THE KOREAN AMERICANS

A Century of Experience

Americans of Asian descent have had a continuous presence here in the United States for over three centuries: Filipino sailors founded coastal fishing villages in what would become Louisiana in the mid-1700s, Chinese American laborers built the western half of the Transcontinental Railroad, and Japanese Americans revolutionized the farming industry in the late-1800s. Since the revision of the immigration laws in 1965 which finally ended the anti-Asian exclusion policies that began in 1882, more recent immigrants from all over Asia have literally changed the face of America.

The history of Koreans in American began just over a hundred years ago, on January 13, 1903, when the S.S. Gaelic arrived in Honolulu Harbor, carrying the first significant group of Korean immigrants to the New World.

Today, Korean American populations exist throughout the United States, with the largest communities residing in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Northern Virginia. The 2000 U.S. Census reports that the population of Korean Americans is well over one million … and that number is growing briskly.