Ari rang - Part I The Korean American Journey

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

On January 13, 1903, a ship from Korea arrived in Hawaii. It was full of immigrants seeking opportunity in America. They kept coming. This migration had its roots in the occupation of Japan beginning in 1894. Japan had defeated China. They had staged in Korea and didn't plan on leaving. The more Koreans heard of America, Land of Independence, the more they came and came; more than 7,000 in three years. Then migrating stopped suddenly.
Japan's Imperial rise continued and stopped the migrating of Koreans to give Japanese workers the edge on these opportunities. Japanese influence grew and colonized Korea. Then Japan annexed Korea in order to try to obliterate Korea as a nation. This made Koreans in Hawaii now have no country.
Wilson mitigated peace between Russia and Japan. For this, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but Korea was helplessly used. To increase their power, they wanted to become more involved with U.S. politics but they were barred from coming to the mainland at that time. This was because Japan had absorbed Korea and Koreans were thus associated with Japan. This was so ironic; association with Japan was what they loathed.
They remained in Hawaii and focused on education. They organized the Korean National Association, started twenty newspapers and organized military boot camps to train to fight Japan. At this time, several leaders rose that seemed to have the interest of raising awareness of the plight of Korea and to actually defeat Japan and regain power. Two of these leaders were Syngman Rhee and Ahn Ho Chan Park.
World War II seemed hopeful with Woodrow Wilson's self-determination of nations. This made Koreans think this was the time to fight to free Korea. On March 1, 1919 in Korea, the nationals held a nonviolent resistance rally. Japanese attacked and killed many demonstrators. Koreans in America converged on Philadelphia and staged independence rallies. To them, Philadelphia represented freedom.
Korean churches maintained the Korean communities and support of the Korean movement. Syngman Rhee had voted as president to a government in exile. This government in exile was in Shanghai. The attack of Japan at Pearl Harbor that brought America into the war gave rise to Koreans that America would push Japan out of Korea.
This eventually did happen but with no happy solution. Korea was divided along the 38th Parallel by the allies. America was given the south to help with reconstruction and Russia the north. Unfortunately, Russia only had in mind to build a communist empire out of the north and so they did. The U.S. withdrew most troops. By 1950, the communist north attacked the south. There was so much chaos and ruin before the U.S. got involved. Thousands fled the northh to asylum in the south. All that was accomplished by this conflict was to hold the north above the 38th Parallel. There were once again the horrors of war and separation of family members.
Today, South Korea has rebuilt, urbanized most of their society and is among the top twelve most industrialized nations. Still, there is the hope that one day, north and south will be reunited. Unfortunately, the north insists that it be reunited under communist regime, and so the struggle continues.

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