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KOREAN STUDIES REVIEW


The Korean American Dream:  Immigrants and Small Business in New York City, by Kyeyoung Park.  The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues.  Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1997.  xvii, 228pp.  (ISBN 0-8014-3343-6 cloth; ISBN 0-8014-8391-3 paper).

Reviewed by Roger Janelli
Indiana University

[This review first appeared in
Acta Koreana 2 (1999), pp. 162-63]


Maintaining that the attainment of anjông ("establishment, stability, or security") is the foremost ideal of Korean Americans, this highly informative ethnography looks for reasons why this ideal was created and its consequences for Korean American gender roles, kinship, ethnic identity, religious affiliation, and involvement in local politics.  The book is based not only on the author's original fieldwork among Korean American communities in Queens, NY, but also on an extensive array of published accounts about Korea, Korean Americans, and other ethnic groups in the United States.

After identifying a variety of reasons for emigration from South Korea to the United States, the author offers a multifaceted explanation of why many Korean Americans have gravitated toward seeking anjông in small businesses rather than pursuing wage labor or salaried employment in the New York area.  Noting that many of the entrepreneurs came from rather different (and often more prestigious) backgrounds in Korea, she views this gravitation largely as a responsive strategy for coping with language difficulties and other constraints as well as opportunities in the United States.

This prevalent ideal, the author maintains, provides the motivation for a typical developmental process among Korean Americans.  Ideally, working for others is pursued only in the early stage of residence in the United States, until the requisite family members, skills, information, and capital have been assembled for starting her (or more typically, his) enterprise.  Not everyone who seeks anjông reaches this goal, however, and Kyeyoung Park shows how its attainment demands long hours and much sacrifice, not only from the entrepreneur but also from family and sometimes extended kin.

Two-thirds of the book is devoted to the consequences of pursuing anjông.  Here the author seeks to demonstrate how this new ideal has transformed family developmental cycles, gender relations, the views of women about their own abilities and patriarchy, perceptions of ethnicity, formation of and participation in local political organizations, and involvement with Christian churches.  Rather than view the ideal simply as the cause of all these transformations, however, she contextualizes its pursuit, showing how it produces different outcomes in different situations.  This enables the volume to adhere to a central thesis while still being attentive to wide variations between individual occupations, opinions, experiences, lengths of residence in the United States, and responsive strategies.

Among the difficulties confronting the author have been the major transformations in occupational ideals, family relations, and gender identities in South Korea during the past few decades.  While cognizant of these changes, the author is not entirely successful in incorporating them into her analysis.  A survey conducted a few years ago by the Chungang Ilbo reported that "owning one's own shop or business" was the occupation most preferred by respondents in South Korea.  One wonders, therefore, to what extent the ideal of attaining anjông through small business ownership in the United States ought to be explained in terms of the immigrant experience and conditions in America.  Similarly, the family developmental cycle in Korea has been significantly altered by the gradual disappearance of the notion that eldest sons are primarily responsible for the care of parents.  Yet to make a point about the decreasing importance of the role of eldest sons in the United States, the author states:  "In Korea it is imperative that the eldest son take care of parents, usually by living with them" (p. 107).  Adequate sensitivity to variation and change among the Korean American community and in Korea, however, is perhaps beyond the ability of one scholar.

One of the author's most original chapters deals with changing conceptions of race and ethnicity among Korean Americans.  Here there seems to be little question that such shifts are almost entirely due to experiences in the United States.  One of the most jarring changes, she reports, is that Korean Americans become conscious of themselves as "Asians" only after immigration.  She persuasively shows how variant workplace encounters, particularly those involving the police and court systems in the United States, promote differing constructions and reevaluations of ethnic identities.

The Korean American Dream is a most welcome addition to the literature on Korean Americans.  It reveals their uniqueness as well as their commonalties with other ethnic groups, is well informed by relevant scholarship, presents an original thesis, and conveys a fine sense of the lives and ideas of this vibrant ethnic community.


Citation:
Janelli, Roger  1999
Review of Kyeyoung Park, The Korean American Dream: Immigrants and Small Business in New York City (1997)
Korean Studies Review 1999, no. 9
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr99-09.htm
[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana 2 (1999), pp.162-63]

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