Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life (review)

This study investigates the participation in the California Vowel Shift by Korean Americans in Los Angeles. Five groups of subjects participated in a picture narrative task: first-, 1.5-, and second-generation Korean Americans, Anglo-Californians, and (non-immigrant) Korean late learners of English. Results showed a clear distinction between early vs. late bilinguals; while the first-generation Korean Americans and the late learners showed apparent signs of Korean influence, the 1.5- and the second-generation Korean Americans participated in most patterns of the California Vowel Shift. However, divergence from the Anglo-Californians was observed in early bilinguals’ speech. Similar to the late bilinguals, the 1.5-generation speakers did not systematically distinguish prenasal and non-prenasal /æ/. The second-generation speakers demonstrated a split-/æ/ system, but it was less pronounced than for the Anglo-Californians. These findings suggest that age of arrival has a strong effect on immigrant minority speakers’ participation in local sound change. In the case of the second-generation Korean Americans, certain patterns of the California Vowel Shift were even more pronounced than for the Anglo-Californians (i.e., /ɪ/-lowering, /ɑ/-/ɔ/ merger, /ʊ/- and /ʌ/-fronting). Moreover, the entire vowel space of the second-generation Korean Americans, especially female speakers, was more fronted than that of the Anglo-Californians. These findings suggest that second-generation Korean Americans may be in a more advanced stage of the California Vowel Shift than Anglo-Californians or the California Vowel Shift is on a different trajectory for these speakers. Possible explanations in relation to second-generation Korean Americans’ intersecting gender, ethnic, and racial identities, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to develop an in-depth description of Korean American 1.5- and second-generation young adults’ subjective, lived experiences in two areas: the experience of being 1.5- or second-generation Korean American, and the experience of exploring their ethnic identity—as experienced in a dance/movement therapy workshop structure that incorporates traditional Korean dance/movement forms. Growing up as children of immigrants, the 1.5- and second-generation Asian Americans often experience ambiguity, uncertainty, and tension about their ethnic identity. And this in-between existence causes isolation, alienation, anxiety, vulnerability and identity crises. Dance/movement therapy offers Asian American individuals an opportunity to experience their two different cultural identities and help them integrate those experiences through self-exploration and expression at a bodily level. For the present study, a dance/movement therapy workshop was designed to encourage self-searching and self-expression through creating movements and experiencing Korean traditional dance/movement. Six Korean American young adults participated in the study. Their subject experiences were collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed by phenomenological method. The findings about being a 1.5- or second-generation Korean American experience include: feelings of not belonging to any specific identification; a sense of isolation associated with their ethnic identity; a sense of pride about Korean heritage and their Korean American identity; and bicultural awareness. Exploring ethnic identity through a dance/movement therapy structure workshop incorporating Korean traditional dance/movement forms allowed this population to search deeper within themselves; yielded positive emotional, cognitive gains; helped them to get in touch with the Korean culture. It is seen to be potentially beneficial as an intervention for people who are struggling for ethnic identity.

Building on insights from Min’s (2010) comparisons between Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus, and my findings of elite freshmen Korean racial insularity (Park 2012), I use data from the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (2004) survey to examine the extent to which religion serves to not only preserve ethnicity but also support insularity in young adult 1.5- and second-generation (“second generation” hereafter) Korean Americans. Findings suggest that at the racial level of comparison, second-generation Korean-American endogamy resembles that of white, black, and Latino endogamy; second-generation Korean-American endogamy reflects not only the highest intraracial marriage rate, but also the highest intraethnic marriage rate of all Asian groups in the sample. Further, religious married second-generation Korean Americans have the highest racially homogeneous composition rate in the congregations they attend relative to other racial groups and other Asian ethnicities. In multivariate analyses, these two dynamics of marital endogamy and congregational racial homophily produce strong effects on one another and diminish the unique Korean effect. Findings suggest that these group relational patterns are more evident for second-generation Korean Americans and may have implications for social mobility in a racialized context.

Ethnic Insularity Among 1.5- and Second-Generation Korean American Christians

Scholarly and popular commentators lament the deterioration of civil society as a result of American individualism, a decline in some part based on eroding religious participation. In this context, it is important to ask how second-generation immigrants use religious resources to understand, participate in, and potentially change American religion. Scholars stress that religion was vital for the civic integration of earlier European immigrants. However, studies of religion among our nation's newest immigrants largely focus on how religion serves the immigrant community -- for example by creating job networks and helping retain ethnic identity in the second generation. In this book Ecklund widens the inquiry to look at how Korean Americans use religion to negotiate civic responsibility, as well as to create racial and ethnic identity. She compares the views and activities of second generation Korean Americans in two different congregational settings, one ethnically Korean and the other multi-ethnic. Surprisingly, she finds that the Korean churches de-emphasize ethnicity. They look like other evangelical congregations and are concerned about evangelizing in the context of providing social services. Multiethnic churches, in contrast, use evangelical Christianity to legitimate a political and social justice consciousness that values ethnic diversity and and individualized understanding of faith in the context of a conservative Christianity. Korean Americans in both kinds of churches are deeply concerned about helping those in their local community, including non-Koreans and non-Christians. In multiethnic churches, however, Korean Americans also develop an awareness of local politics and a concern with social justice for other ethnic and racial minorities. Ecklund's work is based on ethnographic data from two congregations in one impoverished, primarily non-white city on the east coast, which provided the opportunity to compare how members of each practiced community service in the same urban context. She also conducted more than 100 in-depth interviews with Korean American members of these and seven other churches around the country, and draws extensively on the secondary literature on immigrant religion, American civic life, and Korean American religion. Her book is a unique contribution to the literature on religion, race, and ethnicity and on immigration and civic life.

In an age of what many call a declining civil society, it is crucial to ask how changes in the racial, ethnic, and religious composition of the United States will influence how we live together as American citizens. Religious communities are among the primary places Americans form civic identities. This book explores how Korean Americans, a growing segment of American evangelicals, use religion to negotiate civic responsibility. It compares Korean Americans in second-generation and multiethnic churches, the most common types of evangelical churches in which Korean Americans participate. The book is based on in-depth interviews with 100 Korean Americans across the country, nine months of ethnography, and a survey of both a second-generation Korean congregation and a multiethnic church with Korean American participants. It is shown that these church types provide Korean Americans with different cultural schema for ethnic identity and civic responsibility. From their congregations, Korean Americans gain different ways of negotiating the image of Asian Americans as “model minorities”. Although scholars stress the conflict inherent in Asian American and African American race relations, some of the Korean Americans in multi-ethnic churches used a religious justification to identify with African Americans as fellow minorities, and thus become more politically active. For scholars, the book reveals the conditions under which organizations constrained by the same institution, in this case American Evangelicalism, provide room for diverse identity constructs among the individuals in these organizations. For everyone else, it argues that the children of non-white immigrants will change the relationship between religion and American civic life.

Despite a rich body of literature on the role of ethnic religion in immigrant communities, there has been relatively little attention paid to the role and impact of ethnic religion on the second generation. This is due partly to the earlier dominance of the assimilationist paradigm, which, based mostly on the experiences of the “old” turn-of-the-century European immigrant groups, tended to postulate a second-generation rejection of religion and ethnicity. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Korean-American Christians in Chicago, this study seeks to reexamine the role of ethnic religion for the second generation in the context of a contemporary non-white ethnic group. Contrary to earlier views, findings from Korean-American church-goers suggest that when an ethnic group is faced with a strong sense of social marginalization believed to arise from its racial status, the ethnic church can play a dominant role in the group's quest for identity and sense of belonging. This paper shows the ways in which the Korean ethnic church, more specifically the evangelical Protestant church, plays a role in the construction and maintenance of second-generation Korean ethnic identity and boundary. Serving as a primary site of the cultural reproduction of the second generation, the Korean ethnic church supports the development of the group's defensive and often highly exclusive ethnic identity in two key ways; first, through a general institutional transmission of Korean culture and second, by the way a set of core traditional Korean values are legitimized and sacralized through their identification with conservative Christian morality and worldview. In demonstrating how ethnic religion can remain highly salient for the second generation under certain situational contexts, this study illuminates the need to rethink the previous views regarding ethnic religion and the second generation, as well as the nature of second-generation ethnicity.

Book Reviews Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots, by Nancy Abelmann and John Lie. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, 272 pp. $29.95 paper. The City of Angels has a long history that is studded with frequent racial riots. As early as 1871 a mob action was taken against defenseless Chinese residents whose homes and shops were destroyed by whites who felt the Chinese were responsible for their unemployment. The riots that broke out in 1965, often labeled the 1965 Watts Rebellion, were certainly part of the long legacy of a city plagued by racial and ethnic conflicts resulting from unjust discrimination . The most recent race riots that Los Angeles experienced in the spring of 1992 were not unique when viewed within the context of race relations in the past. The main characters may have changed, but the stage remains almost the same. The 1992 Los Angeles riots were triggered by people who felt that an injustice had been committed in the verdict of the Rodney King case. Although the rioters may have initially been motivated by a desire to seek vengeance against whites, they quickly turned their anger against Koreans, thereby making the riots appear to be a racial conflict between African Americans and Korean Americans. The media, in their constant search for exciting and unusual coverage for national and international broadcasts, capitalized on this aspect, no doubt contributing to the widespread public perception that the riots were exclusively a conflict between the two minority groups. The authors reject this misconception and attempt to put the 1 992 riots in wider historical, socioKorean Studies, Volume21. ©1997 by University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved. BOOK REVIEWS123 logical, and political perspective. Three major themes, (1) the transnational character of the Korean diaspora, (2) the heterogeneity of Korean Americans, and (3) a critique of American ideologies, run throughout the book, which is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1, "The Los Angeles Riots: the Korean American Story," argues against the notion that the 1992 riots were a repetition of the 1965 Watts Rebellion. When the former is viewed within the context of the latter, then the place of Korean Americans is not only minimized, but also lost. The notion that the 1992 riots were nothing but a reprise of the 1965 Watts Riots distorts what actually happened not only to the Korean American community in Los Angeles, but also to the urban landscape ofAmerica. Such a notion also ignores the harsh realities of the damage done to Korean Americans. More than half of the 3,100 businesses owned by Korean Americans suffered from the riots, with property losses reaching $350 million. In other words, Korean Americans became the chief victims of the riots. Despite the property damage and human suffering that Korean Americans experienced, the conflict cannot simply be characterized as one between Korean and African Americans. Chapter 2, "Reckoning via the Riots," presents a variety of responses to the riots voiced by Korean American residents in Los Angeles during interviews with the authors. Filtering through the perceptual screen of these interviewees were their sense of estrangement in their adopted homeland, their indignation of being betrayed and deceived by the American creed, their sense of helplessness and hopelessness about their future, and finally a great diversity of opinions and thoughts about their own country and American society. The authors believe that this diversity constitutes the transnational nature of the Korean diaspora. Chapter 3, "Diaspora Formation: Modernity and Mobility," presents a brief but cogent history of Korean immigration to the United States since the early 1900s. The authors stress two major themes in their condensed account of the past 100 years of Korean immigration: (1) the diversity of the Koreans who immigrated to America since 1945, and (2) the different perspectives of Koreatown in Los Angeles. The two primary motivations that brought the Korean immigrants to America were the quest for modernization and for economic and probably social mobility. The availability of college education in America, the gender inequality still prevalent in their native society, lack of mobility among peasants and urban workers, and the notion of freedom in America attracted Koreans to the United States. (Two minor...

This article examines the question of (return) migration among highly-skilled, 1.5- and second-generation Korean Americans and the particular social, material and cultural capital Korean Americans may acquire in Korea. Undoubtedly, Korean Americans have occupied privileged positions in Korea especially compared to other ethnic return migrants such as Korean Chinese and Zainichi Koreans. However, my research attempts to trouble a monolithic or homogeneous understanding of Korean American privilege. Using ethnographic research and by paying attention to the multifaceted and diverse experiences of Korean American returnees in terms of age, gender, level of education, class, occupation, religion and locality, I complicate Korean American ethnicity and assumptions of a “privileged” status among Korean American returnees. Such monolithic assumptions about the Korean American experience are often implicitly based on the masculine subject as the primary agent of migration and diaspora. However, attention to gender and intersectionality of Korean American returnees exposes subtle forms of pressure and aggression often obscured within narratives of Korean Americans as an elite and fundamentally masculine group. In this way, this article proffers a far more nuanced understanding of the contradictory and “double-edged” experience of Korean Americans upon return migration.

This chapter first examines Korean American spirituality in light of American evangelicalism and Korean shamanism. Second, it looks at how its ties to traditional evangelicalism reinforce conservative notions of gender. While scholars contend that second-generation Korean American Christianity is not monolithic and varies from first-generation Korean American Christianity, Hearn offers that an analysis of gender in Korean American spirituality contests this view. Though individuals who hold to more progressive understandings of gender roles exist, there remains, on the whole, a conservatism within second-generation Korean American spirituality around issues of spiritual headship and gender. Hearn combines data from the interviews of second-generation Korean American men with ethnography at Christ Church to make his case.

This article explores the role of language in constructing relational identities among 1.5- and second-generation Korean Americans. Using the methodology of discourse analysis, we reveal two ways of articulating social divisions within the Korean American community among 1.5- and second-generation Korean Americans in Los Angeles. We analyze how their narratives present different ideologies about identity as: 1) an attribute determined by factors not under an individual's control or 2) an observable accomplishment, capable of being easily modified by individual choice. We analyze the discursive features of these two discourses, which we call the discourse of dispositions and thediscourse of agency, and we discuss the implications of this research for theories of race and ethnicity.

Globalization and advances in technologies permit contemporary immigrants to build their lives through transnational engagement in activities that help reaffirm their worth in host societies. Although previous studies focused on the children of immigrants’ transnational engagement, a dearth of research is available regarding the extent of involvement and relevance of the children of immigrants’ participation in sports across national boundaries. The purpose of this study was to examine second-generation Korean Americans’ experiences and perspectives on transnational sports and to discover the role they play in their lives. Data analysis involved thematic analysis. The findings of this study reveal that the Korean Student Association Olympics (KSA Olympics) provided the Korean Americans a space to establish both ways of belonging and promote self-development, which help mediate identity crisis. Implications for this study concern the extent to which these activities impact Korean Americans’ identity negotiation while facilitating their sustainable transnational engagement in activities which occurred allowed for the improvement of affirmative ethnic identity, ethnic language fluency, contributing to the promotion of health welfare of Korean Americans.

In order to understand Korean American immigrants'adjustment to American society, it is important to understand how their life rituals and ethnic identities maintain or change over time and across immigration generations. To achieve this goal, this study examined how Korean Americans who resided in the New York City metropolitan area and New Jersey State performed life rituals and formed ethnic identities. A total of 18 Korean immigrants participated in one-on-one in-depth interviews and the interview data were analyzed with the themes. The results showed that Korean Americans performed life rituals integrating both Korean and American cultural aspects. Many Korean Americans attempted to perform life rituals based on American cultural holidays and procedures. However, a majority of these Koreans also strived to maintain Korean ethnic identities and also practice traditionally Korean life rituals as a way to preserve this ethnic identity. These findings suggest that across time and generation, Korean Americans prefer to maintain their Korean cultural identity, while not shunning the adoption of typical "American" rituals. The way that Korean Americans practice and develop identities differs very little across immigration generation. These findings provide insight on how the Korean government may support foreigners and immigrant families in South Korea and Korean Americans' acculturation processes in the U.S.

Second-Generation Korean Americans and Transnational Media: Diasporic Identifications looks at the relationship between second-generation Korean Americans and Korean popular culture. Specifically looking at Korean films, celebrities, and popular media, David C. Oh combines intrapersonal processes of identification with social identities to understand how these individuals use Korean popular culture to define authenticity and construct group difference and hierarchy. Oh highlights new findings on the ways these Korean Americans construct themselves within their youth communities. This work is a comprehensive examination of second-generation Korean American ethnic identity, reception of transnational media, and social uses of transnational media.

This study compared the ethnic identity and well-being of Korean Americans who were adopted internationally with immigrant/U.S.-born Korean Americans and Korean international students, as well as the relationship between ethnic identity and well-being for each group. One-hundred seven college students completed measures of ethnic identity and subjective well-being. Immigrant/U.S.-born Korean Americans had higher ethnic identity scores than the other two groups. Immigrant/U.S.-born Korean Americans also had higher positive affect scores than international students. Ethnic identity was positively correlated with positive affect for all three groups (r = .27 to .34) but was negatively correlated with negative affect for international students (r = –.44). Overall, the results suggest that ethnic identity, although slightly lower than in non-adopted peers, is relevant to the well-being of adopted Korean American college students.