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Koreans in Mexico

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Korean Mexicans
Mexicanos Coreanos
재멕시코 한국인
Monument in Merida, Yucatan commemorating 100 years of Korean immigration.
Total population
11,800 South Korean nationals residing in the country (2011)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Yucatán, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, León, Querétaro, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Ecatepec, Chiconcuac, Colima, Nayarit, Aguascalientes, Toluca, Valle de Bravo, Tijuana
Languages
Korean, Spanish[2]
Religion
Christianity, Mahayana Buddhism[3]
Related ethnic groups
Korean diaspora, Asian Mexicans

Korean immigration to Mexico began in 1905. The first Korean migrant workers settled in Yucatán, while more recent migrants from South Korea often choose Mexico City as their destination.

Migration history

Early 20th century

In the late 19th century, social instability and natural disasters in Korea resulted in increasing emigration from the country. At first, emigrants chose nearby destinations such as Northeast China and the Russian Far East. By the early 20th century they began going farther afield, for example in 1902 to Hawaii.[4] However, increasing Japanese influence on the Korean peninsula made this controversial: Japanese labour brokers were opposed to Koreans choosing Hawaii as their destination, believing this would interfere with Japanese migration there and they lobbied Japanese foreign minister Komura Jutarō to address the situation.[5] Meanwhile, in Mexico, there was increasing interest in hiring workers from Asia to address labour shortages in the agricultural sector, but the Japanese government placed restrictions on the recruitment of labour migrants for Mexico due to the expectation of poor conditions and the Chinese government was also opposed due to previous experiences with poor treatment of Chinese workers in Peru.[6]

It was against this background that labour brokers began advertising in newspapers in the Korean port city of Incheon in 1904 for workers willing to go to Mexico to work on henequen plantations for four or five-year contracts. Working conditions proved to be harsh with workers being beaten or jailed for either not working or not producing the status quo.[7] A total of more than one thousand were recruited and departed from port of Chemulpo, present (Jung District), Incheon on board a British cargo ship on 4 April 1905, despite efforts by the Korean government to block their departure. They arrived at the Mexican port of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca about a month later on 8 May 1905, from there taking trains to their final destination: Progreso, Yucatán.[8]

By the time their contracts ended, most had not even saved enough money to pay for the return voyage to Korea, despite earlier promises of high wages by recruiters, and furthermore saw little attraction in going back to their no-longer-independent homeland. Most thus settled in Mexico, either continuing to work on henequen plantations or moving to various cities in the country.[9] Some made efforts at onward migration: a Korean American community organisation in San Francisco tried to bring some of them to Hawaii, but to no avail. In 1921, after the collapsing demand for henequen fiber threatened their livelihoods, 288 Koreans set off for Cuba from the port of Campeche.[9] About eight hundred of their descendants still live in Cuba.[10]

Late 20th and early 21st centuries

Korean restaurants in Mexico City.

A new wave of Korean migrants began coming to Mexico in the 1970s. These consisted both of people coming straight from South Korea, as well as members of Korean diaspora communities in other countries of the Americas — particularly from Paraguay and from Argentina — seeking to try their luck in Mexico.[11] Up until the late 1980s their numbers seem to have remained quite small; the Asociación Coreana en México counted only 64 families and 15 or 20 single people among its members.[12] Larger numbers began arriving in the 1990s: according to South Korean government statistics, the size of the community reached its peak in 1997 with around 19,500 individuals before falling to 14,571 by 2005.[13]

Demography

Population estimates

According to the 2011 report of South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on overseas Korean populations, 11,800 overseas Koreans resided in Mexico, down by 2% since the 2009 report. Among them were 876 Mexican citizens, 1,607 South Korean citizens with Mexican permanent resident status, 388 South Korean international students, and the remainder being South Korean citizens with other types of visas. Mexico City was their most common area of residence, with 6,340 recorded as living there; 1,300 others lived in Jalisco state, with the remainder in other locations.[1]

The 2010 Mexican census recorded 3,960 people who responded that their place of birth was South Korea, up from 327 in the previous census in 2010. This made South Korea the 18th-largest foreign country of origin in Mexico, but those born in South Korea comprised only about 0.4% of the 961,121 total foreign-born persons the census found to be residing in the country.[14] A 2012 report by Mexico's National Institute of Migration, based on 2009 statistics, stated that 534 North Korean citizens and 6,028 South Korean citizens lived in Mexico. A plurality but not a majority of each of those groups (258 and 2,261) lived in Mexico City.[15] By migration status, 317 of the North Koreans and 2,970 of the South Koreans were non-immigrants.[16] Each group had a sex ratio somewhat imbalanced towards males.[17]

Other sources also report a wide variety of population estimates. A September 2013 article in The New York Times, citing officials at the Korean Cultural Center, Mexico City, stated that "at least 12,000 Koreans now call Mexico home".[18] The article stated that in 2010 the Korean population in Mexico was ten times as large as the said population in 2000.[18] In contrast, a 2008 report from the Los Angeles Times claimed that the descendants of early henequen plantation laborers alone might number as many as thirty thousand.[19]

Centers of Korean population

Mexico City's Zona Rosa district has a Koreatown known as Pequeño Seúl (Little Seoul), filled with businesses established by the new migrants.[20][21] There, many Korean restaurants can be found as well as hair salons, bakeries, and daycare centers.[22] In the 1990s, others also set up shop in Tepito.[23][24] Other districts in Mexico City where Koreans live include Colonia Juárez, Santa Fe, Interlomas, Polanco and Anzures.[25]

Other centers of Korean population include:

Culture

Language and education

Henequen plantation workers, initially seeing Mexico solely as a place of sojourn rather than of settlement, initially made little effort to learn neither Spanish nor the local indigenous languages.[33] However, as their stay in the country became permanent, they slowly began to abandon the Korean language, and their descendants speak only Spanish.[19] In contrast, more recent migrants retain Korean as their dominant language. A 2006 survey of 160 Korean migrants in Mexico City, both those from South Korea and those from other Korean diaspora populations of the Americas, found that 92% used Korean as the language of communication with their families; 6% used both Korean and Spanish, and only the remaining 2% used Spanish exclusively or English as well.[2] With regards to their command of Spanish, 21% stated that they could understand newspapers, 52% stated that they could hold simple conversations, and the remaining 27% stated that they could only make simple greetings or had no command of the language.[34]

The Korean community has one weekend school aimed at preserving knowledge of the Korean language among heritage speakers: the Escuela Coreana en México, located in Mexico City. For two decades from the 1990s up until 2010 it occupied a variety of rented facilities, but that year it was able to acquire its own premises thanks to US$850,000 donations by companies and other benefactors to the Asociación de Residentes Coreanos en México.[35] It is currently located in Zona Rosa.[35]

The Korean-language paper newspaper Hanin Diario (Korean: 한인신문; Hanja: 韓人新聞; RR: Hanin Sinmun) has been published in Mexico City since the 1990s.[25][36]

Religion

Early Korean migrants to Mexico included a few Christians whose emigration was motivated by the desire to find a place to freely practice their religion.[8] Among more recent arrivals, both Christians and Buddhists are present. The former planted many churches in the 1990s, while the latter established two temples in the 2000s.[3]

Branches of the World Mission Society Church of God, a South Korea-based church, are present in Estado de México, Morelos, Puebla, Nuevo León, Jalisco, with the Mexican headquarters in Tacuba, Mexico City.[37]

Other organisations

Korean friendship pavilion in Mexico City

The Korean Association in Mexico (Template:Lang-es, Korean: 멕시코 한인회) organizes concerts,[38] protests at the North Korean embassy,[39] and other activities.

In Polanco, Mexico City, there is a Korean cultural center, Korean Cultural Center, Mexico City, with activities both artistic (exhibitions, traditional music concerts, folk art shows) and academic (language and Korean history courses).[40]

In Mérida, Yucatán there is a Museum of Korean Immigration (Museo Conmemorativo de la Inmigración Coreana a Yucatán).[41]

The Hospital de la Amistad Corea-México ("Korea-Mexico Friendship Hospital") is located in Mérida, Yucatán.[42]

In literature

One literary portrayal of the early Korean community in Mexico was Kim Young-ha's 2003 Korean-language novel Black Flower, translated into English by Charles La Shure.[43] The book won Kim the 2004 Dong-in Literary Award as well as a nomination for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize.[44]

Notable individuals

Dai-won Moon is a South Korean-born, naturalized Mexican martial artist and is known as the "Father of Mexican Taekwondo".[45]

Ssoni Park is a hair stylist with a salon in Pequeño Seúl (Zona Rosa) who attracts clients from across the country including many models, actors and singers, including the Banda el Recodo, Klezmeron, friends of architect Michel Rojkind, and those who sought her services after she appeared in the credits of a short film by Raquel Romero Monterrubio.[20]

Digital creator Sujin Kim, better known as Chingu Amiga, is also one of the best-known Koreans in Mexico and Latin America. She moved from South Korea to Monterrey in 2016 to work in the Mexican headquarters of Korean companies as a graduate economist,[46] she studied International relations at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León in the Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations.[47][48] Kim also worked as a Korean-language teacher at the same university and on her own website.[49] In 2021, she gained recognition on social media with short videos in which she shared her life and her experiences as a Korean living in Mexico, gaining more than 20 million followers on TikTok and 7 million on YouTube.[50]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b 재외동포 본문(지역별 상세), Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 15 July 2011, p. 147, archived from the original on 26 May 2012, retrieved 25 February 2012
  2. ^ a b Kim 2006, pp. 10, 12, 19
  3. ^ a b Kim 2006, p. 8
  4. ^ Park 2006, pp. 137–138
  5. ^ Park 2006, pp. 139–140
  6. ^ Park 2006, pp. 138–139
  7. ^ Park 2006, pp. 140–141
  8. ^ a b Park 2006, p. 143
  9. ^ a b Park 2006, p. 147
  10. ^ "Five Generations On, Mexico's Koreans Long for Home", Chosun Ilbo, 16 August 2007, archived from the original on 5 March 2015, retrieved 27 September 2013
  11. ^ Kim 2006, p. 3
  12. ^ Kim 2006, p. 6
  13. ^ Kim 2006, p. 9
  14. ^ Conociendo nos todos: Los nacidos en otro país suman 961 121 personas (PDF), Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, May 2011, archived from the original (PDF) on 27 April 2013, retrieved 26 September 2013 ()
  15. ^ Rodríguez Chávez & Cobo 2012, p. 37
  16. ^ Rodríguez Chávez & Cobo 2012, p. 41
  17. ^ Rodríguez Chávez & Cobo 2012, p. 47
  18. ^ a b Cave, Damien (21 September 2013), "For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico", The New York Times, archived from the original on 27 December 2014, retrieved 24 September 2013 Page 3/4 Archived 2018-11-23 at the Wayback Machine: "Officials at a newly opened Korean cultural center here say at least 12,000 Koreans now call Mexico home,[...]" and "There were 10 times as many Koreans living in Mexico in 2010 as in 2000." — Also introductory title caption says "at least 12,000 Koreans are said to live in Mexico".
  19. ^ a b Becerra, Hector (16 August 2008), "A cultural awakening", Los Angeles Times, archived from the original on 21 December 2014, retrieved 25 September 2013
  20. ^ a b Arvide, Cynthia; Álvarez Montero, Carlos (3 January 2011), "Corea-México, la nueva Corea en la Zona Rosa" [Korea-Mexico, the new Korea in the Pink Zone], Chilango (in Spanish), archived from the original on 28 September 2013, retrieved 26 September 2013
  21. ^ Grajales, Jorge (24 July 2012), "Se hablo coreano", TimeOut Mexico, archived from the original on 27 May 2014, retrieved 26 September 2013
  22. ^ "Comunidad Coreana". Once Noticias. 8 April 2011. Retrieved 16 October 2014.[dead YouTube link]
  23. ^ Quinones, Sam (24 July 1996), "Koreans Battle the Odds in Mexico City's Oldest and Poorest Barrio", Pacific News Service, archived from the original on 17 May 2008, retrieved 26 September 2013
  24. ^ Sánchez, Raymundo (30 September 2003), "La mafia coreana controla ya en Tepito la venta de armas" [Korean mafia controls arms sales in Tepito], La Crónica de Hoy, archived from the original on 22 June 2013, retrieved 26 September 2013
  25. ^ a b "Ocho mil coreanos radican en el Distrito Federal" [Eight thousand Koreans settled in Federal District]. Excelsior. 20 August 2011. Archived from the original on 29 October 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  26. ^ ""Coreanos en Tijuana agradecen a la naturaleza", Frontera, Oct 1, 2012". Archived from the original on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  27. ^ "Comunidades extranjeras en Jalisco, Gobierno de Jalisco website". Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  28. ^ ""Especiales Corea/Lengua Coreana en la UAN", Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit UAN". Archived from the original on 22 May 2023. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  29. ^ ""Koreatown tiene su centro en Apodaca", El Financiero". Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  30. ^ ""Samsung Plant"
  31. ^ ""Querétaro, el nuevo territorio japonés", El Financiero". Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  32. ^ "Pesquería y su nueva realidad". El Universal. 7 December 2015. Archived from the original on 28 January 2016. Retrieved 22 January 2016.
  33. ^ Park 2006, p. 146
  34. ^ Kim 2006, p. 16
  35. ^ a b Bautista Gutiérrez, Raúl (15 September 2010), "Sede definitiva de la Escuela Coreana en México", Korea.net, archived from the original on 14 July 2014, retrieved 27 September 2013
  36. ^ "Campo Libre: CoreaMex". Chilango. 21 December 2010. Archived from the original on 13 October 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  37. ^ Juan Pablo Proal. "Una secta coreana en México". sectas.org. Archived from the original on 19 October 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  38. ^ "Ofrece la pianista Hee-Ah Lee concierto benéfico en el DF". El Universal. 11 May 2008. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  39. ^ "Protestan frente a embajada de Corea del Norte en México por ejercicios nucleares". Crónica. 24 March 2013. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  40. ^ "Centro Cultural Coreano", Time Out Mexico City, 21 January 2013, archived from the original on 6 June 2013, retrieved 16 October 2014
  41. ^ "Museo Conmemorativo de la Inmigración Coreana a Yucatán", Sistema de Información Cultural, Secretariat of Public Education (Mexico), archived from the original on 20 October 2014, retrieved 16 October 2014
  42. ^ "Hospital de la Amistad Corea-México". Yucatán State Government Website. Archived from the original on 23 October 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  43. ^ Ford, Glyn (27 June 2013), "Black Flower by Kim Young-ha", Asian Review of Books, archived from the original on 2 October 2013, retrieved 28 September 2013
  44. ^ Black Flower, 2012 Longlist, Man Asian Literary Prize, 2012, archived from the original on 27 July 2013, retrieved 28 September 2013
  45. ^ "Moon Dai-won: father of Mexican taekwondo". Korea Times. 19 July 2013. Archived from the original on 19 October 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
  46. ^ Telediario, Editorial. "Sujin Kim: La vida de una coreana en Monterrey". Telediario México (in Mexican Spanish). Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  47. ^ LR, Redacción (6 November 2022). "¿Quién es Sujin Kim, la influencer coreana que brilla en Latinoamérica?". larepublica.pe (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  48. ^ Por fin me gradué en mexico✨✨, archived from the original on 16 January 2023, retrieved 16 January 2023
  49. ^ "Sujin Kim: Chingu amiga, una coreana y su aventura de vivir en México | Periódico Zócalo | Noticias de Saltillo, Torreón, Piedras Negras, Monclova, Acuña". Periódico Zócalo | Noticias de Saltillo, Torreón, Piedras Negras, Monclova, Acuña (in Mexican Spanish). Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  50. ^ Andrea Saint Martin (20 December 2022). "Chingu amiga: la creadora coreana que enaltece la cultura mexicana". Business Insider México | Noticias pensadas para ti (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 16 January 2023.

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Jeong Gyeong-won [정경원] (2005), 멕시코, 쿠바 한인 이민사 [Korean immigrant history in Mexico and Cuba], Seoul: Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Press [한국외국어대학교 출판부], ISBN 9788974643362, OCLC 67230178
  • Kim Young-ha; Charles La Shure, translator (2012), Black Flower, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 9780547691138 {{citation}}: |author2= has generic name (help)
  • Paek, Pong-hyon (1968), The Koreans in Mexico: 1905-1911, M.A. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, OCLC 36766565
  • Yi Ja-gyeong [이자경] (2006), 멕시코 한인 이민 100년사 [Mexico's Korean immigrants: 100 years of history], Seoul: Hanmaek Munhak Chulpanbu [한맥문학출판부], ISBN 9788991367302
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