[8] Other countries with greater than 0.5% Korean minorities include Brazil, Russia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

The historically used term gyopo (교포/僑胞, also spelled kyopo, meaning "nationals") has come to have negative connotations as referring to people who, as a result of living as sojourners outside the "home country", have lost touch with their Korean roots.

[18] Some were allowed to return to Korea, but many were made to stay in Japan, with the famous example of Korean samurai Wakita Naokata (Kim Yŏch'ŏl).

Korea gained its independence after the Surrender of Japan in 1945 after World War II but was divided into North and South.

Thousands were adopted by American (mostly Caucasian) families in the years following the war, when their plight was covered on television.

[40] Korean immigrants were increasingly settling in urban centers of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, although return migration from South America back to Korea has ensued since then.

South Korean media reports on the riots increased public awareness of the long working hours and harsh conditions faced by immigrants to the United States in the 1990s.

[45] Since the early 2000s, a substantial number of affluent Korean American professionals have settled in Bergen County, which is home to North American headquarters operations of South Korean chaebols including Samsung,[51] LG Corp,[52] and Hanjin Shipping,[53] and have founded various academically and communally supportive organizations, including the Korean Parent Partnership Organization at the Bergen County Academies magnet high school[54] and The Korean-American Association of New Jersey.

The Chusok Korean Thanksgiving harvest festival has become an annual tradition in Bergen County, attended by several tens of thousands.

Large new communities of South Koreans have formed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Qingdao; as of 2006[update], their population is estimated to be between 300,000 and 400,000.

[90] Koreans born or settled overseas have been migrating back to both North and South Korea ever since the restoration of Korean independence; perhaps the most famous example is Kim Jong Il, born in Vyatskoye, Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, where his father Kim Il Sung had been serving in the Red Army.

The largest-scale repatriation activities took place in Japan, where Chongryon sponsored the return of Zainichi Korean residents to North Korea; beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with a trickle of repatriates continuing until as late as 1984, nearly 90,000 Zainichi Koreans resettled in the reclusive communist state, though their ancestral homes were in South Korea.

However, word of the difficult economic and political conditions filtered back to Japan, decreasing the popularity of this option.

Around one hundred such repatriates are believed to have later escaped from North Korea; the most famous is Kang Chol-Hwan, who published a book about his experience, The Aquariums of Pyongyang.

[98] However, roughly 1,000 Sakhalin Koreans are also estimated to have independently repatriated to the North in the decades after the end of World War II, when returning to their ancestral homes in the South was not an option due to the lack of Soviet relations with the South and Japan's refusal to grant them transit rights.

356,790 Chinese citizens have migrated to South Korea since the reform and opening up of China; almost two-thirds are estimated to be Chaoxianzu.

[101] Return migration through arranged marriage is another option, portrayed in the 2005 South Korean film Wedding Campaign, directed by Hwang Byung-kook.

Korean American return migrants have predominantly been entertainers who were either recruited by South Korean talent agencies or had chosen to move there due to the lack of opportunities in the United States; prominent examples include Jae Chong, Johan Kim and Joon Lee (of R&B trio Solid), singers Joon Park (of K-pop group g.o.d) and Brian Joo[103] (of R&B duo Fly to the Sky), hip hop artist and songwriter Jay Park and model and actor Daniel Henney (who initially spoke no Korean).