The Shift of Korean Employment Enclaves
Since the 1970’s an estimated 100,000 Korean immigrants have come to the New York metropolitan area, however the number of new immigrants dwindles every year. According to the New York Times, in 2010, 4,600 Korean immigrants arrived to the United States, a shocking decrease from the 31,600 immigrants in 1988. Korean immigrants came to the United States with a “disadvantage” says Pyong Gap Min, a Korean-American specialist who wrote the book “An Institutionally Complete Community” – which gives an insight into Korean business. Min explains, “Koreans are at a disadvantage in the labor market because they have a very high educational level but a severe language barrier,” he says. “With this combination, they tend to do best by owning their own businesses – where they can use their education and ability most effectively.” In the 1970’s Korean immigrants began to open their own grocery stores, nail salons, and dry cleaners, quickly establishing a “quintessential ethnic employment niche”[1] for Koreans.Korean immigrants often opened these establishments in minority neighborhoods where supermarkets were rare. This helped revitalize some areas of the city, however it wasn’t uncommon for Korean businesses to lead to racial conflicts, such as in 1990, when “black demonstrators boycotted the Family Red Apple store in Brooklyn, saying the Korean owners had been hostile towards them.” In his movie, Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee illustrates a similar conflict between Korean shop owners and black Brooklyn residents who view them as distinct outsiders.
While the Korean Produce Association estimates that they own approximately 70% of the city’s grocery stores, there is evidence that this number is dwindling. According to Pyong Gap Min, there were some 2,500 Korean groceries in 1995, and this number had fallen to 2,000 in 2005. The New York Times mentions that The Korean-American Grocers Association says it has half as many members as it did ten years ago. This decline is likely a product of the generation gap between settling immigrants and their children; second generation Koreans seem much less likely to follow their parents into these small business models. We found this to be true during our interview with Heon, a Korean-American immigrant who came to America at the age of 2. Heon’s parents ran a Korean food market for her entire life, but when it came time to retire, Heon did not take over the family business and instead went to college and began working at The Korean Society. She didn’t want to work in a small Korean industry but instead began a career path that involved larger foundations and businesses. This change in job-type – from a small, self-sustained business to working for other businesses – represents a change in both the Korean-American mindset and business opportunity. They have more room for upward mobility in larger corporations and often don’t feel the need to have a large Korean base surrounding them, showing the way second generation Koreans seem to be digging more into the “American” portion of their identity.
Is this "Americanization" of Korean-American's relationship to employment a bad thing? Getting an education opens up more opportunities for second-generation immigrants. It seems like this would be preferred above being confined to a menial job in a small grocery store.
ReplyDeleteAre first-generation immigrants, the ones that might have opened the store, against this assimilation and success?
The data suggests that Korean employment is dwindling in the grocery store department, but how is it increasing nationwide, in other industries?
Maybe there has been a change of niche.
It's important to evaluate the possible implications, or shifts, of a dwindling grocery store industry among Korean-Americans, rather than just saying employment is dwindling.
i think, in some regards, we see it as a good thing. While some might state losing these typical family businesses as a denigration of culture, in some ways it allows the Korean immigrants more opportunities and, as we mentioned, upward mobility in a larger corporation. I also think there is something to be said by the fact that perhaps these are a result of the 2nd generation not needing to surround themselves with other Koreans.
Deleteimplications-wise, i think we have to wonder about the supplies of these Asian products so many of the grocers sell. Does this mean that the availability of these will go down, and therefore affect those who use them in traditions and cuisine to stop their use? Just a thought on how this might effect these ethnic enclaves in other ways than just having these young professionals perhaps move out.
1. It is really great how you were able to make connections to Do the Right Thing and incorporate that here in great context.
ReplyDelete2. I was really intrigued by this article as a whole, but the last paragraph was especially interesting. From the Mexican Immigration group, we did not encounter many 2nd generation immigrants, because they are a relatively new group. It will be interesting if the idea of 2nd gen Korean immigrants moving towards higher education and more business type employment, will translate across other immigrant ethnicities, or if it is specific to the Korean-American culture.
Hey guys - I found this article was very thorough in terms of talking about the Korean employment situation in America. It interests me how everything leads back to the generation gap and the assimilation of the 2nd generation of Korean immigrants. It would seem that it may be more profitable for the individuals of the 2nd generation to branch off and move away from the "quintessential ethnic employment niche". However, what do you think will happen to those who wish to carry on the traditions held by the 1st generation immigrants as this continues to happen and as future generations come into play?
ReplyDeleteKoreans have found relative success with employment in the US, but i would like to understand if this is due to factors in Korea or the US. is the US far easier to manage than Korea is? does bureaucracy weigh down a lot of the job market in Korea, or do people operate with as much efficiency as they do here? In other countries that Koreans have migrated to, do they have the same success in employment?
DeleteThis is interesting to see the in the Korean job-market within the last fifteen years. I just wonder how Koreans are doing after their choice to abandon family-run establishments. In the end, you say that second generation immigrants are electing to go to college and pursue degrees but what happens to them after that? Are they becoming successful in their career paths or is it just money spent for a college education wasted?
ReplyDeletei didn't actualy read the entire article due to lack of interest, but i would agree with [Little Boy Blue (Senegal)] in saying that perhaps it is better that these small groceries are being abandoned. due to Koreans, as a whole, becoming more assimilated into the American culture, they will leave all of these positions like grocer or dry cleaners will be niches that new immigrant groups can fill. Soon, the 4th generation Korean American will be picking up her dry cleaning at a future-stereotypical Angolan dry cleaners.
DeleteWhy would you not finish the article? It is chalk-full of interesting ideas that you can learn from. I think if you stuck with it, some of your questions would be answered. Also, it is pretty disrespectful to say this about a group's hard work. Please think about that before you make an off-handed comment.
DeleteAnonymous...
DeleteWhile I agre with you somewhat, Koreans aren't leaving these positions solely because they are becoming more Americanized (Perhaps we should have elaborated on this more in the Article). While the motives outlined in our article are indeed the integral reasons for the shift in professions, in the specific case of the grocery stores, it has also been effected by society's shift towards bigger grocery stores in the past 5/10 years. In one article we read, a Korean Shop owner said that he didn't even want his son to continue the family business because large grocers, such as Whole Foods in particular, had recently been taking tons of his business. Unfortunately by the time your "4th Generation Koreans" are even buying groceries, these grocery stores might be a thing of the past, leaving new immigrants to find different niche professions.
Why comment if you have not read the article. Your comment was not needed because you have not read the article.
DeleteAll interesting ideas -- and nobody is wrong here! Anonymous commenter: it is somewhat frustrating that you choose to withhold your identity and simultaneously provide some of the more controversial commentaries in these threads. But maybe Anonymous is providing an important perspective: the person who is unafraid to voice strong, perhaps inflammatory opinions on these contentious concepts. (contentious means "relating to or involving differences between contending parties, acc. to Apple dictionary… good word for this subject material).
DeleteThat said, I am in the Korea group, and we did not fully research HOW the Korean-American job market is changing. Without much background knowledge, I could offer that many are receiving educational degrees here in the States and then returning to South Korea. I also think that trends show 1.5 and 2nd generation Koreans utilizing their educations and deeper understanding of American culture to go into more professional, higher-paying careers such as law, architecture, business (not as merchants and grocers), and other professions that require critical thinking skills and cultural literacy.
As a whole, I think the Korean community's emphasis on education is related to their relative financial and social success in America. In readings and interviews, I encountered 2nd Korean-Americans who stressed that their parents focused intently on two things as their kids were growing up: making enough money and getting their kids the best education possible. Funny because they also attributed this intense focus on specific things to the older generation's inability (or "unwillingness" as one woman put it) to assimilate to American culture in terms of diet, language, or cultural norms.
Great article! I liked how you included a connection to Do The Right Thing...I thought the scene in the grocery store was interesting but I did not quite understand the significance, now I do!
ReplyDeleteI am still wondering how so many Koreans managed to open grocery stores in New York City if they were not proficient at English?
I think it's awesome that you found many Koreans to be attaining high levels of education and beginning onto career paths. Did you find that this affected the relationship with their Korean culture? In your other Korean article title "assimilation" it seemed like the children who do branch off from traditional Korean culture run into some sort of conflict with their parents... Did Heon experience any of this?
I don't know if Pyong Gap-Min wrote the book “An Institutionally Complete Community," I think that was just the title of Ch. 6.
ReplyDeleteCan't find the title of his book.
I enjoyed reading this article and like the others I found it very interesting that you found that connection to the movie. I felt like you made some solid points and backed them up with a lot of strong evidence.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be interesting to do research and find connections between the areas where the Koreans opened their grocery stores.
Are their stores more heavily concentrated in some areas or are they pretty evenly spread out?
You mentioned that they many times open up stores in ethnic neighborhoods, do they favor some minority groups over others?
Yeah, I agree. Jumping off of that, I think it would be cool to see what these Korean grocery stores have that other more commercial grocery stores don't have. Is that a coincidence? Did they appeal to the enclave they place their store in?
DeleteAlso, nice one on the movie comparison!
Yeah! I get you people. Why are they different? Do they bring a more personal relationship to the neighborhood? Or do they not because of their different culture? (As seen in "Do the Right Thing.")
DeleteSo in most cases, language is a barrier for immigrant Koreans. What about in the rarer cases when a Korean does know English or learns English quickly? Does he experience the success that a second generation Korean would?
ReplyDeleteIt is not simply that the Koreans do not have the capability to learn English, it is far more complicated. When we spoke with Heon, she told us that her parents strongly identify solely as Koreans even though they have lived here for so long. They don't necessarily reject American culture, but she told us that they - along with many other 1st generation Korean immigrants - remain strongly traditional Korean (on example is that they only eat korean food), and because of this they did not have a great desire to learn english. One of the biggest draws of immigrants opening establishments such as the ones mentioned in our article, is that they do not require extensive knowledge of the english language to run well. So to address your question, I think that an extremely small population of the 1st generation Korean Immigrants knew english well, and they were able to create jobs that better suited their set of skills.
DeleteIf a 1st generation immigrant Korean were to learn English I'm sure he would be able to experience the kind of success that a 2nd generation Korean would (with the right amount of work). I think that once that 1st generation Korean would learn English then a whole new set of opportunities would arise.
ReplyDeleteThrough all your articles you talked a lot about the first and second generation gap--- I think this is very interesting and distinct from a lot of the other cultures we read about. I wonder if all the other groups have this too, or if it is Specific to Korea. If that's true, then I wonder why so? What does that say about their culture in Korea?
ReplyDeleteAnother thing these three articles made me wonder was do Koreans regret their separateness from the rest of New York? Or do they regret the new assimilation that's beginning in the second generation?
It seems like religion plays a huge part in all of the four immigrant groups we studied, showing how much it effects people all over the world. This is where it gets crazy controversial and offensive to some people, but in some ways this might be related to what John Lennon sang, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it may show how hard it is to be an immigrant, how much they rely on religion.