COVER STORY : L.A. Threatens, Seoul Beckons : South Korean Emigration to the U.S. Has Reached a Turning Point. Fewer Are Coming, and Many Already Here Are Returning Home.

While staring at the maze of hotels, office towers and traditional Korean palaces that line the streets of downtown Seoul, Hae Ok Sung can’t help but question her plans to move to the United States.

On one hand, the lifelong Seoul resident relishes the thought of emigrating to Los Angeles to be reunited with her mother and two sisters. But since she, her husband and their two children first applied for immigration visas several years ago, her excitement has been tempered by a nagging fear that venturing to the United States is a mistake.

“Is L.A. still a good place?” Sung asks. “I want my sons to have many opportunities in L.A., but I’m afraid of the new world. I visited L.A. right after the riots, and I saw the burned-down buildings. I was afraid.”

As South Korea continues to blossom with economic opportunities while the reputation of the United States deteriorates, many Koreans with plans to emigrate to the United States are reconsidering their options. Some are choosing to stay in South Korea, while others are emigrating to other countries or simply visiting the United States.

Last year--the same year 2,300 Korean-owned businesses in Los Angeles were burned, looted or damaged during the spring riots--only 19,359 Koreans emigrated to the United States. Not since 1972 had that number fallen below 20,000.

At the same time, a record number of the roughly 800,000 Koreans now living in the United States are returning to their native country.

These trends, scholars say, signify a major turning point in the history of Korean immigration.

Korean immigration to the United States began at the turn of the century when more than 7,000 Koreans came to Hawaii, at the time a U.S. territory, to work on the island’s sugar plantations. More than 1,000 women arrived between 1910 and 1924 to marry the laborers.

The Immigration Act of 1924 temporarily curtailed the admission of non-Europeans to the United States, but Korean immigration resumed around 1951 and then began to surge after Congress established new immigration quotas for Asian countries in 1965.

“In 1965, the situation in Korea was very bad,” said Kwang Kyu Lee, an anthropology professor at the prestigious Seoul National University. “There was anxiety about North Korea, and many people were living in poverty. People thought that going to the States would provide them with more opportunities.”

Korean immigration grew steadily from 1965, peaking in 1987 when 35,849 Korean immigrants arrived in the United States. Since that time, however, Korean immigration has dropped considerably.

Along with fewer immigrants coming to the United States, the social status of Korean immigrants also has changed. While many earlier immigrants were college-educated and from the upper middle class, the majority of immigrants now coming are from the middle and lower classes and do not have college degrees, said Robert Butler, an immigrant attache at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Seoul.

“For individuals in the the middle class who see themselves as having very little opportunities to advance in Korea, the U.S. is still attractive,” Butler said. “They feel they have nothing to lose.”

But well-to-do Koreans are less inclined to emigrate from their homeland because of growing economic opportunities in South Korea, said Nancy Abelman, an anthropology professor at the University of Illinois who has done extensive research on Koreans and Korean-Americans.

“There’s a real sense among the elite that Korea is a viable country and that they can partake in a cosmopolitan lifestyle here,” said Abelman, who is doing research in South Korea this summer. “This is a fairly recent phenomenon. With the arrival of the 1988 Olympics, Koreans became more confident because they knew Korea had become a world-class player.”

Just three decades ago, South Korea was a poor nation trying to recover from the devastation of the Korean War. About 60% of the population was engaged in agriculture on small farms, and the country’s per capita gross national product, which measures goods and services produced in a nation, was less than $100. Today, South Korea is a highly industrialized society with a per capita GNP of about $6,749.

Seoul reflects this success with its wealth of banks, department stores, deluxe hotels and high-rise office buildings. Prosperous Koreans, many of whom earned their fortunes in recent years, travel around the city in expensive sedans and shop and dine at stores that rival any first-rate Western establishment.

Abelman said many Koreans talk about their country’s meteoric economic rise with a sense of smugness.

“When Koreans compare themselves to people from the same social class who left for the United States, many people here believe they are doing much better,” she said. “There is a huge sense here that somehow Korean-Americans have failed.”

Once considered the land of opportunity, many Koreans now regard the United States as a country plagued by crime, a troubled economy, racial tensions and a vast array of other social problems.

And although many Koreans still would like to send their children through the American education system or go to the United States to be reunited with family members, fewer Koreans are choosing to abandon their homeland for a country that they believe is on the decline.

“Immigration is not very exciting anymore because people in Korea have heard about the bad times Korean-Americans have experienced,” said Young Chang Park, deputy director of the Korean Health Education Information and Referral Center in Los Angeles. “Many Koreans came here thinking they could be millionaires overnight. But when they came here, they were disappointed.”

A Seoul woman, who asked that her name not be used, said she and her husband are sending their oldest son to a private high school in New Jersey because they believe he will receive a better education there. In South Korea, teen-agers spend much of their time studying for grueling college entrance exams, and only 25% of the nation’s high school graduates are admitted to college.

“We don’t tell people we sent him to the U.S. because it has already caused trouble,” the woman said from her Seoul apartment. “Some people say we were avoiding the Korean educational system, and other people say that Koreans who go to America use drugs, drive around in BMWs and are lazy and arrogant.

“I get very angry when I hear such things. We just thought our son would have more opportunities in the U.S.”

The Los Angeles riots, or “L.A. pokdong ,” as it is known in Korea, further cast the United States’ image in a negative light.

During the riots, millions of Koreans turned on their television sets and watched Korean-owned shops in Los Angeles go up in flames. They read stories about Korean merchants losing their life savings in one day, and saw Korean business owners taking up arms to protect their stores.

“People thought the U.S. was a land of opportunity, but the riots broke this conception,” said Hyun Mi An, assistant manager of the Hyundai International Emigration Corp., a government-sponsored agency that helps Koreans immigrate to other countries. “People now think it’s better to stay in Korea, or they want to move to Australia, New Zealand and Canada.”

Between May, 1992, and April, 1993--in the aftermath of the riots--Korean immigration to the United States dropped by 26% from the same period the year before, according to figures from the Korea International Cooperation Agency, a government-sponsored agency that helps Korean investors emigrate.

Jong Ho Choi became edgy when she was asked about what effect the riots had on her. Although the 23-year-old Yonsei University graduate looks forward to moving to the United States to be reunited with her parents and younger brother in Rialto, she worries about what kind of life she will lead in America.

“The riots didn’t affect my father’s business, but it did affect him mentally,” she said. “He got very anxious and that made our whole family anxious.

“People here think going to the U.S. to study for one or two years is nice, but becoming a U.S. citizen is not desirable. People don’t want to give up their Korean identity.”

Instead of applying for an immigrant visa, which would allow them to reside permanently in the United States, many Koreans are choosing instead to travel to the United States as tourists, foreign students or other types of temporary visitors.

Since 1988, the year the Korean government began relaxing passport restrictions and allowing more Korean citizens to travel abroad, the number of temporary visas issued to Korean citizens has risen dramatically.

In 1987, the U.S. Embassy in Korea issued 106,096 temporary visas. Last year, that figure more than doubled to 269,485 visas.

United States immigration officials say they are concerned that some of these “tourists” may be remaining in the United States illegally because they do not want to wait several years for immigrant visas or are not eligible to receive them, since most visa applicants must have relatives in the United States or jobs awaiting them.

But U.S. officials say they do not believe illegal immigration is the main reason immigration figures are dropping.

“(South) Korea is a different country now than when I first came here in the early 1980s,” said Butler, the INS representative. “There isn’t the same push to get out of here as there was before.”

Butler said along with slowing immigration, more Koreans are giving up their U.S. immigrant status and re-establishing residency in Korea. In 1984, only 1,338 immigrants returned to Korea. Last year, that figure jumped to 6,487, according to U.S. Embassy figures.

Although many of these expatriates are eager to return to Korea, their homecoming is often bittersweet.

“You hear people say, ‘The beggars have come back’ when they talk about Korean-Americans who have come back to Korea,” Abelman said. “Some people resent Korean-Americans because they left the country. They feel they didn’t have enough faith in Korea to stick it out through the hard times.

“One man told me that when he was asked to contribute money to Los Angeles riot victims, he swore at them. He said he didn’t feel sorry for them because they left their motherland.”

Hyemoon, a 21-year-old college student in South Korea who asked that her last name not be used because she was embarrassed by her situation, attended Palos Verdes High School and enrolled at Loyola Marymount College for one year before returning to South Korea. Her parents still reside on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

“When I went to school there, I took an ESL (English as a Second Language) course, but I still had trouble understanding English,” she said. “I made some American friends, but all I could say was, ‘Hi,’ ‘How are you,’ things like that. I was very lonely.”

“It was a good experience for me, but I really missed Korea and I wanted to come back home.”

Not everyone, however, longs to return to South Korea--or believes it is practical.

“Many people talked about going back to Korea after the riots, but people can’t go because it’s very awkward,” said Jin Lee, whose Compton grocery store was destroyed during the riots. “We’ve become so Americanized that we won’t fit in, and we also can’t afford to live in the same homes we sold because the price has gone up so much.”

Other Koreans don’t have any regrets about coming to the United States, said Young Ki Yoo, a pastor at Young Nak Presbyterian Church in Downtown Los Angeles.

“The yearning of the homeland is there, but I think many Koreans who came to this country many years ago have done very well and are satisfied with their lives,” he said.

And despite the growing negative image of the United States in South Korea, many Koreans still want to move there.

Pyeon Chan, a 25-year-old English instructor in Seoul, said he cannot wait to move to Florida next year to work as an interpreter for a Korean baseball team.

“I’m not afraid at all,” he said. “A lot of people said the American dream has been broken, but I think it still has a lot of opportunities to offer.”

Nevertheless, Korean leaders in Los Angeles say they are worried that most Koreans do not share Chan’s views.

“Not many new immigrants are registering at the church,” Yoo said. “This worries us. If immigration stops, the Korean-American community will change dramatically in 10 to 20 years.”

Yoo said the Korean community could lose political and economic clout if fewer immigrants come to the United States, and he also is concerned that current immigrants tend not to be college-educated or highly skilled.

“The economic opportunities in America are getting worse and many of these newer immigrants don’t have the skills or education to get good jobs,” he said. “With immigration-bashing surfacing (in the United States), and when you have Korean immigrants less well-educated and struggling, the stigma of all Korean people will get worse.”

South Korean Immigration to U.S.

After a steady increase from 1965 to 1987, the number of South Korean immigrants coming to the United States began to drop considerably. In 1992, only 19,359 arrived here--the lowest number in 20 years. Along with slowing immigration, a record number of South Koreans in the U.S. are moving back to their homeland or oming here on temporary visas.

On the Cover

Downtown Seoul is booming. Improved economic conditions in South Korea, along with the deteriorating reputation of the U.S., is leading an increasing number of Koreans to conclude they would be better off in their native land.

There has been steady decrease in the number of South Koreans emigrating to the U.S., while a record number of Koreans disenchanted with life here are returning to South Korea.

Last year’s rioting further tarnished the U.S.’s reputation as a land of opportunity.

* ADJUSTING TO NEW LIFE: Helen Hong is a counselor at the Korean Youth & Community Center, which helps immigrants adjust to a new life. 22