When the Korean world in Hawaii was young

책 소개

FOREWORD The Ewha Institute for the Humanities at the Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, Korea with the support of the Korea Research Foundation began in 2007, collecting and preserving materials related to Korea’s historic living past, its government, people, and culture. In 2008 Roberta Chang, a Korean American born in Hawaii, was invited to speak at Ewha Woman’s University about Koreans in Hawaii. Ms Chang presented a video documentary, The Legacy of the Korean National Association. At that time Ms. Chang donated 35 copies of interviews with the second generation of the first Koreans who immigrated to Hawaii between 1903 to 1924. The interviews had been taken over a span of nearly 30 years in Hawaii starting from 1993. After studying the documentaries, I obtained Ms Chang’s consent to transcribe nineteen of the valuable interviews. It took me three years to select, study, transcribe and document the findings. The result is the publication of this book by the Ewha Institute for the Humanities. These Korean Americans who were interviewed were descendants of the first Korean immigrants to Hawaii who came in large numbers, officially sanctioned by the Korean Government in 1903. Actually, their parents were the first in such a large number to officially arrive and settle in the United States. Witnessing the situation in which many of the second generation of Korean immigrants were passing away, Ms Chang felt the desperate need to record them before they all died. Most of these second generation Koreans were born in the 1910s and 1920s. They told stories of their parents and themselves. There have been other researches on the first Korean migrants to Hawaii and their picture brides through several photographs and written records; however, this is a rare book based on verbatim interviews speaking in English taken from videos in which we can feel the nuances of their personal experiences and deep thoughts. Ms Chang also furnished relevant photographs among her 1,000 collection on the subjects discussed by the interviewees. Through oral interviews captured on videos, people can describe a specific point of their lives affected by the tenor of their time which becomes part of history. The 19 oral histories in this book show how in a foreign land similar people gather together and depend on each other; how fear in people evokes religious faith; how they firmly unite to help their homeland in need; and how they turn against each other according to opposing leaders. These oral interviews of the early migrants to Hawaii are, thus, private experiences and yet, also vivid records of Korean history in the making. The Korean migration to America started at the end of the Chosun dynasty when several men, suffering from the fall of their nation and poverty, answered the call of recruiting laborers to the Hawaiian sugarcane plantations. The men who came to Hawaii without spouses settled after they started families with the picture brides who began to arrive in 1910. The precarious homeland, eventually, became a Japanese colony and lost all freedom and economic power. The liberation of the homeland seemed to rest more on the efforts of the people living abroad than from within. The Hawaiian-Koreans supported the March First Independence Movement in 1919. The Korean Military in Manchuria was first supported by funds gathered in the form of tithe coming from the Korean churches or the Korean National Association and subsequent newly formed Korean organizations. The leaders of the Korean society in Hawaii appealed for political help directly to Washington. After the liberation from Japan, what had enabled Dr. Syngman Rhee to become the first President of the Republic of Korea was receiving the American government’s recognition. His political and economical foundation were first established in Hawaii. All of the 19 interviewees introduced in this book were involved in someway with President Rhee, either supporting or against him, revealing again tha…

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