Fulbright Forum

The Korea Fulbright Commission invites you to

“Korean Immigration to Hawaii, 1902-1905:
A Look at American and Japanese Policy toward Late Choson Korea”

presented by Dr. Wayne K. Patterson on Friday, May 30th, at 7:00 p.m.

To confirm your plan to attend, please reply to executive.assistant@fulbright.or.kr or call 02-3275-4004 for more information. This month’s Forum will be held at the Fulbright Building (6th floor conference room). See www.fulbright.or.kr for a map and directions.
 
The Fulbright Forum serves as an occasion for Fulbright grantees to share their research and experience with members of the academic community in South Korea. Citizens of any country may attend. Feel free to share this invitation with others.

Summary:

From 1902 to 1905, about 7,500 Koreans went to work in the sugar cane fields of Hawaii.  While the sugar planters wanted them as strikebreakers against the Japanese, the American Minister to Korea, Horace Allen, wanted to assist the planters because he opposed the US policy of neutrality and non-intervention in Korea, wanted the State Department to support the independence of Korea, and thought that increasing Korean economic ties with the United States would help accomplish this. Japan, by contrast, wanted to halt Korean immigration to Hawaii.  The Japanese Foreign Minister learned that Japanese sugar cane workers were leaving the low wages of Hawaii for the higher wages of California, sparking an anti-Japanese exclusion movement that Japan as a greatz power could not accept.

Wayne Patterson holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer at Yonsei University in 2006.  He has taught Korean history at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of Kansas, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of South Carolina, Korea University, Ewha University, and the University of Wisconsin, among others.  He is currently Korea Foundation Visiting Professor at the University of the Philippines.  His books include The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii, 1896-1910 (Hawaii, 1994) and The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903-1973 (Hawaii, 2000).  He is currently working on a book on Chinese-Korean relations in the 1880s.