Howard Chang transcribed from ' THE ILSE : first generation Korean immigrants in Hawaii, 1903-1973: excerpts from: The Ilse author: Wayne Patterson publisher: University of Hawaii Press & Center for Korean Studies, UH available in local Honolulu bookstores (I bought this in a bookstore in the Ala Moana mall)
...102 arrived aboard the Gaelic the morning of January 13, 1903.....first wave of what would become an influx of nearly 7,500 persons in sixty-five ships over the next two and a half years......Korean immigrants far fewer in number than the 50,000 Chinese who arrived between 1853 and 1900 and the 180,000 Japanese who arrived between 1885 and 1907.......great majority of Korean immigrants had lived in the city rather than the countryside before immigrating to Hawaii.......Koreans left the plantations faster than any other ethnic group in the history of Hawaii.....urban background of most Koreans who came to Hawaii made them unfamiliar with agricultural work.....Koreans were, in fact, proving to be mediocre plantation workers...toiled mostly in nonagricultural occupations before immigration....were widely dispersed geographically within Korea...had a bi-modal class background as a group: most from the lower classes with little or no education but a small, significant number were literate, educated and from the upper classes (yangban)........no such heterogeneity existed among the Japanese immigrant farmers and certainly very few from the Chinese gentry class emigrated to Hawaii.......despite best efforts of the plantation owners, it was impossible to keep the Koreans there. .. the city held greater allure for the Koreans, Honolulu but also Wahiawa.....after peaking at about 5000 in 1905, one quarter of the Koreans left the plantations every year thereafter....unlike the Koreans, over 50% of the Chinese immigrants and 98,000 of the Japanese workers returned to their homelands....most Koreans saw themselves as better off in Hawaii.........some first generation Korean households not only treated their sons differently from their daughters, but they treated their boys differently according to age. Traditionally the oldest son was just below the parents in hierarchy and as such received preferential treatment......Finally, the Korean immigrants had a strong Christian connection....this Christian connection distinguishes them from the Chinese and Japanese immigrants.......evidence suggests that many of the Koreans had some contact with American missionaries in Korean cities prior to their departure....small number of returnees to Korea and the evidence that most Koreans saw themselves as better off in Hawaii suggest that most Korean immigrants saw themselves ..and would soon become...settlers and not sojourners....two reasons: first the chaotic conditions characterizing the final years of the Choson dynasty...second ...in 1910 Japan annexed Korea and many of the immigrants felt stateless......Koreans were psychologically able to adapt more quickly than their sojourning counterparts from Japan and China....had no choice but to "make it" in Hawaii. Professor Patterson goes on to mention the noted hunger of the Korean plantation workers to read the discarded newspapers of the plantation administrators/owners and to gain knowledge of the culture of their new land........"refuted the notions that the Koreans were stupid....learn English faster than either the Chinese or the Japanese despite the fact the latter two had been in Hawaii longer...." ...only about one in ten of the Korean immigrants between 1903 and 1905 were women, nearly all of those accompanying their husbands.......were virtually no single women for the bachelors to marry.....we do know that most of the picture brides came from the Kyongsang Province in southeastern Korea....includes the port city of Pusan, Taegu and Masan.....portrait of the picture brides fleeing rural poverty is borne out by personal accounts... attracted by the wealth they believed awaited them......hopes were wildly unrealistic...the entire transaction centered around the exchange of photographs.......for the young women...go-between typically brought along a Japanese photographer to take pictures of them dressed in their traditional silk dress--the chima chogori.............as for the photographs of the grooms, deception was the norm...first, men usually twice the age...second rigors of plantation work made them look even older...third, long hours in sun gave deep tan--not pale complexion of the genteel wealthy... would rent or borrow a suit...take pictures in front of plantation manager's house, car (with foot casually on running board).....when a daughter married, tradition had it that she became the property of her husband's family......in traditional Korea, only sons were provided with formal education... she left her family and home forever in 1917..wanted to escape the oppression women experienced in a society still governed by Conflucian precepts...had a burning desire to travel and study...