Korean Immigrant Communities Research Articles

해외이주 한인 여성의 문화적응 스트레스와 정신건강 : 재영 한인 여성을 중심으로

본 연구는 해외이주 여성의 문화적응 스트레스와 정신건강수준을 파악하고 인구사회학적 요인, 사회적 관계 및 사회적 지지 요인에 따른 차이를 파악하고자 영국에 거주하는 152명의 여성을 대상으로 이루어졌다. 주요 연구변인의 현황을 파악하기 위하여 빈도분석, 상관관계분석, 분산분석을 실시하였다. 여성의 문화적응 스트레스는 5점 척도 기준에서 2.50으로서 중간 정도수준이었으며, 우울은 4점 척도에서 1.66으로서 중간보다 약간 낮은 수준이었다. 문화적응 스트레스와 우울은 정적 상관관계를 나타냈으며, 영국거주기간, 결혼상태, 경제적 상황에 따라 문화적응 스트레스에 차이가 있었으며, 직업유무, 경제상태에 따라 우울 수준에 차이가 있었다. 또한 현지인과의 관계빈도가 높고 사회적 지지 수준이 높은 집단이 문화적응 스트레스가 낮았으며, 사회적 지지가 높은 집단은 우울수준도 낮았다. 이러한 연구결과를 바탕으로 해외 이주 여성의 적응과 정신건강에 대한 관심과 개입의 필요성, 이들의 문화적응과 정신건강문제에 있어서 다양한 요인을 고려할 필요성과 함께, 새롭게 이주하여 문화적 전환으로 인해 심각한 스트레스를 경험하고 있는 여성들에게 정착이나 스트레스 관리와 관련된 지역사회서비스가 필요하다는 것을 제시하였다. The present study set out to explore the acculturative stress and mental health(depression) of Korean women living in Britain according to socio-demographic factors, social relations and social supports level. 152 Korean women's data were collected and analyzed with frequency, correlation, ANOVA. Analysis revealed that women's acculturative stress and depression level was 2.50(moderate) and 1.66(slightly low) respectively. Acculturative stress level showed correlation with depression level. Among demographic variables, acculturative stress was significantly different from residence period in Britain, marriage and economic state and the level of depression was also different from job and economic state. The group which has frequent relationships with British and high level of social supports showed low acculturative stress. The group has high level of social supports also showed low depression. These findings highlight the importance of concerns and interventions about acculturation and mental health of Korean immigrant women and community services for the new immigrant women to improve their acculturation and mental health.

Formation and Development of Ethnic Entrepreneurship of Koryo Saram in Kazakhstan

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of sovereign states opened a new page in the history of the “Koryo saram ”. Opposite to other ethnic minorities, that have chosen the strategy of leaving the former Soviet Central Asian Republics, the Koreans have stayed but they are again being forced to adapt and this time to the nationalizing states. The Korean Immigrant communities living scattered over the world are demonstrating one specific feature - their special ability to adapt themselves in the host countries. Koryo saram are, in this sense, a remarkable case. The first generation of Koryo saram tried as fast as possible to settle down on the land of the tsarist empire and later of the Soviet Russia. The second generation did not have time to taste the first fruits of their labor in the new lands. They were forced to repeat the mission of the previous generation, that is, to adapt after the Deportation of 1937 to the conditions in a new land, namely Central Asia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the third generation also turned out to be pioneering because they were forced to adapt to the new sovereign states of the post-Soviet area.

Severe Underrepresentation of Women in Church Leadership in the Korean Immigrant Community in the United States

Women are severely underrepresented in leadership roles and positions in Korean immigrant churches in the United States. Largely based on ethnographic research or casual observations, researchers have pointed to one or another of the following as a central factor in this underrepresentation: (1) the influence of Korean Confucian patriarchal traditions, (2) the conservative theological position of Korean churches, and (3) the practical need of Korean male immigrants to create high‐status positions through ethnic churches. Although these three factors are intertwined and even reinforcing in the empirical world, this article intends to illustrate them empirically and pull them into a more analytic scheme. In particular, this article analyzes: (1) denominational affiliations of churches in South Korea and their official positions on female ordination to ministers and elders; (2) denominational affiliations of Korean immigrant churches in New York and their positions on women ordination; and (3) the proportion of women head pastors in churches in Korea and that of women head pastors in Korean immigrant churches in New York

Attitudes toward Domestic Violence in Korean and Vietnamese Immigrant Communities: Implications for Human Services

The present study examined the effects of gender, ethnicity, acculturation level, age, and education level of Korean and Vietnamese Americans on their attitudes toward domestic violence. The sample consisted of 229 Koreans and 184 Vietnamese, recruited from ethnic communities and college campuses in southern California. Participants completed a brief questionnaire, which included the Revised Attitudes toward Wife Abuse Scale (RAWA) and the Marin and Marin Acculturation Scale as well as demographic variables. Gender, education, and acculturation level emerged as significant predictors of attitudes toward domestic violence. More specifically, men as well as those who were less acculturated and less educated were more likely to endorse pro-violence attitudes. While there were no significant ethnic differences in the global attitude toward domestic violence between the two immigrant groups, there were specific inter-ethnic differences on select items of the RAWA scale.

Community Forces, Social Capital, and Educational Achievement: The Case of Supplementary Education in the Chinese and Korean Immigrant Communities

Extraordinary Asian American educational achievement has often been credited to a common cultural influence of Confucianism that emphasizes education, family honor, discipline, and respect for authority. In this article, Min Zhou and Susan Kim argue that immigration selectivity, higher than average levels of premigration and postmigration socioeconomic status, and ethnic social structures interact to create unique patterns of adaptation and social environments conducive to educational achievement. This article seeks to unpack the ethnic effect through a comparative analysis of the ethnic system of supplementary education that has developed in two immigrant communities — Chinese and Korean — in the United States. The study suggests that the cultural attributes of a group interact substantially with structural factors, particularly tangible ethnic social structures on which community forces are sustained and social capital is formed. The authors conclude that "culture" is not static and requires structural support to constantly adapt to new situations.

A New Challenge to Korean American Religious Identity: Cultural Crisis in Korean American Christianity

This paper explores the relationship between Korean immigrants to the United States and their religious identity from the cultural point of view. Most scholarly studies on Korean immigrants in the United States have been dominated by sociological approach and ethnic studies in examining the social dimension of the Korean immigrant communities while neglecting issues concerning their religious identity and cultural heritage. Most Korean immigrants to America attend Korean churches regardless their religious affiliation before they came to America. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the fact that Korean church has provided a necessary social service for the newly arrived immigrants. Korean churches have been able to play a key role in the life of Korean immigrants. Korean immigrants, however, have shown a unique aspect regarding their religious identity compared to other immigrants communities in the United States. America is a nation of immigrants, coming from different parts of the world. Each immigrant community has brought their unique cultural heritage and religious persuasion. Asian immigrants, for example, brought their own traditional religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism. People from the Middle Eastern countries brought Islamic faith while European Jews brought the Jewish tradition. In these immigrant communities, religious identity and cultural heritage were homo genously harmonized. Jewish people built synagogue and taught Hebrew, Jewish history, culture, and faith. In this case, synagogue was not only the house of worship for Jews but also the center for learning Jewish history, culture, faith, and language. In short, Jewish cultural history was intimately related to Jewish religious history; for Jewish immigrants, learning their social and political history was indeed identical with leaning of their religious history. The same can be said about the relationship between Indian community and Hinduism. Hindu temples serve as the center of Indian immigrantsin providing the social, cultural, and spiritual functions. Buddhist temples, for that matter, serve the same function to the people from the Asian countries. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tibetans, and Thais have brought their respective Buddhist traditions to America and practice and maintain both their religious faith and cultural heritage. Middle Eastern people, for example, have brought Islamic faith to the United States, and Mosques have become the center for learning their language, practicing their faith, and maintaining their cultural heritage. Korean immigrants, unlike any other immigrant group, have brought Christianity, which is not a Korean traditional religion but a Western religion they received in 18th and 19th centuries from the West and America, back to the United States, and church has become the center of their lives in America. In this context, Koreans and Korean-Americans have a unique situation in which they practice Christianity as their religion but try to maintain their non-Christian cultural heritage. For the Korean immigrants, their religious identity and cultural identity are not the same. Although Korean church so far has provides the social and religious functions to fill the need of Korean immigrants, but it may not be able to become the most effective institution to provide and maintain Korean cultural heritage. In this respect, Korean churches must be able to open to traditional Korean religions or the religions of Korean origin to cultivate and nurture Korean cultural heritage.

North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity (review)

BOOK REVIEWS135 grant communities. I am also unsure whether we can interpret conflicts between Korean immigrant entrepreneurs and wholesalers, landlords, and government agencies as Jewish-Korean conflict. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether the middleman minority thesis, and a focus on Black-Korean relations, could adequately explain the predominantly Latino involvement in looting of Koreatown during the 1992 riot. Finally, any examination of intergroup conflict should qualify the classic conflict aphorism that "intergroup conflicts increase internal solidarity," instead of blindly following it. The author also invokes Black nationalism as an additional factor transforming Black dissatisfaction into concerted antiKorean action. However, the role of Black nationalism in this "anti-Korean" process has yet to be spelled out, to say nothing of the fact that it is treated in an overly simplistic and unrealistically reifying manner. As a further, minor point of contention, I would like to point out that the author's critique of the media is skewed toward mainstream and African American media, not Korean American media. For instance, Min took as evidence for some claims a report by the Korean media, which maintained that an investigation by the FBI indicated that Black gangs were responsible for planning the L.A. riots and deliberately chose to loot and burn Korean-owned stores (91). The data on the Los Angeles Korean immigrant community and Black-Korean conflicts in L.A. were also added to the book at the last minute, and do not square with New York data. Despite significant numbers of Korean immigrants working for others (52% in the author's 1986 Los Angeles survey ), the author's bias toward self-employed small business owners is palpable . Are the only Korean immigrants without their own small businesses single women and illegal residents, as the author claims? Despite this criticism, Caught in the Middle is a much needed and timely publication on Korean American communities. This book will be of both theoretical and empirical interest to scholars of Korean and American studies as well as to social scientists. I admire its utility as a potential textbook that skillfully examines important topics of immigrant entrepreneurship and minority-minority conflict, and that tests the sociologically significant middleman minority thesis. Kyeyoung Park University of California, Los Angeles North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity, by Sonia Ryang. Boulder: Westview, 1997. 256 pp., $64.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity examines a community that defies easy characterization: the Affiliates of the General Associa- 136KOREAN STUDIES, VOL. 22 tion of North Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryun) or "overseas nationals of North Korea," who numbered some 260,000 in 1990. The collapse of the Japanese empire in 1945 found some 2 million Koreans in Japan, largely Japanese colonial and wartime labor recruits. Created in 1955, Chongryun followed in the footsteps of the leftist pro-North League of Koreans, which suffered violent suppression by the Japanese state and Allied powers in the late 1940s. Today, Chongryun Koreans inhabit a highly ambiguous cultural and political space in Japan. Ironies and seeming incompatibilities abound. In spite of their North Korean affiliation, some 97% of Chongryun Koreans hail from homelands that now comprise South Korea. Although the association was founded on an ideal of repatriation to the North, the vast majority of Chongryun Koreans today have no real desire to ever reside in North Korea. Despite being "overseas nationals of North Korea," Chongryun Koreans have no voting rights and little legal standing in North Korea, a situation exacerbated by lack of normalized relations between Japan and North Korea. Finally, the primary language of most Chongryun Koreans is Japanese and their cultural affiliation is with Japan. Amid these ironies, the daily lives of Chongryun Koreans traverse seemingly incompatible milieus as they touch upon both the Japanese and Korean languages, capitalist Japan and Communist North Korea, and heterogeneous understandings of late 20th-century Asian Pacific geopolitics . Sonia Ryang takes these ironies and seeming incompatibilities as her points of departure, offering an extended argument about the day-to-day workings and reproduction of Chongryun identity. She portrays the heterogeneity and complexity of Chongryun Koreans, who have often been vilified for their ideological unity and faith in North...