Teaching East Asia: Korea Teaching East Asia: Korea | Page 249

Korean American History
Edward T. Chang is Professor of Ethnic Studies and founding Director of the Young Oak Kim
Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California at Riverside. He earned his
B.A. (1982) in Sociology and Ph.D. (1990) in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and M.A. (1984) in
Asian American Studies at UCLA. Professor Chang is considered as one of the foremost
interpreters of the Los Angeles civil unrest and race relations and has received many prestigious
awards for his contributions in the field of Ethic Studies and Korean American history.
Professor Chang is author of eight books, seven edited volumes, and numerous articles in The
Los Angeles Times, Korea Daily, and the Korea Times. His most recent book is the Korean
translation of Lonesome Journey published by Korea University Press in 2016. He translated the
Korean book Unsung Hero: The Story of Col. Young Oak Kim (2011). Chang is also the author
of "Ethnic Peace in the American City: Community Building in Los Angeles and Beyond," (with
Jeannette Diaz-Veizades) in 1999. His commentaries have aired on the Korea Broadcasting
System and Radio Korea.
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A Concise History of Korean Americans
Edward T. Chang
Today, Korean Americans are a growing ethnic group whose history in the United States reaches
back to the late 1800s. The first Koreans came to the U.S. as diplomats, students and ginseng
merchants. Official Korean immigration to the U.S. began in 1903. A group of 102 Koreans
boarded the SS Gaelic and sailed to Hawaii. On January 13, 1903 those pioneering Koreans
landed in Honolulu. Today, January 13 is recognized and celebrated by the United States as
Korean American Day.
Koreans in Hawaii established the first Korean American church in November 1903. However,
most of these Korean worshipers resided and worked on plantations and were dispersed across
several islands. The Korean Methodist Church of Hawaii provided a haven for Korean laborers
who had no formal community of their own because they lived on plantations as workers. The
living arrangements on the plantations resembled a pyramid, where the owner lived on the top of
the hill and the supervisor known as the Luna, resided in the middle acting as a buffer, and the
diverse labor force lived in cottages or camp sites.
Korean laborers resided on these plantations with other minorities including the Chinese,
Japanese, and later Filipinos. In fact, Hawaii had become a multiethnic/multiracial society
because the plantation owners continually imported foreign labor – 400,000 workers from 33
different countries to work on the sugar plantations from the 1860s to the 1940s. Koreans in
Hawaii formed their own organizations including a village council for each plantation. The
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