Mapping the Geopolitical Terrain of the Korean Diaspora

This chapter traces the migration of Koreans immigrating to the United States in the years prior to 1945 and their adaptive strategies upon arrival. In mapping the migration and settlement patterns of Korean immigration the United States, it discusses the geopolitical circumstances that led to Korea’s loss of national sovereignty to Japan in 1910. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Korea emerged as a central battleground for geopolitical power struggles among its neighbors, thrusting Korea into a global system made up of individual nation-states competing for economic and military power. These international rivalries not only precipitated the mass dispersal of Koreans from their homeland but also profoundly shaped their experiences as migrants abroad. Migration to the United States was thus inextricably intertwined with the machinations of international diplomacy, industrial capitalism, and restrictive immigration policies, all of which unfolded within a triangulated web of geopolitical relations involving a colonized Korea, imperialist Japan, and exclusionist United States. This international context created a shared sense of marginality and displacement across the Korean diaspora that provided conditions for the eventual development of a transnational nationalism in search of statehood.