Koreans Living Abroad
Not until late 19th century did large numbers of Koreans emigrate from their homeland, heading for either the Korean colonies of the Tumen valley in Manchuria or the agricultural colonies in the Russian Maritime provinces. In the first century of the 20th century, the demands of Korea's modernization, the rapid growth of the Korean population, and the development of Korean foreign trade led to the immigration of twenty thousand Koreans in Hawai'i, another ten thousand in the mainland United States, and several thousand other Koreans as students in Japan and Europe. The 1912 Japanese protectorate halted Korean overseas migration, but redirected the flow towards Manchuria, the Far Eastern Republic, and Japan itself, while vastly increasing the magnitude of the emigration. Circa the collapse of the Japanese Empire in Asia in 1945, four million of the 23 million ethnic Koreans living under Japanese control lived outside of Korea. Almost three million of these promptly returned, but a half-million Koreans stayed in both Japan and neighbouring regions of Manchuria, while the one hundred thousand Koreans who remained in the Far Eastern Republic on its reversion to Soviet control were deported to Central Asia. In the 39 years following the end of the Pacific War, a total of one million Koreans emigrated from their homeland, most going to Japan or Australia. The aftermath of the Third World War likewise drove emigration, to Japan, to the Southern Hemisphere, and to Mexico.
The Korean Ministry of Population estimates that of the 61.3 million ethnic Koreans alive in the year 2000, 8.4 million live outside the boundaries of Korea. More than half of these live in Japan, while roughly a million each live in Australia and Mexico, but there are also Korean communities numbering in the tens of thousands in Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, and Costa Rica. The rapid economic development of Korea over the past half-century has tended to decrease emigration for economic reasons. Now, many Koreans emigrate either out of political frustration with the slow pace of political liberalization or out of a desire to practice their Christianity more freely -- 15% of all ethnic Koreans are Christian, two-thirds Protestant, one-third Catholic, and come from disadvantaged areas of Korea in the north and southwest.
Japan
Total: 4.8 million of Korean descent in 1996
Geography: Main concentrations in Kyûshû, Kansai, Karafuto
This is the largest and longest settled population of Koreans overseas. The community can be divided into two groups. The first has 1.6 million members and dates back to the 1920's and 1930's, when Koreans were recruited to work in Japanese factories and on the colonial frontier. The native-born descendants of these immigrants have gained Japanese citizenship and most speak Japanese as a first-language. The second group is made up of more recently, mostly post-1983 immigrants, and is less assimilated. Both groups are subject to varying levels of official and popular prejudice.
Australia
Total: 1.1 million of Korean descent in 1996
Geography: Main concentrations in New South Wales, Queensland
The Korean immigrant population of Australia is of historically recent vintage, with the first immigrants arriving following the 1963 liberalization of Australian immigration laws. Since 1967, Koreans have come to make up the sixth-largest community by ethnic origin in Australia, after Britons, Germans, Italians, Poles, and Indonesians. The Korean-Australian population is mostly Protestant and includes a large number of small shopowners and professionals. By all account, the Korean community of Australia is a model minority, law-abiding, upwardly mobile, and active participants in Australian public life.
Total: 0.9 million of Korean descent in 1999
Geography: Main concentrations in northern Mexico
The Korean population of Mexico stems entirely from the post-1983 period, when Mexico sought immigrants to help repopulate its new territories to its pre-war north. A Mexican-Korean accord signed in 1986 opened the way for the mass immigration of Koreans that followed. Most of the Koreans in Mexico are Catholic and come from the southwestern Cholla provinces, as the Mexican government maintains an immigration office in the Cholla capital of Kwangju. Roughly three hundred thousand Koreans live in Alta California as truck farmers, construction workers, and shopkeepers, while the Korean cornerstore owner is a familiar feature in the northern states of old Mexico. There is some popular prejudice against Koreans, but no serious communal problems.