generation Korean she had some difficulty in coordinating with Korean immigrant parents and teachers in the beginning. But her 1.5-genetation status is currently helpful to the bilingual operation of the school. Each grade has two separate classes, one for students with Korean-speaking parents and one for those with English-speaking parents. The school also communicates with parents bilingually. This school has the largest choir in the New York Korean community. The choir, established in 2015, has fifty-four members: it specializes in Korean folk/arts songs. The school’s website indicates that the choir has made approximately a hundred per formances over the past six years, including three formal performances. Figure 4.2 captures the choir members before their performance at a UN organization in 2019. Principal Hwang emphasized Korean children’s learning of the community life of helping one another while practicing music performances at the choir.
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figure 4.2. The choir at a UN organization in 2019. (Photo provided by Hyun Joo Hwang.)
Two Major Organizations That Support Korean Schools This section provides information about two major Korean organizations that provide support for the Korean schools in the area financially, technically, and in networks. They are the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS and the KEC. The information in this section is based on my personal interviews with Kwang Ho Lee, Sun Geun Lee, Kyung Wook Kim, and Hee-Dong Park, and the “Special Activity Report of Northeast Chapter of NAKS” (2010: 29–33). The first three informants are Korean-language leaders in the area, whereas Hee-Dong Park was the director of the KEC in 2014. According to Kwang Ho Lee, t here are approximately 1,200 Korean schools in the United States in 2014. As noted in the beginning of the chapter, they established two national associations: the NAKS and the Korean School Association in America (KSAA). Korean schools in Southern California and three other West Coast states (Nevada, Arizona, and Washington) established the KSAA in 1981. About 250 Korean schools are affiliated with the association. Korean schools in the rest of the United States established the NAKS in 1981. About 950 Korean schools are affiliated with this umbrella organization. The most important event of the NAKS is its annual meeting, in which several hundred member schools participate. Korean government agencies provide funds for events organized by the NAKS and KSAA through the Korean embassy in Washington, D.C. The NAKS and KSAA have carried out various Korean-language and cultural events to enhance Korean American children’s heritage education through their local chapters. The NAKS has fourteen regional chapters. Its Northeast Chapter was established in 1985. As of 2013, 120 Korean schools in Greater New York had
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membership with the chapter. It published the twenty-ninth “Special Activity Report” in July 2010, which includes reports of its activities for all years since its establishment in 1985. The chapter organized or sponsored ten events and meetings in 2010. The most important event in the year was the annual conference held in June, in which almost all member schools and hundreds of individuals participated. The conference also included the speeches of invited keynote speakers and workshops related to Korean schools’ ethnic, historical, curricular, and instructional issues. In March of that year, the chapter organized a teachers’ night for the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation, giving awards to twenty-seven teachers. The chapter’s newsletter said that about 400 people, mostly Korean school teachers, participated in the event. In June, the chapter held two separate teachers’ training sessions, respectively in New York City and Bergen County, in which 420 Korean school teachers participated. In July, sixty people consisting of staff members of the chapter and teachers from Korean schools participated in a three-day NAKS national conference, which was held in Seattle. The national conference also included workshops for teachers. Thus, the national and regional conferences and meetings provide Korean school teachers with enough workshops and lectures given to improve their teaching skills. The chapter also sponsored a few events and contests at particular Korean schools in the area in 2010. In May, it held the Twenty-Fourth Children’s Korean Arts Festival contest at Dae Dong Manor in Flushing, in which 450 students from fifteen schools participated. In November, it sponsored its eleventh bilingual (Korean-English and English-Korean) translation contests for children, one in New York City and the other in Connecticut. Four hundred fifty students from nineteen Korean schools participated in the contests, with forty-two of them receiving awards. Two other events, sponsored by the chapter in most years but not held in 2010, w ere a Korean-language writing contest and a contest for making dramas based on Korean fairy tales. The Northeast Chapter has annually orga nized these events and contests in close coordination with the director of the KEC. In March 2010 it also organized the fifteenth Korean-language mock test to help Korean high school students prepare to take the SAT II Korean language test. About 900 students from thirty-five Korean schools participated in the test. The KEC is a branch of the Korean Ministry of Education, located at the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York, that takes care of the operation of Korean schools, the adoption of the Korean language in public schools, and Korean international students in the area in five states: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The Korean schools in the first three states established the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS. Its director is involved in many activities to coordinate and technically support Korean schools in the area. The KEC also collects statistics about Korean schools in the area and allocates funds based on the scales of schools. As previously noted, the financial support from the center covers only small fractions of total expenditures for most Korean
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schools. According to statistics released by the KEC, only six Korean schools in the area received $15,000 or more in the 2014 academic year, with more than two- thirds of the schools receiving $5,000 or less (Seo 2014a). It also provides free textbooks published in Korea for t hose schools that need them. Each school pays only for shipping. Moreover, the director helps the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS and hosting Korean schools in organizing and holding various language and cultural contests, offering partial financial support for the events and giving awards to winners.
Summary and Concluding Remarks This chapter has comprehensively examined the establishment and management of Korean schools in Greater New York. Three weekend Korean schools were first established in the 1960s. The influx of Korean immigrants in the 1970s and thereafter led to the rapid increase in the number of Korean schools, probably over 200. But about 150 better and larger Korean schools survived in 2014. Eighty percent of them were established within Korean Protestant churches, while the other 20 percent w ere established by Catholic Churches, Buddhist temples, community organizations, and Korean community local districts. The New York Korean community, like o thers in the United States, benefits from the presence of many Korean Protestant churches in providing Korean ethnic education for younger-generation Koreans. All five contributing f actors to the preservation and promotion of Korean culture discussed in chapter 1 are important for the development of Korean schools and the improvement of their ethnic education. In connection with the replenished ethnicity theory, the continuity of the immigration flow is important for the preservation and promotion of ethnic culture not only because of the demographic advantage but also b ecause of the significant role of immigrant leaders and temporary residents in making efforts to preserve it. In this chapter I have highlighted several Korean-language leaders who made significant contributions to the development and improvement of Korean schools, with three older immigrants having devoted their entire adult lives to it. I have also pointed out that Korean temporary residents often provide important contributions to Korean schools as teachers. Korean schools in the United States established two national associations in the early 1980s. Korean schools in Greater New York belong to the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS. The NAKS and its local chapter have held annual conferences in which a few teachers from each school participated. The local chapter has organized teachers’ workshops, seminars, and many Korean language and cultural performance contests. Through t hese collective efforts and events, the chapter has improved teaching techniques, expanded the curriculum by including taekwondo, samulnori, and Korean m usic and dance, and developed textbooks. Korean school leaders consider it their ultimate goal to strengthen younger-generation Koreans’ ethnic identity in the United States. Their linguistic and ethnic homogeneity seems
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to facilitate their collective efforts to improve Korean schools. Moreover, their personal experiences with and memory of the Japanese colonial government’s effort to annihilate Korean culture seem to have strengthened their w ill to transmit their language and culture to younger-generation Koreans. Finally, major findings indicate the usefulness of the transnational theory emphasizing the role of the emigrant state in facilitating transnational linkages to the homeland. The Korean government has played a significant role in financially and technically supporting the operation of Korean schools. It has financially supported Korean schools by covering portions of expenses for each Korean school’s operation, the national Korean school associations’ and local chapter’s annual conferences, and the latter’s numerous language and performance award events. The Korean government has also technically supported the operation of schools by providing Korean-language textbooks. We will see in chapter 5 that the Korean government has financially and technically supported the movement of Korean language leaders to local public schools too. The Korean government has supported Korean schools in the United States through the KEC.
5 • THE MOVEMENT TO PROMOTE KORE AN TO A MERIC AN SCHOOLS
In chapter 4 we examined the efforts of Korean immigrants to transmit the Korean language and culture to their c hildren by establishing weekend Korean schools. Korean immigrants have also made efforts to promote their language and culture to American schools in close coordination with Korean government agencies. A review of the literature indicates that no other immigrant group has made such a collective effort to promote their ethnic language to American public schools. However, t here are several articles that reveal the Chinese government’s extraordinary efforts to promote Chinese-language classes to foreign schools, including those in the United States. In 2004, the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), a Chinese government agency, established and funded Confucius Institutes in many foreign universities to popularize the Chinese language around the world (Ding and Saunders 2006; Gil 2008). The Chinese government has tried to promote the Chinese language, Mandarin, throughout the world as part of its effort to accomplish its foreign policy goals through the use of soft power, instead of military or economic power. Hanban “promotes cultural exchanges and tours, support networks for teachers and students of Chinese, and provides a wide array of language teaching and learning supports” (Zhao and Huang 2010). A Confucius Institute, formally a nonprofit organization, is usually attached to a major university in a foreign country. It is also linked to a university in China as a partner in maintaining and promoting Chinese language teaching and Chinese cultural programs. Many intellectuals in the West have been critical of the Chinese government’s aggressive efforts to popularize their language through the financial support of Confucius Institutes and its control of Chinese-language courses and cultural programs (Mosher 2012; Paradise 2009). Without a doubt, its aggressive efforts are the major contributing f actor to the adoption of Mandarin as a foreign language in so many secondary schools and higher educational institutions in the United States. 73
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Korean immigrants’ effort to promote their language to U.S. schools is an example of how they have tried to influence American society with Korean culture. This chapter is titled “The Movement to Promote Korean to American Schools” b ecause Korean language leaders have lobbied many elementary and secondary schools, local school boards, and the College Board to include Korean as a foreign language in schools and on the SAT II. In chapter 1 we reviewed five major theoretical models to explain the successful effort of Korean immigrants to preserve the ethnic language and culture. Among the models, the strong ethnic organization and emigrant state transnationalism models seem to be most useful in explaining the Korean-language movement in Greater New York. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section examines immigrants’ movement to include Korean as a foreign language on the SAT II in the 1990s. The second section examines the efforts of Korean-language leaders to promote Korean to public schools in Greater New York. The third section discusses the advantages of the Korean immigrant community in promoting the language to public schools over multigenerational white ethnic communities with no significant immigrant population.
The Movement to Include Korean on the SAT II Korean immigrant leaders in New York have engaged in two different types of movements to promote the Korean language: (1) the movement to include Korean on the SAT II and (2) the movement to get it adopted as a foreign language in public schools. In each movement, Korean community leaders requested help from a company in K orea or Korean government agencies and gained their financial support. The first movement to include Korean and other Asian languages on the SAT II originally started at UCLA, but leaders in Greater New York, associated with the Northeast Chapter of the National Association for Korean Schools (NAKS), played an important role in collecting donations to cover related expenses. Asian American faculty members in the University of California system created the UC Task Force on Asian Languages in 1988 to recommend the adoption of East Asian languages by public schools and colleges and their addition to the SAT II (Gordon 1990). This grew into a national movement, leading to the formation of the U.S. Task Force on Asian Languages in 1989. Edward Chang, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, and staff members of the Korean School Association in America (KSAA) in Southern California and three other states in the West created the Task Force on the Korean Language in 1993. They collected signatures from the Korean community asking the College Board to include the Korean language on the SAT II. In April 1993, Edward Chang visited Harvard University to meet Donald Stewart, professor and president of the College Board from 1987 to 1999, with
The Movement to Promote Korean to American Schools 75
approximately 15,000 Korean immigrants’ signatures collected throughout the West and asked him to add the Korean language to the SAT II. Chang recollected his meeting with Stewart: “Dr. Stewart indicated the difficulty in adding the Korean language on the ground that t here w ill not be enough students to choose the Korean language in SAT II. He said that only one high school in Washington, D.C. offered a Korean-language class in the entire United States at that time. To counteract his argument, I told him there are approximately 1,000 Korean weekend schools in the United States at that time.”1 As a result of the movement, the College Board promised to add three East Asian languages to the SAT II one by one, beginning in 1993. Thus, it added Japanese to the SAT II in 1993 and Chinese in 1994. In April 1994, two months after the Chinese language test was included on the SAT II, the College Board sent a letter to the Korean Task Force, asking for a donation of $500,000 to help cover the $750,000 expenses to create the Korean- language test on the SAT II (K. H. Lee 2015). In response, Korean communities engaged in major donation campaigns to create the $500,000 fund by the end of 1995. As summarized above, the Korean-language movement started in California, and staff members of the Association of Korean Schools in Americ a (AKSA) played an important role at the beginning of the movement. They asked the NAKS to collect donations throughout Korean communities in the United States. The NAKS covers all states except three western states and Southern California, which belong to AKSA. According to Kwang Ho Lee, a Korean-language leader in the New York area, the NAKS, by virtue of being a national association with fourteen regional chapters, was in a better position than AKSA to collect donations from the entire United States. The Task Force on the Korean Language and AKSA collected donations from Korean immigrants on the West Coast, while the NAKS solicited them from the East Coast and elsewhere through its fourteen chapters. When they collected only about $240,000 in the first four months of 1995, Korean-language leaders realized that it would take longer than one year to collect the full $500,000. They decided to seek a donation from Samsung, a major Korean electronics company. Samsung agreed to the request and donated $500,000 to the College Board in May 1995 (K. H. Lee 2015: 326). As a result, the College Board added the Korean-language examination to the SAT II as one of nine foreign languages in 1997. In addition to the three East Asian languages, six European languages—Spanish, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Modern Hebrew—were included on the SAT II. Since Samsung donated the full $500,000 to the College Board, Korean- language leaders established the Foundation of Korean Language and Culture in USA (FKLC) in Los Angeles with the $240,000 that had been collected. One of the foundation’s main objectives was to get courses related to the Korean language, history, and culture adopted in American elementary and secondary schools. According to Kwang Ho Lee, the president of Northeast Chapter of the
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NAKS in 1996, the FKLC gave $100,000 to the NAKS to help Korean-language classes get a dopted in American high schools. As a result, the NAKS succeeded in establishing Korean-language classes in twelve high schools in five cities in the United States between 1997 and 1999 (K. H. Lee 2015: 329). Another important objective of the FKLC was to support the development of textbooks for Korean- language classes; the group also donated $70,000 to the NAKS for that purpose. The other important objectives of the foundation are to offer scholarships to excellent Korean-language students in American schools, to invite principals and other school administrators for schools with newly created Korean-language programs to Korea for tours of cultural sites, and to provide workshops for Korean- language teachers in American schools. The main sources of FKLC revenue are the Korean government and community donations in the Los Angeles area. The NAKS invited Dr. Brian O’Reilly, the SAT program director, to its 1996 national conference to lecture about the development of the SAT II Korean test. The FKLC also invited Dr. O’Reilly to its international Korean-language conference focusing on “Overseas Koreans and the Next Generations,” held in K orea in June 1997 (see K. H. Lee 2015: 329). In April 1996, the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS also held the first pilot test for Korean high school students who planned to take the first SAT II Korean-language test in 1997. Over 1,200 students from sixty-three Korean schools participated in the mock test (327). From 1997 on, the NAKS gave the pilot test locally e very year through its fourteen chapters and the AKSA. These activities indicate the extent to which Korean-language leaders have been deeply involved not only in getting the Korean language included on the SAT II but also in helping Korean students to excel on the test. Approximately 2,500 students, almost all of whom were Korean Americans, took the Korean-language test in the first year (1997). As shown in table 5.1, the number of students who took the Korean-language test gradually increased, reaching approximately 4,600 in 2009, and then gradually dropping to about 3,000 in 2013. However, in terms of the number of students who took it, it was still the third-largest SAT language exam in 2013, a fter Chinese and Spanish. According to Korean-language leader Sun Geun Lee, t here were approximately 1,000 elementary schools and 750 secondary schools that offered Chinese and Japanese, respectively, as a foreign language in 2013, compared to about 120 schools (see table 5.2 in the next section) that offered Korean. These figures suggest that many nonethnic students chose to take the Chinese or Japanese exam for the SAT II, whereas almost all of the students who chose Korean were Korean American. After 2014, the College Board released only the 2017–2019 combined data on the results of SAT II foreign-language tests. Many colleges and universities have recently eliminated SAT scores as a criterion for admission of new students. Thus, the number of students who took a SAT foreign-language test is known to have decreased during recent years. Statistics on numbers of students who took SAT II foreign languages between 2017 and 2019 in table 5.1 reflect this trend. All these foreign languages experienced a decline in the number of students who chose
3,428 3,918 4,297 4,657 4,990 5,113 5,234 4,917 5,062 6,166 6,542 6,878 6,896 6,877 7,294 9,585 6,167 5,682 12,297
2,447 2,448 2,128 2,220 2,370 2,555 2,826 2,878 3,240 3,888 4,176 4,443 4,625 4,540 4,273 3,552 2,986 2,453 5,255
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2017–2019
1,174 1,070 1,141 1,155 1,270 1,371 1,404 1,303 1,465 1,683 1,733 1,732 1,759 1,818 1,966 1,750 1,521 1,410 3,193
Japanese
4,183 2,849 2,454 2,500 2,492 2,369 2,457 2,279 2,542 3,358 2,993 2,900 2,684 2,700 2,370 2,288 1,972 1,870 3,246
French
Number of Test Takers
1,045 907 814 919 938 779 848 751 830 1,050 1,039 949 919 854 770 710 675 620 1,179
German
6,543 5,279 4,671 4,872 5,105 4,979 5,308 5,428 5,656 8,252 7,794 7,876 7,045 7,152 6,399 4,898 3,868 3,321 5,560
Spanish
649 751 723 736 746 740 737 745 752 754 757 760 763 764 767 769 767 767 760
Korean
748 749 746 745 748 752 756 756 758 764 764 763 763 761 758 759 759 758 760
Chinese
627 651 662 669 672 676 675 682 687 682 687 693 689 688 684 692 688 695 702
582 599 609 625 625 623 630 627 629 621 618 624 637 620 646 656 654 664 673
French
Mean Score Japanese
567 574 604 606 605 611 628 612 631 596 582 601 609 612 611 614 624 626 618
German
574 603 615 614 631 622 638 635 635 638 644 647 652 653 663 670 668 664 664
Spanish
note: The three foreign languages (Italian, Latin, and Hebrew) that did not have the listening test are not included in the t able. The numbers of students who took Spanish without taking the listening test were much larger than those listed in the table. For example, the number of students who took Spanish alone in 2014 was 21,069.
source: The College Board, SAT Subject Test Data, 1997–2014 and 2017–2019.
Chinese
Korean
Numbers of Students Who Took SAT II Foreign Languages and Mean Scores, 1997–2019
Year
table 5.1.
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each in the last three years. Nevertheless, the Korean language continued to take third place in the number of students who chose it, next to the Chinese and the Spanish, and much ahead of the other three foreign languages. Considering that the Spanish-and Chinese-speaking populations are much larger than the Korean- speaking population in the United States, the Korean language seems to be enjoying respect in academia. Statistics about the mean scores of the SAT II are even more surprising. From the beginning, students who chose Korean had the second-highest mean score (following t hose who took Chinese). In 2009, the Korean language tied for first with Chinese with a mean score of 763. In the following years, the mean score of the Korean language surpassed that of Chinese. It ranked first in mean score (767), followed by the two other East Asian languages in 2013. The Chinese and Korean languages were tied for first again (with a mean score of 760) in the years 2017–2019. The number of major universities and colleges that used SAT II foreign languages for admissions has recently further decreased. Moreover, unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented most students from taking the test in the United States and foreign countries in 2020. As a result, the College Board suffered serious financial losses. The organization thus decided to stop offering the SAT II from 2021 on. In his interview with me in March 2021, Kwang Ho Lee, one of the leaders of the NAKS in the New York area, expressed his and other Korean- language leaders’ disappointment at the cancellation of SAT II foreign-language tests: “We made great efforts to get the Korean language included in SAT II foreign-languages and paid $500,000 to the College Board. But only twenty-two years after the Korean language had been included on the SAT II, the College Board abolished the system. We lost a half million dollars quickly. The Korean community is one of the major unlucky victims of the pandemic.” The College Board created Advanced Placement (AP = college-level) courses for high school students to strengthen their credentials for college admission. Students who pass AP courses receive college credit. The College Board includes eight foreign-language and culture courses in the thirty-five AP courses. Japanese and Chinese w ere included in 2003, but Korean was excluded b ecause it did not meet two major requirements: (1) the adoption of the language as a foreign language in 250 or more elementary or high schools and (2) the willingness of 100 or more colleges and universities to recognize it as a foreign language. The Korean language did not meet e ither requirement: only an estimated 175 elementary and secondary schools a dopted Korean as a foreign-language course as of 2020. In addition, Kwang Ho Lee shared that the College Board also demanded $1 million to include Korean in AP courses, even if it met the two requirements. The Korean Language Foundation established a steering committee to get Korean adopted as an AP course by the College Board in December 2018 (Seo 2018). After they heard of the abolition of the SAT II foreign-language tests, Korean-language leaders became more serious about getting a Korean-language AP course.
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Koreans are very proud of their alphabets, invented in the mid-fifteenth century by Greater King Sejong. The Korean government long ago adopted October 9, presumably the date Korean alphabets were announced by the Greater King, as Korean Alphabet Day. Another important achievement Korean-language leaders in Los Angeles and New York made through their lobbying efforts is the resolutions in the California and New York state legislatures to adopt October 9 as Korean Alphabet Day. Kwang Ho Lee told me that, encouraged by the passage of the resolution by the California State Assembly and Senate in 2017, two major Korean-language organizations in the New York area, the Korean Language Association (KLA) and the Northeast Chapter of the NAKS, began to lobby New York State Assembly and Senate members to adopt a similar resolution in New York in 2019. They succeeded in summer 2021 and celebrated the first Korean Alphabet Day on October 9, 2021, with several Korean-language contests for children organized.
The Movement to Adopt the Korean Language in Public Schools The greatest achievement that Korean-language leaders in the area have made through their collective actions is the adoption of Korean as a foreign language by about twenty-five elementary and high schools. This section examines their successful effort to make t hese public schools adopt Korean as a foreign language, Korean immigrant teachers’ extra efforts to make it very popular in the schools, and the cultural impact of the Korean-language program on students, their parents, and residents. The Need for Korean-Language Courses in Public Schools Korean-language leaders have been encouraged by the inclusion of Korean on the SAT II and the gradual increase in the number of high school students who have chosen Korean for the foreign-language test. However, they learned that Korean students still comprised almost all of the test takers, with non-Korean students constituting less than 3 percent each year (author interview with Sun Geun Lee, 2014). Sun Geun Lee and other Korean-language leaders also found that, as of 2007, only sixty-four elementary and secondary schools in the United States offered Korean as a foreign language and that most students were Korean Americans. In contrast, schools that offered Japanese and Chinese in 2007 numbered approximately 750 and 1,000, respectively, with much larger proportions of non- Japanese or non-Chinese students. Korean-language leaders believed that the inclusion of the Korean-language test on the SAT II would encourage not only Korean American students but also non-Korean students to study the language. A fter twenty-two years of the language’s inclusion on the test, the number of students who chose Korean for the SAT II significantly increased, from 2,447 in 1997 to 4,176 in 2007 (see table 5.1). But almost all of the students w ere Korean. As the data show, the number of
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schools that offered Korean in 2007 was very small, especially compared to the numbers that offered Japanese and Chinese. Leaders concluded that getting enough high schools to offer Korean as a foreign language would encourage non- Korean students to study it, and that some of those students would be likely to continue Korean studies as their major. As Yung Duk Kim said, “There are many Korean-language schools in New York as well as in other Korean communities. But since t hese weekend schools teach Korean-language skills below the elementary school level, they cannot prepare students to concentrate in the Korean language and literature in college. As long as they do not study Korean in high schools, they cannot major in Korean in colleges. We need to take action to make many high schools adopt Korean as a foreign language.” Korean-language leaders realized that they needed to more aggressively lobby school administrators to get Korean a dopted in public schools. Korean-language leaders established the KLA in 2007 to get Korean-language classes offered more broadly. As noted in the previous section, the FKLC financially supported the NAKS to get Korean-language classes a dopted in U.S. secondary schools. However, it did not have enough funds to support the adoption of Korean-language classes on the East Coast in the early 2000s. The leaders of the KLA believed that the Korean- language adoption movement could be carried out more effectively locally. In their view, the FKLC is ineffective outside of Los Angeles because local Korean community leaders and parents of students need to get involved in negotiating with local schools and getting donations to start Korean-language programs. This is the context in which Korean-language leaders in the area established the KLA. Key staff members of the KLA include Sun Geun Lee and Kwang Ho Lee—two longtime leaders of the NAKS—and Yung Duk Kim, a veteran community fundraiser and board member of several significant Korean ethnic organizations. The KLA’s members also include several Korean-language teachers in public schools in the area. The Movement to Lobby High Schools in Bergen County The following paragraphs are based on my three interviews with Sun Geun Lee. The KLA has made a few important contributions to increase the number of high schools that offer the Korean language. First, it helped several graduate students obtain Korean-language teachers’ certificates with full scholarships. They approached Rutgers University to establish a short-term Korean-language master’s certificate program. Korean community donations covered the scholarships for the first five students who completed their master’s program for the Korean-language teachers’ certificates at Rutgers University in 2010. In 2014, the KLA helped three more Korean students enroll in the same program by awarding them scholarships. In 2016 and 2018, the KLA leaders respectively established additional Korean-language teachers’ certificate programs with the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY). The KLA’s next tasks were to locate high schools with large numbers of Korean students and to lobby administrators to offer Korean-language classes. When high
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figure 5.1. Korean-language leaders present a check for $50,000 to Mark Hayes, the
Palisades Park superintendent of schools, to cover the salary of a Korean-language teacher at Palisades Park High School for the first year. (Photo provided by Korea Times.)
schools first establish a Korean-language class or classes at the request of Korean parents and leaders, they usually demand financial support for the first two years to cover the instructor’s salary. Once Korean-language classes have sufficient enrollments, high schools obtain financial support from their school board. The KLA thus must solicit donations from the Korean community. While several schools in New York City offered Korean as a foreign language around 2009, it was not offered by any public schools in New Jersey. As noted in chapter 2, Korean Americans comprised significant proportions (over 25 percent) of the populations in several neighborhoods in Bergen County. Therefore, the KLA decided to focus on public schools in Bergen County, where Korean immigrants were highly concentrated. In 2009 the KLA targeted Palisades Park High School (PPHS) to be the first high school in New Jersey to offer Korean-language classes with financial support from the Korean community. As noted in chapter 2, a major suburban Korean enclave was established in Palisades Park in the early 1990s. In 2010, Korean Americans comprised the majority (52 percent) of the population in Palisades Park, and Koreans also comprised the majority of the student body at the only high school in the township. The leaders of the KLA and parents of Korean students at PPHS approached the high school’s administrators (including its superintendent, Mark Hayes) about adding a Korean-language course at the school. Hayes showed g reat interest in doing so. But, as expected, he demanded a donation of $100,000 to cover the salary of the new Korean-language teacher for the first two years. Korean-language leaders agreed to support the course and collected a donation of $25,000 from Korean parents, business o wners, and a church in Palisades Park, and another $25,000 from the KEC. In May 2010, KLA leaders presented a check for $50,000 to Hayes to cover the first-year salary of the Korean-language teacher to be hired (see figure 5.1).
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Two of the leaders of the KLA, Sun Geun Lee and Yung Duk Kim, visited Seoul in November 2009 to ask Korean government agencies for financial support to expand Korean-language classes in New York high schools. Their visit proved to be timely b ecause a few Korean government agencies had already been considering expanding financial support for Korean-language education for second- generation Korean Americans. The globalization of the Korean language is one of the ten Korean brands that former president Lee Myung-bak designated for global marketing in 2009. Thus, in 2010 the Korean government increased its annual financial support for Korean-language education in the United States to $1.5 million. Without a doubt, this government policy was an important contributing factor to the expansion of the government’s financial support for Korean-language classes in U.S. schools. However, both Lee and Kim told me that their lobbying activities, especially their emphasis on the Chinese government’s immense financial support for Chinese-language classes in U.S. schools, also significantly influenced the government’s decision to expand its financial support for Korean-language programs. Beginning in 2010, the Korean government provided, through Korean Education Centers (KECs) located at eight Korean consulate generals in the United States, $25,000 for each school that offered one or more Korean-language classes for the first time and $10,000 for ongoing Korean-language classes each year. For the Korean-language classes at PPHS, the KEC agreed to support the program with $25,000 in the first year and $10,000 in the second year. The KLA thus needed to create a fund totaling $25,000 for the first year and $40,000 for the second year to create and maintain Korean-language classes at PPHS. In 2010 and 2011, the KLA collected more money than needed ($65,000). The Korean Association of New Jersey, a Korean church, many Korean students’ parents, and Korean ethnic organizations in the neighborhood participated in the fundraising campaign (Chung 2010). As a result, three Korean-language classes, each with twenty-seven students, began in the fall semester of 2010 at PPHS. In the 2011 fall semester, the number of students enrolled in Korean-language classes increased to approximately one hundred. Since the Korean-language program at the high school has been successful in terms of student enrollment, the local city government agreed to financially support it from the 2012 academic year on (KangLee 2011a). This was exactly what the leaders of the KLA had sought. According to Jane Cho, the first Korean-language teacher at PPHS, the number of students who wanted to take Korean-language courses increased to over 120 in 2013, but some w ere unable to register because the high school could not hire another teacher. She negotiated with the school and the KEC to hire a part-time instructor to teach two more classes to accommodate all of the interested students. While the Korean-language courses have enjoyed increasing popularity, two of the other three foreign languages that had been offered at the high school—French and Italian (Spanish is the other language that has not experienced reductions)—have suffered significant reductions in the number of students registered.
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As we w ill see in the next section, Cho taught Korean-language classes with immense enthusiasm, combining more straightforward teaching with rich cultural activities and spending a lot of extra time to help students. In addition, she received significant financial and other forms of support from the KEC, Korean parents, and even Korean community organizations. Given this, it is not surprising that Korean- language classes have become increasingly more popular with a concomitant decline in the popularity of French and Italian. However, Korean American students have comprised a predominant majority of the students. According to Cho, non-Korean students, mostly Chinese and white students, composed about 25 percent of her basic Korean-language classes. As the class level went up, the number of non-Korean students diminished. Since most Korean immigrant students usually spoke Korean in their homes, they could take intermediate and advanced Korean- language classes. But non-Korean students who did not speak Korean at home felt alienated and dropped out of the intermediate and advanced classes. In a similar way, the KLA succeeded in establishing Korean-language classes at Ridgefield Memorial High School (RMHS) in fall 2011. Ridgefield (which borders Palisades Park) is another township in Bergen County with a large Korean population. In 2011, approximately 35 percent of RMHS students w ere Korean ( Jin Su Lee 2011a). The Korean government supported this Korean-language program with $35,000, with the remaining $65,000 covered by community donations. In summer 2011, the KLA had to collect over $65,000 to cover the second-year salary for the instructor at PPHS ($40,000) and the first-year salary for the instructor ($25,000) at Ridgefield (KangLee 2011b). The KLA succeeded in acquiring the needed donations before the 2011 fall semester started. Ji Young Won, who obtained a Korean-language teacher certificate from Rutgers University, was hired as the teacher for this new Korean-language program at RMHS. The program at RMHS was so successful that the school board decided to offer Korean-language classes to junior high school students beginning in 2013. As a result, RMHS hired a part-time instructor in the fall of 2013 with financial support of $15,000 by the KLA. The school has had nine Korean-language classes (seven in high school and two in junior high) since 2013, involving 117 students (Seo 2013). The school agreed to promote the part-time instructor to a regular full-time teacher with a full salary beginning in the 2015 academic year. The KLA contacted Fort Lee High School, located in another Korean enclave in Bergen County. According to Yung Duk Kim, the KLA invited the school’s principal to Korea in 2013, and “he was very impressed by the Korean educational system.” Fort Lee High School established the Korean-language program in fall 2016. In the meantime, two major high schools in the best school district in New Jersey—Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest and Old Tappan High School—decided to offer the Korean language beginning in the fall of 2015 with no financial support from the Korean community. This decision is very much the fruit of Korean parents’ concerted lobbying activities toward the schools and the school board, supported by a Korean school board member
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and a Korean City Council member, for about three years (Seo 2014b). Korean students compose over 30 percent of the students at the two high schools, and the Korean parents’ associations at both schools are very active. However, Korean immigrants’ demographic advantage and lobbying activities alone are not enough to make the best school district in New Jersey decide to start Korean-language programs without financial support. Without learning about other benefits of a Korean-language program, the school administrators and non-Korean parents would not have agreed to commence a Korean-language program in the school district. Sun Geun Lee, one of the leaders of the KLA, commented on the other important contributing f actors to the “miracle” that is occurring in New Jersey: Many white parents and community leaders complained about Korean parents’ and community leaders’ lobbying activities for the establishment of the Korean- language program b ecause five other foreign languages had already been offered in the school. The school administrators’ access to information about the popularity of the Korean language and its positive effect on students’ school performance in the other two high schools in Bergen County is another important factor to their decision to start the Korean-language program. A 2013 graduate from Palisades Park High School who was exceptional in the Korean-language classes became the first student from the school who had been admitted to Harvard for many years. . . . And the Korean language has become very popular in the other two high schools mainly because the two Korean teachers trained with our scholarships have devoted all their time and energy to teaching the Korean language by combining it with all elements of Korean culture. Spontaneous Adoption of Korean-Language Courses in Public Schools in New York City Thirteen elementary and secondary schools in New York City had already offered Korean-language courses before the two above-mentioned high schools in Korean enclaves in New Jersey started them in 2010 and 2011. They include three schools with a few to no Korean students whose principals spontaneously adopted Korean- language courses mainly because they w ere impressed by the Korean educational system and Korean culture. In the following paragraphs, I introduce the development of Korean-language programs in two of these schools. The following paragraphs about the spontaneous establishment of Korean- language classes at Democracy Prep Charter School are based on my interview with Jungjin Lee, her book chapter, and a few articles published in local Korean dailies. Lee was hired as the first Korean-language teacher at the high school in 2010. The school, established in Harlem in 2006, has the largest Korean language and culture program in the area. Its founder and principal, Seth Andrew, created Korean-language courses in 2009, three years a fter its foundation, by virtue of his positive experiences with Korean culture and educational system during his nine- month stint as an English-language instructor in Korea. He founded Democracy
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Prep (kindergarten through twelfth grade) in a low-income Black neighborhood in the heart of Harlem in 2006. During his residence in K orea, he was deeply impressed by (1) both Korean parents’ and students’ zeal for education, (2) Korean society’s recognition of the importance of education, and (3) Korean students’ high level of respect shown to him as a teacher ( Jungjin Lee 2016). He adopted several “positive” aspects of the Korean educational system, which emphasizes strong discipline, respect for teachers, and long hours of study. At Democracy Prep, Black and Latino students comprise 80 and 20 percent of the student population, respectively, with virtually no white or Asian students (there is not a single Korean student at the school). However, the school requires all students to take a Korean-language course. During the 2014 spring semester, nearly 500 students from Democracy Prep and another associated high school were enrolled in nineteen Korean-language classes taught by four full-time Korean teachers at the school ( Jungjin Lee 2016). The school has created a Korean Department consisting of four Korean teachers. It also teaches students bongsan talchum (a traditional Korean mask dance), taekwondo, arirang (a very important Korean folk song), and K-pop songs after school as extracurricular activities. Following the Korean educational system, the school starts early in the morning, at 7:45 a.m., and requires all students to remain in school u ntil 5:15 p.m., which constitutes a significantly longer school day than at most American schools. After regular classes, students meet teachers to check their academic progress and engage in Korean extracurricular activities, including taekwondo and choir. According to Lee, the high school established a sister relationship with a high school in Seoul and sends a group of about forty students to Seoul e very year for seven to nine days. Each visiting student stays at a Korean student’s home. Surprisingly, students’ academic achievements have dramatically improved to the extent that in 2010 it was selected as the best charter school in New York City. The percentages of the high school students who passed the state regency tests in English and mathematics w ere extremely high, comparable to t hose at specialized high schools in New York City. The majority of the students do not have parents who attended college. However, most Democracy Prep students planned to attend first-or second-class colleges and universities. In 2013, all thirty-nine students in the graduating class received admission to two-or four-year universities. The principal attributed the radical academic improvements of the school to the Korean educational system he adopted. Jungjin Lee, chair of the Korean Department at the high school, also agreed that the adoption of two key Korean cultural components—emphasis on the importance of education and respect for teachers and parents—by the founder has greatly improved students’ attitudes toward their academic activities and teachers. This school’s success story and its emphasis on the Korean style of education have been widely publicized in Korea through an article published in JoongAng Ilbo, a Korean daily newspaper. When the principal visited K orea in June 2011, just after the publication of the article, more than twenty-five media outlets interviewed him (KangLee 2012).
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The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) featured a program about the school’s success story and the principal’s emphasis on the superiority of the Korean educational system. Suddenly, he became a hero in Korea. His high school has received different types of technical and financial support in implementing Korean language and cultural programs from various organizations in K orea. Another school in New York City that has included Korean-language courses and other important Korean cultural elements, such as taekwondo and samulnori (Korean folk dance, percussion, and music), in the curriculum is East-West School of International Studies in Flushing. This public high school, which has only a dozen or so Korean students, was established in 2006. The school focuses on East Asian studies, particularly Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Jounghye Rhi is the senior Korean teacher at the school. According to Rhi, all junior high students take the three East Asian languages in different grades—Japanese in sixth grade, Korean in seventh grade, and Chinese in eighth grade. High school students can choose one of the three languages and one of three different levels: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. Of 640 students at the school, about 150 took the Korean- language classes during the 2014 spring semester. In addition to Korean-language courses, a pungmulnori (traditional Korean music and dance) class was offered for sixth-and seventh-grade students. Six other elementary and high schools in New York City started Korean- language courses in 2013 more or less spontaneously. Three elementary schools, Flushing 242, Robert Christian, and Pennington (Seo 2013), started offering Korean courses mainly because Korean parents, with moderate financial support, pushed the schools to implement them. Also, the information about the positive effect of Korean language and culture courses on academic achievements and financial support by the Korean government seem to have encouraged school principals to establish Korean-language programs. The exception is PS 32, a public elementary school located in Flushing. Its principal, Debra Eriko, turned her elementary school into a dual-language school combining English and Korean in 2007 because, in her view, “no language is as beautiful as Korean and no country has as many cultural properties as K orea” ( Juliane Lee 2010a). On December 11, 2013, Eriko invited the director of the KEC and members of the KLA to her school to observe Korean-language classes (S. J. Suh 2013b). At a press conference on November 9, 2011, Suk Lee, director of the KEC, reported that in the 2011–2012 academic year the Korean government supported Korean-language programs at fourteen elementary and secondary schools in the tri-state area with $220,000 in funding ( Juliane Lee 2011). The beneficiaries of the Korean government’s financial support included the three schools with small or nonexistent Korean student populations that spontaneously created Korean- language programs as well as the other schools with Korean-language programs, most of which were located in Korean enclaves. I have analyzed the movement to promote the Korean language in elementary and secondary schools in the area. However, Korean communities in other areas
table 5.2.
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Number of Elementary and High Schools with One or More Korean-Language Classes and Number of Students in the United States and in Greater New York, 2010–2019 United States
Year
2010–2011 2011–2012 2012–2013 2013–2014 2014–2015 2015–2016 2016–2017 2017–2018 2018–2019
Greater New York
Number of Schools
Number of Students
Number of Schools
Number of Students
61 91 109 122 126 N/A N/A N/A N/A
6,085 8,509 9,421 10,588 12,428 N/A N/A NA N/A
13 14 16 23 26 30 30 33 36
1,158 1,580 1,870 2,503 3,951 4,391 3,853 4,785 5,355
source: Hwang 2014.
have gone through similar transitions with combined efforts by Korean parents, community leaders, and the Korean government. As a result, the number of U.S. elementary and high schools that offer Korean as a foreign language has in creased rapidly. Table 5.2 shows the increase with the number of students who registered for the courses in the United States as a whole and in Greater New York separately between 2010 and 2014. Only sixty-one schools offered at least one Korean-language class in the United States in the 2010–2011 calendar year. Both the number of schools and the number of students doubled during the 2010–2014 period. U.S. data for the most recent years are not available. But data for Greater New York indicate phenomenal increases in the numbers of both schools and students. Thirteen more schools started to offer Korean-language courses in the area between 2014 and 2018, with the number of students increasing by approximately 2,500. In 2015, Korean-language leaders changed the name of the KLA to Korean Language Foundation (KLF) in an effort to raise more donations from the Korean community. It established two more Korean-language teachers’ certificate programs, the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2016 and Queens College in 2018. According to a report released by the KLF in 2000, it had helped eighteen Korean American adults complete Korean-language teachers’ certificates with full scholarships (see figure 5.2). All but one graduate found Korean-language teaching positions mostly in high schools, but some in colleges and universities. Impressed by the progress of the Korean-language movement in Greater New York, in 2017 a Korean government agency asked the KLF to select two dozen honor students from Korean-language classes for a one-week summer tour of Korea.
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figure 5.2. Members of the Korean Language Foundation with four students and their scholarships in 2021. (Photo provided by Kwang Ho Lee.)
The Key Role of Korean Immigrant Teachers and the Korean Immigrant Community The establishment of language programs does not automatically lead students to take the courses. It involves much hard work and dedication on the part of teachers to get the programs off the ground. It is extremely difficult to start a Korean-
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language program, especially in schools where there are not many Korean stu dents, because non-Korean students and their parents initially do not see any benefit to learning the language. In the following paragraphs, based on my personal interviews with several teachers, I summarize the initial difficulties the teachers encountered and how they overcame them with extra work, dedication, and love. Almost all Korean-language teachers completed their college education in Korea majoring in Korean language and literature or other humanities fields. They usually came to the United States as international students for further studies. Many completed a master’s program in the United States but w ere unable to find meaningful jobs. In Korea, they never imagined they would have the opportunity to teach the Korean language in an American school. Thus, they feel very proud of the Korean economic power and cultural influence in the United States, which have given them the opportunity to teach the language and culture. As immigrants with a strong Korean identity, most Korean-language teachers have a sense of mission to globalize Korean culture in the United States by teaching the language to Korean American and non-Korean students. I was so impressed by the level of their dedication to teaching Korean that I asked fifteen of them to write personal essays about their teaching to publish in an edited book (Min and Yim 2016). We noted earlier that Seth Andrew, the founder and principal of Democracy Prep who modeled his school a fter the Korean education system, deserves much credit for establishing a successful Korean language and culture program at a school with no Korean students. However, we also need to acknowledge that the school would not have been successful without the efforts of dedicated Korean teachers. As of 2014, the Korean Department had four immigrant teachers, all who fully devoted themselves to teaching disadvantaged non-Korean students the Korean language and culture and preparing many cultural events, spending numerous extra hours after school. They initially encountered a great deal of rejection and disrespect from minority students at the school. In particular, Jungjin Lee, the founding Korean-language teacher in the high school, suffered painful experiences during her first year in dealing with black students’ rejection of her class and their contempt for and mockery of her Asian background and accented English. In her essay reflecting on her Korean-language teaching experiences, she confessed that she often silently cried in the school rest room during the first year ( Jungjin Lee 2016: 50). However, the difficulties did not diminish her effort and enthusiasm to teach Korean language and culture, which ultimately led to fruitful results: Part of my personality is not to give up easily and I persistently tried to persuade students and gain their support. By the time I completed my first year of teaching, full of tears and pain, I seemed to gain support from about half of the students. Also, studying Korean culture and traditions in an effort to teach American students and looking at K orea as an outsider provided me with the opportunity to see
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orea as a w K hole for the first time and to love Korean arts and culture. My explanations and teachings about K orea w ere no longer deriving from my head; they w ere my exclamations deriving from the bottom of my heart. (52)
fter the first extremely difficult year, students’ attitudes gradually improved. A Both faculty and students began to show respect for and trust in her ( Jungjin Lee 2016: 53). She reported that a fter a year, some students began to call her “mom” and to show interest in Korean etiquette and culture. Many parents expressed appreciation for her teaching the children to respect their parents. The following paragraphs are based on my interviews of Jane Cho in 2014 and 2015 and on her essay included in my coedited book (Cho 2016). As the first gradu ate from the Korean-language teacher certification program, she was hired to teach Korean-language classes at PPHS in 2010. She said that the initial difficulty of teaching Korean in a high school humbled her, despite teaching at a Korean weekend school for about twenty years (Cho 2016: 60). A highly dedicated teacher, Cho emphasized students’ “Korean cultural experiences” as a means to learning the Korean language: “I teach students the Korean language by helping them experience Korean culture. I often invite outside experts on samulnori, taekwondo, and talchum to my classes to perform these Korean cultural practices for my students” (author interview, 2015). In the fall 2013 and spring 2014 semesters, she took her Korean-language students to the Metropolitan Museum of Art so they could see the special exhibition of Korean fine art from the Silla period (Korea Daily 2014a). On their way back to the school, she guided students to a Korean restaurant in K-Town to show them how to make kimchi and mandoo (Korean-style dumplings). After establishing the Korean Club for after-school activities, she divided the Korean-language students into five different teams for their weekly after-school activities, with teams focusing on (1) K-pop dance, (2) K-pop singing, (3) samulnori, (4) taekwondo, and (5) instrumental m usic. As the only Korean-language teacher at the high school, she supervised the five teams a fter school each week. The Korean Taekwondo Association sent a staff member to teach the taekwondo team once a month; they practiced on their own the rest of the time. Even for the other cultural teams, Cho has often invited Korean experts in the respective categories to teach each team a few times each semester. She has received about $8,000 each year from the KEC and uses the money to pay lecturers for each team. However, she also has spent one or two hours a fter school about three days each week to supervise the students’ extracurricular activities. Moreover, she has had to spend a lot of time preparing students for the year-end Korean night perfor mances in May and June. Additionally, she has created scholarships for excellent students in her Korean-language classes, with about fifteen students receiving from $200 to $500. Five scholarships were offered by the KEC, while an equal number of scholarships were given by Korean community organizations and the Korean Parents Club at the high school.
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figure 5.3. Several students bow to teacher Jane Cho to celebrate the Lunar New Year in
2021 at Palisades Park High School. (Photo provided by Jane Cho.)
Cho said she even cooked ddeukguk (Korean rice cake soup traditionally eaten in celebration of Lunar New Year) for students and teachers around the holiday (see figure 5.3). Her days at the school w ere much longer than t hose of other teachers, as she tutored Korean students a fter their regular classes each day. Seeing that Cho worked extremely hard, a European-language teacher told her that she did not need to work so hard to keep her position. But teaching students the Korean language and culture was not just a m atter of keeping her job but a God-given mission to promote the Korean language to American students (author interview, 2015). Cho also works as assistant principal for a Saturday Korean school. Her appreciation for the opportunity to teach Korean and her sense of mission to promote the Korean language and culture to second-generation Korean American students pushes her to work that much harder. Since 2006, Kyung Hee University in K orea has organized an essay contest focusing on Korean-language teachers’ experiences all over the world. Cho, a longtime essayist, won the 2011 best essay award (Jin Su Lee 2011b). Jounghye Rhi has taught Korean-language courses at the East-West School of International Studies (EWSIS) in Flushing since its establishment in 2006. As already noted in the previous section, all seventh-grade students at the school are required to take the Korean language. However, high school students can choose to take Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. The high school is located in a working-class
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neighborhood in Flushing where Chinese immigrants constitute the majority of the population. Since there are few Korean families in the neighborhood and only about fifteen Korean students at the school, Rhi struggled to recruit enough high school students for the Korean-language class. The principal tried to eliminate the Korean-language program around 2009 due to the lack of student interest. To save the program, Rhi contacted Korean community leaders to influence the principal (KangLee 2011a; Rhi 2010). To attract students and to compete with the other two East Asian language programs, she has facilitated student involvement in Korean cultural activities, community events, and even summer visits to K orea. She has helped students make and eat Korean food three times each semester and has had her students drop by Korean-owned stores to introduce themselves in Korean. Her students have also been involved in the most important Korean community event in Greater New York every year since the establishment of the Korean- language program at EWSIS: the annual Korean Parade hosted by the Korean American Association of Greater New York (KAAGNY): “EWSIS has participated in the Korean Parade held in Manhattan around Korean Thanksgiving Day every year. About 40–50 students participate each year. Boy students holding Korean flags and girl students in hanbok (Korean dress) march at two end rows while the other students with Korean and American flags in both hands march at the middle rows, saying ‘Anyyunghaseyo’ (how are you) loudly. A fter the parade they are busy tasting different types of Korean food at jangtur (Korean food booths) and looking at Korean gongyepoom (handicrafts)” (Rhi 2016: 85). By virtue of their participation in the parade, the ten students selected from the EWSIS Korean program w ere invited to the 2011 annual gala organized by the KAAGNY to celebrate Korean American Day (Rhi 2016: 87–88). I witnessed t hese students singing aegugga (the Korean national anthem) for the audience of 1,000. Korean American Day is celebrated on January 13 to commemorate the arrival of Korean immigrant pioneers in Hawaii on January 13, 1903. Rhi and Kyung Hee Kim, another Korean-language teacher at EWSIS, have also helped many students in the Korean-language program to participate in various Korean cultural contests, such as an international Korean music and dance contest, a national K-pop dance contest, and a Korean-language writing contest. Their teams have won several awards in t hese contests. Rhi and Kim have taken their students to the Korea Society, K-Town, H-Mart in Flushing, the Korean Cultural Center, and other Korean organizations. They have also helped several students visit Korea for summer tours and internships and have spent many hours a fter school helping students practice and rehearse, but they are happy to find that students’ participation in Korean cultural events and contests has contributed to the popularity of the EWSIS Korean-language program. Rhi said that financial support from the KEC helped her organize several cultural programs, including a regular lecture for teachers on Korean culture. As a result of their hard work and
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enthusiasm, the Korean program at EWSIS has become very successful, with over 150 students registering for the Korean-language program and two Korean teachers spearheading it as of 2014 (Rhi 2016: 86). Rhi said that two non-Korean high school seniors who have taken Korean-language classes at EWSIS planned to attend college in Korea.
Summary and Concluding Remarks Korean-language leaders in the United States, and especially in Greater New York, engaged in the movement to include the Korean language on SAT II foreign- language subject tests in the 1990s, led by the NAKS. They collected donations from the Korean community and received $500,000 from Samsung. The Korean language was thus included as one of the nine SAT II foreign-language exams. Korean-language leaders in Greater New York have engaged in a more active movement to promote the Korean language in public schools. The movement has involved establishing master’s programs at three universities for Korean-language teacher’s certificates, collecting donations to support the programs, lobbying Korean government agencies for financial support, and lobbying high school principals and school boards to include Korean as a foreign language. Their struggle has succeeded in getting Korean-language programs established in twenty-three area schools. Moreover, these newly established Korean-language programs have been very successful in attracting students. Older Korean immigrant language leaders’ meticulous plans and dedication to promoting the Korean language in public schools have played a central role in establishing Korean-language programs t here, while Korean immigrant teachers’ sense of mission to teach American students the Korean language with Korean cultural elements has been essential to the polarity of the Korean language there. In addition, Korean parents, ethnic organizations, and other members of the Korean community have supported Korean-language programs through monetary donations, supporting students’ extracurricular activities, and helping students with year-end performances. Th ese findings support my extension of the replenished ethnicity theory provided in chapter 1 that the presence of a large number of immigrants has had a positive effect on ethnic preservation through immigrant leaders’ active roles in creating mechanisms for heritage education. In particular, older immigrants have worked tirelessly to promote Korean-language education in public schools. They have also supported Korean heritage and cultural organ izations in preserving and promoting Korean culture. Korean government agencies’ financial and technical support of the Korean- language movement indicates the importance of emigrant state transnationalism for understanding the extraordinary effort of Korean immigrants to promote Korean-language education. Korean government agencies have supported the movement partly in response to Korean-language leaders’ requests for financial
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support; they have also supported it proactively to globalize the Korean language through Korean immigrants in the United States. And the global popularity of Korean culture, especially the strong influence of K-pop, has contributed to the popularity of the Korean language in public schools. Finally, New York public schools’ readiness to accept non-European languages has facilitated the effort of Korean community leaders to promote the Korean language in area public schools.
6 • KORE AN FOOD
Food is an important component of ethnic culture because it is inextricably linked to ethnic history, traditions, and religion. Thus, immigrants and members of an ethnic group eat ethnic food to maintain their ethnic traditions and express their ethnic identity (Abrahamson 2005: 196–197; Anderson and Alleyne 1979; Bankston and Henry 2000; Barer-Stein 1979; Brown and Mussell 1984; Gabaccia 1998; Liu and Lin 2009). Some national-origin groups, such as Chinese and Indians, have several subgroup differences within their culture, depending on what regions or provinces they originate from. These subgroup differences are most clearly reflected in various subethnic cuisines. For example, in contemporary Chinatowns, one can find inexpensive noodles or dumplings cooked in the disparate styles of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Canton (Brown and Mussell 1984; Kwong 1987: 38). Given the significance of ethnic cuisine for ethnic or subethnic culture and identity, it is important for immigration scholars to study ethnic food. However, they have gravely neglected this component of ethnic culture. There are many journal articles and books that focus on ethnic foods related to nutrition, diet, and health. However, only one particular type of social science study of immigrants has paid some attention to ethnic cuisine. It consists of studies focusing on Chinatowns and other immigrant enclaves (Kwong 1987; Min 2017; Shaw and Bagwell 2011; Wong 1998: 45–50). Even these studies have devoted only a few pages to ethnic restaurants and markets as major ethnic businesses in immigrant enclaves. Unlike language, p eople can learn to eat and prepare ethnic food without exerting much effort. Immigrants usually cook and consume ethnic food at home, especially for dinner. Once the c hildren of immigrants gow accustomed to eating ethnic food at home, it is easy for them to maintain ethnic culinary traditions even after they establish their own separate households. Thus, ethnic cuisine is transmitted to the third and subsequent generations, helping them maintain ethnicity symbolically (Gans 1979). Research shows that even intermarriage does not do much to hinder the preservation of ethnic cuisine (Alba 1990: 91). The con temporary U.S. government’s multicultural policy and immigrants’ strong transnational ties to their homelands give contemporary immigrant groups great 95
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advantages in maintaining ethnic cuisine over generations and promoting it to members of American white ethnic groups whose ancestors came to the United States during the first mass migration period. Ethnic grocery stores and restaurants are two key mechanisms by which immigrants eat ethnic cuisine, transmit it to their children, and promote it to American society. This chapter, which focuses on the cultural significance of Korean ethnic cuisine, is divided into three sections. The first section focuses on Korean grocery stores and supermarkets. The second section examines the increases in the number of Korean restaurants and the proportion of non-Korean customers. The third section examines Korean immigrants’ efforts to publicize Korean food through food festivals. I use Korean directories showing lists of Korean restaurants and grocery stores or supermarkets, articles from Korean daily newspapers, and personal interviews with managers of Korean grocery stores and supermarkets and owners of Korean restaurants as major data sources for this chapter.
The Evolution of Korean Grocery Stores and Supermarkets Access or proximity to Korean grocery stores and Korean supermarkets determines how convenient it is for Korean immigrants to eat hansik (Korean food) at home on a regular basis. Korean immigrants’ access to Korean markets in the United States has gone through major changes over time. I examine these changes chronologically to show how contemporary Korean immigrants are able to enjoy all kinds of Korean food at home. Korean Grocery Stores before 1990 According to my interview with Jong H. Hong, a longtime resident of Flushing, when he immigrated to Queens in 1974 there was no Korean grocery store nearby. He went to the only Korean grocery store in Manhattan, established in 1973, once every two weeks. The store provided key Korean grocery items, such as rice, kimchi, fermented bean paste for Korean soups, tofu, sliced meat for bulgogi, seaweed, and ingredients for kimchi and other Korean dishes (garlic, soy sauce, onions, sesame oil, etc.).1 He reflected that a Korean immigrant purchased an Asian grocery store in Flushing from a Chinese owner and transformed it into a Korean market in 1979. But the number of Korean grocery stores in the Flushing and elsewhere in New York City gradually increased in the 1980s. The 1989 Korean Directory, published by the Korea Times, indicates that there w ere over forty Korean grocery retail stores in the area, with ten additional Korean w holesale grocery stores. Korean markets carried an increasingly greater variety of food items in the 1980s, including various types of seafood, many canned and manufactured food items made in Korea (including Korean beer), and many ready-to-eat vegetable side dishes (mitbanchan).
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Although Korean grocery stores in the 1980s carried more Korean items than they did in the 1970s, an overwhelming majority w ere small groceries rather than supermarkets. The 1989 Korean Directory indicates that only five of the forty-three Korean grocery stores were supermarkets. The majority of them were located in Queens, where Korean immigrants were highly concentrated at that time. As small grocery stores, they did not have enough space to carry American grocery items for Korean customers. Thus, Korean immigrant families had to visit American supermarkets as well. In particular, Korean immigrant families with children or adolescents, like my own, had to visit American supermarkets with greater frequency to purchase the majority of the food consumed each week. Only elderly Koreans who did not live with their c hildren did not visit American supermarkets regularly. Kimchi is a traditional fermented spicy and thus looking-red Korean side dish. The most popular kinds of kimchi are made of baechoo (Korean cabbage/nappa) or moo (Asian radishes/daikon) with a variety of seasonings. Koreans can barely survive without eating it almost every day. Families in Korea traditionally purchased large quantities of Korean cabbages, radishes, and other ingredients (onions, garlic, and hot peppers) at the gimjang sijang (kimchi market) and made large batches of kimchi in November. They kept them in pots to eat throughout winter. Many Korean immigrant families in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s made batches of kimchi at home in November, using Korean cabbages and ingredients purchased from Korean grocery stores. However, many families could not continue the November tradition because Korean cabbages and radishes were too expensive in the United States. Chang Il Kim, a former president of the Korean Produce Association of New York, said that his association annually opened a one-day gimjang sijang for Korean immigrant families in three areas of Queens—Flushing, Sunnyside, and Elmhurst— in November between 1981 and 1983 (Min 2008a: 136). For the one-day gimjang sijang, about thirty to forty members of his association bought Korean cabbages and radishes directly from farms at low cost and onions, peppers, and other ingredients from Hunts Points Market, the largest produce w holesale market in the New York area. On the advertised day, they sold these kimchi ingredients to Korean women at wholesale prices to help them make kimchi in large quantities at home (Min 2008a: 136). Th ere has been a gradual increase in the degree of access to Korean food items in Korean grocery stores. However, Korean immigrants who came to New York City before 1990 had limited access to Korean ingredients. The Emergence of Korean Supermarkets The change from small Korean grocery stores to gigantic Korean supermarkets was gradual from the 1980s through the 2010s. Having gone through a transitional period in the 1990s, Korean immigrants ushered in the Korean supermarket age in the early 2000s, enjoying its full benefits. They have witnessed its growing positive impact on their preservation and promotion of traditional Korean cuisines over
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table 6.1.
Number of Korean Food Stores in the New York–New Jersey Area, 1989, 2014, and 2019
Year
1989 2014 2019
Total Number
Number and % of Supermarkets
Number in Queens
Number in New Jersey
Number in Other Areas
44 43 58
5 / 44 (11%) 30 / 43 (70%) 43 / 58 (74%)
20 14 18
10 18 22
14 11 18
sources: Korean Business Directory, 1989 (Korean News, 1989); Korea Daily Business Directory, 2014 and 2019 (Korea Daily, 2014, 2019).
the course of ten years or so. As shown in t able 6.1, as of 2019 t here were fifty-eight Korean food stores in Greater New York, fourteen more than in 1989. Readers may wonder why there was no increase in the number of Korean grocery stores during the twenty-five-year period between 1989 and 2014, given that the Korean American population in the area nearly doubled between 1990 (n = 118,096) and 2010 (n = 221,705) (see table 2.2). The answer is very s imple. A predominant majority (70 percent) of Korean grocery stores in 2014 were large supermarkets, whereas in 1989 t here were only five. Two Korean directories show that almost all of the grocery stores listed in the 1989 directory, with the exception of the five supermarkets, had disappeared by 2014. This indicates that when large Korean supermarkets emerged with much lower prices for key items, small grocery stores could not compete and closed. Since Korean supermarkets purchased in bulk key grocery items, including vegetables and fruits, directly from farms and large corporations, they were able to provide customers with substantially lower prices than smaller stores. They established Korean supermarkets by buying American supermarkets or expanding small Korean grocery stores. H-Mart (in Korean Han Ah Reum, which means “one arm full of groceries”), established in Woodside, Queens in 1982, was the first Korean supermarket in the area. Established by Il-Yeon Kwon based on capital from South Korea, H-Mart is the largest Korean supermarket chain in the United States. Two more locations were established in the 1980s, one in Flushing and the other in Manhattan’s K-Town. From the 1990s through the 2010s, the number of H-Marts increased in Flushing (to three) and expanded into Bayside (one), Long Island (two), Westchester County (one), and several neighborhoods in Bergen County (eight). Altogether, as of 2019 there were eighteen H-Marts in Greater New York, heavily concentrated in middle-and upper-middle-class white neighborhoods with large Korean populations, and another eight in New Jersey. H-Marts have also been established in other parts of the United States, including Georgia, Illinois, Texas, and Michigan. Altogether, as of 2022 t here are eighty-one H-Marts in the United States. Th ere are even a few H-Marts outside the United States, with branches in Vancouver, Toronto, and even New Malden in South London (Korean Weekly 2011).
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Han Yang Mart is another Korean supermarket chain that has been influential in the New York area. According to my interview with a manager of a Flushing H-Mart in 2012, the owner started the supermarket chain in Woodside in 1986. By 2012 it had four branches in the area, the largest one in Flushing, two in Bergen County (Bergenfield and Ridgefield), and another in Hicksville, Long Island. The third well-regarded Korean supermarket chain is Hannam Mart. It had eight locations in California but opened a branch in Bergen County in 2012. Other Korean supermarkets populate the area, but they and regular American supermarkets cannot compete with these three Korean supermarket chains in terms of size, diversity of items and services, number of customers per day, and popularity among customers. Korean supermarkets are large in scale, with occupying over 50,000 square feet. Each supermarket has several sections selling Korean food-related products and other sections selling h ousewares, cosmetics, bakeries, ready-made Korean side dishes, health food, communication to Korea, and express delivery. Some have food courts. U.S. Korean supermarkets are modeled a fter supermarkets in Korea in their large scale and the diversity of products and services offered. Supermarkets in Korea have been established by major corporations, such as Shinsege Group (E-Mart) and Lotte Shopping (Lotte Mart), and provide all types of products and services, offering “one-stop shopping.” In particul ar, following the model of supermarkets in Korea, Korean supermarkets in New York have established two large sections, one for fruits and vegetables and the other for seafood. Since the markets purchase large quantities of fruits and vegetables directly from large local farms at lower prices, they generally offer vegetables and fruits for lower prices than American supermarkets.2 Seafood items at Korean supermarkets are also cheaper and fresher than t hose at regular American supermarkets. Korean immigrants can now save time and enjoy the convenience of purchasing many different Korean food items, ready-made side dishes, baked goods, cosmetics, and even kitchenware at one Korean supermarket. Moreover, they can buy Korean produce and seafood. U ntil recently, Korean-owned farms and factories in New Jersey and California had supplied key produce items, manufactured goods, rice, tofu, and so forth for Korean supermarkets. However, full enforcement of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement in 2012, Korean local governments’ active strategies for the export of agro-fishery products, and improved international transportation links have enabled Korean supermarkets to purchase many of these items directly from K orea. For example, Korean immigrants can now purchase oranges (gamgyul) originating from Jeju Island, pears (shingobae) from various Korean cities, Fuji apples from Chungcheongbuk-do province, and seaweed from Daechun. Rice is one of the most important food items for Korean immigrants, as most consume it at all three meals each day. U ntil very recently, Korean supermarkets had purchased rice exclusively from companies in Sacramento, California. However, since 2012, they have been able to import it directly from Korea. Korean supermarkets and Korean provincial governments often organize events at supermarkets to promote and advertise special agricultural and fishery
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products from particular provinces. Staff members of relevant Korean provincial governments often participate in the food promotion events held at particular Korean supermarkets. For example, H-Mart in Ridgefield, New Jersey, had a ribbon-cutting ceremony on February 13, 2014, to promote and advertise dried vegetables and fish that originated from Gangwon-do, South K orea (D. H. Kim 2014). Il-Yeon Kwon (the founder and president of H-Mart), a few staff members of Gangwondominhe (the Association of Koreans originating from Gangwondo), and officers from the Gangwon provincial government participated in the ceremony. New York representatives of the Korean Trading-Investment Promotion Agency and the Korean Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corp have often coordinated with Korean provincial officials to promote special products. Efforts to promote Korean agro-fishery products using promotional events at Korean supermarkets have intensified, especially since the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement was fully enforced (Korea Times 2012). In my survey conducted in Greater New York in 2013–2015, the 290 Korean immigrant respondents w ere asked how many days each week they ate Korean food for dinner. Nearly half (49 percent) ate it almost e very day, with another 42 percent doing so four to six times per week. These findings indicate that Korean immigrants ate Korean food for the vast majority of their meals. We also asked them about their frequency of g oing to a Korean versus an American grocery store. About two-thirds reported that they went to a Korean grocery store most of the time (34 percent) or more often (32 percent); another 18 percent shopped at the two types of stores equally. Only 16 percent reported that they went to an American grocery store more often or most of the time; they usually had second- generation children and/or lived in Upstate New York or Suffolk County in Long Island, which have no Korean supermarkets. Jong H. Hong is in his mid-seventies and lives with his wife alone in Bay Terrace close to Flushing. I asked him how often he visited Korean and American supermarkets. He said he and his wife usually visited a Korean supermarket once every two weeks. But they also visited Costco, an American superstore, every two weeks to purchase both American and Korean grocery items. He said that Costco carried such Korean items as seaweed, rice, gimchi, tofu, and bulgogi (beef barbecue). He stopped going to American supermarkets. Responding to my question about the frequency of visiting Korean and non-Korean restaurants, he said that he ate at a Korean restaurant about three times a week. Before he retired, he ate lunch at a Korean restaurant almost e very day. But he visited a non-Korean restaurant once every two weeks (author interview 2021). Promoting Korean Grocery Items to American Customers Korean supermarkets have attracted many non-Korean customers and thus have been able to promote ethic ingredients and food to New Yorkers. Korean supermarkets located in ethnic enclaves have immigrants as the majority of their customers. For example, the manager of the H-Mart located in the heart of Flushing
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told me that Korean customers comprised about 80 percent of their weekly customers (n = approximately 70,000) in 2012, with Chinese and white customers composing the majority of non-Korean customers (20 percent). I also saw many Hispanic, Asian Indian, and Black customers at the same supermarket. An H-Mart was established in Bayside, Queens, only a five-minute walk from my h ouse, in summer 2013. In Queens Community District 11, encompassing Bayside, Douglaston, and L ittle Neck, white Americans comprised about 40 percent of the population, with Asian Americans, predominantly Korean and Chinese, comprising about another 40 percent (see table 2.3). Chinese immigrant residents there outnumber Korean residents by a large margin. The manager at the H-Mart in Bayside told me that non-Korean customers, consisting mostly of Chinese and whites, comprised about half of their customers. However, Korean supermarkets located in predominantly white neighborhoods have non-Koreans as the majority of their customers, with whites constituting the largest group. I went grocery shopping a few times at the H-Mart located in Williston Park, a white middle-class neighborhood in Long Island, with a moderate Korean and other Asian population. White customers seem to outnumber Korean and other Asian customers t here. In 2012, I asked the manager of the H-Mart in Flushing what grocery items white and Chinese customers usually purchased from his supermarket and why. He responded that many Chinese immigrants and white Americans frequently visited H-Mart mainly b ecause they could purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at much lower prices than at non-Korean supermarkets. He also added that because of the many similarities between Korean and Chinese food culture, Chinese immigrants purchased tofu, noodles, rice, and seafood. There are also several large-scale Chinese-owned supermarkets in Queens, and they too have big produce and seafood sections. However, many Chinese immigrants shop at Korean supermarkets. I asked a Chinese immigrant, my next-door neighbor, about his grocery shopping at the Korean supermarket. Responding to the question of how often he visited the Korean supermarket, he said, “We use this market for our major family grocery shopping every week and we sometimes come here twice a week. We go to a Chinese supermarket located in College Point only when we need special grocery items we cannot find in Korean supermarkets.” White Americans who regularly shop at Korean supermarkets are usually elderly and middle-aged p eople who eat numerous fruits and vegetables for health purposes. I talked with an elderly white male customer at the H-Mart near my home. Responding to the question of how long he had shopped at a Korean supermarket and how often he visited it, he said, “I began to use an H-Mart branch at Great Neck three years ago. I visited the mart e very week. I changed to this mart last fall when it was open here, b ecause it is closer to my house.” I asked him which grocery items he usually bought in the Korean supermarket and why. He told me that he liked fruits and vegetables best because he could choose what he liked from so many different kinds, and they w ere much cheaper than at American
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supermarkets. He also said that he often purchased seafood items, such as fresh shrimp, live lobsters, and marinated meat. The two most popular Korean barbecue dishes are bulgogi (sliced ribeye) and galbi (beef short ribs), and both are marinated beef soaked in onions, garlic, scallions, soy sauce, and sugar. Since non-Korean customers usually do not know how to make bulgogi or galbi from scratch, Korean supermarkets sell marinated meat. I talked with an elderly white female customer about her visits to the Korean supermarket. She also usually visited it once a week and purchased mainly fruits and vegetables, in addition to other Korean vegetarian food items such as tofu and bean sprouts. She expressed gratitude to Korean and Chinese supermarkets for providing so many healthy ingredients. The above paragraphs are based on my observations at H-Marts made in the early 2010s. When I observed them in 2020, I found many younger white customers in addition to Asian Indian, Black, and Hispanic customers of all ages, showing that Korean supermarkets are attracting more and more American customers regardless of age or racial background. Both Korean supermarkets’ offerings of fruits, vegetables, and seafood for more reasonable prices than American supermarkets and American customers’ increasing consumption of these items have contributed to their growing appeal with American customers. Both H-Mart and Hanyang have extensively used advertisements featuring sale items in Chinese newspapers b ecause Chinese customers are very important for their businesses. Hannam Market in Fort Lee, New Jersey, also advertised its sale items in a local English-language newspaper and has often organized cultural and food festivals to introduce Korean cuisine and grocery items to local residents. For example, in May 2010 the H-Mart located in Great Neck, Long Island, organized an event called “East Meets West with Food and Culture” for seven days for local children and their parents to celebrate the second anniversary of its opening (Korea Times 2010c). The event included many free gifts, Korean food tasting, and games (including darts and yootnori, a traditional Korean board game). In March 2011, the Edison, New Jersey, branch of H-Mart organized a three-day Asian food festival that featured Korean and Chinese dance and m usic, showcased popular Korean, Chinese, and Japanese food items, and served them to local residents (H. S. Choi 2011). Approximately 9,000 residents participated in the three-day event. In addition, some Korean supermarket branches have tried to teach non- Korean local residents how to cook Korean food. For example, an H-Mart and a Hanyang Mart, in 2011 and 2012, respectively, organized a video signing event featuring Marja Vongerichten, a biracial Korean w oman who is the host of the PBS televi sion show The Kimchi Chronicles, with her famous chef husband, Jean Georges Vongerichten (Korea Daily 2012). The manager of Hannam Mart at Fort Lee told me that the market had provided several cooking classes for non-Korean customers. Partly as a result of non-Koreans’ frequent grocery shopping at Korean supermarkets, Americans, especially whites, have become accustomed to many kinds of Korean foods. Kimchi, seaweed, ramyeon or ramen (instant noodles), marinated
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meat, and Korean pears (shingobae) have become popular Korean grocery items in the United States. Taking advantage of the Korean wave (Hallyu) in Korean culture and entertainment, several Korean immigrants and younger-generation Koreans have established wholesale businesses that supply Korean food items to American megastores and even to restaurants in popular h otels ( J. G. Ahn 2012). Nongshim Americ a, a Korean food wholesale company, supplied about one million boxes of Korean-made cup noodles to Costco in 2011 in the first year of business between the two companies. Costco and several other U.S. companies sell kimchi, seaweed, cup noodles, marinated beef, Choco Pies (an extremely popular Korean snack cake, similar to an American moon pie), and Korean pears ( J. Park 2012). As noted above, Korean supermarkets in Greater New York have played an important role in initially promoting these Korean food items to American customers. The transnational coordination between government agencies in Korea and Korean supermarkets facilitated by contemporary technological advances has also played an important role.
Korean Restaurants The other mechanism for preserving and promoting Korean food culture is Korean restaurants. This section focuses on Korean immigrant-owned restaurants that primarily serve immigrant customers and increasingly serve younger-generation Koreans and non-Koreans. The number of Korean restaurants in the New York area has gradually increased since the 1960s. They provide authentic cuisine that is inseparably tied to Korean history and cultural traditions. As noted in chapter 2, an old Korean community was established in Manhattan before 1965. Several Korean restaurants were established t here before a large number of post-1965 immigrants arrived and settled in Queens. Kyou-Jin Lee’s historical study indicates that four Korean restaurants w ere established in Manhattan in the 1960s and that their number increased to fifteen in the mid-1970s (K. Lee 2011: 566–567). These early Korean restaurants w ere fairly large, with seating capacities of 100–300. The owners of the larger restaurants mainly targeted non-Korean patrons, in particular whites. Lee said that 90 percent of their customers were non- Koreans. She reported that these restaurants, like European restaurants, offered several different courses for dinner and lunch specials for discounted prices (568). According to Lee’s research, the New York Times reviewed these Korean restaurants a few times and graded them very good or excellent (K. Lee 2011: 568). With a small number of Korean restaurants in Manhattan there was not much competition, which seems to have been a major reason why they did fairly well. However, Lee’s research shows that all of these early Korean restaurants closed prior to 1990. In 2012, Young Oak Kim interviewed Ms. Chung, a w oman who ran Arirang House in midtown Manhattan (28 West Fifty-Sixth Street) with her mother-in- law between 1972 and 1986. It was the first Korean restaurant in New York City, established in 1963 and closed in 1986. Kim’s personal interview sheds light on the
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characteristics of the early Korean restaurants in Manhattan. It had twenty-two employees and three rooms, with a seating capacity of 130 to 150 customers. According to Chung, the manager, non–Korean Americans comprised 80 to 90 percent of the customers, with Koreans comprising 10–20 percent. The Korean customers consisted of staff members of the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York, high-ranking Korean government officials visiting New York City, presidents of major Korean companies located in the New York area, Korean journalists, and so forth. She described non-Korean celebrity regular customers in the following comment: “Many famous actors and actresses visited our restaurant regularly. Anthony Quinn was included in the list of regular customers. . . . Since they made advance reservations, we made preparations for particular celebrity customers. For example, when Dustin Hoffman made a reservation, I ran to Doubleday (the name of a bookstore) close to our restaurant and checked data on him to serve him the right food. We found out what foods certain actors and actresses liked or disliked. By d oing so, we served e very customer with right menus” (Kim’s interview with Chung, 2012). According to my personal interviews with older Korean immigrants in 2012, six Korean restaurants had been established in Queens, the area of major settlement of post-1965 Korean immigrants, by the late 1970s. All were small and mainly served Korean immigrant customers. To see the increase in the number of Korean restaurants over time, I used the 1989, 2005, and 2019 Korean business directories for Greater New York and counted the number of Korean and Korean-Chinese restaurants. Korean directories, renewed e very year, are useful for this research because almost all owners include the names of their restaurants in the directories. I included Korean-Chinese restaurants in the count because Korean-owned Chinese restaurants serve Korean-style Chinese dishes and therefore they are included in Korean business directories. As noted in chapter 2, the latter half of the 1970s and the 1980s was the peak period of Korean immigration to the United States. The Korean population in the area increased from 38,081 in 1980 to 118,096 in 1990 (see table 2.2). As shown in table 6.2, the total number of Korean restaurants increased from twenty-four in 1979 to sixty-nine in 1989. While the number of Korean restaurants in Manhattan increased only from eighteen to twenty-five, the number in Queens increased from six to thirty-one. Also, there were twelve Korean restaurants in New Jersey in 1989. Most of them seem to have been established in the latter half of the 1980s when many Korean immigrants began to move from Queens to Bergen County. The number of Korean restaurants grew exponentially during the next twenty years, from 69 in 1989 to 397 in 2019. Korean restaurants located in Manhattan in 2005 (n = 41) seem to have been underlisted. Both Queens and Bergen County witnessed radical increases, from 31 to 123 in Queens and from 12 to 91 in Bergen County. The phenomenal growth in the number of Korean restaurants in these two areas is not surprising, as they are heavily concentrated in Korean enclaves: Flushing-Bayside in Queens (see map 2.1) and Palisades Park–Fort Lee in Bergen
table 6.2.
1969 1979 1989 2005 2019
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Growth in Number of Korean Restaurants in the New York–New Jersey Area, 1969–2019 Manhattan
Queens
Bergen County
Other Areas
Total
4 18 25 41 86
0 6 31 109 123
0 0 12 48 91
0 0 1 27 97
4 24 69 225 397
sources: For 1969 and 1979: Kyou-Jin Lee (2011); for 1989: Korean Business Directory, 1989 (Korean News, 1989); for 2005: Korean Business Directory, 2005 (Korean News, 2005); for 2019: Korea Daily Business Directory, 2019 (Korea Daily, 2019).
County (see map 2.3). Most Korean restaurants in Manhattan in 2005 were located in K-Town (see map 2.2). While the number of Korean restaurants did not much increase in Queens between 2005 and 2019, in Bergen County they almost doubled. Whereas the Korean population in Queens experienced a moderate decrease during the period, in Bergen County the population boomed. This differential change in the population size partly contributed to the differential numbers of restaurants in the two counties. Moreover, some small Korean restaurants in Queens were forced to close due to the economic downturn of the late 2000s. Korean restaurants located in Korean enclaves in Queens and Bergen County serve mainly immigrant customers. However, the proportion of non-Korean customers has increased over the past fifteen years or so. Our interviews with manag ers and o wners of these restaurants indicate that their non-Korean customers comprise about 15 percent of total customers and that whites comprise the largest group of non-Korean customers, followed by Chinese. Intermarried Koreans (mostly women) often visit the restaurants with their non-Korean partners. Due to the large number of Korean restaurants located in enclaves, there is excessive competition. As of 2015, the restaurants in Korean enclaves offer lunch specials priced around ten to fourteen dollars, with about ten free side dishes (banchan), mostly fresh or pickled vegetables. Many larger, well-established restaurants in Korean enclaves with ample seating do quite well financially. However, due to stiff competition, many small Korean restaurants struggle to survive. As a result, there is high turnover. Both Korean and non-Korean customers tend to agree that the main attraction of Korean restaurants is the free side dishes, which include kimchi, kongnamul (seasoned soybean sprouts), softened tofu, and cooked radish. Side dishes are usually served before the main meal. Thus, customers can start eating side dishes and can ask for additional servings, all for free. Korean restaurants in Manhattan provide fewer side dishes, although they charge higher prices throughout their menus. These side dishes serve as an attraction since no other ethnic restaurants provide several of such items.3
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In the 2013–2015 survey of Korean immigrants, we asked respondents how frequently they ate at Korean restaurants. In all, 5 percent chose the most frequent category (four times or more per week), with another 19 percent choosing the next category (two to three times per week). Thus, about one out of four Korean immigrants in the area visited a Korean restaurant at least twice a week. Another 27 percent reported that they visited once a week. In contrast, only 28 percent reported that they visited a non-Korean restaurant once a week or more. When Korean immigrants in the New York area visit non-Korean restaurants, they mostly eat at a Chinese or Italian restaurant. Most of those Korean immigrants who reported visiting a Korean restaurant two to three times or more per week (24 percent) are likely to live in a Korean enclave or work nearby. I belong to this lucky group. Queens College is located in Flushing, only three and a half miles from the city’s downtown. I usually eat lunch at a Korean or Korean-Chinese restaurant twice a week with students or fellow faculty members. Living in Bayside, which has five excellent Korean-Chinese restaurants and several Korean restaurants, I usually visit a Korean or Korean- Chinese restaurant for dinner with my wife once a week. When I left South Korea in 1972 to pursue graduate studies in the United States, I worried that I would have to eat sandwiches and other American foods that I disliked. At that time, I never imagined that my life in the United States would entail eating Korean food for dinner five days a week and eating at a Korean restaurant two to three times weekly. My research on Indian Hindus and other Indian religious immigrant groups revealed that they eat out much less frequently for religious reasons (vegetarianism) than Korean immigrants (see Min 2010). Korean immigrants (who are predominantly Protestant and Catholic) usually have no problem eating meat at restaurants. Korean beef barbecue (bulgogi), as well as other forms of Korean barbecue (pork belly, short ribs, grilled octopus), are some of the most popular Korean dishes. The Korean community has an unusually high number of ethnic organizations, which regularly hold meetings at major Korean restaurants, especially in enclaves in Flushing-Bayside and Palisades Park–Fort Lee. Frequent meetings of various Korean organizations also help major Korean restaurants in Korean enclaves survive, and even thrive (see Min 2013a). As noted in chapter 2, K-Town is not a residential enclave but a Korean business district. As shown in t able 6.2, t here w ere eighty-six Korean restaurants in Manhattan as of 2019. Most of them are located in K-Town and are highly concentrated on Thirty-Second street. Also, t here are two Korean supermarkets, four Korean bakeries, and eighteen bars in the small area. Regular lunchtime patrons in K-Town include Korean business owners and professionals who work for companies in Manhattan, Koreans and Korean Americans holding individual or group meetings, and non-Korean graduate students and professional managerial workers. However, at night, K-Town has far more non-Korean visitors (75 percent) of various racial and ethnic backgrounds than Korean Americans, overwhelmingly young adults. They include young professionals, managers, and students of all
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backgrounds who work or study in Manhattan, visitors from other boroughs, and tourists from abroad. They come to K-Town to enjoy Korean restaurants, bars, bakeries, and franchise stores (including BBQ Olive Chicken, Pinkberry, Paris Baguette, and Red Mango). They usually visit K-Town as a group, and it is common to see mixed groups of Koreans and non-Koreans, as the following comment by a second-generation Korean American indicates: “Even though I live and work in Brooklyn, I go to K-Town in Manhattan once or twice a month. I usually go there to meet up with my non-Korean friends, mostly Latinos and whites, to eat Korean barbecue and tofu stew. My non-Korean friends like Korean food a lot. After dinner we usually go to a frozen yogurt place like Red Mango for dessert or a Korean bar to drink beer, soju, or cocktails.” Many other non-Korean groups visit K-Town at night because they enjoy Korean food and the youthful nightlife. K-Town Korean restaurants are so popular that after 6:00 p.m., customers often have to wait thirty minutes to an hour for a t able. When I visited one particular K-Town restaurant a few years ago, there was a long line of customers waiting outside, with a waitress taking orders outside so they could serve customers quickly. Many K-Town restaurants are full until around 9:00 p.m. and operate at full capacity most days, even though they charge higher prices for dishes than Korean restaurants in enclaves in Queens and Bergen County. Responding to a question about customers’ ethnic and racial background, the owner of Kum Gang San Restaurant in K-Town said, “About 30 percent of our customers are Koreans. Among the 70 percent of non-Korean customers, the vast majority are whites, with Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians comprising only 20 percent of them. We started the restaurant mainly with Korean customers. But the percentage of non-Korean customers has gradually increased during recent years. They usually come as a group. On weekdays, employees of finance companies are coming as groups, but on Sundays many white families visit our restaurants” (author interview, 2013). I asked the owner of Kum Gang San Restaurant what dishes non-Korean customers liked. He replied: “They like Korean barbecue or t able barbecue most. They like barbecue meat cooked on their own tables. They also prefer bibimbap (vegetables mixed with rice and gochujang, a Korean red pepper paste), which has been widely publicized recently in Korean food festivals. We give mild sauce for bibimbap for non-Korean customers and hot sauce for Koreans. High-class white customers also enjoy eating teriyaki and sashimi. . . . Of course, they like japchae (mixed vegetables with vermicelli noodles) and haemool pajeun (Korean vegetable and seafood pancake)” (author interview, 2013). Teriyaki (beef, chicken, or salmon), sushi, and sashimi are Japanese dishes, but many major Korean immigrant-owned restaurants in the United States serve them because white American customers, as well as Korean immigrant customers who are very health-conscious, prefer these dishes to beef or pork barbecue. Major Korean restaurants have also established sashimi bars with liquor sales. Th ese represent some of the changes in the way Korean immigrants run their restaurants in the United States. In addition, as noted above, many Korean immigrants run
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Japanese restaurants and sushi/sashimi houses. The manager of Cho Dang Gol, a Korean tofu stew restaurant, shared that in addition to various tofu dishes, galbi (marinated beef short ribs), bulgogi, and bibimbap are popular dishes among non-Korean customers. New York City is the most diverse U.S. city in terms of its residents’ and tourists’ racial, ethnic, and national origins. K-Town is located in the heart of New York City, and Manhattan is the center of many international tours. In particul ar, Times Square and Penn Station, just a handful of blocks from K-Town, are two of the most crowded areas in Manhattan. Thus K-Town is significant not only for reinforcing or enhancing younger-generation Koreans’ ethnic identity but also for publicizing Korean culture to New Yorkers and tourists because of its unusual and unparalleled racial, ethnic, and national diversity. In the preceding paragraphs I have focused on restaurants. But many other drinking and eating establishments in K-Town are full of customers (mostly non- Korean) after dark, including Korean franchise restaurants, bakeries, and taverns (karaoke rooms and regular bars). U ntil about twenty years ago, Korean food was relatively unknown to New Yorkers. However, many young residents in Manhattan today are very familiar with it through frequent visits to Korean restaurants in K-Town. In terms of attracting non-Korean customers, Korean restaurants and other establishments in K-Town and elsewhere in Manhattan have great advantages over those in Queens and Bergen County. Encouraged by the natural development of K-Town into a popular place for Korean foods and culture, especially for young people, the Korean Cultural Center (KCC) held a groundbreaking ceremony in 2016 for a major Korean cultural center in K-Town. The building was expected to open in 2021, but as of May 2022 it has not been completed. When completed, it w ill exhibit many Korean cultural artifacts. As will be shown in chapter 7, the Korean American Association of Greater New York holds the annual Korean Festival at K-Town. With the cultural building, K-Town is likely to be the most important place for Korean culture in New York City. There are at least twenty Korean restaurants outside of K-Town in upscale white neighborhoods in Manhattan, including the downtown business district and even Brooklyn. The o wners are usually 1.5-and second-generation Korean chefs, including David Chang (the owner of Momofuku) and Jenny Kwak (the owner of Haenyeo) and serve Korean fusion cuisine (Korean-Japanese, Korean American, and Korean-Mexican dishes). The customers of these expensive restaurants are highly educated Asian American and white professionals and managers. These high-end restaurants serve some basic Korean side dishes, such as kimchi, ggakdugi (cubed daikon radish kimchi), and kongnamul. However, unlike regular Korean restaurants, which provide a variety of side dishes free of charge, they charge for each side dish ordered. Not all second-generation Korean Americans specialize in making Korean fusion food. Alice Kim, a young Korean w oman who came to the United States at
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the age of five accompanied by her parents, was covered by a food magazine for brewing makgeolli, the oldest Korean alcoholic beverage. While growing up, she watched her parents regularly brewing makgeolli with rice and other ingredients in a jar at home. While working for a company a fter completing her college education, she practiced making home-brewed makgeolli in her crowded room a fter work and on weekends as a hobby. As she became more serious about it, she visited Seoul in 2015 to take a formal class and “met members of the makgeolli community who shared a similar desire to revive the traditional brewing methods” (Sohn 2021). In October 2020 she opened her own brewery, Hana Makgeolli, in an industrial area in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Hers is the only U.S. business that serves home-brewed makgeolli.
Food Festivals for the Promotion of Korean Food Korean immigrants in Greater New York have organized many food festivals to publicize and promote hansik to New Yorkers. During recent years, they have organized more than a dozen of major Korean food festivals annually. This section examines the festivals organized in 2010 based mainly on articles published in two major Korean-language daily newspapers in the area, the Korea Times and the Korea Daily. I selected 2010 especially because several significant food festivals were organized in New York City as a result of Korean government agencies’ efforts to globalize Korean cuisines. There was a special reason why Korean government agencies strove to help Korean community organizations in New York to organize important Korean food festivals that particul ar year. Yoon-ok Kim, the first lady of South Korea, and President Lee Myung-bak established the Korean Food Foundation in 2009 to globalize Korean cuisines. They believed that overseas Koreans in major diasporic communities, such as the United States and China, could play an important role in promoting Korean foods to people in their settlement communities. Policy makers in K orea considered the United States, by virtue of its large population and cultural diversity, as the biggest market for Korean cuisine. Ji-Sung You, the owner of Keumgangsan (Gold Mountain), the largest and oldest Korean restaurant in Flushing, agreed with Korean policy makers that the United States is the best market for introducing hansik (Korean cuisine). He made the following remarks in 2011: “I am excited about the Korean government’s policy to globalize Korean cuisines. Korean policymakers have rightly targeted the United States as the biggest market for Korean cuisines. Americans’ most serious health problem is being overweight. If they replace American cuisines with hansik consisting mainly of gimchi, bean paste soups, and many other vegetarian menus, they can solve the major health problem. Gimchi is so addictive that once they start eating they cannot stop.” As a result of the Korean government’s efforts to globalize Korean food, Korean restaurant o wners in the New York area established the
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Northeastern Section of the Korean Cuisine Globalization Committee (KCGC) in January 2010. Approximately seventy major Korean restaurant and supermarket owners in the area joined the organization (W. Y. Park 2010a). Ji-Sung You became its first president. You and other o wners of Korean restaurants organized the Korean Food and Culture Festival at a plaza in front of the Naumburg Bandshell (covering six blocks between Sixty-Sixth and Seventy-Second streets) in Central Park on July 30, 2010. It was the largest Korean food festival ever held in New York City. The Korean Food Foundation and eT Center from the Korean government helped the KCGC promote Korean food to New Yorkers ( J. Y. Ahn 2010a; W. Y. Park 2010b). The all- day food festival drew approximately 50,000 people, a combination of New Yorkers and tourists. Organizers invited 200 American veterans of the Korean War and served them free food in appreciation for their service to protect South K orea. Participating restaurants provided samples of different Korean dishes, including kimchi, bulgogi, bibimbap, jeon (Korean pancakes), sikhe (a sweet drink made from rice and sugar), bonchon chicken, and ddeok (sticky rice cakes) in fifteen booths where participants tasted several Korean dishes of their choice for reasonable prices. Most participants waited in long lines to taste different Korean foods ( J. Y. Ahn 2010a; W. Y. Park 2010b). The festival included a corner where leaders of the host organization and staff members of the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York demonstrated making bibimbap for 4,000 people. It also included a kimchi-making contest, rice-cake-making contests, Korean dress contests for participants, and various Korean cultural performances, including samulnori (traditional Korean percussion) performances and taekwondo. On October 20, the Jogye Order, the largest branch of Korean Buddhism, and the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of the Korean government, in close coordination with the Association of Korean Buddhist temples in the area, orga nized a Korean temple cuisine day at Gallery Skylight, a major gallery for shows, weddings, and galas, in SoHo to introduce Korean Buddhist fare to New Yorkers (W. Y. Park 2010c). Korean t emple cuisine merely refers to types of food that originated in t emples dating back to the Silla period and that consist solely of vegetarian ingredients with no chemical additives or preservatives.4 The organizers invited approximately 300 well-known journalists, politicians, and food specialists and served them forty different Korean t emple dishes, including three-colored lotus rice, pumpkin porridge, pumpkin-jeon, tofu-jeon, and five-colored noodle. Monks from Korea and several Korean students from the Culinary Institute of America in New York City cooked vegetarian food for this event. In his welcoming address, the executive director of the Jogye Order emphasized the pro-environmentalist and healthy nature of Korean t emple cuisine. The Association of Korean Buddhist temples in the area helped the Joghe Order from K orea celebrate a Korean temple cuisine day in New York City. Before the food fair, the Association of Korean Buddhist temples organized a vegetarian food dinner event for the Korean community by inviting 500 members of the local Korean community. I participated in the event.
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For five days between October 18 and October 22, 2010, the Seoul Municipal Government and the Seoul Tourism Organization organized the 2010 Seoul Gourmet Week in the Delegates Dining Room at the United Nations ( J. Y. Ahn 2010b). Visitors, mostly UN diplomats from various countries, as well as many Korean immigrants enjoyed buffets consisting of Korean temple cuisine, royal court cuisine (fare eaten by kings and queens of the Joseon period), and street cuisine, as well as bibimbap, gujeolpan (a traditional platter with nine different foods), sinseonlo (a type of hot-pot dish), and makgeolli for lunch for five days. The Seoul Municipal Government’s subsidy of ten dollars for each visitor helped each person pay only fourteen to eighteen dollars for the excellent buffet lunch. I visited the UN dining room on one of the five days and found the spacious room almost full. For this event, the Seoul Municipal Government sent six celebrity Korean chefs. The KCC arranged for a dozen immigrant w omen to help with cooking and food service. I learned that several other countries had organized their own cuisine weeks at the Delegates Dining Room mainly through their central governments but that the Seoul Municipal Government was the only local government that had organized its cuisine week. This indicates the Seoul Municipal Government’s great efforts to promote tourism. In their view, publicizing Korean cuisine to foreigners is one of the most effective ways to promote tours to Seoul, and the Delegates Dining Room is an ideal place to do it. The Seoul Tourism Organization designated 2010 as the year of tourism to Seoul. On November 8, 2010, the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York and the KCC, in close coordination with the Korean Cuisine Publicity Committee from Korea, organized “The Taste of Korea” 2010 at Edison Ballroom in Times Square as part of their project to globalize Korean food (S. H. Park 2010). About 300 influential “opinion makers” in New York City consisting of musicians, academics, and artists were invited to the event. Thirteen Korean chefs who had won major cooking contests in Korea came to serve “authentic Korean cuisine” to these celebrity New Yorkers. The participants were served nine courses consisting of special kinds of traditional Korean cuisine, including tarak porridge, several appetizers such as gungjung japchae baekgimchi (royal white kimchi), and main dishes, including mushroom, bulgogi and galbijjim (steamed beef short rib), ganjang gejang (marinated raw crabs), and samma yongyangbap, made of thirty-three grains, including walnuts, peanuts, ginseng, and sunflower seeds.
Summary and Concluding Remarks It is very important for the welfare of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans’ ethnic identity to preserve Korean foods and promote them to New Yorkers. Two major mechanisms for preserving and promoting Korean cuisine are having significant numbers of Korean grocery stores, supermarkets, restaurants, and other eating and drinking establishments in the area. By virtue of an expansion of Korean enclaves and ethnic business districts over the past thirty years, the numbers
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of large Korean supermarkets, restaurants, bakeries, bars, and frozen yogurt shops have greatly increased. In particular, faster and more affordable air transportation and the full enforcement of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement in 2012 have made agro-fishery food items originating from Korean provinces available to immigrants in New York. This indicates that transnational linkages to the homeland facilitated by technological advances have enabled Korean immigrants in New York to enjoy dishes currently popular in K orea. In 2009, the Korean government included cuisine as one of the ten Korean brands to export to the global market. Policy makers believed that overseas Koreans are in an ideal position to promote Korean cuisine in their settlement countries. Influenced by this policy, Korean restaurant owners in New York organized an association, with o wners, chefs, and wait staff receiving training. As discussed in the third section of this chapter, four major Korean food festivals took place in New York in 2010. Three of the four festivals, directly organized by Korean government agencies in coordination with the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in New York, promoted Korean cuisine to UN members and American taste makers. These upscale promotional events had limited effects promoting Korean cuisine. Moreover, the Korean government almost s topped promoting Korean cuisine in the United States a fter 2010, placing more priority on promoting the Korean language. As discussed in the first and second sections of this chapter, Korean supermarkets and restaurants located in ethnic enclaves have played a more important role in promoting Korean cuisine to the general public in the New York area over the past three decades. Korean immigrants who have established supermarkets and restaurants have tried to manage them efficiently for commercial purposes. But they have greatly contributed to globalizing the cuisine in New York and other major Korean population centers. As will be highlighted in chapter 7, Korean immigrants have also publicized bibimbap and other Korean dishes effectively through cultural festivals. These festivals provide participants with traditional and contemporary Korean music and dance performances and popular foods. Non- Korean festival participants have greatly increased during recent years. Moreover, the global popularity of K-pop, taekwondo, K-dramas, and even the Korean language seems to have had positive effects on promoting Korean foods.
7 • KORE AN CULTUR AL FESTIVALS AND PAR ADES
Hundreds of ethnic and immigrant groups celebrate their history and cultural heritage every year. Ethnic festivals and parades have become such an important part of urban American life that they are regular occurrences in all major American cities. New York City, with nearly 200 ethnic and immigrant groups, is the most ethnically diverse U.S. city. Thus, many ethnic festivals and parades are held year-round in the city’s ethnic enclaves and major public parks. However, most are held in Manhattan. City Lore is the major New York City nonprofit cultural heritage organization. It has selected seventy-five ethnic and other cultural groups’ festivals and parades and posted the list on its website, https:// www.nycservice.o rg/organizations/2251. The City Lore list includes two of the three major Korean festivals that I introduce in this chapter—the Korean Parade and Festival in Manhattan and the Korean Harvest and Folklore Festival in Queens. In his widely cited article, Herbert Gans (1979) indicated that multigenerational (third-or higher generation or later) white Americans have lost their ethnic language and most of their other ethnic cultural traditions and are usually not involved in ethnic social networks. However, he observed that even highly assimilated multigenerational white Americans try to maintain their ethnic identity by using ethnic food and festivals as symbols of their ancestry. Compared to learning a language, which requires great dedication, time, and effort, eating ethnic food and participating in festivals and parades is much easier. Thus, not only immigrants but also their children and grandchildren are actively involved in ethnic festivals. Ethnic festivals and parades have received a great deal of attention from news media and magazines yet little academic attention. I have located only two books that focus on ethnic festivals and parades (Gutiérrez and Fabre 1995; Ye 2008). I have also found only six journal articles and book chapters that examine ethnic festivals (Bankston and Henry 2000; Chacko 2013; Kasinitz and Freidenberg- Herbstein 1994; Tai 2008). Research on ethnic parades and festivals is of g reat importance because they display immigrants’ presence in particular cities to large audiences and combine ethnic cuisine, folklore, and m usic and dance performance, three powerful pop-cultural genres. 113
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There are four major Korean parades and festivals, four local Korean festivals, and two special festivals respectively organized by the Korean school at Wonkwang Buddhist T emple and the Korean Cultural Center. But this chapter has no space to cover all ten. The three major festivals examined include (1) the Korean Parade and Festival, held in Manhattan and organized by the Korean American Association of Greater New York (KAAGNY); (2) the Korean Thanksgiving and Folklore Festival, held in Queens and originally organized by the Korean Produce Association of New York; and (3) the Queens Festival and Lunar New Year Parade, organized by the Korean Association of Queens and the Chinese Merchant Association in Flushing. I introduce the first three major parades and festivals in three separate sections. The final section examines the coalitional effort of New York City Korean and Chinese immigrants to make Lunar New Year an official school holiday. The major data sources for this chapter are my own and research assistants’ participant observations of festivals organized in different years, personal interviews with leaders of the organizations that have organized festivals, articles from two Korean daily newspapers, and festival programs.
The Korean Parade and Festival in Manhattan The KAAGNY and the Korea Times co-organized the first Korean Parade in Manhattan on Saturday, October 18, 1980. This parade continues today, becoming the main Korean parade in New York City. It is usually held on the first Saturday in October. The parade originally started at Forty-Second Street, proceeding south along Sixth Avenue to Thirty-Fifth Street and along Broadway between Thirty- Fourth and Twenty-Fourth streets. In recent years, in a change requested by the city government because of traffic, the parade covers only the area between Thirty- Eighth Street and Twenty-Seventh Street along Sixth Avenue. Since 2003, parade organizers have added the Korean Festival, which is held in K-Town on Thirty-Second Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue from 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. The festival includes (1) selling and giving away several different kinds of Korean food and other special Korean products at jangtur (a folk market), (2) Korean folk games, and (3) various Korean cultural perfor mances and a singing contest on the outdoor performance stage. Combining the two components, organizers now call the event the Korean Parade and Festival. This parade is more effective for publicizing Korean culture and history than the Lunar New Year Parade held in Flushing because it draws far more spectators, including city residents, visitors from outside the city, and international tourists. It is also more metropolitan and transnational in terms of Korean participants in the parade. The KAAGNY is the major Korean umbrella organization in the area that represents the Korean community to the Korean government and the outside world. It was established In Manhattan in 1960, when there were only 500 Koreans in
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New York City. But the Korean population increased to about 38,000 by 1980. At that time, the Korean community in New York City was attracting a lot of local media and political attention, especially because of the visibility of their businesses all over New York City (Min 2008a). To establish a major parade in New York City, organizers need permission from the New York State government. In 1980, Hugh Carey, governor of New York, gave permission to start the Korean parade in Manhattan in recognition of Korean immigrants’ contributions to New York (Korea Times 1980a). In addition, the governor declared October 3 as Gaecheonjeol (Korean National Foundation Day), a recognized Korean day in New York State. Gaecheonjeol is a national holiday in Korea, established in commemoration of the mythological founding of Korea (Gojoseon) in 2333 BCE. The Korea Times reported that twenty-one floats and about 1,500 Koreans representing twenty-eight Korean ethnic organizations and twenty Korean businesses participated in the first parade (Korea Times 1980b). The parade started with two sumoonjang (chiefs of gatekeepers in the royal palace during the Joseon Dynasty) in traditional robes. Eleven of the twenty-one floats represented major Korean overseas companies and were created by their New York branches. Participating Korean organizations included several Korean-language schools (200 students), the Korean Taekwondo Association of New York (200 p eople), seven marching bands, and two samulnori teams. Shawn Weatherly, the 1980 Miss USA and Miss Universe, participated in the parade as a special guest. About 200 Korean children and many female adults participated in the parade, wearing traditional Korean dress (chima and jeogori). Some of the features of the Korean Parade included Korean traditional dances (lion dance, fan dance, and drum dance), a taekwondo demonstration, and replicas of a Korean king and queen in traditional court dress. A Korea Times article reported that highlights of the parade included the lion dance team, the 200 Korean school c hildren in traditional Korean dress, and Miss Universe Shawn Weatherly (Korea Times 1980b). The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) recorded and broadcasted the parade to K orea. Local American media also covered it. An article in the Korea Times cited praise by local television station WNEW-TV as “the most colorful parade in New York” (Korea Times 1980b). The parade drew about 60,000 people, including 20,000 Korean Americans (Korea Times 1980a). Korean Americans who observed the parade waved Korean and U.S. flags prepared by the KAAGNY. At that time, this parade was the only large-scale public display of the presence of Korean immigrants and their cultural traditions in New York City. A Korea Times report (1980a) indicates that many Korean immigrants who came to see the parade became emotional and shed tears, witnessing Korean Americans able to show this scale of a cultural parade to New Yorkers. The “Parade T oday” Section of New York Times on October 18, 1980, carried the following sentence: “The Korean-American Parade begins today at noon at 42nd Street and Broadway and proceeds down Broadway to 23rd Street.”
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The Korea Times was the oldest Korean daily newspaper in the area, and when it was established in 1977, it was called Korean Times New York. Since it was the only Korean ethnic media in the area at that time, it played a key role in circulating information about community events. The paper’s role in organizing the parade was essential at that time to publicizing it to Koreans scattered all over Greater New York and mobilizing as many of them as possible. This is the reason why the KAAGNY coordinated with the Korea Times in preparing the parade. Actually, the Korea Times undertook two major components of preparing the parade: (1) publicizing the parade widely to Koreans through articles and advertisements and (2) processing applications for floats from Korean organizations and ordering them from float-making companies. When the festival at K-Town was added in the 2003, the Korea Times also undertook organizing and managing the festival. But the KAAGNY assumed the job of organizing and running the festival from 2010 on, as the scale of the festival was greatly expanded. Since the Korea Times has been deeply involved in organizing and running the parade, its rival Korean newspaper, the Korea Daily, has not reported on it. Also, the KAAGNY has had conflicts with the Korea Times over preparations for the parade and the Korea Times’ failure to publicly reveal a financial report about sales of floats in due time after the parade, especially in 2007. Many Korean community leaders were frustrated that the KAAGNY did not have autonomy in organizing the parade, one of the most important community-wide events, and that other Korean media could not participate in publicizing and reporting the parade. The Korean community in the area went through major changes during the thirty-year period between 1980 and 2010. First, the Korean population increased from about 38,000 in 1980 to roughly 220,000 in 2010. As explained in another of my books (Min 2013a), the Korean community in the 2010s was more integrated into American society while also maintaining much stronger transnational linkages to South Korea than before. B ecause of these changes, the more recent versions of the Korean Parade and Festival have been quite different from the 1980 parade that I summarized above. I use the 2010 Korean Parade and Festival below to illustrate the event’s nature in recent years. The KAAGNY and the Korea Times held the thirtieth Korean Parade and Festival on Saturday, October 2, 2010. The 2010 parade stretched for eleven blocks between Thirty-Eighth and Twenty-Seventh streets along Sixth Avenue from noon to 2:00 p.m. However, the festival in K-Town lasted for nine hours, between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. This is the most successful parade ever held during the most recent years in terms of participation in the parade and the number of spectators mobilized. The parade included about eighteen floats, mostly representing Korean companies and approximately 120 Korean ethnic organizations with about 2,000 participants. The parade was led by a Grand Marshal Committee that included David Patterson (New York’s governor from 2008 to 2010), Yonghwa Ha (president of the KAAGNY), Young Mok Kim (the Consul General of the Republic of K orea in
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New York), and Hak Yeon Shim (the president of the Korea Times). The Grand Marshal Committee members also included Grace Meng, a Chinese American member of the New York State Assembly who brought her half-Korean son, and David Ku, a Chinese American New York City councilman (Korea Times 2010e). As usual, a samulnori team and a taekwondo demonstration team led the parade, followed by the Grand Marshal Committee. Two components of the parade, both of which reflect Korean history, attracted the spectators’ greatest attention. One was a long procession of people in traditional robes prepared by Busan Metropolitan City, the second largest city in Korea, that participated in the 2010 Korean Parade and Festival with an impressive and spectacular historical project. The KAAGNY arranged for the Busan Cultural Foundation to organize a 200-member procession to reproduce Joseon Tongsinsa, the Joseon diplomatic missions, dispatched to Japan for cultural exchanges about 400 years ago (Korea Times 2010f). Busan Metropolitan City brought 88 people from Busan for Joseon Tongsinsa, while 112 more Korean immigrants in New York joined the group. The 200 members practiced the procession several times as a showcase for Korean Americans and non- Korean New Yorkers. After the parade, a formal ceremony took place on the main stage of the festival site in which Namsik Hur (Busan Metropolitan City mayor) and Shigeki Sumi (the UN ambassador from Japan) exchanged credentials. In his interview with Korean journalists, Hur emphasized that the Joseon diplomatic missions to Japan symbolized the peaceful relations between K orea and Japan and that he brought the historical project to New York City, encouraged by the United Nations, to promote world peace. The second spectacle that drew admiration from spectators was a float made by Seoul Tourism Organization, which carried a large-scale replica of Sungnyemun, a southern gate in Seoul constructed in the mid-fifteenth c entury, currently the primary Korean national treasure symbolizing Seoul, to publicize tours to the city. The Seoul Tourism Organization spent a significant amount of money to participate in the Korean Parade and Festival to promote tours to Seoul and Korea. The Korean Festival included several components of cultural activities that provided Korean and non-Korean participants with varieties of popular Korean cuisines, exciting Korean m usic and dance performances, a singing contest, and folk games (Korea Times 2010e). Twenty-seven booths offered food, local products from K orea, information about local banks and insurance companies, and tourism brochures at minsok jangtur (the folk marketplace). Several major Korean restaurants in the area cooked two dozen different specialty dishes in their booths and served them for attendees, mostly non-Koreans. Many spectators came to K-Town in the morning and ate lunch at minsok jangtur and then attended the parade starting at noon. Also, after the parade there was a large demonstration on how to make bibimbap (rice mixed with vegetables, eggs, meat, and gochujang, a
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figure 7.1. Demonstration of bibimbap making by Grand Marshal Committee members at
the 2010 Korean Parade and Festival on October 4, 2010. (Photo provided by Korea Times.)
fermented chili pepper paste) for 500 people at minsok jangtur in which Governor Patterson and other Grand Marshal Committee members participated. After making a large quantity of bibimbap during the demonstration, they served it to about 500 participants f ree of charge. Since most Korean cultural and food festivals highlight bibimbap making, New Yorkers are now familiar with the dish. Figure 7.1 shows a bibimbap-making demonstration by members of the G rand Marshal Com mittee at a Korean festival in K-town in 2010. Various performances, including dances by local Korean groups, m usic by the Korean Cultural Foundation of Busan Metropolitan City, and a singing contest organized by The Korean Channel (a Korean television station in Flushing) on the outdoor stage from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. were as appealing to the participants as the Korean food was at jangtur. The B-Boying Contest (a break dancing competition) in which several non-Koreans, as well as many Korean Americans, participated, followed the singing contest. American media estimated the total number of participants in the parade to be approximately 150,000. In addition, Yonghwa Ha also informed me that more than 100,000 people participated in the 2010 Korean Festival alone. Assuming most people attended both the parade and the festival, more than 200,000 people are likely to have participated. I asked Ha how the KAAGNY mobilized such a large number of people to the event. He replied: The main reason for such a big turnout was our effective advertisement of the parade and festival through several different English-language news media. I par-
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ticipated in ABC Network’s Good Morning America and CBS’s Early Show in Korean traditional dress to introduce our events. We also advertised it through 1010 WINS radio, Wall Street Journal, AMNY, and a free magazine distributed at subway stations. I also had an interview with an AP reporter, and he publicized the event through the news report. We also distributed 30,000 copies of the flier at subway stations in Manhattan and Queens. Many second-generation Koreans and non-Korean citizens called our office to ask about the event on weekdays just before the event. (Author interview, 2011)
This comment indicates that their publicizing efforts through the local English- language media were effective in mobilizing many younger-generation Korean and non-Korean spectators.
The Korean Thanksgiving and Folklore Festival in Queens The Korean Produce Association of New York (KPA) started this festival in 1982 for all Koreans in New York to celebrate Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving Day) together. Along with the Korean Parade and Festival, this is one of the two largest Korean festivals held in New York City. Koreans celebrate Chuseok on August 15 of the lunar calendar to bless the rich harvest for the year and to offer fresh crops and fruits to the spirits of the ancestors. Chuseok and Lunar New Year are the two most important cultural holidays in Korea. The vast majority of p eople in Korea take off work for three days to celebrate Chuseok. I examined the KPA’s Chuseok festival in connection with my 2008 book Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City. For the book I conducted personal interviews with several former presidents of the KPA in 2005, and interview questions included information about the beginning and the progression of the Chuseok festival. I have also participated in the festival as a spectator and a researcher in most years since 2005. This section is based on my previous interviews with a few presidents of the KPA, my participant observations of the festivals, annual festival programs made by the KPA, and local Koreanand English-language newspaper articles. The KPA initially held the festival on the Sunday immediately a fter Chuseok on the Lunar Calendar in late September (Korea Times 1982) at Flushing Meadows– Corona Park in Queens. Queens was an early site of the United Nations, and it has now become the United Nations of cultural festivals, as about a dozen cultural festivals are held in the park from April to October every year. The KPA expanded the one-day festival to a two-day event (Saturday and Sunday) in 1996, given the tremendous increase in the number of festival participants and its popularity. Because a two-day festival further increased attendance, the KPA began to hold it in the middle of October in the early 2000s, a fter the regular baseball season was over, to
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avoid traffic congestion at Shea Stadium (the New York Mets’ home stadium from 1964 to 2008), which was adjacent to Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Readers may wonder why and how a Korean business association established a major Korean festival. To answer this question, I need to introduce Korean immigrants’ excessive business-related intergroup conflicts, their reactive solidarity, and Korean business associations’ power and influence in the 1980s and early 1990s. During this period, Korean immigrants in the area had an exceptionally high self- employment rate in small retail and service businesses due to their language barrier and other labor market disadvantages (Min 1996, 2008a). Approximately 2,500 Korean produce retail stores comprised the largest Korean small business at that time, symbolizing the Korean community in New York. Moreover, they had more severe conflicts with Black customers and white suppliers at Hunts Point Market, the largest wholesale produce market. As a result of their severe business-related conflicts, they maintained strong ethnic and class solidarity. They also became very loyal to the Korean community. Collectively through their business associations and individually, Korean produce retailers spent a significant amount of money for the welfare of the Korean community. In addition, they made an important contribution to the Korean community by establishing the Korean Harvest and Folklore Festival. According to one of its founders (Min 2008a: 137), the festival has three main goals. One is to provide an opportunity for all Koreans to celebrate Chuseok together to help them feel at home in New York. The other two goals of the festival are to transmit Korean folk culture to second-generation Koreans and to publicize and promote Korean cultural traditions to New Yorkers. I introduce the first festival held in 1982 and recent festivals below. Readers w ill find that the KPA has achieved the above-mentioned three major goals through its festival. From the beginning, not only many Korean immigrants but also many Korean children participated in the festival. Moreover, an increasing number of non-Koreans have participated not only as spectators but also as active participants in festival programs during recent years. Thus, the Korean Harvest and Folklore Festival has made a major contribution to publicizing and promoting Korean culture to New Yorkers. The KPA held the first festival at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park on September 26, 1982. An article published in the Korea Times summarized the content and activities of the festival in detail with several photos. Like the festival in K-Town, this festival had three components: (1) performances, which included Korean music and dance, singing contests, and Korean dress contests on the main stage; (2) various folk games in special event areas; and (3) freshly made Korean cuisine in food booths. Th ere w ere samulnori performances, a taekwondo demonstration, performances of popular songs by several celebrity singers, and a singing contest for older p eople (jangsumudae) on the main stage. All of the Korean singers and dancers, with the exception of one from Canada, were local (Korea Times 1982). Also, two Korean dress contests, one for c hildren and the other for adults, w ere held on the main stage. Close to 150 children and over 50 adults respectively participated. Among the folk games, a ssirum (Korean wrestling) tournament in which
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sixteen men participated attracted the most attention. The folk games also included yutnori (a traditional Korean board game that entails tossing four painted wooden sticks instead of dice) and jegichagi (a Korean version of hacky sack). Children also made songpyeon (crescent-shaped rice cakes with a sweet filling) for Korean Thanksgiving Day. Songpyeon is a very important food for Chuseok that people traditionally eat and share. Five participating Korean restaurants freshly prepared and cooked their specialty cuisines in their booths, but they sold out of all food items well before the festival came to an end at 6:00 p.m. (Korea Times 1982). An article in the Korea Times reported that about 10,000 Koreans from three states (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut), as well as many non-Koreans, participated in the festival. The Korean population in the area in 1982 seems to have been around 35,000 (Min 2008a: 16). It is surprising that they mobilized such a large number of Korean Americans to the festival. The fact that as many as 150 Korean children participated in the Korean dress contest indicates that a large number of younger-generation children participated in the festival, accompanied by their parents. This festival grew increasingly larger in its scale and also continued to steadily draw more participants in the 1980s and 1990s. The popularity of the festival led the KPA to expand it to a two-day (Saturday and Sunday) festival in 1996. The two-day expansion in turn led to a great increase in the number of attendees, to approximately 130,000 in 1996 and 180,000 in 1998 (Min 2008a: 138), numbers that the KPA founding members never even imagined in the beginning. This festival has also attracted more local English-language and Korean-language media (both in New York and in K orea) attention than the parade held in Manhattan. In his preview of the 2002 Korean Harvest and Folklore Festival published on October 4, Sandee Brawarsky, a journalist at the New York Times, devoted two full pages to introducing the content of the festival. I cite one paragraph from his well- researched article about the festival: “For Koreans in New York City this harvest time is a mingling of joy and homesick-ness. Unable to return to their family places, many Korean Americans gather with extended family h ere; some put on traditional dress and enact a long-distance version of ancestor veneration. Some simply eat a large festival meal, like at American Thanksgiving, and o thers do nothing special but phone home to Korea” (Brawarsky 2002). The two-day expansion has also transformed a local festival into a transnational festival, in which two dozen singers, dancers, and other entertainers from Korea performed. Many Korean immigrants and children came to the festival to enjoy performances by celebrity singers and dancers from K orea. Since 1997, they have added exhibitions and sales of special agricultural and manufacturing products from Korean provinces to the festival. Three or four provinces of K orea usually participate in the exhibitions of their special products each year to publicize them at the festival and then to export them to the United States through Korean supermarkets. Also, KBS expanded jeongook noraejarang, a very popular singing contest tour in Korea, to the festival in New York City. The KBS broadcast a festival-based
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singing contest live to K orea. The winner got a ticket to participate in the year-end contest in Korea in which many winners in local county contests participated. Since the festival became a two-day event, the KPA has held a formal opening ceremony on the morning of the second day of the festival. Several provincial governors and National Assembly members from Korea, as well as the mayor of New York City, the governor of New York State, and local politicians have participated in the ceremony. In addition, congratulatory remarks by the U.S. president, the governor of New York State, the mayor of New York City, the president of Korea, and the chair of the Korean National Assembly w ere included in the festival program. To prepare this transnational festival connecting New York and Korean cities, four executive members of the KPA visit Korea in early May each year to negotiate with the Agro-Fishery Corporation and provincial governments to send their products for exhibitions and leading entertainers to perform for the festival. The Overseas Koreans Foundation, the Agro-Fishery Corporation, and local provincial governments covered a significant portion of the annual festival expenses, usually around $350,000 in the 2000s. Serving participants freshly prepared and cooked Korean food from temporarily established booths for reasonable prices is an important component of nearly all Korean cultural festivals. About twenty-five Korean restaurants and nonprofit organizations rented booths to sell food or offer information to festival participants for two full days. Major Korean food items available at the festival included galbi (beef short ribs), bulgogi (thinly sliced and marinated barbecued beef), bibimbap, pajeon (Korean scallion pancakes), ddeokbokki (Korean chewy rice cakes cooked in a spicy and sweet sauce), and various noodle dishes. Since many non-Korean participants ate food purchased from these booths, the festival was helpful in publicizing Korean cuisine to non-Korean New Yorkers. However, according to the KPA, the number of Korean produce stores in New York City decreased from around 2,500 in the 1990s to around 500 in 2005, and then to around 300 in the early 2010s (author interview with Keum Yeon Chung, 2017). A number of factors contributed to this drastic reduction. First, large supermarkets, like the Korean-owned H-Mart, carried a wide variety of vegetables and fruits to meet an increased consumer demand due to their health consciousness; in addition, by virtue of being able to buy larger quantities, H-Mart and other large American supermarkets were able to sell fruits, vegetables, and other produce for lower prices. Moreover, the movement of supermarkets into Black neighborhoods, like Harlem, which was made possible by changes to zoning laws in the second half of the 1990s, made it difficult for Korean produce store owners to continue their business (Min 2008a: 92–94). In addition, due to the decrease in the number of annual Korean immigrants (Min 2011) and their ability to find occupations in the mainstream economy, not many Korean immigrants wanted to run labor-intensive produce stores. The drastic reduction in the number of Korean produce stores and the lack of business-related intergroup conflicts greatly weakened the KPA’s power and finan-
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cial resources. Accordingly, it was very difficult for the KPA to continue to orga nize the festival on such a large scale in the early 2010s. After losing about $200,000 each year in 2012 and 2013 from the expensive festivals, the KPA ended their involvement. In 2014, the Korean-American Harvest Festival Committee, a newly established nonprofit Korean community organization, undertook the festival. Many Korean immigrants who consider Korean cultural transmission to subsequent generations very important joined the newly established organization as staff or board members. In particular, two p eople played key roles in this newly established organization: Keum-Yun Chung, the president of New York Ilbo (a Korean daily newspaper), and Jeong-Nam Yoon, a former KPA leader and longtime festival organizer. The new organization organized and held festivals in the parking lot of Queens College four times (2015–2018). In 2019, the organization relocated the festival from Queens College to Queens Botanical Garden, a location very convenient to Korean immigrants in Flushing. As a result, according to Keum-Yun Chung, the participants in the two-day festival increased from about 25,000 at the Queens College parking lot to 45,000. But the number of participants is much smaller than in the 1990s and 2000s. Chung explained this radical reduction in the number of participants: “When they invited Korean celebrity singers and dancers from K orea in the 1990s and early 2000s, many Koreans and even Americans participated in the festival to see their perfor mances. But they can now see their performances in digital media easily. Moreover, at that time it was expensive to invite a Korean celebrity performer. “It costs $15,000 because he/she demands a business-class air ticket, a few or several days of decent hotel accommodation, and a decent honorarium” (interview with Chung, 2014). He emphasized that he would organize a local festival rather than a transnational festival in which local Korean American and other American citizens perform Korean music and dance. The organization already included a K-pop contest in the festival from the beginning and invited many non-Korean participants.
The Queens Festival and Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing As noted in chapter 2, large numbers of Korean and Chinese immigrants began moving to Flushing in the early 1980s. As a result of the influx of post-1965 immigrants, Flushing has become the largest Korean immigrant enclave in Greater New York, and it is also one of the three major Chinese enclaves in New York City.1 The two East Asian groups that have established ethnic business districts in downtown Flushing share many cultural characteristics, including Lunar New Year. P eople in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Vietnam celebrate Lunar New Year as the most impor tant cultural holiday. This is the background in which the Chinese and Korean communities have co-organized the Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing. Before describing the Lunar New Year Parade, I will introduce the communities’ involvement in the Queens Festival, based on my interview with Jong H. Hong
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conducted in 2012. Hong served as the president of the Korean Merchants Association in Flushing between 1981 and 1983. According to Hong, the Queens borough president established the Queens Cultural Festival in Flushing Meadows– Corona Park in 1984 for all immigrant groups. The Queens Cultural Festival is very meaningful because the borough is known to be the home of the most diverse immigrant groups in the United States. Hong said that the cultural festival, usually held in June, drew two to three million people during the two days (Saturdays and Sundays) each year, becoming the most popular cultural festival in New York City. Hong established the Korean Culture Society of Eastern U.S.A. in 1984 to collect donations and prepare cultural programs for the Korean Pavilion within the Asian Village at the Queens Festival. As the president of the association, he made a great effort to make the Korean Pavilion at the Queens Festival successful. An article published in the Korea Times reported that the Korean Pavilion and the Asian Village at the 1986 Queens Festival were full of Korean cultural perfor mances and exhibitions. They included a Korean fashion show, performances of Korean traditional fan dances, samulnori and gayageum (a traditional Korean stringed instrument) performances, taekwondo demonstrations, exhibitions of calligraphic works, and fliers introducing the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games (Korea Times 1986). Hong said that it was extremely difficult to raise donations amounting to approximately $30,000 to cover the expenses for the festival each year, but that the festival was very effective for publicizing Korean cultural traditions to New Yorkers. Unfortunately, due the difficulty in covering escalating expenses, Queens ended the popular festival in 1994. Instead, Hong and the Korean community focused on the Lunar New Year Parade in 1995, which had already been held in Flushing since 1991. The Chinese community also joined the New Year Parade in 1996. However, Hong told me that the Chinese group used a different name on the banner: From 1996, Chinese immigrants joined the parade, but they used “Chinese New Year” on the banner, instead of Lunar New Year. Chinese community leaders insisted on “Chinese New Year,” claiming that “it had been used in Chinatowns all over the world.” We had arguments with Chinese community leaders, but we could not resolve the issue. We had separate parades for three years, with the Chinese group parading first using the banner of Chinese New Year and us following them with significant distance using the banner of Saehae Bokmani Bateuseyo (Happy New Year). However, in 1999 when the leadership of the Chinese Merchant Association in Flushing changed from Taiwanese immigrants to mainland Chinese immigrants, they conceded to the Korean community’s request to use Lunar New Year Parade.
Thus, since 1999, the two communities have organized the parade together under the name “Lunar New Year Parade.” The Korean and Chinese communities
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figure 7.2. K orea’s Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing, New York, in 2013. (Photo provided by Chang Jong Kim.)
internally prepare the parade separately to get donations from each community to cover expenses for the parade and to decide which ethnic organizations should participate with floats, what ethnic m usic and dance organizations should be invited for performances, and what other cultural and social activities should follow the parade. Leaders from the two different communities have a few meetings to coordinate the overall structure of the parade, such as to decide the parade order and parade route, how many flower cars each community should be assigned to, whom to invite to play the role of grand marshal, and so forth (Shin 2011). By organ izing the parade together, the two communities are sending a message to the public that they share many cultural traditions and social ties. All Korean and Chinese communities in the United States celebrate this festival, the most important cultural holiday in their home countries. However, the parade held in Flushing may be the only major Lunar New Year parade in the United States that the Korean and Chinese communities prepare and present together. This is possible because both East Asian communities have ethnic business districts in downtown Flushing. Figure 7.2 shows performers in the 2013 parade. I conducted participant observation at the 2012 Lunar New Year Parade and Korean Festivals with my wife. Myung Suk Lee, the president of the Korean American Association of Queens, organized the parade. According to media estimates, a total of 3,000 spectators, including Korean and Chinese Americans, attended the parade in 2012, with the majority of the attendees being residents of Queens ( Ju Lee 2012a). The Chinese portion of the parade started at 11:00 a.m. and the Korean portion followed it. It took half an hour for the Chinese part of the parade to pass. The
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Korean part of the parade started with ten minutes of traditional dance perfor mances by a young Korean American samulnori team at the Korean Business District on Union Street and ended around 1:00 p.m. It started at the intersection of Union Street and Thirty-Seventh Avenue, in front of the New York City’s 104th police precinct in Flushing. This is the heart of Flushing’s Korean business district (see map 2.1 in chapter 2). The parade proceeded southward along Union Street and turned right (west) at Sanford Avenue. It then turned right (north) at Main Street and continued through the heart of downtown Flushing. From Main Street, the parade turned right (east) onto Thirty-Seventh Avenue and ended near the starting point of the Chinese team. As usual, the president of the KAAGNY (Yonghwa Ha), the Consul General of the Republic of Korea in New York (Young Mok Kim), the mayor of New York City (at the time Michael Bloomberg), the Queens borough president (at the time Helen Marshall), and several local politicians participated in the parade, comprising the Grand Marshal Committee. Korean Army veterans from the Vietnam War Association headed the Korean participating organizations in the 2012 parade. Other organizations included Korean Community Services, the Council of Korean Churches of Greater New York, Korean American F amily Counseling Services, the New York Chapter of the Advisory Board for Korean Unification, and the Flushing Elderly Center. Gangwon Dominhe (a provincial association) had a placard wishing g reat success for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. A c hildren’s taekwondo team, including a few non- Korean members, gave a demonstration, while c hildren from the Korean Traditional Music and Dance Institute of New York performed dances. The Korean parade ended with dance performances by a female Korean samulnori team for ten minutes. In terms of both its organizers and its participants, the Lunar New Year Parade held in downtown Flushing is very local, compared to the other two Korean festivals introduced above, which are very metropolitan and transnational. Between 1991 and 2006, the Korean American Association of Flushing organized the parade. Since 2007, the Korean American Association of Queens has organized it. The organization annually collects donations from Korean restaurants, supermarkets, and professional businesses located in the Flushing-Bayside area to cover the expenses of approximately $30,000–$40,000 for the parade. Following the conclusion of the parade, the Korean Festival was held at Kum Gang San Restaurant and Manor, the largest Korean restaurant in Flushing. The festivities started with a demonstration of how to make different kinds of rice cakes. Two or three young men smashed boiled rice on a wooden mat with wooden hammers. This is the traditional way Koreans make injeolmi (a particular type of soft, sticky rice cake), although they now make it in factories. They also demonstrated how to cook other Korean dishes and bulgogi tacos, a Korean- Mexican fusion food that was invented by second-generation Korean Americans. Following customs, ddeokguk (savory rice cake soup), the traditional soup eaten and prepared by Koreans for Lunar New Year, was first served. The Korean orga
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nizer served ddeokguk and other Korean dishes for members of the parade- participating organizations at a large dining hall at Keumkangsan Restaurant. After a late lunch, there was roughly ninety minutes of Korean cultural programs. Many young girls in traditional Korean dresses performed samulnori, fan dances, and drum dances. A group of boys gave a taekwondo demonstration. I asked Myung Suk Lee, the president of the Korean Association of Queens in 2012, how he prepared the parade. He responded, “Flushing is the heart of the Korean community in the New York area. It is important to show the Queens residents how Korean immigrants celebrate our most important cultural holiday. Especially because we organize the cultural holiday with Chinese immigrants, we need to show as good a parade as the Chinese one. We asked Korean immigrants for donations to prepare a good parade. Over thirty Korean business owners not only in Flushing but also in other parts of the New York area donated money. Including $4,000 from Overseas Koreans Foundation, we collected about $40,000.”
The Coa lition of New York City Chinese and Korean Immigrants to Make Lunar New Year a School Holiday Lunar New Year is similar to a religious holiday for many families in East Asian countries because they still practice ancestor worship, with family members preparing food and bowing deeply before the tombs or images of their ancestors. Therefore, they usually have national holidays on Lunar New Year and one or two other days, to celebrate it with family members. However, Chinese and Korean immigrant families in New York City could not celebrate Lunar New Year with their children on the exact day because their children had to attend school. Consequently, many Chinese and Korean students skipped school on Lunar New Year so they could celebrate their cultural holiday at home. This is the main reason why the Chinese and Korean communities in New York City started the movement to make Lunar New Year a school holiday in the late 1990s. Margaret Chin (Chinese) and Incha Kim (Korean), the first two Asian American school board members in New York representing the Twenty-Fifty School District, encompassing Flushing and its adjacent neighborhoods, lobbied the New York City government to recognize Lunar New Year as a school holiday in the late 1990s. However, at that time they received little support from New York City politicians and government officials. I personally believed that their effort was unrealistic; I thought that if Lunar New Year became a holiday, then so many other ethnic holidays would have to be recognized as well. However, the movement accelerated in the 2000s when the 2000 Census showed that Asian Americans comprised 10 percent of the population in New York City and five Chinese Americans were elected as members of the New York City Council ( John Liu and Peter Koo) or New York State Assembly ( Jimmy Meng, Ellen Young, and Grace Meng). In 2002, the New York City Council passed
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a proposal made by John Liu, a second-generation Taiwanese American City Council member, to make Lunar New Year a public celebration day. Mayor Michael Bloomberg then eliminated the alternate-side parking rule on Lunar New Year in 2003. In 2004, the New York State Assembly passed a similar proposal to make it a public celebration day, which was effective from 2005 on (Korea Daily 2004). In January 2005, Jimmy Meng, a Chinese immigrant New York State assemblyman representing the Flushing-Bayside district, submitted a proposal to the State Assembly to make Lunar New Year a school holiday in cities in New York State with over one million p eople where Asian Americans composed at least 7.5 percent of the population. Two Chinese State assemblywomen representing the Flushing- Bayside district, Ellen Young in 2007 and Grace Meng in 2009 and 2011, respectively resubmitted the same proposal. However, the proposal had never even been deliberated by the Education Committee in the State Assembly u ntil the early 2010s (Shin 2012). Before she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2012, Grace Meng, as a member of the New York State Assembly, had pressured Mayor Bloomberg to designate Lunar New Year as a holiday on the school calendar to facilitate the passage of the proposal by the State Assembly (Shin 2013a). Grace Meng, a second-generation Taiwanese American w oman, represented both the Chinese and Korean communities effectively by virtue of her marriage to a Korean husband. The 2010 Census showed that Asian Americans comprised 5.5 percent of the U.S. population and 16 percent of the population of New York City. Thus, the early 2010s seems to have been prime time for the passage of the bill to recognize Lunar New Year. Korean daily newspaper articles show that Korean parents organized many programs in several public schools in New York City and Bergen County to celebrate Lunar New Year in the early 2010s. Korean students at Stillman Elementary School in Tenafly, New Jersey, comprised 38 percent of the student body in the 2000s. The Korean Parents’ Association at the school had already organized rich Korean cultural programs involving Korean music/dance and food to celebrate Lunar New Year with students, teachers, and local residents for many years. They also had actively involved in the school administration. As a result, the Tenafly School Board had already a dopted Lunar New Year as a school holiday in 2006 ( Jeong 2011). Chinese parents’ associations also organized similar cultural programs in many public schools with large numbers of Chinese students in New York City to promote Lunar New Year. Korean teachers’ and parents’ associations in New York City even engaged in the movement not to send their children to school on Lunar New Year (Korea Daily 2011). On January 4, 2010, about thirty Korean and Chinese organizations organized a demonstration in front of New York City Hall to condemn Mayor Bloomberg and other city government officials for not taking action to influence the proposal submitted to the New York State legislature ( Jin-Hu Lee 2010). In January 2013, three New York State senators representing districts in Queens with large numbers of Korean and Chinese immigrants and Ron Kim, a Korean American elected
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in 2012 as a New York State assemblyman representing the Flushing-Bayside district (District 22), resubmitted the same proposal to both the New York Senate and State Assembly (Shin 2013a). Proponents of the proposal had a press conference in an elementary school in Flushing, emphasizing passing the bill to make Lunar New Year a holiday as respecting Asian culture. They pointed out that Asian-American students comprised 15.4 percent of students in public schools in New York City in 2012 and that 80 percent of the students at an elementary school in Chinatown did not attend school on Lunar New Year (Shin 2013b). By 2013, the public celebration of Lunar New Year had become widespread. In his congratulatory message sent on February 8, 2013, through the White House website, President Barack Obama said that “not only the U.S. but all countries in the world congratulate Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on celebrating Lunar New Year” (G. S. Park 2013). Since Lunar New Year is celebrated only in East Asian countries,2 some groups such as South Asians, Southeast Asians, and even Japanese Americans may have felt uncomfortable about his message lumping all Asians and Pacific Islanders together. In his address to Chinese Americans given just before the mayoral election in November 2013, Bill de Blasio, a Democratic Party nominee for mayor, also promised that he would make “Chinese New Year” a holiday in the 2014–2015 academic year when he was elected mayor. Daily News used the same term “Chinese New Year” when it reported de Blasio’s address to Chinese Americans. Their references to “Chinese New Year” prompted the Korean Parents’ Association to send a message to de Blasio indicating that the reference to “Chinese New Year” reflects the denial of Korean and other Asian groups who also celebrate Lunar New Year and that therefore they should not use the term again (S. J. Suh 2014a). On January 27, 2014, de Blasio, the newly elected mayor of New York City, announced that he supported making Lunar New Year a holiday in New York City (Shin 2014a). He also sent a separate Chinese-language message to Chinese Americans that “the New York City government is very proud of Chinese communities for being very active.” The Korean Parents’ Association again sent a message that Mayor de Blasio should understand that Korean, Vietnamese, and other Asian groups celebrate Lunar New Year too and that he should have more accurate information about Asian culture (S. J. Suh 2014a). The State Assembly passed the proposal to make Lunar New Year a school holiday on February 3, 2014, while the State Senate passed it about three months later (Shin 2014b; S. J. Suh 2014b). According to the resolution, school boards in New York State with large proportions of Asian American students can decide to make the Lunar New Year a holiday in the school calendar. On December 17, 2014, New York State governor Andrew Cuomo signed it into law (Shin 2014b). The goal, which I had thought absolutely impossible in the late 1990s, was achieved in 2014. The New York City School Board did not include the Lunar New Year as one of the school holidays in the 2015–2016 academic calendar, though it included two Muslim religious holidays (Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr) for the first time. Chinese
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and Korean politicians—Grace Meng, Margaret Chin, and Ron Kim—had a meeting with New York City’s relevant staff members and strongly told them about the importance of including Lunar New Year as a school holiday. The staff members indicated the difficulty in adding another holiday to meet the regulation of 180 school days per year but promised to find a way to include it in the 2015–2016 school holiday list. When the New York City government had not taken any action, on March 10, 2015, Grace Meng, Ron Kim, about forty other local politicians and about twenty Chinese and Korean community organizations sent a letter to Mayor de Blasio to push him to designate the holiday (Shin 2015a). On June 11, 2015, the New York Senate passed a bill to require the New York City government to designate the holiday in the school calendar, while Ron Kim proposed the same bill to the New York State Assembly. U nder immense pressure from state politicians, Mayor de Blasio announced on June 23, 2015, that he would include Lunar New Year on the city’s school calendar from February 2016 (Robbins 2015; S. J. Suh 2015). Thus, New York City became the first major American city to designate Lunar New Year as a school holiday from February 2016. It had taken ten years from the first proposal. As noted above, the election of several Chinese and Korean Americans to the New York City Council, the New York State Assembly, and the U.S. House of Representatives since the early 2000s was a key factor (Robbins 2015). Also, the increase in the Asian population to 16 percent of New York City in 2010, with Asian American students comprising more than one-third of students in several public schools in the city, is another major contributing factor. The increase in the Asian population not only helped several Chinese and Korean candidates to be elected as State Senate or Assembly members and New York City Council members, but also led non-Asian local politicians to support the resolution. Finally, the unified lobbying and picketing activities of Korean and Chinese immigrants to get approval from local politicians seem to have played a key role in the passage of the proposal. Part of the reason Korean and Chinese immigrants live in the Flushing and Bayside areas in large numbers is that they feel similar to each other. Because these two East Asian groups share many cultural aspects and live in the same areas, they have been able to coordinate more effectively in political actions.
Summary and Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have examined three major Korean cultural festivals in the New York area in detail: the Korean Parade and Festival in Manhattan, organized by the Korean American Association of Greater New York; the Korean Thanksgiving and Folklore Festival, originally organized by the Korean Produce Association and recently undertaken by the Korean-American Harvest Festival Committee; and the Queens Festival and Lunar New Year Parade, organized by the Korean Association of Queens and the Chinese Merchant Association in Flushing. I also exam-
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ined how Chinese and Korean communities in Queens coordinated to make Lunar New Year an officially recognized school holiday. Organizing major Korean cultural festivals and parades is important b ecause it publicizes the existence of the Korean community to New Yorkers and enhances younger-generation Koreans’ ethnic identity. The Korean Parade and Festival in Manhattan and the Korean Thanksgiving and Folklore Festival in Queens have had significant transnational linkages with Korea in terms of the government’s financial support and the participation of performers from Korea in the programs. Technological advances have facilitated organizing their programs transnationally. However, technological advances in media during recent years have enabled Korean immigrants and second-generation Koreans to watch celebrity singers and dancers from the comfort of their own homes, mainly through digital streaming platforms. As a result, the organizers of the Korean Thanksgiving and Folklore Festival have decided not to invite celebrity performers from Korea. As will be discussed in chapter 9, for the same reason, Korean ethnic organizations have invited fewer celebrity Korean singers and dancers from K orea during recent years than they did two decades ago. The most important contributing f actor to Korean immigrants’ tireless efforts to organize the major Korean cultural festivals examined h ere and other minor Korean festivals is their strong ethnic attachment based on their ethnic homogeneity. Organizing cultural festivals involves spending long hours of work on the part of many organization members for collection of donations from the community, inviting many participants in the programs, and bringing many Korean and non-Korean spectators to the festivals. But there are enough Korean immigrants who are willing to sacrifice their time and effort to display the existence of the Korean ethnic community to New Yorkers and to enhance younger-generation Koreans’ ethnic identity. Chinese and Korean immigrants’ residential concentration in the Flushing- Bayside area, their co-organizing of the Lunar New Year Festival, and their coordination in getting New York State and New York City governments to make Lunar New Year a school holiday have much to do with pan-Asian ethnic boundaries. Asian American scholars have tended to emphasize pan-Asian coalitions or solidarity involving their collective actions to protect common interests. But there are two forms of pan-Asian ethnicity; one form is pan-Asian attachment based on similarities in primordial ties (culture, physical characteristics, and history), and the other form is pan-Asian solidarity or coalitions based on using collective actions to protect common interests. There are two pan-Asian attachment bound aries; one is the East Asian boundary, and the other is the South Asian boundary. East Asian and South Asian groups within each boundary can use pan-ethnic collective actions more effectively because of primordial ties. East Asian ethnic groups, including Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese immigrants, as well as their U.S.-born counterparts, share similarities in their culture and physical characteristics. As a result, they have tended to share neighborhoods,
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friendships, and even intermarriages. Large Chinese and Korean populations live side by side in the Flushing-Bayside area in Queens and have co-organized Lunar New Year, the most important cultural holiday in their home countries. By virtue of sharing this important cultural holiday, the two East Asian groups have effectively used pan-Asian collective actions in making Lunar New Year a school holiday in New York City.
8 • KORE AN TR ADITIONAL PERFORMING ARTS
As a group, Koreans cherish music and dance. Groups and individuals sing, play musical instruments, and dance in the Korean community regularly. Thus, we can hear their performances almost e very day. Korean immigrants’ love of music and dance is well reflected by the many choirs in the Korean community in Greater New York. Moreover, 450 Korean Protestant churches and twenty-five Korean Catholic parishes or communities in the area each have a choir, and many have more than one. In addition, as w ill be documented in chapter 9, nationally recognized music and dance groups from Korea visit New York City to perform with great frequency. Thus, Korean immigrants in the area can frequently enjoy performances made by other Korean immigrants, younger-generation Koreans, or special musical guests from K orea at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, or other venues, or at Korean festivals. However, for the purposes of this book, I am not interested in Korean Americans’ performances of classical music or church choirs’ performances of hymns and praise songs. This chapter focuses on the practices and consumptions of Korean traditional music and dance performances, while the next chapter covers contemporary Korean music and dance performances. Many organizations and individuals have contributed to preserving and promoting Korean traditional performing arts. However, only two dozen Korean immigrants, mostly women, who were specially trained in traditional music and dance in Korea can teach Korean American children to continue traditional performing arts in the area. In particular, two Korean immigrant women, and their organizations and their members, have played a central role in preserving and promoting Korean traditional performing arts. Accordingly, I devote the first two sections of this chapter to these two women. The third section examines three other Korean traditional performing arts organizations and individuals. The final section examines Korean traditional performing arts events, including transnational events, in the Korean community in Greater New York in 2019.
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Dooyi Yoon Sook Park and Her Group About forty years ago, in 1983, when she was in her late thirties, Dooyi Yoon Sook Park (figure 8.1) came to New York City to visit her b rother. She was trained from her early years in Korea to play gayageum (a twelve-string Korean zither) and to perform pansori (a Korean genre of musical storytelling performed by a vocalist and a drummer). She became a popular performer in these two Korean traditional musical genres but had to stop her Korean traditional m usic career after marrying in K orea. Married w omen in Korea in the 1960s w ere usually supposed to stop their c areers to be full-time housewives and mothers. She felt that her life was meaningless because she could not continue her performing artistic activities. Although she had two d aughters to raise at home, she visited her b rother in New York City to explore the possibility of continuing her career as a performing artist. Fortunately, by virtue of her popularity in Korea as a gayageum and pansori performer, she received invitations from New York–based Korean organizations to perform her Korean traditional music specialties in 1984. In 1985, Jong H. Hong, president of the Korean Cultural Society of Eastern U.S.A., invited her to perform gayageum and pansori for the Korean Pavilion at Queens Festival held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Park talked about her role in the Korean Pavilion in Queens Festival between 1985 and 1988: I participated in the two-day Queens Festival from 1985 on. The Chinese pavilion attracted a greater audience than the Korean Pavilion b ecause Chinese leaders prepared it with a huge amount of money sent by the Chinese government. But Korean leaders did not get financial support from Korean Cultural Center in New York, which had been established a few years before to promote Korean culture in New York City. We had neither dresses nor musical instruments for quality perfor mances. Nevertheless, I worked hard to help the Korean Pavilion to get more spectators than the Chinese Pavilion. Finally, in the 1988 festival, the Korean pavilion attracted more spectators than the Chinese.
Park said that, strongly recommended and supported by several Korean community leaders in the Flushing area, she established the Korean Traditional M usic and Dance Institute of New York in 1987 at Haninsanga, the Korean business district, on Union Street in Flushing. It cost approximately $50,000 to rent a building for the institute and to purchase instruments. She spent $30,000, which she borrowed from her b rother, who ran a taekwondo center in New Jersey, to establish the institute. The chair of the board of directors, Chai Sam Gook, donated $10,000, and other community leaders in the Flushing area and the Korean Cultural Center (KCC) donated another $10,000. The main mission of the institute is to preserve and promote Korean traditional music and dance by training younger-generation Koreans. When I interviewed Park, who taught different types of Korean m usic and dance, in 2011, the institute had seven other teachers who worked part time; students w ere
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figure 8.1. Dooyi Yoon Sook Park ( far right) playing a traditional musical instrument and
her daughter, Yusun Kang (far left), performing a traditional Korean dance. (Photo provided by Dooyi Yoon Sook Park.)
often invited to perform at Korean and non-Korean cultural events. Students at the institute learned traditional m usic and dance and practiced after school. The institute had about seventy to eighty students enrolled prior to 2009. However, due to the economic recession, the number fell to about forty at the time of our interview. As previously indicated, many Korean parents would send their c hildren to private music institutes or hire tutors a fter school to teach them how to play the piano and other musical instruments. However, Park said, only a very small number of Korean parents who recognized the importance of preserving Korean cultural traditions sent their c hildren to her and other Korean traditional music and dance schools. Students at the institute ranged in age from four to seventy. Of the approximately forty students, only three were male and three w ere not Korean (they w ere s isters from a Black family). The mother of the Black children was fascinated by Korean cultural traditions and enrolled all of her children at the institute. Park said that approximately 2,000 students had graduated from the institute since its opening. The most successful graduate of the institute is Park’s older daughter, Yusun Kang, a 1.5-generation Korean who graduated from Queens College and majored in drama and dance. She worked as associate director of the institute and, at the time of our interview, it was Park’s hope that she would inherit the institute within five or six years. During her high school and college years, Yusun visited K orea many times during summer vacations to receive training from a famous master of
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Korean dance. As a result, she won many awards in Korean traditional dance contests, not only in the New York Korean community but also in national contests in Korea. Park’s younger d aughter, Hosun Kang, also worked as an instructor of Korean dance at the institute. Park said of Yusun when I interviewed her in 2014 for the second time, “Training my daughter to become a well-known Korean traditional dancer to succeed me in r unning the institute is the most satisfactory achievement I have made since I came to the United States. No younger-generation Korean American would like to run this kind of school with all kinds of difficulties. My daughter who came to this country after elementary school in K orea knows enough about the East and the West. . . . I believe that she w ill run the school successfully. I can retire comfortably within a few years.” Board member dues, community donations, and student tuition comprise the major sources of the institute’s annual revenue. The money is far short of covering the commercial rent, monthly utilities, and instructors’ salaries. Park said that she spent much of her earnings from her frequent performances for other organizations in covering operational expenses of the institute. The KCC, a branch of the Korean government established in New York City in 1979, has annually provided moderate financial support. The institute has held an annual fundraising gala that features traditional Korean music and dance performances. However, Park was disappointed that no successful Korean business owners had donated significant funds to the institute; only a handful of Koreans who recognize the importance of preserving their traditional culture have made donations. Park’s institute has contributed immensely to preserving and promoting Korean traditional music and dance not merely by teaching and training younger individuals but also in two other important ways. One is by providing many traditional m usic and dance performances for Korean as well as non-Korean organ izations. Park, often in collaboration with other instructors affiliated with the institute and with its students, has given numerous m usic and dance performances for important public events. She said that she had given about 1,500 perfor mances for other organizations over the past twenty-five years. They include about five f ree performances per year at prisons, parties for older Koreans, American nursing homes, elementary and secondary schools, and some Korean festivals. She told me that while non-Korean organizations have generally compensated her well for her performances, many Korean organizations have tried to get free services from her and her group. She has been invited to perform traditional m usic and dance for events organized by several consulate generals in New York City, several U.S. universities, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the New York International Dance Parade and Festival in Manhattan (three times), and many organizations in Latin American cities, including in a high school in Mexico established by M other Teresa. Responding to the question of what she felt was her most memorable perfor mance, Park commented, “About twenty years ago, I was invited to a festival at Duke University. I made a gayageum performance in front of about 4,000 students
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at an auditorium. Everyone listened to my low gayageum performance sound quietly to the end. When I was coming down from the stage a fter ending it, I heard them giving me thunderous applause. I can never forget about it. I felt very proud of the fact that foreigners are so much attracted by Korean traditional performing arts.” In 2012, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs selected four minority members as the Folk Artists of New York City. Park was selected as one of them, representing minority members of the city. The other important way that Park contributed to the promotion of Korean traditional music and dance was by helping to establish the Traditional Art Society of Korea (Mijoo Hangukgugak Jinheunghe) in 2001. Several other Korean immigrants seriously interested in Korean traditional performing arts w ere involved in establishing the association. However, Park played the central role in creating it. In 2012, there were about fifty members. The major mechanism of the association in promoting Korean traditional music and dance is organizing the Korean Traditional Music and Dance Competition, which was created from the inception. The association established the competition partly to encourage younger-generation Koreans to practice Korean traditional music and dance and partly to publicize them widely to New Yorkers. The expenditure for the annual contest is about $30,000, including about $12,000 for the prizes for winners. The KCC has given modest financial support for the competition. Also, two to five nationally recognized traditional performing artists in Korea who are considered Living National Treasures have visited New York City to serve as judges for the competition. The association has provided financial support for hotel accommodations for these judges. These Korean celebrity performing artists usually provide their own performances for Korean immigrants immediately after the competition. The president and other staff members of the Traditional Art Society of Korea also spend many days and hours in preparing the competition and publicizing it. They even spend their own money to cover expenses for the contest. Kyung Ha Lee, the president of the association in 2012–2013, said that the president of the association and the chair of the board of directors each usually contribute several thousand dollars to support the contest. Korean immigrant leaders make these kinds of sacrifices, not only in terms of their time but also in financial support to help preserve Korean cultural traditions. This is something that few Koreans or Korean policy makers may be aware of. The number of participating teams in the contest has gradually increased, reaching forty-six in 2010. The association changed its name from the Korean Traditional Music and Dance Competition to the World Korean Traditional M usic and Dance Competition in 2010 to allow individuals and groups from outside of the United States to participate in the competition. Three of the forty-six teams in the 2010 contest were non-Korean teams (Canadian, Japanese, and Chinese), with the number of spectators for the contest reaching 1,000 ( Jung 2010). The number of participating teams decreased somewhat from 2011 to 2014, but
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“the quality of their performances has remained at a very high level, a higher level than the founders of the competition originally expected,” Lee, the president of the association, emphasized. Park formally retired as director of the institute in 2016, at the age of seventy. As she had hoped, her eldest daughter, Yusun Kang, inherited the Korean music school. Moreover, her d aughter, who married a Korean man, taught her three children Korean traditional m usic and dance skills. That same year, the institute organized a thirtieth-anniversary reception and Park’s farewell performance at a theater in Manhattan; the event featured other traditional music and dance performers as well. The institute invited my wife, Young Ok, and me to the event. Among the performances, the one by a three-generation f amily—Park, her eldest daughter, and her six-year-old granddaughter, Susan S. Cho—attracted the most attention from the participants.
Sue Yeon Park and Her Group The other key person in the effort to preserve and promote Korean traditional music and dance in the area is Sue Yeon Park (figure 8.2). She happens to share the same last name as Dooyi Yoon Sook Park, since Park is the third most common surname in K orea (following Kim and Lee). However, the two most important Korean traditional performing artists in the area do not have any kin relationship. In fact, they have maintained a very competitive relationship. While Yoon Sook Park has been actively involved in preserving and promoting Korean traditional performing arts in Queens, Sue Yeon Park has taken a leadership role in Manhattan. As w ill be shown, there are some significant differences between the two leaders in their budgets, target populations, and approaches to promoting traditional performing arts. Park received salpuli choom (shaman ritual dance) and seungmoo (Buddhist ritual dance) training u nder Master Lee Mae Bang, one of the Living National Treasures in Korea. As soon as she arrived in New York City in 1982, she started her performing arts activities, participating in the two most important Korean festivals, the first Korean Harvest and Folklore Festival in 1982 and the third Korean Parade in Manhattan in 1983. She met several other Korean immigrants interested in Korean traditional performing arts. Together, they began practicing Korean traditional performing arts under a highway bridge in Flushing using samulnori (percussion) instruments donated by the Kim Deoksoo Samulnori team, arguably the best percussion team in Korea. By virtue of her residence in New Jersey not far from Rutgers University, Park and her group trained a Korean pungmulnoripae (a Korean farmers’ dance group) at the university. They called it the Rutgers Korean Cultural Group (RKCG).1 The group has grown into one of the best Korean pungmulnoripaes in the area. In 1993, Sue Yeon Park changed the name of her organization to the Korean Traditional Performing Arts Association and registered it as a nonprofit organiza
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figure 8.2. Sue Yeon Park performing a Buddhist dance in 1998. (Photo provided by Sue
Yeon Park.)
tion, and in 2010 she changed the name to the Korean Traditional Performing Arts Center (KTPAC). The center has provided four major performances each year and has often organized performances with RKCG. Park has given annual performances each year at the center, located in Manhattan on Thirty-Third Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, only two blocks from K-Town on Thirty-Second Street. Sue Yeon Park established the center in Manhattan mainly because she lived in New Jersey with her husband, Jerry Wartski. At the time of our first interview in 2011, the center had about thirty students (fifteen children from kindergarten through twelfth grade and fifteen adult students). The center, in close coordination with members of RKCG, opened Camp Friendship, a summer camp for
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Korean adoptee c hildren in New Jersey, in 1993, teaching them samulnori and different Korean traditional dances. The unique aspect of the summer camp is that in addition to the adoptee c hildren, their adoptive parents participate in learning Korean traditional music and dance as well as in other camp activities. According to Park, approximately 1,000 students had passed through the center up to 2011. One of the 1.5-generation Korean students, Ji Young Ha, has become a well-known Korean traditional dancer and teaches at the center. In 2008, Park was a recipient of the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States, which validated her artistry and influence outside of the Korean community. The center’s annual revenue (approximately $160,000 at the time of our first interview) comes from board member fees, regular member fees, and parent sponsorships ($2,000–$3,000 per family per year) rather than students’ fees. Since 1998, Park and her group have regularly received grants from the Folk Arts Program of the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for Humanities for the Arts, respectively. When I interviewed Park a second time, in August 2014, the board of directors included three non-Koreans. In terms of the sources of its budget, membership, and performing members, the KTPAC is more strongly connected with younger-generation Koreans and non-Korean people than the Flushing-based Korean Traditional Music and Dance Institute. Her husband has served as a senior advisor for the center and has positively influenced it by bringing non-Korean board members and spectators. Sue Yeon Park established Sounds of K orea, a Korean dance troupe, at the center in 1993. At that time of my second interview with Park, Sounds of Korea included about twenty well-known Korean performing artists (instrumental performers, vocalists, and dancers). Some of these members, like Song Hee Lee, have established their own performing groups. Ji-Young Ha, who served as executive director of the group, completed a doctorate program at the City University of New York Graduate Center in ethnomusicology. She often introduced the origins and contents of particular Korean traditional m usic and dance genres in English before her performances. Although she taught at two universities in K orea, she regularly visited New York City to participate in the group’s performance preparations and a ctual performances. Since 1993, the center has offered an annual performance in Manhattan every year, with the exception of two years. Park said that the audiences at the annual performances w ere roughly half Korean and half non-Korean (predominantly white). Partly by virtue of the center’s location in Manhattan, its annual perfor mances have drawn a much larger proportion of non-Korean spectators than those at Dooyi Yoon Sook Park’s institute in Flushing. Her husband has also helped bring more non-Korean spectators to her center’s performances. I attended the twentieth annual performance of the Korean Traditional Performing Arts Center held at a theater in Manhattan (Symphony Space) on October 25, 2014.
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Park invited pansori master Young-Hee Shin, a Korean Living National Treasure, and samulnori master Kwang-Sook Lee, a Korean legendary percussionist, from Korea to enhance the annual performance. The performance event was well attended, with the approximately 500-seat space nearly filled to capacity. Non-Koreans and younger-generation Koreans not fluent in Korean seem to have made up the majority of spectators. To accommodate English-language spectators, the center provided an English-language program with detailed notes about the performances. Additionally, a professor of traditional m usic from Korea gave English-language introductions prior to the start of the performances, and all performances were given with English subtitles and often with English summaries on a big screen. Thus, non-Korean spectators seemed to have understood the meaning of each program entry. Both Korean and non-Korean spectators seem to have thoroughly enjoyed the performances. More important, Sounds of Korea has performed at various important events about twenty times each year. Events have taken place in New York City at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the annual Israeli Festival, and the annual Korean Parade; at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.; at American folk festivals in Richmond, V irginia, Los Angeles, and Bangor, Maine; and at the annual Independence Day Parade in Wakefield, Massachusetts. White Americans have comprised the majority of the audiences at Park’s own or her group’s invited performances. Her group has often given large- scale performances involving several members for major events organized by external organizations. For example, twelve members of her group gave perfor mances for two days for an event at California Technological Institute in 2009. The institute paid the group $10,000, in addition to covering expenses for their airfare and h otel accommodations. Park said that non–Korean American organ izations and individuals treat her and her team members better and express greater appreciation for their performances than Korean organizations. I asked Park about some of the most memorable performances she or her group made for other organizations and how the audiences responded to the per formances. She made an interesting comment using her group’s 2003 perfor mances at a festival in Maine: We, about twelve, w ere invited for performances to [the] American Folk Festival held in Bangor, Maine, one of the seven largest festivals in the United States, in August 2003. There were approximately 200,000 spectators, almost all white Americans. When we completed performances on the main stage, almost all participants stood up and gave us a thunderous applause. Some of them touched my hands and others gave me big hugs. Th ere w ere around seven Korean women international students in the audience. Some of them hugged me with tears. I cannot accurately describe how deeply moved my heart was at that time. . . . W hen they gave this kind of heart-felt appreciation and enthusiasm to our performances, I felt a g reat
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responsibility on my shoulder b ecause we have to practice harder and harder to upgrade our performances. We are moving diplomats for K orea.
A very important transnational project of Park’s center is the Camp Friendship Program, involving Korean adoptees’ annual summer trip to a remote area of South Korea. In establishing the program, she was greatly influenced by her knowledge (through her husband, Jerry Wartski) of roots educational programs to Israel established for young Jewish Americans, particularly Birthright Israel. She established this program in 2006 after visiting K orea four times to make decisions on places and schedules for the tour. When asked about the main objectives of the program, Park said the following: I decided to create this Korean tour program for Korean adoptees for two main goals. One main goal is to help Korean adoptees hold their Korean ethnic identity. Those adoptees did not come to American families by choice, but were sent by adoption agencies in Korea. When they have grown to be successful professionals, they should be able to visit K orea as 100 percent Koreans. For them to do it, they need roots education in their early years. The same thing can be said of second-and third-generation Korean Americans. The other important goal of the program is to show Korean adoptees and their American adoptive parents what a contemporary advanced and rich country Korea has become to make them feel proud of their own and their children’s m other country.
Although the program was initially created mainly for Korean adoptees, second-generation Koreans have also been allowed to participate in it. For Korean adoptees, at least one of their parents is required to accompany the participant so that their parents can also learn about Korean culture and the modern, technologically and economically advanced Korea. The program started only with twenty participants in 2006, but the number reached forty-three in 2011. About half of the 2011 participants were adoptees, while the other half were younger- generation Korean Americans. The program involves two weeks of training in Korean performing arts at a famous Korean traditional performing arts training center in Jindo (an island in Jeollanam-do, a southwestern province). In the first four years, the participants paid for their own airfare. However, since 2010, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has covered half of the airfare for each participant. The hosting Korean traditional performing arts center (Guglip Namdo Gugagwon) provides both the training and lodging free of charge for the visiting children. The visiting children also learn the Korean language and etiquette. In return, they teach English for f ree to the Korean c hildren and adolescents who live t here. On weekends, they get free tours to historical and cultural sites in local areas and Seoul. Tours to Seoul include visiting the Blue House (the Korean equivalent of the
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White House), the National Museum of Arts, and the KTPAC. On the second Friday of their training, the participants give a formal performance to demonstrate their two weeks of learning about Korean traditional performing arts; after the performance, they receive certificates of completion. Park told me a moving story about reactions of a participating Korean adoptee mother after watching her son’s demonstration performance on the last day of the training program. According to Park, the mother made the following remarks with tears in her eyes: “As my son lived in my f amily as my a dopted child, I always thought he was an American. But, after I watched him eating Korean food and living with Korean friends, after I watched him performing a Korean dance with Korean friends today, I have realized he is a real Korean.” In wrapping up these sections focusing on two key figures who have worked to preserve and promote traditional Korean performing arts in the New York area, I would like to provide some brief concluding remarks. Before my wife and I interviewed these two g iants of Korean traditional performing arts, we did not know how much they had contributed to promoting Korean culture throughout the United States, using their respective centers in the New York area. Like us, most Korean immigrants in the area are also unlikely to know about Dooyi Yoon Sook Park’s and Sue Yeon Park’s prominent roles in promoting Korean culture throughout the United States through their performances. Of course, few people in Korea may know about the central role of Korean immigrants in the United States in publicizing and promoting Korean culture. They seem to believe that the superiority of Korean culture and the emerging global power and influence of South Korea are the only major contributing f actors to the popularity of Korean culture all over the world.
Other Korean Traditional Performing Arts Organizations ere are other Korean traditional performing artists and organizations in the Th New York area who have also contributed immensely to preserving and promoting Korean performing arts. To estimate the number of Korean traditional performing artists and organizations in the area who give performances for events and/or train children, I have consulted the 2019 Korean directories published by the Korea Times and Korea Daily, two major Korean daily newspapers in Greater New York. I also interviewed several organizations that played a very important role in preserving and promoting Korean traditional performing arts in the area, not only to ask them about their own performances but also to locate other Korean performing arts individuals and groups. As shown in t able 8.1, I located thirty-one Korean traditional performing arts organizations in the area that perform at social and cultural events. Each organ ization has several members. Th ose Korean immigrants and Americans in the area who engage in Korean traditional dances and music professionally are likely to be
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table 8.1.
Number of Korean Traditional Performing Arts Organizations in Greater New York, 2014
Genres
Samulnori and poongmulnori (percussion groups) Other instrumental, epic storytelling, and dance groups Total
Performance Alone
Performance and Training
Total
10
4
14
12
5
17
22
9
31
sources: Korean daily business directories by the Korea Times and the Korea Daily in Greater New York (2014), reviews of websites, and telephone contacts with the organizations.
a few or several hundred p eople. As w ill be shown in t able 8.2, they perform for both Korean and non-Korean organizations. Korean community events include cultural festivals, galas, and other ceremonies and visits to senior centers and nursing homes. But I have not included traditional music/dance performances made in galas and other family events. The majority (n = 22) of the thirty-one organ izations solely give performances without training Korean c hildren. The o thers both provide performances and give training for c hildren at their own centers or by tutoring students individually. Samulnori is a form of traditional percussion m usic originating from Korea. It originated from pungmulnori, a Korean folk genre comprising m usic, acrobatics, folk dance, and rituals. It was traditionally performed in rice farming villages in order to ensure and celebrate good harvests. It uses four percussion instruments: ggaenggari (a small gong), jing (a large gong), janggu (an hourglass-shaped drum), and buk (a barrel drum). The Kim Duk Soo samulnori team was the first to bring m usic from a folk genre to the contemporary stage in K orea in 1978. Since the repertoire is very powerful for performances for outside events due to its inherent dynamics and volume, Korean samulnori teams have been invited to many festivals and other outdoor activities. As noted in chapter 7, all annual Korean festivals and the major Korean parade in Manhattan invite one or more samulnori teams. Galas and other indoor events in the Korean community usually invite performers of Korean traditional dance, instrumental/string music, or epic songs (chang). However, they also often use samulnori performances at the beginning of their events to attract participants’ attention quickly. W omen usually perform Korean traditional dances, instrumental/string music, and epic songs. In the rest of this section I introduce three additional Korean immigrants in the area who have also played a significant role in preserving and promoting Korean traditional performing arts with their own performances and training of young Korean Americans. The first person I would like to introduce h ere is Jung
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Bae Park, an eighty-year-old male immigrant in 2020. Like many other Korean traditional performing artists in the area, he came to New York City in 1982 in his late thirties as a temporary visitor. He seems to be one of the dozen Korean traditional artists who came to the New York area in the 1980s. Before he came to the city, he had worked for the national Korean traditional arts center, specializing in playing danso (a Korean short bamboo flute). As soon as he arrived in the city, he found Korean festivals for which he could use his traditional musical talent. While working full-time in a Korean produce store, he participated in pungmulnoris in the Korean Parade and other Korean festivals in the area. Since most other Korean women traditional artists did not have to financially support their family members, they have been able to work on their traditional dance/music performances more or less full-time. In contrast, Park and a few other male traditional artists have had to work full-time to support their families, engaging in their performances part-time. They established Pyonghwa Tongil Nongakdan (Peaceful Unification Pungmulnori Team) around 1995. While making performances for Korean and non-Korean festivals and events, he has also engaged in training samulnori teams at several Korean organizations. In addition, he worked for his shoe repair shop full-time for many years u ntil his retirement. Vong-Gu Park performed samulnori for many events organized both inside and outside of the Korean community. He came to New York City in 1998 on a visitor visa. He started street performances of a play called Seoljanggo, a repertoire from samulnori using a janggu and a sangmo (a hat with a long, broad ribbon attached to the top of it) in the Times Square subway station to make a living. He said that he was the first Korean street performer to obtain a M usic U nder New York permit from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Public Arts Department. He performed for four to ten hours per day and made $6.50 per hour, minimum wage at that time. While giving performances in Times Square, he became friends with a few Black street performers, which led him to connect samulnori with a jazz band. He commented on how New Yorkers’ positive reactions to his street performances have helped develop his sense of mission to popularize Korean traditional arts to New Yorkers: “I initially performed Korean traditional performing arts genres for economic survival. When giving me one or two dollars, New Yorkers expressed appreciation to me and showed a lot of interest in my per formances of traditional Korean arts. Their positive responses to my performances have led me to develop a sense of my mission to popularize Korean traditional arts. One day in the late 1990s, a member of a well-known 1.5-generation Korean samulnori team (Woomuncha) encountered Vong-Gu Park while he was performing in Times Square. He brought Park to the Korean community, connecting him with some well-known Korean traditional arts organizations in New York City. He established a very popular samulnori team at that time. He and his team were invited to perform at many community events. Our Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College invited his group to perform at the installment ceremony for Korean totem poles (jangseung) on the Queens College
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c ampus in 2010.2 He also performed in many movie theaters, high schools, and universities in New York City. Additionally, he performed in twenty-seven differ ent countries, including Mexico, other Latin American countries, Eastern and Western European countries, and various African nations. Upon completion of his BA in theater at Brooklyn College in 2005, Vong-Gu Park took a two-month-long busking (backpacking and street performing) tour to seventeen European countries by himself. Without taking much money, he supported himself mainly through his solo street performances of the Seoljanggo play in different European cities. He said that he was very much encouraged and impressed by the positive responses of Europeans to his performances of a traditional Korean music repertoire. I asked him to talk about the most memorable performance he had been involved with at a non-Korean event or festival. He mentioned his participation at a folk festival held in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 2010. He and his samulnori team participated in a festival as a part of Sounds of Korea, the well-known ensemble established by Sue Yeon Park. In addition to the samulnori performance, he was responsible for the stage management of the performance. Due to his difficulties communicating with the Mexican stagehands and assistants and the absence of adequate tools, it took as long as eight hours to complete technical and dress rehearsals. He said that he was almost completely physically exhausted before the performance even started. However, the rousing cheers and applause of the large audience after the performance rejuvenated him: “Sick, I don’t remember how I completed the performance. But after the performance, almost all in attendance, about 1,600 people, stood up and gave us a huge applause. Their enthusiastic reactions gave me a new life. I realized that I had an obligation to continue my perfor mance of samulnori to promote it to p eople all over the world. . . . I tried to figure out why Korean traditional performing arts were playing a minor role in performing arts in Korea when they were accepted enthusiastically in other countries.” After I interviewed him in 2014, he said he would move to G reat Britain to get further education. Another person who deserves an introduction h ere is Chunseung Lee. He was a senior percussionist for the Ansan City Traditional Orchestra in K orea before he came to New York City in 2006. He auditioned at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and was accepted there, specializing in conducting orchestral concerts as well as studying Western classical m usic. In 2008 he established Chwitadae, a New York Korean traditional marching band, in Flushing. Chwitadae was the traditional royal band that performed Daechwita, Korean court or military m usic, to announce the arrival of the king. Daechwita is played with percussion and wind instruments. Samulnori, the contemporary version of traditional farmers’ folk songs, is widely known not only in Korea but also in almost all overseas Korean diasporic communities. In contrast, according to Lee, Daechwita is not known even to most p eople in K orea, and even fewer Koreans in overseas Korean commu
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nities are familiar with it. In fact, Lee said that his center in New York City is the only place outside of Korea where one can see Daechwita. He wanted to introduce a new, unknown genre of Korean traditional performing arts here. Lee and his group have largely taught and performed samulnori and other genres of Korean traditional performing arts, which are far more popular to both Korean and non-Korean people. His ensemble consists of about ten members, including a few Korean women and non-Koreans members living in Washington, D.C., and other areas. He has his own center in Flushing, where he and his group can perform and teach samulnori, but it does not have enough space for large- scale performances. By virtue of having his own center, he has advantages in performing and giving lessons over other Korean traditional performing artists. At the time of our interview in August 2014, he was giving lessons to two teams once a week, one an adolescent samulnori team (high school students) and the other a children’s samulnori team (elementary and junior high school students), with each class having about ten students. More importantly, Lee was teaching a samulnori class involving about thirty students as a regular class for the Asian Music Department at Wesleyan University. His team also performed samulnori at the June 2014 commencement and the fall semester orientation ceremony for new students at Wesleyan University. I also invited his team to the 2016 fall semester orientation ceremony at Queens College as a part of the Year of Korea program. Lee said that members of his samulnori class, predominantly non-Korean students, planned to participate in the New York City Korean Day Parade in October 2014. He also planned to hold a summer samulnori camp at Wesleyan University in summer 2015 by inviting all college samulnori teams throughout the United States. There are Korean samulnori clubs at several U.S. universities, including New York University, Rutgers University, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, Wesleyan University and the University of Maryland are the only two U.S. higher educational institutions where samulnori is taught as a regular course. At the time of our interview, it had been only six years since Lee established Chwitadae, but he had been active in giving performances for both Korean and non-Korean organizations. Lee and his team have gained popularity, especially after they won the grand prize in the World Korean Traditional Music and Dance Competition organized by the Korean Traditional Performing Arts Association in 2011. According to Lee, he gives about thirty performances a year, eighteen in the local area and twelve in other cities or countries. Local performances include those given at major Korean cultural festivals, at public schools around the Lunar New Year, at a few American theaters in Manhattan, at the KCC and other Korean organizations, and at Lincoln Center (twice). His team also participated in the annual Korean Heritage Day at Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, in 2012. He and his team have performed at a few universities, for the FBI in Washington, D.C., and in the Dominican Republic.
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Korean Traditional Music AND Dance Perform ances in 2019 In the previous three sections we examined how Korean immigrants in Greater New York preserve and promote Korean traditional performing arts by looking at well- known artists and groups. Another way to examine Korean immigrants’ performing arts is to measure the prevalence of these performances through a content analysis of performances reported in Korean dailies. Table 8.2 shows the total number of traditional Korean music/dance perfor mances that took place in the New York area in 2019, as well as the organizations that initiated those performances, which included local Korean arts organizations and sponsoring organizations from K orea. There w ere fifty-four local traditional music/dance performance events in the area in 2019, which indicates about one event each week. As previously noted, t here are not many Korean w omen immigrants in the area who are active in traditional arts performances. Also, there is g reat demand for traditional music and dance performances by the local Korean community and American organizations. Since Korean traditional music and dance symbolize Korean culture and history, both Korean and non-Korean organizations have often created events involving traditional arts performances on Lunar New Year, in multicultural festivals, and in other cultural venues. Given these, it is not surprising to find that Korean immigrants provide traditional music/dance per formances at the rate of once e very week. The upper half of table 8.2 indicates places where local Korean traditional performing arts events occurred. About one-third of the local performances (19) w ere provided in public schools, public libraries, and other public places, such as the United Nations. For example, many high schools and elementary schools with significant numbers of Korean students in the area organized events involving traditional Korean m usic and dance performances to celebrate Korean cultural or national holidays. A Korean traditional performing dance team (Chumnuri Muyoungdan) gave a performance with the name “Arirang Fantasy” for approximately 500 spectators in the Teaneck High School auditorium in New Jersey on April 13, 2019, marking the centennial of the establishment of the provisional Korean government in Shanghai during the Japanese colonization period (Korea Times 2019c). The KCC also provides financial support to a few Korean traditional performing arts teams in selected American schools and organizations u nder the Spotlight Korean program. For example, on April 5, 2019, the Korean Traditional M usic and Dance School of New York gave a performance at Robbins Lane Elementary School in Syosset, Long Island, helped by the Spotlight Korean program (Korea Times 2019b). Two Korean traditional dance teams w ere invited to three different UN forums to give performances in 2019 (Korea Times 2019e, 2019g, 2019l). For example, Chumnuri Muyoungdan, a Korean traditional dance troupe, was invited to the UN Annual Celebration for International Day of Education for Global Citizenship on
table 8.2.
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Local and Transnational Traditional Korean Performing Arts Events in Greater New York, 2019
Local Traditional Performing Arts Events by Venue
54 (100%)
1. Public schools, public libraries, and other public organizations 2. Korean cultural festivals and ethnic organizations 3. Places of multicultural festivals 4. Nursing homes and senior centers 5. American performing centers like theaters
19 (35%) 18 (33%) 6 (11%) 8 (15%) 3 (6%)
Transnational Traditional Performing Arts Events by the Organizations That Initiated Them
29 (100%)
1. Local Korean arts organizations initiated the event 2. One or more sponsoring organizations in Korea and/or in the local area initiated the event 3. The performing arts organization(s) in Korea themselves initiated the event as part of a tour of the U.S. East Coast
13 (44%) 8 (28%) 8 (28%)
sources: Articles published in the Korea Times and the Korea Daily in 2019.
July 22, 2019, for Korean traditional dance performances (Korea Times 2019e). A traditional Korean performing arts group and a Korean Christian service organ ization for Korean disabled children were also invited to the UN General Assembly and gave Korean traditional music and dance performances for celebration of the Day of the Disabled (Korea Times 2019l). The Korean Channel, a Flushing-based Korean television station, and Arirang TV presented the Fifteenth Korean Night at Citi Field. The approximately 500 Korean and American fans wearing shirts with a sign, “Commemorating the Strong and Steadfast U.S.-Korean Alliance,” gave a “Warning-Track-Salute” before the game with a powerful Korean samulnori per formance (Keum 2019b). Table 8.2 shows that Korean ethnic organizations organized eighteen local traditional performing arts events. Korean umbrella organizations in Greater New York organized events marking the centennial of the March First Independence Movement, the founding of the Korean Provisional Government, and the seventy- fourth anniversary of Korean Independence Day, with each event involving Korean traditional m usic and dance performances (Korea Times 2019a, 2019c, 2019j; Korean Cultural Center 2019a; New York Ilbo 2019). Also, many of these traditional arts performances w ere given in public places in areas with large Korean populations to celebrate Lunar New Year. For example, public schools and libraries in several municipalities in Bergen County, where Korean Americans comprise large proportions of the population, had offered traditional music and dance performances by Korean performing organizations (Seo 2019). Korean parents and local Korean community leaders organized these events to celebrate Lunar New Year with local American residents.
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Korean community leaders arranged events to be held at New York City Hall and public schools to publicize K orea’s history of suffering u nder Japan’s colonization. For example, Korean immigrants in Palisades Park, a city with a second- generation Korean American mayor, organized a large ceremony for the centennial of the March First Independence Movement, with 400 Korean Americans and many other non-Korean residents participating in the ceremony at Palisades Park High School (Korea Times 2019a). The Korean American Association of Greater New York (KAAGNY) convinced Corey Johnson, the chair of the New York City Council, and other members of KAAGNY to organize the reception for the seventy-fourth anniversary celebration of Korean Independence Day at City Hall (New York Ilbo 2019). After the ceremony, 400 Korean and non-Korean participants enjoyed Korean foods and Korean American children’s traditional music and dance performances. As noted in chapter 7, each of the three major Korean cultural festivals includes participation of several Korean traditional cultural performance organizations. There are five other local festivals, all of which include a traditional cultural per formance. For example, the Korean Association of Nassau County organized a Korean-U.S. cultural festival at Chapin Lakeside Theater in Eisenhower Park on August 27, 2019 (Korean Cultural Center 2019b). A traditional music and dance team, a taekwondo team, and a church youth orchestra in Nassau County performed for approximately 1,300 local residents. In addition, several weekend Korean schools and Korean-language classes in public schools provide traditional cultural performances regularly or at the end of the academic year. There are many multicultural events and festivals in the area organized by government and community organizations or schools. For Asian cultural traditions, Chinese and Korean traditional dance and music performance organizations are usually invited to these multicultural events. Urigarak Hangukmunwha Yesulwon, a Korean traditional m usic and dance troupe, was invited to the Global Multicultural Expo organized by Rockland County in Upstate New York in November 2019 (Korea Times 2019f). The team presented Korean traditional music and dance per formances, including fan dances and nanta (a Korean nonverbal comedy show that incorporates traditional samulnori rhythms). Flushing Town Hall in Queens provides many multicultural performances for local residents all year round. Music and dance troupes and celebrity arts performers from Korea usually pre sent five or six events each year. A review of Korean dailies shows that Korean organizations presented five performances in 2019. Going back to table 8.2, twenty-nine Korean transnational traditional performing arts events were given in Greater New York in 2019. As explained in chapter 3, transnational performing arts events feature celebrity performers from Korea. Given that Korean transnational performing arts events involve much greater expenses and more time for international travel, the total number seems to be fairly high. Most of the Korean traditional arts organizations or
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a rtists who performed in the New York area w ere world renowned. As such, they gave performances at Lincoln Center or other popular venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I classified the twenty-nine events into three categories in terms of which organization initiated the transnational performance: (1) Korean traditional arts or ethnic organizations, including the Korea Times, invited the artists or the arts organization from K orea; (2) the KCC, the K orea Society, or the K orea Foundation organized transnational performances; and (3) visiting artists or artist organ izations in K orea arranged the performing events with the hosting theaters or organizations in New York. As shown in t able 8.2, thirteen, or 44 percent, of the transnational events w ere made possible when Korean ethnic organizations in New York invited the traditional artist groups from K orea. The Korea Times organized three Korean traditional arts performances in 2019, all held at the Queens College Colden Center. The first performance organized by the Korea Times was held on April 27 in commemoration of the first anniversary of the normalization talk between South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean prime minister, Kim Jong-un ( J. H. Kim 2020). If a Korean newspaper invites Korean performing artists for a transnational performance in New York, they use the money from ticket sales (usually from $50 to $200) to cover the performers’ travel expenses and honorariums. But when a Korean ethnic organization invites performing artists from Korea for performances, the hosting organization covers the travel expenses. Another eight, or 28 percent, of events held in 2019 w ere made possible by the invitations of individual artists or an artist group in K orea by the KCC (n = 5), the Korean Foundation in K orea (n = 2), or the Korean Society (n = 1). The KCC invited a Korean traditional performing arts group or organized performances for four events in 2019. For example, in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the KCC’s founding in 1979, the KCC’s director invited Guklip Namdo Gukakwon, a Korean national traditional arts center in a southern island ( Jindo) in Korea, and the KTPAC, directed by Sue Yeon Park, to co-organize a f ree performing arts event, “Memories of Jindo: Korean Folk Songs from the Hometown of Gugak,” at Symphony Space in Manhattan on November 2, 2019 (Korea Times 2019m). The article said that the 770 audience members included many second- generation Koreans and Korean adoptees. Table 8.2 shows that another eight Korean transnational traditional arts performance events were arranged directly between performing arts groups in Korea and venues in New York City. These events w ere made possible without the role of the Korean ethnic intermediary because t here are many traditional performing arts groups in Korea, as well as contemporary K-pop groups, which are globally known. T hese events w ere held at Lincoln Center and other major theaters in New York City. The majority of participants in transnational Korean music and dance performances as spectators in the New
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York area are Korean immigrants and their c hildren, with non-Korean New Yorkers comprising a significant proportion.
Summary and Concluding Remarks Two Korean immigrant women who w ere well trained in Korean traditional m usic and dance performance came to New York City to explore career opportunities. Only a small number of Koreans, who have been specially trained as traditional music and dance performers in two or more particular genres, can make professional performances and teach Korean American c hildren. As the New York Korean community expanded its cultural festivals and other performing-arts events, it needed their traditional Korean m usic and dance skills. Thus, the two Parks have played a significant role in making traditional m usic and dance performances for Korean and non-Korean events regularly and educating young Koreans. I took in-depth looks at the performing and educational activities of these two women in the first two sections and provided overviews of the performing activities of three additional Korean immigrant male performers in the third section. My interviews with them show the following major findings. First, their performing activities are very transnational, connecting New York City with Seoul and other cities in K orea. Dooyi Yoon-Sook Park sent her eldest daughter and even her granddaughter to Korea several times during summer vacations to receive additional training from masters of traditional m usic and dance. Her d aughter even won an award in the national traditional dance contest in Korea. Also, the Traditional Arts Society of Korea, which Park helped establish, has annually invited two Korean traditional music and dance specialists from Korea to serve as judges for the annual competition. They arranged the judges from Korea to make their own performances after the end of the competition. Sue Yeon Park’s performing and teaching activities also have maintained transnational connections with performing arts organizations in Seoul. Moreover, Park established the Camp Friendship program with a Korean traditional m usic and dance training performance center for Korean adoptees and second-generation Koreans in the New York area. It is a truly transnational heritage education program linking the New York area with a provincial city in Korea. The second major finding from my interviews is the fact that these Korean performing artists, mostly women, have worked extremely hard, providing many per formances for Korean and non-Korean events each year and teaching small groups of Korean children traditional m usic and dance, which is not popular in the Korean community. The third related major finding is that their Korean traditional music and dance performances have been accepted more enthusiastically by non- Korean audiences than by Korean audiences in the United States. All of them also agreed that non-Korean individuals and organizations appreciate their perfor mances and are usually willing to pay for their services, whereas their Korean counterparts are less appreciative and are unwilling to pay them.
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In the final section, I analyzed the number of traditional Korean m usic and dance performance events made in Greater New York in 2019, with local events separated from transnational events. Local Korean performing arts organizations made fifty- four Korean traditional cultural performances for social and cultural events in Greater New York in 2019. Most of these performances w ere made in public places such as elementary or high schools with large numbers of Korean students, public libraries in Korean enclaves, local government agencies, or UN organizations. Th ese findings based on Korean daily newspaper articles support the finding from our personal interviews with Korean performers that a small number of Korean traditional performing artists in the area have played a central role in promoting Korean traditional m usic and dance to New Yorkers. The KCC has provided moderate financial support for four or five traditional performing organizations. It should consider expanding its financial support to more organizations. The data set based on Korean newspaper articles shows that twenty-nine Korean traditional music and dance performances made in 2019 w ere transnational performances, meaning that they were made by performing artists from Korea. Korean ethnic or cultural organizations arranged thirteen of the twenty-nine transnational cultural events, covering the expenses for the international travel of visiting artists. In eight cases, either world-renowned visiting Korean performing organizations or individuals initiated transnational performances or local cultural organizations invited Korean individual performing artists or a performing organization. This indicates the global popularity of not only K-pop groups but also Korean traditional music and dance groups. Finally, the KCC, the K orea Foundation, and the K orea Society organized eight of the transnational performing events with financial support.
9 • KORE AN CONT EMPOR ARY USIC AND DANCE M PERF ORM ANCES
In the previous chapter we examined several Korean traditional artists’ performing and training activities and their contributions to promoting traditional performing arts in the New York area. In contrast, immigrants, their children, and other New Yorkers have consumed Korean contemporary m usic and dance performances mainly through local Korean transnational radio and TV programs, social media, and digital streaming services. They have also enjoyed watching transnational contemporary m usic and dance performances made by celebrity K-pop stars and other performers from Korea. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section examines transnational Korean TV and radio stations in Greater New York and their rebroadcasting of popular music and dance programs made by Korean media. It also provides survey data on Korean immigrants’ viewing of Korean TV programs. The second section examines Korean Americans’ consumption of contemporary Korean m usic and dance performances using social media and digital technologies. The third section examines contemporary Korean performing arts organizations and training centers in Greater New York. It also examines Korean contemporary music and dance performances made in the area in 2019.
Watching Korean Contemporary Music and Dance Perform ances through Korean Transnational Media Con temporary immigrant communities have developed active transnational media that enable immigrants to get access to media programs made in their home country. Transnational media enable immigrants to listen to news from their home country on a daily or even hourly basis. They also help immigrants watch entertainment programs from their home countries, including music and dance programs, as well as TV dramas. 154
table 9.1.
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Korean Ethnic Radio and TV Stations Broadcast in Greater New York, 2019
Name
Location
Korean TV/Radio Stations Where Programming Originates
Radio Stations
AM 1660 K Radio KRB (Korean Radio Broadcasting) (dependent upon KBS for news, but independent for other programs) KCBN (Korean Christian Broadcasting Network)
Bayside, NY Flushing, NY
Independent KBS (Korean Broadcasting System)
Flushing, NY
Independent
Palisades Park, NJ
MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation in Korea) Korean Broadcasting System in Korea None
TV Stations
KBN (Korean Broadcasting Network) KBTV (KBS America)
Bergen County, New Jersey Little Neck, NY
KCTS (Korean Christian TV System of New York) MBCD TKC (The Korean Channel)
Los Angeles Flushing, NY
TVK TVK2
Los Angeles Los Angeles
MBC SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) Arirang World; YTN Arirang World (English- language Korean TV in foreign countries)
sources: Korea Daily Business Directory, 2019 (Korea Daily, 2019). “Korean Broadcasting System,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Broadcasting_System.
The Korean community in Greater New York has well-developed ethnic media, most of which are transnational media. By virtue of their monolingual background, they have advantages over other multilingual Asian groups in developing ethnic TV and radio networks. As shown in t able 9.1, as of October 2019, t here are three Korean-language radio stations and seven Korean-language TV stations in the New York area. For this section, I collected data between 2010 and 2015 and wrote the contents of this section in 2015 and 2016. One of the three Korean radio stations, the Korean Christian Broadcasting Network (KCBN), serves Korean Christian families in the area. Since approximately 60 percent of Korean immigrant families in the New York area are Protestants (Min 2010: 52), there is a significant radio audience for this type of programming. KCBN features guest speakers and regular broadcast programs intended for Korean Christian families. The other two Korean-language radio stations as of 2020 are Korean Radio Broadcasting (KRB) and AM 1660 K Radio, which provide cultural and other
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programming to Korean immigrant listeners. When I started this book project in the early 2010s, KRB was the only non-Christian Korean radio station in Greater New York. Korean TV and radio stations offer Korean cultural programs, music and dance programs and performances, and dramas to Korean immigrants, their children, and non-Korean listeners. I begin by discussing KRB’s contemporary Korean m usic programs. In the early 2010s, several of KRB’s programs broadcast K-pop songs, but unlike Korean TV stations, KRB could not show m usic and dance performances visually. However, unlike Korean TV stations recycling m usic and dance programs originally created and broadcast by TV stations based in K orea, KRB produced its own original programs, which mostly consisted of music but also included other types of programming. The medium of radio was also more powerful in reaching a large audience at different times of day than television b ecause p eople could listen virtually anywhere, while working or driving, as well as at home. Finally, u ntil very recently, radio stations had an advantage over TV stations in introducing very popular K-pop songs to young Korean Americans in the area at almost the same time those songs were released in Korea. In October 2014, KRB broadcast programs for seventeen hours, from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., and repeated half of the programs between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. I found that it devoted five programs, which accounted for four hours and forty minutes (29 percent) of the sixteen broadcasting hours, to playing modern K-pop songs, combined with American pop songs. Most radio stations devoted a good portion of their broadcast time to music programs because they could communicate with listeners effectively through m usic, playing songs requested by listeners and letting them share stories. Mi Sun Chang was an announcer who had worked for KRB since the station started in 1994. Her two-hour-long yeoseong ssalong (women’s salon) program between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. devoted forty minutes to playing popular songs requested by listeners and having on-air conversations with them. Since the listeners of her program included all age groups, she played a mix of American pop songs, K-pop, and other genres of Korean gayo (popular songs), including trot—a genre of popular m usic in Korea influenced by foxtrot ballroom dance. She informed me that many Korean middle-aged and elderly people who grew up in the 1960s through the early 1980s in K orea enjoyed American pop songs that w ere popular in those decades when they were younger. However, she said that since Korean immigrants who grew up in the late 1980s and after w ere greatly influenced by emerging Korean popular songs, they prefer Korean gayo to American pop songs. KRB had a major music program called “Music A lbum,” hosted by DJ Jae Kyung Kim between 7:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Since the target audiences for her music program were middle-aged and elderly Korean immigrants, she also played a combination of Korean and American popular songs that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s, roughly half and half.
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I asked Mi Sun Chang if KRB had helped promote Korean popular songs to Korean immigrants and even to other New Yorkers. She responded, “In the late 1990s through the 2000s, when internet social media platforms w ere not powerful, our music programs met the demand of Korean immigrants for Korean gayo through a Korean-language medium. They listened to our gayo programs at home while driving their cars, and at their workplaces. Korean supermarkets, nail salons, and dry-cleaning shops turned on our radio programs, listening to Korean and American popular songs we played. A fter school and on Saturdays, many young Korean mothers listened to our music programs, along with their children.” The seven Korean-language TV stations available to Korean immigrants in the New York area include KCTS (Korean Christian Television System of New York), located in L ittle Neck, Queens, which specializes in Christian programs. The other six stations rebroadcast many programs that are produced by major national TV stations in Korea. These major TV stations include KBS (Korean Broadcasting System 1 and 2), MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation), SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System), and Arirang TV (an English-language cable TV station). Of the local stations, KBTV is the most popular Korean TV station in Greater New York. Located in Palisades Park in Bergen County, it rebroadcasts KBS America, which was established as a subsidiary of KBS in 2003. KBS is the oldest and the largest Korean TV and radio station that has been supported by the South Korean government. In 2007, KBS World was available in thirty-two countries. As of 2020, it is available in even more countries. TKC (the Korean Channel), established in Flushing in 1984, rebroadcasts programs produced by SBS, while KBN (Korean Broadcasting Network) and MBCD rebroadcast programs produced by MBC. The two other channels, TVK and TVK2, air programs produced mostly by Arirang TV in South Korea. Arirang TV is an international English-language network based in Seoul and operated by the Korean International Broadcasting Foundation, a government agency. This network was established in 1996 to share a positive image of Korea with the rest of the world. It airs many K-pop songs with traditional Korean m usic and dance programs. Arirang TV broadcasts three channels: Arirang Korea, Arirang World, and Arirang Arab. Arirang World, which began to offer subtitles in several different languages in addition to English in 2000, is available for free in most countries in Asia, Oceania, Europe, and North Americ a. KBS World and Arirang World reflect the Korean government’s extraordinary effort to promote an advanced and con temporary Korea and Korean culture to the world. All of these Korean national or commercial TV stations in the United States relay news stories produced by TV stations in Korea several times a day, only one or two hours after they were initially broadcast by major TV stations in Korea. As of 2020, these TV stations broadcast regular news programs by KBS, MBC, and SBS in real time. The first two national Korean TV stations also provide news stories related to the Korean community in Los Angeles and other major Korean
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communities, while the other two local (New York) non-Christian Korean TV stations offer news mainly pertaining to the Korean community in Greater New York. All of them also rebroadcast music, dance, drama, and other entertainment programs produced by TV stations in K orea a few days after they are originally broadcast in Korea. Until around 2015, they had rebroadcast these cultural and entertainment programs about two months after they originally aired in TV stations in Korea. However, greater technological advances have shortened the time lag between Seoul and New York. Due to space limitations, I cannot summarize all Korean local and national TV stations’ coverage of contemporary music and dance programs and their effect on Korean immigrants, younger-generation Koreans, and non-Korean viewers here. Instead, I focus on three TV stations: TKC, KBTV, and TVK2. As mentioned earlier, TKC is a Flushing-based Korean-language channel that rebroadcasts programs produced by SBS. TKC has aired two SBS programs. One is a K-pop star audition program in which many young Koreans, Korean Americans, and foreigners compete by performing K-pop songs combined with dancing, with the hope of being picked by talent agencies to be trained as stars. Those who are picked by one of the three major agencies participate in the final competition. The winner in the final contest received a $100,000 prize plus an additional $200,000 for production of an a lbum to debut as a K-pop star. But the K-pop star audition program came to an end. KBS 1 and 2, two of the four major TV stations in Korea and the only government-run TV stations, have four major weekly m usic programs: (1) Jeonguk Noraejarang (National singing contest), (2) Yeollin Eumakhe (KBS open concert), (3) Bulhu-ui Myonggok (Immortal songs 2: Singing the legend), and (4) Gayomudae (Gayo stage). These four music programs are very popular in Korea, and KBS Americ a airs them every week to a global audience. Jeonguk Noraejarang and Yeollin Eumakhe are popular in Korea among all age groups. Jeonguk Noraejarang features an outdoor music contest in a different county each week. The director of the program, who is now over ninety years old, visits the selected county with his staff and selects qualifiers to participate in the main contest. About two dozen participants compete in the main contest by singing and dancing on an outdoor stage in front of local county residents. The first-and second-place winners are then qualified to participate in several rounds of national singing contests held at the end of the year. In addition to receiving cash prizes, a few winners in the national contests get the opportunity to debut as professional singers. Yeollin Eumakhe takes place each week at selected locations, such as universities, businesses, beaches, and plazas, by inviting top popular singers. Tens of thousands of p eople usually attend the concerts to watch several celebrity singers and dancers perform. Ten years ago, most of the invited singers and dancers at the concerts were regular people who did not have record deals or contracts with entertainment agencies. However, with the global popularity of K-pop during
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recent years, well-known K-pop idol groups have usually been included in the concerts during recent years. In Bulhu-ui Myonggok, current popular young singers perform legendary pop songs by famous singers from the past, putting a new spin on the original melody and style. Since the contestants sing Korean popular songs from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the program appeals to middle-aged and elderly p eople, in addition to the young people who are the main audience for K-pop and other K-pop- related shows. This program has become international, not only in terms of the popular songs from the past that are featured but also in terms of the nationalities of the participants, as many non-Korean singers have performed on the show in recent years. On October 18, 2014, Michael Bolton, an American popular singer, was selected as the first foreign legendary singer ( J. H. Lee 2014). One week later, on October 25, 2014, Paul Potts, a famous British opera singer, participated in the contest, singing a Korean trot singer’s song in duet with another young Korean singer (Younji Kim 2014). Gayomudae is an indoor program shown at the KBS building, focusing on Korean popular songs from the past. Producers invite current well-known Korean singers to perform popular songs from past eras, such as the pre-1945 period and the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, middle-aged and elderly people in Korea who grew up during those periods enjoy these two programs. Korean immigrants in New York, especially the middle-aged and the elderly, also seem to be the main audience for these programs. TVK and TVK2 show the same or similar programs from the English-language channel Arirang World. As already noted above, the Korean International Broadcasting Foundation, a Korean government agency, has made Arirang World available free of charge to most foreign countries to promote K orea and Korean culture to the world. Since Hallyu is sweeping many Asian, Latin American, and Western countries, Arirang World includes many cultural programs related to K-pop, Korean dramas, taekwondo, and other content to show a positive image of K orea. Arirang World TV airs programs related to K-pop six to eight times each day. Both TVK and TVK2 cover the same Arirang TV programs and show K-pop perfor mances several times each day. I focus on TVK2 in this section. My observations of TVK2 almost e very night over a two-week period supported my expectation that the channel would air K-pop- related programs with g reat frequency. In the past, I did not like K-pop because I thought it was too noisy and wild. However, a fter watching K-pop programming for two weeks, I found myself enjoying it. Without a doubt, many Korean American high school students and young adults are often likely to watch K-pop and other cultural programs through Arirang World. Also, many young non-Koreans in the United States who are impacted by Hallyu seem to regularly watch Arirang World. The following paragraphs provide survey results of Korean immigrants’ frequency of watching Korean TV programs and Korean traditional and contemporary
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usic and dance performances in the New York area between 2013 and 2015. When m asked w hether they watch Korean TV programs more often than American TV programs, 283 of 290 respondents answered the question. Only 19 percent reported that they watch American TV programs most of the time or more often. Of the respondents, 63 percent reported that they watch Korean TV program most of the time or more often, with 18 percent reporting that they watch both types of programs equally. The results indicate that Korean immigrants heavily depend upon Korean TV programs. When asked what kinds of mechanisms they use to watch Korean TV programs, only 23 percent of Korean immigrant respondents reported that they used local transnational Korean TV channels (KBS, MBC, SBS and Arirang), compared to 63 percent using online downloads or internet streaming. Three respondents reported using the TVpad streaming box (similar to Apple TV or Roku). Only 8 percent said that they did not watch Korean TV programs at all. As of 2020, an even smaller proportion than 23 percent seem to use local transnational TV channels, as more and more people have depended upon internet streaming ser vices such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, smart TVs, or streaming boxes such as TVpad, Apple TV, and Roku. I asked the respondents if they watch Korean or American TV programs more often in the given items using five categories of answers: (1) far more often Korean, (2) more often Korean, (3) Korean and American equally, (4) more often American, and (5) far more often American TV programs. Out of the original sample of 290, nine respondents did not respond to this question. Since many more people reported that they did not watch either type of TV program (Korean or American) for each item, the sample size was further reduced. I collapsed their responses into the following three categories for the convenience of understanding: (1) far more often or more often Korean programs, (2) both programs about equally, and (3) far more or more often American programs. I present the findings in t able 9.2. For news, it is not surprising to find that they depend upon American TV programs slightly more than Korean TV programs. But even more than one-third (36 percent) of Korean immigrants in the area use Korean TV programs far more often or more often even for news. I belong to this group. It has been possible for Korean immigrants in Greater New York to get news from Korean TV programs in real time. Since the late 2010s, I have usually watched KBS news at 8:00 a.m. (9:00 p.m. news in Korea, which is thirteen hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time) while eating breakfast. In watching m usic and dance TV programs, 38 percent of the respondents reported that they depend upon Korean TV programs far more often than American TV programs, while another 29 percent report watching Korean TV for m usic and dance performances more often. Thus, about two-thirds of the respondents watch Korean music and dance performances more often or far more often. Another 15 percent reported that they depend equally upon Korean and American TV programs for
table 9.2.
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Frequency of Respondents Watching Korean vs. American TV Programs for Five Categories
Category
News Sports Music and dance TV dramas Health information
Sample
Korean Programs More Often or Far More Often
Korean and American Programs Equally
American Programs More Often or Far More Often
255 192 202 237 195
36% 27% 67% 75% 70%
18% 25% 15% 11% 18%
46% 49% 18% 14% 12%
source: Author’s 2013–2015 survey of Korean immigrants in the New York–New Jersey area on their transnational practices.
usic and dance performances. Only 18 percent responded that they watch Amerim can TV programs for music and dance more often or far more often than Korean TV programs. They are likely to be Korean immigrants who came to the United States at early ages and who lived h ere for a substantially longer period of time than other Korean immigrants. Since there are so many and such a variety of exciting Korean TV music and dance programs available to Korean immigrants in New York, and since they are able to watch them at the same time or only one or two weeks after they air in South Korea, it is not surprising that the majority of them consume these transnational cultural products from K orea to relax at home. Table 9.2 also indicates that an even higher proportion (75 percent) of the respondents depend upon Korean TV programs for watching dramas most of the time or more often, compared to only 14 percent using American TV programs. In particular, elderly Korean w omen spend many hours every day watching Korean dramas produced by three Korean TV stations. Moreover, Korean immigrants can regularly watch Korean movies in local American theaters in three or four Korean enclaves in the metropolitan New York City area (Flushing, Bayside, and Palisades Park, New Jersey). I also asked the respondents if they depend upon Korean or American TV programs more often for health information. As expected, 70 percent of the respondents reported that they depend upon Korean TV far more often or more often than American TV programs. Another 18 percent said that they watched an equal amount of Korean and American TV for health information. Thus, only 12 percent reported that they depended more often or far more often on American TV programs for heath information. Korean immigrants are well aware that Korean TV stations provide many programs focusing on enhancing their bodies, using dietary rules and physical exercises. Th ere are cultural differences between the United States and Asian countries in their approach to health issues. Korean, Chinese, and other Asian immigrants benefit from their ethnic media in getting access to Asian medical techniques and information.
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table 9.3.
Korean Popular TV Music and Dance Programs Ranked by New York Korean Immigrants
Music and Dance Programs
Bulhu-ui Myonggok (Immortal songs 2: Singing the legend) Bokmyon Gawang (King of the masked singer) K-pop Audition Yeollin Eumakhe (KBS open concert) Gayomudae (Music stage) Jeonguk Noraejarang (National singing contest) Ingi Gayo (Music trend) Total Do not watch any of these programs Did not respond Sample
Number of Respondents
Percentage
58
33%
51 32 17 9 7 3 177 102 11 290
29% 18% 10% 5% 4% 2% 100% — — —
source: Author’s 2013–2015 survey of Korean immigrants in the New York–New Jersey area on their transnational practices.
I also asked the respondents how often they watch Korean TV music and dance programs. The majority (52 percent) reported that they watched a few times a month or less often. Another 31 percent responded that they watched approximately once a week, while the other 17 percent reported that they watched anywhere from twice a week to every day. The findings indicate that they watch Korean m usic and dance programs less often than I expected. As w ill be shown later, since most Korean immigrants use social media, YouTube, and other digital technologies to watch Korean m usic and dance programs made in Korea, their dependency upon Korean TV programs is lower than I expected. Finally, I present findings on the most popular Korean TV m usic and dance programs as determined by Korean immigrant respondents from seven major music and dance weekly programs. I asked respondents to rank the programs in order. In table 9.3 I present the order of the programs by counting only the program respondents judged as the best. Out of 290 respondents, 11 people did not respond to the question, while 102 respondents (37 percent) said they could not answer because they did not watch the programs much. Of the 177 respondents, 63 percent answered the question, which means two-thirds of them w ere following these TV music programs in Korea. The largest number (n = 58, 33 percent) chose KBS’s Bulhu-ui Myonggok as the best TV music and dance program. MBC’s Bokmyon Gawang (The king of mask singer) received the second largest number (n = 51, 29 percent) of responses. For non-Korean readers who are not familiar with Korean TV programs, these findings may not be very interesting. However, since these two TV programs are known to be the two most popular m usic and dance programs in K orea too, they
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should be meaningful to all readers of the book b ecause they indicate that by virtue of strong transnational media, two-thirds of Korean immigrants in New York regularly watch t hese popular m usic programs in K orea.
Watching Contemporary Music and Dance Perform ances Using Social Media and Digital Technologies The Korean TV channels included in table 9.1 and the foregoing discussions of the role of Korean media in presenting and promoting Korean contemporary music and dance performances are based on my own views of TV programs my interviews that I conducted with staff members of radio and TV stations. I know that the vast majority of other Korean immigrants in the area regularly listen to and watch the same Korean radio stations and TV channels. However, by talking with Korean American students, I learned that younger- generation Koreans have had access to KBS World, Arirang World, and other Korean cable channels through newer digital technologies like Apple TV, Roku, and smart TVs since the early 2010s. They also told me that younger-generation Koreans mainly watch Korean TV m usic programs and dramas by locating and selectively choosing particular programs that interest them, rather than by watching TV channels, which have regularly scheduled programming that happens at specific days and times. This indicates the current trend of users of technology selecting the content that they consume, rather than listeners and viewers choosing TV channels. These Korean American students told me that their access to important Korean TV channels through Apple TV has been possible only since around 2013. However, prior to multiple Korean TV channels being available on Apple TV, many younger-generation Koreans and non-Korean fans of Korean culture were able to watch and learn about K-pop through social media such as YouTube, Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. In fact, even most young and middle-aged Korean immigrants seem to watch K-pop and other contemporary Korean m usic and dance performances, especially trot performances, mainly through these social media from their smartphones. I cannot talk about the powerful effect of social media on the popularization of K-pop without mentioning “Gangnam Style” by the world-famous Korean K-pop star Psy. The malchum (horse dance) is Psy’s trademark dance that accompanies the song. The video for his hit song was released in July 2012. On December 12, 2012, “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views. Beginning in September 2012 (Chae 2012), NBC and ABC invited Psy to New York City for major performances. His most publicized performance was the one made for ABC network’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve held at Times Square on December 31, 2012 (Park and Paik 2013). His and three other Korean artists’ performances were seen by about one million participants at the program. On May 29, NBC’s Today arranged for Psy to give a live performance at Rockefeller
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Plaza, another famous landmark in New York City. A Wikipedia article shows that as of May 31, 2014, his m usic had been viewed over two billion times on YouTube, increasing to almost four billion times in January 2021. Many people credit this song and video with establishing the global legitimacy and popularity of Hallyu and K-pop. This indicates how much internet-related innovations have changed media technology and the global spread of pop culture. One of the major contributing f actors to the global spread of Hallyu over the past several years is the emergence of internet-and smartphone-based social media, widely referred to as social network services (SNS). Management companies and government agencies in Korea have taken full advantage of these social media to promote K-pop singers and K-pop songs all over the world. In previous paragraphs I have shown that Korean immigrants in the area have enjoyed watching m usic and dance programs produced by several TV stations in Korea and rebroadcast by Korean ethnic TV stations in New York and Los Angeles for two decades. In recent years, most internet-savvy young Koreans and Korean Americans, and even middle-aged Korean immigrants, have been able to watch Korean TV programs, such as K-pop performances and the Bulhu-ui Myonggok program in various digital formats, including the internet and applications on hand-held devices, such as smartphones, iPads, and other tablets. B ecause of such technological innovations, they are able to watch t hese programs only a few hours after they were originally broadcast in Korea.
Contemporary Korean Performing Arts Organizations and Training Centers in New York This section examines Korean contemporary arts organizations and training centers, and performances that take place in the New York area. Th ere are four major genres of contemporary music and dance performances: K-pop, trot, artistic and folk songs, and dances. Broadly speaking, K-pop includes all three aforementioned genres of contemporary popular songs. However, since K-pop is known to listeners in foreign countries primarily as very upbeat, dance-oriented m usic performed by young Korean idol groups, I use the term “pop songs” (gayo) to indicate the other two types of Korean pop songs that tend to be more popular in Korea. In fact, trot—a genre of popular music in Korea influenced by foxtrot ballroom dance that originated in the first half of the twentieth century—is far more popular than K-pop in Korea, especially among middle-aged and elderly Koreans. Although K-pop songs have gained global popularity among adolescents and young people during recent years, their popularity tends to not last long, and many K-pop artists turn out to be passing trends. After being popular for a few months or at most a few years, they are often replaced by newer songs and artists. In contrast, many Korean regular popular songs, like classic American pop songs, maintain their popularity for decades. This section is based on personal interviews with the directors of Korean
table 9.4.
Social Service Organizations
3
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Number of Choirs and Training Centers by Ethnic Organization in 2019 Youth Groups
1
Korean Schools
University Alumni Associations
Voluntary Associations
Training Centers
Total
2
3
3
2
14
sources: Personal interviews with community organizations; Korea Daily Business Directory, 2010 (Korea Daily, 2010).
choirs in 2014 (that was updated in 2020), the 2019 Korean Directories, and Korean daily newspaper articles published in 2019. Choirs and Training Centers That Perform Contemporary Music and Dance There are twelve Korean choirs and two training centers in the Korean community in the New York area (see t able 9.4). All twelve choirs have been active in providing contemporary non-K-pop music and dance performances. Only one organization, Born Star Training Center, has trained c hildren and adolescents to help them be come K-pop stars. Two of the twelve choirs are performing arts organizations that were spontaneously established by their members. Byung Sun Soh and his friends established the New York Korean Arts Song Association in 1986. The organization has offered two major performances each year at a Korean church to collect funds to donate to refugees from North K orea. They have continued performances for about thirty-five years. Soh said that many Korean art singers had volunteered to give their musical talents free to help refugees from North K orea. Jae Won Yang established the NY Korean-American Chorus in 2011, with about forty other Korean immigrant contemporary musicians. The organization has offered two annual performances for the Korean community. More important, it has given several free performances to nursing homes and other Korean organizations every year. Three adult w omen’s choirs w ere established by major social service agencies in the Korean community in the area several decades ago. For example, Korean Community Services of Metropolitan New York, the largest Korean social service agency in the area, has a women’s choir consisting of thirty women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies. Its members practice three times or more a week and have performed for major community events organized by their own and other community organizations. They have enjoyed their performances and the community services associated their talents. As a result, they have stayed healthy and young. Invited by Kwang Suk Kim, the president of Korean Community Services, I watched members of the choir practicing contemporary and traditional Korean singing and dancing in 2014. I found that some Korean w omen in their seventies look very young.
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figure 9.1. Hannah Hong and students at Born Star Training Center in 2021. (Photo provided
by Hannah Hong.)
There are two contemporary organizations that offer training for young K-pop enthusiasts. The Korean Cultural Center (KCC) established a free, four-week K-pop dance and vocal training program at the Manhattan Movement and Arts Center at New York University in 2016. The more established program is the New York K-pop Academy at Born Star Training Center, established in Manhattan in 2013 and now located in East Harlem (see figure 9.1). According to Hannah Hong, the president of the New York K-pop Academy, there are about nineteen Born Star K-pop training centers, fifteen in K orea and four elsewhere. The New York K-pop Academy is the only one in the United States. It had about forty students as of November 2021. Whereas 90 percent of students w ere non-Koreans, all five teachers were Korean. Most of the students live in Greater New York, but some live in Los Angeles and Canada and get training in New York during summer and winter vacations. Hong told me most students represent minority groups, including Blacks, Hispanics, and other second-generation minority members, including Muslims and other Asian Americans. According to Hong, the goal of the students is to achieve K-pop stardom in Korea. Every year, entertainment companies from K orea visit the school to scout prospective candidates via auditions. Students, who have ranged in age from eight to twenty-eight, have received basic training in the Korean language and Korean culture, and since they are fluent in English they have advantages in being scouted by these entertainment companies. Hong said that five graduates from her school succeeded in debuting as K-pop stars, with two of them having achieved popularity in China. Hong indicated that her school provides K-pop performances two or
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three times a month for events mostly organized by non-Korean organizations in the New York area. Readers of this book may presume, as I did, that most students at the K-pop training programs have middle-and upper-middle-class backgrounds. However, Hong told me that, unlike students of classic music, most are from working-class backgrounds. She revealed a surprising story: Since our school has not received any funding from the central K-pop Academy in Korea, we have charged $175 per month for four 90-minutes classes, the minimum number of classes they have to take. I have found many students struggling to pay the monthly fee. Some students stopped a fter three months of training because they could not pay training fees any longer. One day, a student drank a lot of water. I served him pasta for dinner. He completed a portion of pasta for two or three people quickly. I realized that because he was hungry he had kept drinking water all day. Many students seem to express their difficulties and anger deriving from their poor family background through K-pop vocal and dancing actions.
Hong wishes that she could give training free to those students who cannot afford to pay, but the program’s expenses, including rent for the training space, make that impossible. She told me that she had saved a great amount of money from her work as a stewardess for American Airlines for twenty-six years, but that she spent most of her savings and sold her h ouse to maintain the training center. She has even worked part-time as a stewardess to cover operating expenses for the school. She feels her school deserves financial support from a Korean government agency and/or the KCC to provide K-pop training to American students and K-pop performances for American organizations. Her devotion to training American children and adolescents for K-pop in New York City is a good example of the significant intermediary role of Korean immigrants in promoting K-pop and Hallyu to Americans. The KCC established a K-pop contest (called Korean-Day Festival) in the area in 2012. The participants were required to select one song by one of three Korean idol groups (SM’s SHINee, YG Entertainment’s Big Bang, and JYP Entertainment’s Wonder Girls), each of which belonged to one of the three major management companies in the Korean entertainment industry. Videos of each participant’s performance of the selected group’s music and dance were then posted on YouTube ( Ju Sarang Lee 2012b). After the videos w ere posted online, teams w ere selected from the preliminary round to participate in the main contest held at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. In 2014, the KCC expanded the K-pop contest to the Korean Festival held on August 15, Korean Independence Day, by preparing ten booths for Korean cuisine, costumes, cosmetics, and tours (H. E. Choi 2014a). The eight teams selected from about 1,000 participants in the preliminary contest participated in the final K-pop contest (H. E. Choi 2014b). The contest was financially supported by the
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three aforementioned Korean management companies. The first-place winner was entitled to participate in the World K-Pop Festival held in Changwon, South Korea, financially supported by Korean government agencies. When Koreans go to noraebang (karaoke bars) to sing and drink, they usually sing gayo (trot), which is comparable to mainstream American soft rock or adult contemporary music, rather than K-pop. As already pointed out, although K-pop songs have gained global popularity among adolescents and young people during recent years, their popularity tends to not last long, and many K-pop artists turn out to be passing trends in K orea. A fter being popular for a few months or at most a few years, they are replaced by newer songs or artists. In contrast, many Korean regular popular songs, like classic American pop songs, have maintained their popularity for decades. In particular, middle-aged and elderly Korean immigrants enjoy viewing trot performances that w ere popular decades ago through the KBS channel. Immigrant leaders of Korean organizations, like middle-aged and elderly people in K orea, tend to enjoy trot far more than K-pop. However, they are also excited about the popularity of K-pop in the New York area, as well as in other parts of the United States and the world. Thus, they have encouraged Korean and non-Korean youngsters to hone their K-pop singing and dancing skills and to gain exposure by participating in K-pop contests. In the aftermath of “Psy-mania,” Korean immigrant leaders in the New York area sponsored K-pop concerts and contests as a way of promoting Korean culture. The Korean Thanksgiving Festival, which was organized by the Korean Association of New Jersey between September 29 and 30 in 2012, included the first malchum contest in the area (H. S. Suh 2012). After the malchum competition, two consecutive days of K-pop contests followed, which included preliminary rounds and the main event. The event was held at Club Circle in K-Town in November 2012 (H. E. Choi 2012). The Korean Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries supported these contests, partly in an effort to help Psy’s “Gangnam Style” reach the top spot on the Billboard music chart. The Korean American Association of Queens also organized a Psy malchum contest at Flushing High School after the Lunar New Year Parade on February 16, 2013 (H. S. Suh 2013). I noted above and in chapter 6 that Korean immigrant community leaders, as well as the KCC, made efforts to promote K-pop to second-generation Koreans and other young New Yorkers by organizing K-pop contests in major Korean festivals and other special occasions. Korean community leaders have tried to promote K-pop not because they have enjoyed them, but b ecause they have felt proud of its global popularity. Not only Korean immigrant leaders, but also second-generation Korean cultural entrepreneurs have partly contributed to the promotion of K-pop to non-Korean residents in the New York area. Jinwon Kim, a sociologist, captured the role of internet-savvy younger-generation Korean Americans in publicizing K-pop, K-dramas, and K-cosmetics by creating Korean cultural portal
table 9.5.
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Contemporary Korean Music and Dance Performances in Greater New York in 2019 by Type and Genre
Local Transnational
Total
K-pop
Trot
Artistic/ Folk Songs
Dance
33 (100%) 32 (100%)
18 (55%) 18 (56%)
3 (9%) 4 (13%)
12 (36%) 8 (25%)
0 (0%) 2 (6%)
sources: Korea Times New York Business Directory, 2019 (Korea Times, 2019); Korea Daily Business Directory, 2019 (Korea Daily, 2019).
sites ( J. Kim 2018: 223–226). She reported that Korean Americans established the portal sites in the 2000s, and that the Hallyu consumers in the New York area w ere predominantly non-Korean and non-Asian young people. She also commented, “Because of the symbolic meaning of Koreatown in Manhattan as a cultural space, it is a very efficient gateway for the promotion of Korean pop culture in New York City” (224). Contemporary Korean M usic and Dance Performances in New York in 2019 In t able 9.5, I analyze the frequency of performances of Korean contemporary popu lar songs and dance made for major events in Greater New York in 2019 by reviewing articles published in two local Korean daily newspapers. I include the following three categories of contemporary Korean music and dance performances: (1) K-pop combined with other genres, (2) Korean popular songs (trot = gayo), and (3) seongak (Korean artistic and folk songs). As I did in the previous chapter, I analyze local Korean m usic and dance events separately from transnational ones. The t able shows that there were thirty-three local Korean contemporary m usic and dance performances in Greater New York in 2019. The number is much smaller than that of Korean traditional dance and music performances (n = 54) (see table 8.2 in chapter 8). Among contemporary m usic and dance genres, trot is the most popular genre in Korea. However, since Korean immigrants can watch trot and other contemporary popular m usic and dance performances through transnational TV programs, social media, and digital streaming, they do not consider watching a ctual performances of trot in the local area as important as they did two decades ago. As noted in the above section, t here are many popular TV programs and contests for contemporary music and dance in Korea. Korean immigrants and some younger-generation Koreans consume t hese m usic contests recycled through transnational TV programs and digital streams. Eighteen (55 percent) of the thirty-three local contemporary music and dance performances w ere K-pop performances, overwhelmingly made at major and minor Korean festivals and t hose made by two Korean high school student choirs. Both the annual Korean Festival in Manhattan and the Queens Korean Thanksgiving and Folklore Festival organized K-pop contests. Other minor Korean festivals
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usually include K-pop performances to attract young Korean and non-Korean participants. For example, a minor Korean festival organized by the Korean-American Association at Eisenhower Park in Long Island in August included a K-pop perfor mance (KCC 2019b). This indicates the significant role of Korean immigrants and their children in promoting K-pop to New Yorkers. There were two special performances of Korean artistic and folk songs at major concert halls in Manhattan. The KCC helped the Korean Music Foundation and the Korean American Association of Greater New York organize “A Night for Korean Arts Songs” at Merkin Concert Hall in Manhattan on March 28, 2019 (H. E. Choi 2019). They organized a free concert for the centennial of the Korean Independence Movement on March 1, 1919, for the establishment of the Korean provisional government in Shanghai on April 14, 2019, and in celebration of the New York State Assembly’s adoption of March 1 as Korean Independence Movement Day. The per formance covered several prominent Korean songs from the colonization period and a fter. The KCC and Lincoln Center also co-organized what was likely to be the most important local K-pop performance in 2019. It was a performance-oriented K-pop seminar, titled “K F actors: A Musical Exploration of K-pop,” in June 2019 to review the Korean songs that contributed to the formation of K-pop (Korea Daily 2019a). It was reported that tickets for the 1,000-seat venue were sold out and that most ticket purchasers w ere Korean and non-Korean young people. The bottom row of table 9.5 shows that thirty-two transnational contemporary Korean music and dance performances w ere given by singers and dancers from Korea in 2019. Eighteen of them (56 percent) were made by Korean K-pop groups. The K-pop groups that visited New York were globally known Korean idol groups, including BTS, SuperM, and Monsta X. They visited the New York area as part of their U.S. tours. They performed at Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, Times Square, and other large venues. For example, BTS, the most popular Korean K-pop group, was invited to perform at the Rumsey Playfield at Central Park on May 15, 2019, as the first of ABC’s Good Morning America summer performances. ABC introduced BTS as the first group since the Beatles to earn three consecutive Billboard No. 1 albums in eleven consecutive months (Korea Times 2019d). Many fans were reported to have spent three consecutive nights outside to obtain their seats at Rumsey Playfield. Three days later, BTS gave an even bigger performance at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Since local Korean newspapers publicized these scheduled performances to the Korean community in advance, many Korean Americans, including second-generation Korean Americans, are likely to have attended either performance. Without a doubt, nearly twenty K-pop performances in the New York area in one year must have enhanced Korean Americans’ ethnic pride and identity, mainly because they w ere globally known K-pop groups. The cultural power of the homeland is likely to have boosted 1.5-and second-generation Koreans’ ethnic identity. A second-generation Korean American presider at a gala meeting said in 2018, “Twenty years ago, Americans often asked me if I was a Chinese or
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Japanese, but they recently asked me if I was a Korean. When I said I was a Korean American, they asked me if I liked K-pop.” Eight of transnational performances (25 percent) belong to the genres of Korean artistic songs and folk songs. The Art Incubator, a young, Seoul-based group, performed in four different theaters in the New York area in June 2019, in collaboration with Ensemble Mise-en, a local Korean American contemporary m usic artist group (Korea Times 2019n). The performances w ere provided free, financially supported by the Korean Cultural Artist Committee in Korea. Cheongchun Hapchangdan (Youth Choir), an amateur Korean folk artist group consisting of forty-eight senior Koreans, gave a performance at Carnegie Hall in commemoration of the centennial of the March First Independence Movement in May 2019 (Korea Daily 2019a). The elderly Korean amateur singing group was also reported to have provided outdoor performances at the High Line Park in Manhattan, the Korean War Veterans Park in Washington, D.C., and Niagara Falls Plaza. Only four transnational performances belong to the trot genre. Although most middle-aged and elderly Korean immigrants enjoy singing and listening to trot at karaoke bars and parties, community organizations rarely organize events involving trot performances during recent years mainly because they can easily watch those performances made in Korea through transnational media and SNS. Moreover, they may not want to introduce trot songs to non-Korean New Yorkers as a major Korean music genre b ecause they symbolize Korean history and culture much less than other genres of Korean music and dance. Thus, only two well-known Korean trot singers in Korea (Undo Seol and Suhee Kim) were invited separately by two differ ent Korean ethnic organizations in New York. Seol gave a trot performance for a Korean nursing home in Flushing ( J. H. Lee 2019), while Kim gave two perfor mances in the Flushing and Fort Lee Korean enclaves (Keum 2019a). In addition, a Korean trot group consisting of five women members, with the name Ms. Trot, gave two performances before Thanksgiving Day for about 2,000 Korean immigrants at the Colden Auditorium, Queens College (Keum 2019c).
Summary and Concluding Remarks Since Korean immigrants usually listened to and watched Korean contemporary music and dance performances mainly through transnational radio and TV programs around 2010, I started with ethnic radio and TV stations in the New York area. According to results of a survey conducted in the early 2010s, about two- thirds of Korean immigrants in Greater New York depended on Korean TV programs for music and dance performances. I introduced seven major Korean TV weekly music programs and asked respondents to rank them based on their preferences. Sixty-three percent of the respondents answered this question, meaning that they followed the weekly music programs. But in terms of the mechanism of watching Korean TV programs, only 23 percent used the transnational TV channels, with the majority of them using
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internet streaming. Internet streaming and various SNS, which have been available since the early 2010s, have enabled Korean and other immigrant groups to get easy access to m usic and dance performances and other cultural products made in their home countries within a few hours of their original broadcasts. Trot songs are far more popular than K-pop songs in K orea and in the Korean community in New York. In fact, many middle-aged and elderly Korean immigrant w omen watch trot contests held in Korea at home almost every day on their smartphones while preparing dinner. K-pop songs comprise the major Korean contemporary music and dance genre. They have gained popularity in New York since the early 2000s. But many people credit Psy’s 2012 release of the “Gangnam Style” video and his performances orga nized by U.S. media in the New York area with establishing the global legitimacy of Hallyu and K-pop. Although Psy’s popularity disappeared in two years, new Korean K-pop groups (e.g., BTS, SuperM, and Monsta X) emerged and gained global popularity. As part of their U.S. tours, they have visited New York City and performed at the city’s landmark sites, including Madison Square Garden, Central Park, and Lincoln Center. In 2021, eighteen transnational Korean K-pop performances were made in Greater New York. Frequent K-pop performances in New York have had a strong positive effect on Korean immigrants’ national identity and their c hildren’s ethnic identity due to their global popularity. The KCC, as the major Korean government agency, established a K-pop contest in 2012 that has been very competitive. It also established a K-pop training center in 2016. Moreover, it has promoted K-pop to New Yorkers by coordinating with major performing organizations in the city. For example, the KCC and Lincoln Center co-organized the seminar “K-Factors: A Musical Exploration of K-pop,” which explored the previous Korean musicians and music groups that had contributed to the development of the contemporary K-pop. Hannah Hong, a Korean immigrant, founded a K-pop training academy in K-Town in Manhattan in 2013, modeled after the fifteen Born Star Training Centers in K orea. Of the forty students in the school, 90 percent are non-Korean students who have different racial minority backgrounds, including Black, Hispanic, and Asians American. Hong has managed the school despite its financial difficulties. The school has provided frequent K-pop performances for cultural and social events, mainly for non-Korean organizations, and has played an important role in promoting K-pop to New Yorkers, partly by training minority members as K-pop stars and partly by providing these performances. Korean immigrant ethnic organizations in the area have further contributed to the promotion of K-pop to Americans by organizing four or five K-pop contests each year. Whereas the frequent K-pop performances at New York landmarks by globally known Korean idol groups boosted Korean immigrants’ and second-generation Koreans’ national and ethnic identities, Korean immigrants also have played an important intermediary role in further promoting K-pop to New Yorkers.
10 • CONCLUSION
This book has examined how Korean immigrants in Greater New York have made collective efforts to preserve and promote their cultural traditions. Data analyses in the previous substantive chapters show that immigrants have made extraordinary efforts to preserve major Korean cultural traditions and promote them to mainstream society. I claimed in chapter, based on my own and other immigrants’ experiences, that whereas older Korean immigrants and the community have been increasingly integrated into mainstream American society, they have been culturally more closely linked to South K orea. Data analyses in dif ferent chapters support the validity of this claim and explain why this paradoxical phenomenon has happened.
Korean Immigrants’ Increasing Cultural Linkages to the Homeland and a Challenge TO Assimilation Theory ere were very few Korean grocery stores and restaurants in the 1960s and 1970s, Th but their numbers have increased as Korean business districts in have expanded since the early 1980s. The emergence of Korean supermarkets in the early 1990s, technological advances in air transportation in the early 2010s, and the full enforcement of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement in 2012 have enabled Korean supermarkets to import agro-fishery products directly from Korean provinces instead of from farms in California. These products can be packed in ice (for example, ginseng chickens and sesame noodles) or dried (such as persimmons and squid). Bottled beverages (such as Korean sake, ginseng juice, and tea) are also available. As a result, immigrants now have access in their local supermarkets to many major grocery items currently popular in Korea. These supermarkets receive grocery items from Korea via cargo plane in three to four days. In addition, the transplantation of Korean food franchise businesses, such as Bonchon Chicken, Paris Baguette and Tous Les Jours (two major Korean bakery franchises), and Red Mango (a frozen yogurt franchise), to New York City since the early 2000s has further contributed to the strong linkages of Korean immigrants to Korean food culture. 173
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The increasing convenience in Korean immigrants’ access to Korean grocery items and Korean food over the decades summarized above is an important piece of evidence for my claim about Korean immigrants’ increasing cultural linkages to their homeland. It is a very important change over time because Korean and other immigrants enjoy eating the ethnic cuisine to which they grew accustomed during their childhood. I examined the number of Korean transnational cultural events organized in New York and made by cultural specialists from Korea. I found the number of transnational cultural events significantly increased from 2001 to 2014. Given the great convenience of organizing transnational cultural events in the local area facilitated by increasingly greater technological advances, the findings are not surprising at all. Also, the proportion of Korean immigrants and second- generation Koreans who participated in transnational cultural programs established in K orea have increased over time. Music and dance performances account for most transnational cultural events. Whereas small proportions of Korean immigrants and second-generation Koreans in New York have participated in transnational cultural events, the vast majority of them have watched Korean traditional and contemporary m usic and dance performance made in K orea through transnational Korean TV programs, digital technologies, and SNS since the late 2000s. These pieces of evidence summarized in the above paragraphs support my claim that post-1965 Korean immigrants have maintained increasingly stronger and stronger cultural linkages to their homeland. The increase has been gradual since the late 1960s, but the turning point was the late 2000s and the early 2010s, when remarkable technological innovations in media, communications and internets were made. In fact, Korean and other immigrant groups in 2020 had stronger transnational cultural linkages to their homeland than they did in the early 2010s, when I collected data for this book. The fact that older Korean immigrants enjoy eating all kinds of Korean food and watching Korean m usic and dance performances here, which they never could in the 1970s and 1980s, is a great blessing to them. As they have achieved some level of assimilation to American culture, most older Korean immigrants seem to take bicultural orientations with their Korean national identity. Some white American social philosop hers, like Samuel Huntington (1997), are likely to have a very negative view of immigrants’ and their c hildren’s bicultural orientations. But I consider immigrants’ bicultural orientations as beneficial not only to their own mental health and cultural lives, but also to American multiculturism. By showing Korean immigrants’ increasing cultural linkages to their homeland over time, I challenge classical assimilation and neo-assimilation theories. Few sociologists seem to accept the zero-sum assimilation theory that considers one’s cultural assimilation to American society reduces his/her ethnic preservation. In fact, many immigration scholars have emphasized the advantage of the additive assimilation, meaning that immigrants should learn English and America culture while preserving their ethnic language and ethnic cultural traditions (Portes and
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Rumbaut 2014: 247–249). But there is no doubt that Korean immigrants’ assimilation to American culture is correlated with their length of residence in the United States. However, no scholar has indicated that immigrants have stronger and stronger transnational cultural linkages to their homeland over time. Many social scientists have conducted research on immigrant transnationalism since the early 1990s. If they had focused on immigrants’ cultural transnational linkages to the homeland over their life cycles, they would have found the “paradoxical” phenomenon that I have found in this study. But, considering the increasing level of immigrants’ transnational linkages to their homeland, facilitated by the increasing technological advances, this finding is never paradoxical. Portes and his colleagues have tried to make conceptual clarifications and empirical measurements of immigrants’ transnational practices with survey data. However, as I reviewed the literature in chapter 3, there is much room for a further improvement of their conceptualization and measurement of cultural transnationalism. Chapter 3, a reprint of my article published in Sociological Perspectives in 2017, provides my conceptualizations and measurements of transnational cultural events and immigrants’ transnational cultural practices. I hope the chapter w ill contribute to studies of immigrants’ transnational ties to the homeland, especially in connection with their cultural transnational practices.
Further Theoretical Contributions to the Fields of Immigration and Ethnicity I use Transnational Cultural Flow from Home: Korean Community in Greater New York as the main title and the subtitle of my book, partly b ecause Korean foods, m usic and dance performances, dramas and movies, paintings, and other Korean cultural components easily move from home to the Korean community in New York, strongly affected by technological advances. As indicated in different pages of this book, t here is no doubt that increasing technological advances have contributed to Korean immigrants’ increasing transnational linkages to the homeland. When researchers of immigrants use the transnational perspective as a theory, they seem to assume that increasing technological advances have contributed to the increasing linkages of immigrants to their homeland. Thus, I have used technological advances as the first major independent variable in my analytical model. All immigrant groups benefit from technological advances in maintaining stronger linkages to their home country than they did four or three decades ago. But some home countries have made higher levels of technological advances than other home countries. South Korea is one of the top countries among the homelands of major immigrant groups in the United States in internet, communication, and media technologies. As indicated in chapter 1, although major immigrant groups benefit from technological advances in maintaining transnational cultural linkages to their homeland, some immigrant groups benefit more than other groups by virtue of their home countries’ active efforts to facilitate their ex-compatriots’ cultural transnational ties to them. Their home governments have differential financial resources
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and make differential efforts to strengthen their emigrants’ cultural ties to the homeland and their ethnic identity. As further reviewed in chapter 1, the researchers who have emphasized the emigrant state’s role in facilitating its compatriots’ transnational linkages to home have focused on giving dual citizenship to them. No one seems to have examined the emigrant state’s active and reactive role in facilitating immigrants’ transnational cultural ties to the homeland. As discussed in different chapters, the Korean government has played a significant role in strengthening Korean immigrants’ and their children’s cultural ties to the homeland. Korean government agencies in K orea and New York have provided financial and technical support for Korean immigrant organizations’ efforts to establish and manage Korean-language schools, to promote the Korean language to public schools, and to organize Korean cultural festivals in the New York area. The Korean Cultural Center in New York has coordinated with major performing arts organizations, such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, in inviting Korean music and dance artists for major performances. The Overseas Koreans Foundation, established in 1997, has organized several heritage education programs for overseas Korean children and adolescents by inviting them for conferences, seminars, and sightseeing to cultural and historical sites. In addition, the increase in the global popularity of South Korean entertainment and popular culture (Hallyu), represented by K-pop, K-dramas, K-foods, and even the Korean language, during the last twelve years or so has strengthened Korean immigrant organizations’ effort to preserve and promote Korean culture. It has also encouraged second-generation and multiracial Koreans to learn the Korean language and Korean culture and boosted their ethnic identity since the early 2010s. The Korean government has invested a large amount of money in developing and promoting K-pop stars and other Korean cultural products each year partly because the global Korean cultural influence strengthens the global Korean image and partly because Korean cultural products bring significant economic benefits. The Korean government seems to have provided financial and technical support for Korean immigrants’ efforts to preserve and promote Korean culture partly to strengthen Korean Americans’ ethnic identity and partly to raise the global image of Korea by using the intermediary role of Korean immigrants in the most globalized city with UN and many other international organizations. The replenished ethnicity theory is the third theory that I consider important for the Korean community’s cultural preservation and promotion to New Yorkers. Using the case of the Mexican immigration to the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, Jimenez (2010, 2017) has emphasized the continuity of immigration flow as contributing to the preservation of ethnic networks and ethnic identity, and a low intermarriage rate. No doubt, the continuity of the Korean immigration flow since 1965 has helped the Korean community preserve ethnic traditions. But the annual number of Korean immigrants has been drastically reduced since the early 1990s. In contrast, the annual numbers of Chinese and Indian immigrants have significantly increased since the early 2000s. Moreover, huge numbers of Chinese and
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Indian temporary residents, consisting of international students and H-1B temporary workers, have come to the United States over the last twenty years. As a result of the presence of large proportions of temporary residents, the Chinese and Indian communities seem to have advantages over the Korean community in preserving ethnic traditions. Despite its disadvantages in the number of annual permanent and temporary residents, the Korean community is d oing well in their efforts to preserve and promote Korean language and culture. Given that the number of immigrants has been drastically reduced since the late 1980s and that many third-generation children have been born during recent years, Korean schools are unlikely to be popular. However, as I have shown in chapter 4, Korean schools, especially those located in Korean enclaves, are very popular. Many second-generation and multiracial parents who cannot speak Korean are sending their third-generation children to Korean schools mainly because of the global popularity of K-pop, K-drama, and other Korean cultural components. This indicates the significant effect of the cultural power of the homeland on the preservation of ethnic culture in diasporic communities. Jimenez (2010, 2017) rightly emphasized the role of a large proportion of the immigrant population in an ethnic community in replenishing the community with ethnic culture and ethnic social networks. But I would like to expand the replenished ethnicity theory by emphasizing the role of immigrants in establishing and running heritage and other cultural organizations in the ethnic community. We have found that older immigrant leaders have played the central role in managing Korean schools and the Northeast Chapter of the National Association for Korean Schools (NAKS). Byung-Yul Huh, who played the key role in running and teaching at a Korean school for more than fifty years, retired at the age of eighty-seven. The other three key Korean-language leaders in the Korean community—Sun Geun Lee, Yung Duk Kim, and KwangHo Lee—are still working hard, all in their eighties. Major Korean social serv ice organizations have gone through the transfer of leadership from the immigrant to the second generation. But elderly Korean immigrants are still leading cultural organizations, such as Korean schools, Korean performing arts organizations, and the Korean writers’ association. I showed in chapters 4 and 5 that Korean immigrant teachers in both Korean schools and public schools teach students enthusiastically with a sense of mission. The theory emphasizing the strength of community organizations is very useful to understanding the successful effort of the Korean community in preserving and promoting Korean language and culture. I have found that Korean immigrants’ unimaginable collective efforts to transmit the Korean language to second-and third-generation Koreans and promote it to public schools in two chapters on the Korean language. A small number of weekend Korean-language schools w ere established in Greater New York in the 1960s. But the number increased to about 150 in the early 2010s, with several of them having over 200 students. Korean- language leaders established two national associations of Korean schools in 1981.
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The NAKS is further divided into fourteen regional chapters. The Northeast Chapter of the NAKS, including about 150 Korean schools in Greater New York, has organized an annual conference, quarterly teachers’ workshops, a few seminars, and several Korean language and cultural contests for students every year. As a result of their collective efforts, the quality of Korean schools has greatly improved during recent years. Korean-language leaders made aggressive efforts to lobby the College Board to include the Korean language on the SAT II foreign language exams between 1994 and 1997 and to adopt it as one of the foreign languages in public schools between 2007 and 2020. In the former case, they engaged in a national donation campaign to collect a half million dollars to pay the College Board to cover the cost of creating a test for the Korean language. In the second case, they created a Korean-language teacher’s certificate master’s program at Rutgers University and collected donations to pay scholarships for the registered students. Moreover, they lobbied local high school principals and school boards in Bergen County to include Korean as a foreign language and collected a large fund to cover the salaries of Korean-language teachers in the first two years. To get an additional fund, two leaders of Korean Language Association visited Korean government agencies in Korea and explained the importance of financially supporting Korean language courses in public schools in the United States to Korean policy makers. Partly as a result of financial support by the Korean government, they have succeeded in getting the Korean language adopted as a foreign language by about fifteen high schools more in Greater New York. Highly dedicated Korean immigrant language teachers have made these newly established Korean-language programs very popular in the high schools. The most important factor to Korean immigrants’ establishment and effective management of enough Korean schools and their movement to get the Korean language included on the SAT II foreign language tests and a dopted as a foreign language in public schools is the “group homogeneity and institutional completeness” summarized in chapter 1. By virtue of their linguistic and ethnic homogeneity, Korean immigrants are effective in establishing ethnic organizations and using ethnic collective actions to protect their ethnic interests. By virtue of linguistic homogeneity, the Korean language has a much better chance to be included among SAT II foreign languages and adopted as a foreign language in public schools, compared to Hindi or Tagalog. In addition, Korean immigrants in New York and other areas tend to take a defensive nationalistic position b ecause of their memory of Japan’s colonial rule of Korea for thirty-five years. The Japanese colonial government tried to annihilate the Korean language and culture. Because of this memory, Korean-language leaders, such as Byung-yeal Huh and Sun Geun Lee, emphasized the importance of transmitting the Korean language to second-generation Koreans. Partly because of this memory, Korean-language leaders in Los Angeles and New York successfully lobbied State Assemblies and Senates to make October 9 the Korean Alphabet Day.
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Not only Korean-language leaders and teachers in public schools but also Korean traditional music and dance performers have worked extremely hard because of their sense of mission. Since the Korean traditional performing arts genre is not popular in the Korean community, only a small number of Korean immigrants, mostly w omen, have been engaged in making Korean traditional music and dance performances regularly, with a much smaller number of them engaged in teaching Korean traditional performing arts. We have found that two pioneer Korean w omen traditional performing artists have devoted their entire immigrant lives (over thirty-five years) to making performances for Korean and non-Korean events and educating children. The three additional performing artists introduced in the chapter have worked extremely hard to transmit their artistic skills to second-generation Koreans and promote them to American society. People usually watch contemporary Korean m usic and dance (K-pop and trot) performances using TV channels, digital technologies, and SNS. However, they usually watch traditional m usic and dance performances live and in-person. Thus, their active engagement in their performances is essential to the preservation and promotion of their artistic skills. Korean immigrant traditional music and dance artists, like Korean-language leaders and teachers, have made devotion to preserving and promoting their own Korean traditional music genres. Korean traditional music and dance artists told me that non-Korean spectators showed more appreciation to and interest in their performances than Korean counterparts. This finding seems to have given them enough energy to continue their performing artistic activities with little monetary compensation. One of them indicated that when Korea was poor in the 1970s through the 1990s, their international performances were not as well accepted as Chinese or Indian coun terparts, but that as South K orea achieved a significant economic development since 2000 their performances w ere better accepted. Not only the Korean economic power but also the global Korean cultural influence associated with Hallyu may have led international spectators to give more positive responses even to Korean traditional music and dance performances. The frequent visits of Korean K-pop groups to the New York area and their per formances at New York City landmarks have enhanced Korean immigrants’ and their children’s national and ethnic identity. In turn, Korean immigrant community leaders have played an important role in promoting K-pops to New Yorkers by establishing a K-pop training school, organizing K-pop contests. Even Korean- language teachers at public schools have also contributed to promoting K-pops to American students by taking K-pops as extracurricular activities a fter the regular classes. In addition to Korean immigrants’ linguistic and ethnic homogeneity and older Korean immigrants’ sense of mission to promote the Korean language and culture to New Yorkers, the Korean government has played an important role in facilitating Korean immigrants’ and their c hildren’s cultural linkages to Korea. The Korean government established the Overseas Koreans Foundation (OKF) in 2017 to
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accommodate overseas Koreans scattered all over the world. The OKF seems to have paid greater attention to Korean Americans than to Koreans in other diasporic Korean community partly because they are in a much better position to help Korea diplomatically, culturally, economically and with scientific knowledge. The OKF established several heritage-education programs for overseas Koreans, which involve inviting younger-generation Koreans to Korea for ten days or so for a conference and tours to historical sites. I introduced heritage education programs in the last section of chapter 3. The OKF also provides financial support for festivals and other cultural activities in the United States. Finally, I emphasize the role of a strong multicultural policy taken by New York City and many local (counties and townships) governments and public schools as an important factor to Korean immigrant organizations’ ability to preserve and promote Korean cultural traditions. The main reason why the Korean-language organization has been able to persuade public schools in Bergen County and New York City is the principals’ and superintendents’ readiness to adopt the Korean language as a foreign language if there are enough students and enough resources to cover the expenses. Korean immigrants and Korean community organizations have benefited from American multiculturism in promoting not only the Korean language, but also Korean performing and fine arts, and Korean cuisine. The Flushing Town Hall in Queens has organized a few multicultural performances and exhibitions e very week all year round. As noted in chapters 8 and 9, several Korean traditional and contemporary music and dance artists from the Korean community and K orea have been invited for performances at Flushing Town Hall e very year. The New York Mets, the Queens-based professional baseball team, has annually organized the Korean or Asian Night by inviting a Korean cultural group to perform. Local government agencies in the New York area have often invited Korean traditional dance groups for performances to multicultural events.
The Impact of Korean Culture on New Yorkers I pointed out in chapter 1 that few immigration scholars have paid attention to the impact of immigrants on American culture. I have shown in this book many examples of Korean immigrants’ impact on American culture. As noted in chapter 5, Korean immigrant leaders in Greater New York have effectively promoted the Korean language to about twenty-five local elementary and high schools while Korean immigrant teachers have worked extremely hard to make the Korean-language course popular to students by teaching it using Korean cultural components, such as Korean food, taekwondo, K-pop, samulnori (Korean percussion), and Korean etiquette. As a result, the Korean language has been accepted in these schools as a very important East Asian language. Many Korean and non- Korean students seem to have chosen the Korean-language course partly b ecause of the global popularity of K-pop.
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But the increase in the number of Korean-language courses has further popu larized K-pop and even taekwondo to American high school students because Korean-language courses often adopt K-pop and taekwondo as extracurricular activities after regular classes. Many of those students who take Korean-language courses also try to watch K-dramas at home. Also, Korean parents’ organizations usually serve ddeokguk (rice cake soup) on Lunar New Year and songpyeon (sticky rice cakes with a sweet filling) on Korean Lunar Year and Thanksgiving Days for all teachers at the schools that adopt a Korean-language program e very year. Moreover, Korean Cultural Service has provided samulnori instruments for per formances for some of the high schools that have a dopted Korean as a foreign language. In this way, the promotion of the Korean language to American public schools has a further positive effect on promoting K-pop and other Korean cultural elements. In particular, the Korean-language program established at Democracy Prep School and other s ister schools in Harlem has had a strong positive impact not only on Black students but also their parents and other Black residents in Harlem. The white American founder of the school who had learned about the Korean culture emphasizing children’s education and respect for teachers and adults adopted the Korean education style in the school. Thus, the Korean educational system has partly influenced the school. Moreover, Korean-language teachers’ use of Korean etiquettes respecting students’ teachers and parents have positively changed Black students’ attitudes and behaviors. In addition, the schools’ adoption of taekwondo, K-pop, and the Korean traditional mask dance as after-school programs, and the annual year-ending Korean cultural performances, combined with Korean food and m usic performances, have strong Korean cultural effects on Black residents in Harlem as a whole. In chapter 6, I examined several Korean food festivals held in New York City in 2010 and mostly organized by Korean government agencies. They have helped introduce traditional and contemporary Korean dishes to high-class American opinion makers and international diplomats in New York City. But they have not played an important role in promoting Korean foods to the general public in the New York area. In contrast, many Korean restaurants, bakeries, and supermarkets located in enclaves in three business districts have played a significant role in introducing key Korean cuisine items, pastries, and grocery items. Compared to Chinese, Japanese, and even Thai food, Korean food was not much known to New Yorkers in the 1960s and the 1970s. However, as a result of many Korean restaurants in enclaves in New York, especially in K-Town in Manhattan, an increasing number of non-Korean New Yorkers have become familiar with Korean food. Non-Korean customers comprise approximately 20 percent of customers in Korean restaurants located in Korean enclaves in Queens and Bergen County, while 75 percent of customers for t hose in K-Town in Manhattan are non-Korean customers. Such Korean dishes as bulgogi (marinated beef cooked on customers’ tables), galbi (marinated beef short ribs), bibimbap (vegetables mixed with rice and hot
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sauce), and haemul pajeon (Korean vegetable and seafood pancake) are well known to many non-Korean customers. Among several franchise businesses from Korea, two Korean bakery franchises, Paris Baguette and Tous Les Jours, are very popular with non-Korean customers. White and other non-Korean customers’ frequent shopping at Korean supermarkets has also popularized such Korean and Asian grocery items as kimchi, tofu, and ramyeon (instant noodles). Costco, the largest American supermarket in New York, carries t hese Korean grocery items for all customers. Korean traditional performing arts organizations have frequently provided samulnori and fan dances for very important non-Korean as well as for Korean cultural events since the early 1980s. As a result, many New Yorkers seem to recognize them as important Korean traditional instrumental m usic and dance performances. Korean ethnic organizations have also contributed to the promotion of Korean traditional m usic and dance performance by regularly inviting Korean traditional music and dance organizations from Korea for Korean cultural festivals and other events. Also, Korean Arirang TV’s broadcasting of frequent performances of traditional Korean music and dance genres for global fans seem to have contributed to promoting them to some Americans interested in Korean traditional performing arts.
Contributions to Asian American and Hallyu Studies In addition to contributing to immigration studies in connection with assimilation theory and transnational theory, this book also contributes to cultural studies of Asian Americans and studies of Hallyu. Under the influence of Said’s Orientalism, social scientists studying Asian American culture have focused on showing the cultural hegemony of white Americans and the latter’s stereotypes of and prejudice against Asian American cultural traditions. I do not intend to indicate that their critique of the cultural domination of white Americans is inadequate. My main point is that there have been gradual positive changes in Americans’ attitudes toward Asian cultural traditions since the 1970s. Therefore, we also need to examine the impact of Asian culture on American society. Here I introduce an episode from a personal narrative by David William Wang, a second-generation Taiwanese American, to indicate how much Asian American children suffered cultural rejection and insults even in New York City in the late 1960s. He recounted that during his elementary school years he had regular nightmares in which his mother with broken English would give his white classmates a tour of his house kitchen. He continued, “I would wake up frenzied, jump out of bed, and pull on a pair of pants. Only when I was ready to rush out and throw my classmates out of my house, would I realize that it had been just a dream” (David Wang 1999: 90). Wang’s story is a very old one now. During his childhood, Wang was ashamed of Chinese food and Chinese calligraphy to the extent that he was embarrassed to show these aspects of his parents’ culture to his white classmates; t hese days, both
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are well accepted by New Yorkers, especially by white Americans. In fact, New Yorkers—and New York Jews in particular—like Chinese food so much (Tuchman and Levine 1993) that t here is a joke in New York City that Jews had suffered for hundreds of years b ecause t here was no Chinese food before the Chinese calendar started. As summarized above, not only K-pop but also taekwondo, K-food, and even the Korean language have enjoyed popularity in Greater New York. Finally, this book contributes to studies of Hallyu by examining the role of Korean immigrants in promoting Korean culture to New Yorkers. Korean cultural components associated with Hallyu include TV dramas, K-pop, the Korean language, films, and cuisine. My review of the expanding Hallyu literature (Choi and Maliangkay 2014; Hong 2014; Jin 2016; Ko et al. 2014; Lee and Jin 2019) indicates that the popularity of Korean dramas and music in China, Japan, and other Asian countries in the early 2000s was somewhat accidental but that the global popularity of Korean culture, especially of K-pop, beginning in 2010 was planned. Hallyu scholars, overwhelmingly anthropologists and communications and media specialists, have generally indicated that the following f actors have contributed to the global popularity of Korean culture. First, Korean government agencies and management companies have developed sophisticated media and cultural technologies to effectively produce and promote Korean cultural contents, especially K-pop and Korean dramas, to the world. Second, t hese two organizations have also utilized communication, media and SNS effectively to market cultural products globally. Third, the efforts of management companies to train pop idol groups for several years with iron discipline to produce popular K-pop have partly contributed to the music genre’s global popularity. Neither Korean government policy makers nor Hallyu scholars have indicated the significant role of overseas Koreans in promoting any element of Korean culture in their settlement countries. In their view, the global popularity of K-pop and Korean dramas has gradually led foreign fans to learn the Korean language, become familiar with Korean food, and other elements of Korean culture (Ko et al. 2014: 315–317). This interpretation is not wrong, but very narrow, by neglecting to examine the intermediary role of Korean immigrants and even Koreans born in settlement countries in publicizing and promoting Korean culture. On December 21, 2014, by chance I watched a very interesting program titled “Hallyu: Toward a New Direction” on KBS World, an international affiliate of the Korean Broadcasting System. Several speakers, including journalists, professors, and foreign commentators, provided insightful comments on contributing factors to the global spread of Hallyu and new strategies to maintain the current level of Korean cultural influence in foreign countries. Only one speaker briefly mentioned the role of overseas Koreans, but she mentioned them mainly as consumers of Korean cultural contents rather than as promoters of them. Cultural anthropologists and communication and media specialists may have difficulty in detecting the role of Korean immigrants and other overseas Koreans in promoting Korean
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culture in settlement countries. However, as a sociologist specializing in immigration and ethnicity, I have observed the active role of Korean immigrants in Greater New York in publicizing and promoting Korean culture to New Yorkers mainly through cultural and other ethnic organizations. The main title of my book, Transnational Cultural Flow from Home, may give readers the wrong impression that K-pop and other Korean cultural components automatically flow from K orea to New York by virtue of technological advances. Yet, it is never true. I have shown in this book g reat efforts of Korean community leaders to promote K-pop, K-food, and the Korean language to New Yorkers. As shown in chapters 7 and 9, two Korean ethnic organizations and a Korean TV station have organized the annual K-pop contests for Korean and non-Korean citizens in the area in their annual Korean cultural festivals. Moreover, a Korean immigrant woman, Hannah Hong, has provided K-pop training for non-Koreans, mostly minority c hildren and adolescents, and K-pop performances for events by non-Korean organizations in the New York area by establishing a K-pop training school and managing it with much financial difficulty. As discussed in detail in chapters 4 and 5, Korean-language leaders made all efforts to get the Korean language a dopted as a foreign language in public schools in Bergen County and New York City. But the adoption of Korean as a foreign language in public schools never guarantees its survival in strong competition with other European languages. Korean immigrant language teachers have made extraordinary efforts to make it poplar by teaching it through students’ experiences of Korean food, K-pop, taekwondo, and Korean etiquette. In return, the popularity of the Korean language in U.S. public schools has further led American students, their parents, and residents (in Harlem in particular) to show great interest in the Korean language and Korea itself. No doubt, the Korean community leaders in the New York area have played the most active role in promoting K-pop and other components of Hallyu relative to those in any other area in the United States and even in any other diasporic Korean community partly b ecause of the immense diversity of ethnic and racial backgrounds of New Yorkers and partly b ecause of the strong multicultural policy of the city. But I also believe that Korean residents in other Korean diasporic communities have played an important role in promoting K-pop and other genres of Korean culture to local residents. There is a special reason why Korean residents in New York and other diasporic communities have been excited about the emergence of South K orea as a global economic power and Hallyu during recent years. Most Korean residents in New York and other diasporic communities remember the sufferings of Koreans under Japa nese colonization for thirty-five years, the almost forced division of K orea into two halves, and the ensuing civil war in Korea. As shown in different chapters, in 2019 in particular, Korean community leaders in the New York area organized a dozen cele bration events in commemoration of the centennials of the Independence Movement Day (March 1, 1919) and the Establishment of Provisional Government of
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Republic of Korea Day (April 11, 1919) and the seventy-fourth anniversary of Korean Independence Day (August 15, 1945). From a global Korean diasporic media (Global Korean), I found that one or more similar celebration events were organized in many other Korean diasporic communities in 2019. Especially because Koreans experienced the Japanese colonial government’s effort to annihilate the Korean language and culture, Koreans in diasporic communities are excited about the global popularity of K-pop and other cultural elements. Thus, they try hard to publicize their ancestors’ sufferings to the residents in their countries of settlement.
ACKNOWLE DGMENTS
Twelve years have passed since I started this project in 2010. I acknowledge that I could not have completed the book without the help by two major groups. The first group consists of sixty-five informants. They are Korean-language teachers in Korean schools, leaders of Korean-language associations and Korean performing arts organizations, o wners and managers of Korean restaurants and supermarkets, Korean association leaders who have organized Korean festivals, and non-Korean customers in Korean restaurants and supermarkets. I would especially like to thank those who have responded to my personal interviews several times over a ten-year period: Jongmoo Cho, Byung-Yeal Huh, Jane Cho, Chong H. Hong, Hyun Joo Hwang, Keum Yun Chung, Yusun Kang, Hye Sung Kim, Yung Duk Kim, Kwang Ho Lee, Sun Geun Lee, Jong Kwon Park, and Dooyi Yoon Sook Park. These informants have provided me with essential data for the book. The second group consists of graduate students and staff members who have worked for the Research Center of Korean Community. They have played an important role in completing the project, partly by collecting many articles and several photo images used in the book from two major Korean dailies in New York and partly by proofreading and editing several versions of the book manuscript. I acknowledge my appreciation to the following research assistants and voluntary workers: Dong Wan Joo, Gaheon Kim, the late In Cha Kim, Eun Jeong Lee, Hyeonji Lee, and Sang Mi Sung. Thomas Chung and Sejung Yim, our center’s longtime staff members, have played a an even more prominent role. Thomas edited three or four versions of the manuscript, while Sejung analyzed census data and public documents used in many of the tables that appear in the book. She also collected and analyzed survey data focusing on Korean immigrants’ transnational cultural practices. Hyeonji Lee and Jong Mu Cho collected the survey questionnaires. I also would like to acknowledge several organizations for providing me with financial support to complete the book. A 2012 fellowship from the International Center for Korean Studies at K orea University was essential to collecting different types of data in the early stages of the project. I greatly appreciate the organization for providing the fellowship and for their patience in waiting for the much-delayed publication of the book. Two grants from the Overseas Koreans Foundation have also been of g reat help, as have two PSC-CNUY grants that assisted in data collection. Finally, I acknowledge that the funds provided by Gagopa and the Research Foundation for Korean Community have covered a large proportion of expenses incurred for research activities related to the book. I express my sincere thanks to the following leaders of Gagopa and the Research Foundation: the late president Francis An, Spencer An, Peter Kihyo Park, Yung Duk Kim, Hae Min Chung, Jea-Seung Ko, and Henry H. Jung. 187
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I would like to express my since thanks to Min Zhou for providing constructive critical comments and making detailed suggestions for revising an e arlier draft of the manuscript. While I am sure that the final version of the manuscript was better than the version she reviewed, I am wholly responsible for any weakness of the book. As usual, my wife, Young-Oak Kim, has been deeply involved in this multiyear project. She completed several personal and telephone interviews, and she often accompanied me to ethnographic research sites for data collection. In addition, she helped me collect Korean-language newspaper articles at home and spent time almost e very day solving one or another internet problem I encountered. She deserves great credit for my academic achievements associated with this book and for my other academic pursuits. My three sons, Jay, Michael, and Tony, and my daughter-in-law, Julia, have been very supportive of my research activities and paid special attention to my health conditions. My grandson, Jake, has brought me a lot of enjoyment. I always feel some regret that my concentration on academic activities for five decades has taken much of the time that I could otherwise have spent on my children in the past, and on my grandson now. My close academic and nonacademic friends have been very supportive of my research activities for many years. Their e-mails, telephone calls, personal communications, and advice have given me strength and encouragement. I would like to share my joy of publishing this book with the following colleagues and friends: Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Kyung-Tek Chun, Steve Gold, He-suk Ha, So Hyun Jang, Charles Jaret, ChangHwan Kim, Chang Jong Kim, Chigon Kim, Seok-ho Lyo, Arthur Sakamoto, Shige Song, SungHee Shin, and In Jin Yoon. Finally, I would like to thank Kimberly Guinta, the editorial director at Rutgers University Press, and Japser Jang, the former editor of the Asian American book series, for finding the value of this book and for processing its publication quickly. I also would like to express my sincere thanks to John Donohue at Westchester Publishing Services for adding the final touches to the manuscript and providing many suggestions for clarity.
NOTES
chapter 2 The Korean Community in Greater New York 1. Korean immigrant redress activists have established eleven “comfort w omen” monuments
and “comfort girl” statues in the United States.
chapter 3 Transnational Cultural Events Held in the Korean Community in 2001 and 2014 1. Asian Immigration scholars have used “geese families” to refer to the transnational split
f amily form of international migration in which the m other accompanies her c hildren to North America and the father stays home to economically support the family. They have often used Korean and Hong Kong immigrant families split in their home countries and the United States or Canada as typical examples of geese families.
chapter 4 Korean-Language Schools 1. Until the influx of post-1965 immigrants, the Korean Church of New York had been the cen-
ter of the Korean community in the New York area, as Korean students at Columbia University, New York University, and other universities in Manhattan and New Jersey comprised the majority of Koreans in the New York area. 2. Theologically more liberal than Korean Protestant churches, Korean Catholic churches make little effort to evangelize non-Catholic members. Moreover, unlike Korean Protestant churches, Korean Catholic churches do not encourage other nonmember Korean Catholics to attend their own churches, partly b ecause they are not financially independent of the local Catholic diocese. 3. Between March and May 2005, I conducted a major telephone survey of Korean, Chinese, and Indian immigrants in five boroughs of New York City using the surname sampling technique to examine business and ethnic attachments among three Asian groups. I used the Kim sample technique for Korean immigrants. I included their religious background, affiliation with religious institutions, and frequency of participation in the religious institution. Of the 530 selected Korean Kims, 277 responded to the survey. 4. Squid Game is a Korean drama series that aired on Netflix in the summer and fall of 2021. The drama was seen by millions of audience members in many countries, especially in the West. Since the content includes traditional Korean c hildren’s games, children comprised the majority of audiences. Korean community leaders in many Korean diasporic communities in Western countries, including the United States and Spain, organized squid games for local adults in the fall of 2021. 5. They named the Korean school Broadway Korean School because the Broadway Korean Businessmen’s Association established it to meet its members’ needs for their c hildren’s ethnic education. But the school was located in downtown Manhattan. Moreover, by the early 2010s, Broadway Korean merchants provided only a few students for the school, with the vast majority of students living in other parts of Manhattan. 6. Remember that about 50 to 55 percent of 1.5-geneation and U.S.-born married Korean Americans have non-Korean partners, mostly white partners (see Min and Kim 2009).
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chapter 5 The Movement to Promote Korean to American Schools 1. This is an exaggeration of the number of Korean schools at that time.
chapter 6 Korean Food 1. Kimchi is the most important part of Korean cuisine that Koreans eat e very day. Popular
types are made from nappa (Asian cabbage) and daikon (Asian radishes). Along with coarse salt used to brine the vegetables, other kimchi ingredients include gochugaru (crushed chili pepper), garlic, ginger, scallions, and sometimes salted baby shrimp or raw oysters (which can jump-start the fermentation process). 2. To make information more accurate, I need to add that non-Korean American supermarkets currently offer vegetables and fruits at almost as reasonable prices as Korean supermarkets. 3. I witnessed in a Korean TV program a foreign resident in K orea telling an announcer that serving a set of free side dishes is the best component of Korean cuisine. 4. Silla was a kingdom located in the southern and central parts of the Korean Peninsula. Silla, along with Baekje and Goguryeo, formed the three kingdoms of Korea.
chapter 7 Korean Cultural Festivals and Parades 1. The other two Chinese enclaves in New York City are located in the old Chinatown on the
Lower East Side of Manhattan and the Chinatown at Sunset Park in Brooklyn. 2. They celebrate Lunar New Year in Vietnam, a Southeast Asian country, because of the cultural impact of China on Vietnam due to the former’s colonization of the latter for many years. Japan has been strongly influenced by Chinese culture, but Japanese do not celebrate Lunar New Year.
chapter 8 Korean Traditional Performing Arts 1. Pungmulnori was the original form (the old farmer’s dance) of samulnori (the modern percussion developed in Korea in the 1970s from pungmulnori). 2. In October 2010, our Research Center for Korean Community installed a Korean totem pole at Queens College, helped by an artist from Seoul Metropolitan City’s Tourism Organization. This is the only Korean totem pole installed at a college in the United States. Another Korean totem pole has been installed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
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INDEX
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and tables. contributions of the book: to cultural studies of Asian Americans, 5, 6, 10–11, 182–183; to Hallyu studies by paying g reat attention to the role of Korean immigrants, 183–184; to studies of immigrants’ cultural assimilation and their transnational linkages to the homeland, 2, 3, 4, 173–175; to studies of the cultural impact of immigrant groups on the host city, 180–181 Gook, Chae Sam, 134 Korean-Chinese coalitions to make the Lunar New Year a school holiday, 127–130; Bill de Blasio, 129; Ellen Young, 83; Grace Meng, 128; Incha Kim, 127; Jimmy Meng, 127; John Liu, 127–128; Margaret Chin, 127; Michael Bloomberg, 128; Peter Koo, 127; Ron Kim, 130 Korean Church of New York, 56 Korean contemporary music and dance per formances in New York in 2019, 164–171; Byung Sun Soh, 165; Hannah Hong’s Born Star Training Center, 166, 166–167; impact of K-pop performances on second-genera tion Koreans’ ethnic identity, 170–171, 172; Korean Cultural Center, 167, 170, 172, 176; K-pop contests, 167, 168 169, 170; K-pop performances at New York City’s landmarks by major groups, 66, 92, 94, 169, 170, 171, 172; local performances, 169–170; orga nizations and training centers, 165–169; Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” 168; transnational, 170–171 Korean Cultural Center, 134, 151, 152, 153, 168, 170, 181 Korean Education Center, 58, 61, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 82, 86, 90, 92 Korean enclaves in Greater New York, 13, 19–22, 27–30; in Bergen County, 26–28; in Flushing- Bayside area, 19–24; in K-Town, 24–26 Korean food festivals, 109–111; Ji Sung Yu, 109; Korean Cuisine Globalization Committee,
110; Korean Food and Cultural Festival, 110; President Lee Myung-bak’s Food Foundation, 109; Seoul Gourmet Week at the UN Delegates Dining Room, 111; “The Taste of Korea” at the Edison Ballroom, 111 Korean foods: at Costco, 103; Korean enclave residents’ advantages for, 106; Korean food inextricably linked to ethnic culture and history, 95; Korean government’s efforts to globalize, 109; Korean grocery stores and restaurants as two major mechanisms of Korean food, 96; Korean immigrants’ frequency of eating, 106 Korean grocery stores and supermarkets, 97–103; before the 1990s, 96, 97; “East Meets West with Food and Culture,” 102; H-Marts, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102; Il-Yeon Kwon, 98, 100; Jong H. Hong, 100; Marja Vongerichten (The Kimchi Chronicles), 102; modeled after supermarkets in K orea, 99; Nongshim America, 103; number of Korean grocery stores in the New York–New Jersey area between 1989 and 2019, 98; promoting Korean agro-fishery products to American customers, 99, 100–103; U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement fully enforced in 2012, 99 Korean immigrants’ access to Korean con temporary music and dance perfor mances through Korean transnational media, 154–162; Korean media in New York, 155–158; survey results of Korean immigrants’ frequency of watching Korean vs. American TV programs for dramas, contemporary music and dance perfor mances, and healthcare information, 159–161; survey results of Korean immigrants’ dependence on Korean vs. American media, 158; survey results of Korean immigrants’ rank order of popular Korean music and dance programs, 162–163; transnational TV and radio stations in New York, 155–163
209
210
Index
Korean immigrants’ access to Korean con temporary music and dance performances using social media and digital technologies, 163–164; Apple TV, 163; Bulhu-ui Myonggik, 159, 162, 164; Hallyu and K-pop, 164; Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” 163; social network services, 164, 171, 172, 174 Korean immigrants’ establishment of ethnic business districts, 22–24, 24–26, 29–30 Korean immigrants’ increasing transnational cultural linkages to Korea, 1–2, 173–175; analytical model of, 8–9, 9, 11; continuity of the immigration flow, 5–6, 93, 177; emigrant state’s role, 4, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 63, 93, 176; ethnic organizations’ role, 6–7, 43, 93, 177, 178; host city’s multicultural policy, 7–8, 41, 180; technological advances, 4, 41–42, 174, 175 Korean immigrants’ role in publicizing and promoting K-pop in New York: K-pop academies, performances by, 92, 94, 170, 171, 172; K-pop contests established by the Korean Cultural Center, 167–168; New York K-pop Academy at Born Star Training Center by Hannah Hong, 166–167 Korean immigrants’ settlement patterns and enclaves in New York, 18–24, 28–29 Korean(-language) schools: clarifications of “Korean school” and Sejong Hakdang, 54–55; classification of, 59; devotion of Byung-Yul Huh to Korean ethnic education, 56–58; devotion of Sun Geun Lee to Korean ethnic education, 67–68; established by ethnic organizations, 61; established by religious organizations, 58–61; established in local areas, 61–62; growth of Korean schools in the post-1965 immigration period, 58; Hee-Dong Park, 69; Hyun Joo Hwang, 55, 68, 69; Hyunglin Kim, 56–58, 69; improvements of during recent years, 62; increasing popularity of, 62–63, 64; Jane Cho, 63; Jin-Eun Park, 66; Jong Kwon Park, 57, 58, 62; Keun Soon Kim, 66, 67; Korean Education Center, 58, 61, 63, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72; Korean Heritage School of Adoptees, 67; Kwang Ho Lee, 56; Kyung Wook Kim, 64; National Association for Korean Schools (Northeast Chapter) as the main supporting organization, 54, 62, 63, 68, 69, 70, 71; New York Korean C hildren’s Festival,
66; operation of Korean schools, 63–68; popularity of Squid Game contributing to enrollment, 63; Sejong Hakdangs, 53, 54, 55; Sun Keun Lee, 66, 67; Tae Myung Hong, 63 Korean Parade and Festival in Manhattan, 114–119; demonstration of bibimbap making by Grand Marshall Committee, 118; Hugh Carey and, 115; Joseon Tongsinsa, 117; Korean American Association of Greater New York, 114, 115; Korean Cultural Foundation of Busan Metropolitan City, 118; Korea Times, 115, 116; 1980 parade, 115; 2010 parade and festival, 116–117; Yonghwa Ha and, 118–119 Korean restaurants: growth in number of in New York–New Jersey area, 105; Korean Food and Cultural Festival, 110; Korean fusion cuisine, 108; main attraction of, 105, 106, 107; in Manhattan before 1970, 103, 105; non-Korean customers at, 108; popularity of in K-Town, 106, 107; popular Korean dishes, 107, 108 Koreans’ immigration patterns, 15–18 Korean teachers’ dedication to teaching Korean with cultural activities, 82, 83, 88–92; East-West School of International Studies, 92; Jane Cho, 63, 82–83, 90, 91; Jounghye Rhi, 86, 88, 91–92; Jungjin Lee, 85, 89–90; Korean American Association of Greater New York, 92; Kyung Hee Kim, 92 Korean Thanksgiving and Folklore Festival in Queens, 119–123; Agro-Fishery Corporation, 122; changes from a transnational to a local festival, 122–123; Keum Yun Chung, 122, 123; Korean Produce Association, 119–122; Michael Bloomberg, 126; Overseas Koreans Foundation, 122; Sandee Brawarsky, 121 Korean traditional music and dance perfor mances in New York in 2019, 148–151; Global Multicultural Expo, 150; Korean Night at Citi Field, 149; March First Inde pendence Movement, 150, 170; New York City Hall, 150; transnational Korean traditional music and dance performances, 150–151; UN organizations, 148–149, 153 Korean transnational cultural events, 32–52; conceptual clarification of transnational cultural events, 34–38; Korean transnational cultural events held in New York in 2001
and 2014, 40–46; Korean transnational cultural events held in Korea in 2001 and 2014, 46–51; measurement of cultural transnationalism, 38–40 Min, Pyong Gap, Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival, 119, 122 movement to include Korean on the SAT II, 74–79; Advanced Placement courses, 78; College Board, 75, 76; donation by Sam Sung, 75; Edward Chang, 74; Foundation of Korean Language and Culture, 75; Korean School Association in America, 64, 69; Kwang Ho Lee, 79; Northeast Chapter of National Association for Korean Schools’ efforts to collect donations in 1989 and 1995, 64, 74–76, 77; number of students who chose Korean on SAT II and mean scores, 77; SAT II foreign-language tests, 76, 77, 78; SAT II Subject Test Data, 77 movement to promote the Korean language in public schools, 87–89; Confucius Institutes established by Office of Chinese Language Council International, 73–74; Democracy Prep Charter School, 84, 85, 86, 87; East- West School of International Studies, 86; Fort Lee High School, 83; Jounghe Rhi, 86; Jungjin Lee, 84, 85, 89, 90; Korean Broadcasting System, 86; Korean Education Center, 82, 83; Korean Language Association, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87; Korean Language Foundation, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 88; Kwang Ho Lee, 56, 67, 78, 79, 81, 88; Kyou-Jin Lee, 103; lobbying California and New York state legislatures to adopt October 9 as Korean Alphabet Day, 79; March First Korean Independence Movement Day, 56; Mark Hayes, 81, 81; master’s program for Korean-language teachers’ certificates with scholarships at Rutgers University, 80–83, 87, 88, 93; National Association for Korean Schools, 76, 78, 79, 80; Northern Valley Regional High School, 83; number of elementary and high schools with one or more Korean-language classes and number of students in the United States and Greater New York, 2010–2014, 87; Palisades Park High School, 81, 82, 83, 90; Queens College of the City University of New York, 80; Ridgefield Memorial High School,
Index 211 83; Seth Andrew, 89; State University of New York at Stony Brook, 80; Sun Geun Lee, 66, 67, 68, 69, 80, 81, 82, 84; Yung Duk Kim, 80, 81, 82 New York City as first city to designate Lunar New Year as a school holiday, 130 Obama, Barak, 129 other prominent Korean traditional performing arts organizations, 143–147; busking (backpacking and street performing), 146; Chwitadae, 146; Chunseung Lee, 146; Jung Bae Park, 144–145; number of, 144; participating in the annual Korean Heritage Day at Citi Field, 147; teaching and performing samulnori and other traditional music and dance genres at many universities, 147; Vong-Gu Park, 145 Park, Sue Yeon, and her Korean traditional music and dance performance group, 138–143, 139, 153; Camp Friendship, 139–140, 142, 146; Korean Traditional Arts Center, 138, 139; performances at Korean Harvest and Folklore Festival and Korean Parade in Manhattan, 138; as recipient of National Heritage Fellowship, 140; salpuli choom (shaman ritual dance) and seungmoo (Buddhist ritual dance) training, 138; Sounds of Korea (Korean dance group), 140; trained Korean pungmulnoripae (Rutgers Korean Cultural Group), 138; various performances, 140–141 Park, Yoon Sook, and her Korean traditional music and dance performance group, 134–138, 135, 152; Folk Artists of New York City, 137; formal retirement in 2016, 138; gayageum and pansori, 134; granddaughter Susan S. Cho’s performance at her farewell performance event, 138; Hosun Kang (her younger daughter), 136; Korean Traditional Music and Dance Institute of New York, 134; Kyung Ha Lee, 137; performance at Duke University, 137; Traditional Art Society of K orea, 137; Traditional Music and Dance Competition, 137; various perfor mances, 136; visit to New York City to explore her music career, 134; Yusun Kang (her older daughter), 135, 135–136
212
Index
Queens Cultural Festival and Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing, 123–127; conflicts between Korean and Chinese communities in Flushing over the name of the parade, 124; Helen Marshall, 126; Jong H. Hong, 123–124, 134; Korean American Association of Greater New York, 126; Korean Culture Society of Eastern U.S.A., 124; Lunar New Year Parade, 123, 125, 125–127; Myung Suk Lee, 125; Queens Cultural Festival, 123–124; Yonghwa Ha, 116, 126; Young Mok Kim, 116, 126 studies of immigrants’ retention of mother tongues, 9–10, 53 technological advances and immigrants’ cultural linkages to their homelands, 4–5, 10, 52 transnational cultural events held in the Korean community in 2001 and 2014, 32–52; conceptualizing immigrants’ cultural
transnationalism, 36–38; Korean transnational cultural events held in Greater New York in 2001 and 2014, 40–46; Korean transnational cultural events held in Korea in 2001 and 2014, 46–51; measurements of cultural transnationalism, 38–40 watching Korean contemporary m usic and dance performances through Korean transnational media, 154–163; Korean ethnic radio and TV stations broadcast in Greater New York in 2019; 155; results of a survey regarding Korean immigrants’ dependence on Korean vs. American media, 158 watching Korean contemporary m usic and dance performances using social media and digital technologies, 163–164; Apple TV, 163; Bulhu-ui Myonggik, 159, 162, 164; Hallyu and K-pop, 164; Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” 163; social network services, 164
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P yong Gap Min is a distinguished professor at Queens College and the Gradu ate Center of the City University of New York, as well as the director of the Research Center for Korean Community. He is the author of six books and the editor or coeditor of fourteen o thers. They include the award-winning Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles and Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations. He published Korean “Comfort Women”: Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement with Rutgers University Press in 2021.