Korean American History
By May Chow | AsianWeek Staff Writer
1864
Birth of Philip Jaisohn, the first Korean to become an American citizen and first Korean American to receive an American medical degree. Born Suh Jae-Pil in the South Cholla province of Korea, Jaisohn uses an Anglicized version of his name upon arrival in the United States in 1885.
1882
Korea and the United States enter into their first treaty, The Treaty of Friendship and Commerce.
1902
On Dec. 22, the first group of Korean immigrants — 56 men, 21 women and 25 children — sail across the Pacific en route to Hawai‘i aboard the SS Gaelic. They land in Honolulu on Jan.13, 1903 to work as immigrant laborers on the sugar plantations.
1903
The Korean Methodist Mission Church is founded by the first group of immigrants from Korea in Hawai‘i. It is the first Korean church outside of Korea.
1904
Syngman Rhee (1875-1965), leader of the Independence Club in Korea, arrives in the United States. He earns a Ph.D. from Princeton University, the first Korean to receive a degree from an American institution of higher learning. He becomes a leader in the Korean Independence Movement and organizes the Korean Methodist Church and the Korean Christian Institute.
1906
The Korean Evangelical Society is organized in San Francisco. The society soon begins publishing the first Korean language newspaper.
1910
Sara Choe is the first of 951 picture brides to come to the United States from Korea.
1911
European American farmers drive 11 Korean apricot workers out of Hemet, Calif. The Japanese consul general offers to help the workers, but the Korean association leaders refuses Japanese assistance. The Korean associations in California then band together to assert their separate identity from the Japanese Americans.
1912
The Korean Youth Corps, which had established a voluntary program offering military training, in Hastings, Neb., under the leadership of Park Yong-man, graduates its first class of 13 students. Park is active in the Korean Independence Movement and believes in the military training of Koreans in the United States.
1913
Fifteen Korean fruit pickers about to start a job in Riverside County, Calif. are surrounded and driven off by a mob of angry unemployed European Americans when they arrive at the train station.
1919
Feb. 20, the School of Aviation is founded in Willows, Calif, when Kim Chong-nim, a successful Korean American rice farmer known as the “Rice King” donates three airplanes. Future pilots are to be trained there to fight against the Japanese empire in the Korean struggle for independence from Japan.
News of the Korean Independence Movement and Japanese suppression mobilizes nationwide demonstrations by Korean Americans. The Korean National Association launches a fund raising campaign for independence and collects $10,000.
On April 14-16, 150 Koreans in Philadelphia attend the first Korean Liberty Congress, designed to draw attention to the plight of Koreans in Japanese-dominated Korea.
1921
A group of Korean students in New York begin publishing the Samil Sinbo newspaper. Among them are Chang Dok-su, Yun Ch’I-yong and Ho Chung, all of whom would play vital roles in South Korean politics after the end of World War II.
1936
Ahn Ik-t’ae (1906-1965), a Korean composer in Philadelphia, completes his composition of the Korean national anthem.
1939
Korean Americans picket in Los Angeles against U.S. scrap iron and airplane fuel shipments to Japan, marking the first public demonstration in the United States against Japan’s invasion of China.
1943
On Dec. 4, Military Order No. 45 is issued, exempting Koreans in the United States from enemy alien status.
The Korean National Revolutionary Party of Los Angeles begins publishing The Korean Independence newspaper. The paper’s politics comes under investigation from the Department of Justice, and deportation proceedings are carried out against the staff.
1945
The United States War Department sets the 38th parallel in Korea, dividing Soviet-occupied North Korea and American-occupied South Korea.
1948
Sammy Lee, a Korean American, wins the gold medal in the men’s diving division at the London Olympic games. He breaks a diving record and goes home with another gold at the 1952 Helsinki games.
On Aug. 14, the new Republic of Korea (South) is inaugurated in Seoul, Korea, with Syngman Rhee as its founder and first president.
1950
The Korean War begins on June 25 when North Korea invades South Korea.
U.S. forces join United Nations troops on June 27. General Douglas MacArthur, who commands U.N. forces during the Korean War, makes plans to assign more than 20,000 Korean Army recruits to U.S. Army units during the war, known as the Korean Augmentation to U.S. Army Program.
1953
May 2 is declared Korean Day in the United States, and U.S. citizens are encouraged to donate money and aid to war-torn Korea.
The truce that ends the Korean War is signed on July 23, 1953.
1956
Harry Holt returns from Korea and brings back eight orphans to his residence in Oreswell, Ore. He establishes the Holt Adoption Agency, which will bring thousands of Korean orphans to the United States.
1965
President Nixon appoints Judge Herbert Choy, a Korean American, to the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Choy is the first Asian Pacific American to be named to a federal court.
1970
Sue Ann Kim becomes the first Korean woman to receive a doctorate from UCLA. Kim was born in South Korea and came to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in 1959.
1983
The nonprofit Korean American Coalition (KAC) is formed to facilitate the Korean American community’s participation in civic, legislative and community affairs.
1992
The Korean community in Los Angeles suffers devastating losses following four days of rioting in response to the Rodney King verdict. Nearly 2,500 Korean businesses are damaged and destroyed.
Korean American businessman Jay Kim is elected to Congress, representing the 41st District of California. He becomes the first Korean American member of Congress.
1994
Margaret Cho becomes the first APA to star in her own television show, All American Girl.
2001
Harry Kim, a legendary defense director, becomes one of the nation’s first Korean America mayors, in Hawai‘i.
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