Korean immigration to Hawaii

Among the group were fifty-six men recruited as labourers for sugarcane plantations located on various islands in the Territory of Hawaii, as well as twenty-one women and twenty-five children.

For some Western-oriented Korean intellectuals, immigrating to the United States was considered useful, in part, to help them in the modernization of their homeland.

Consequently, the recruiter for laborers for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association (HSPA), David Deshler, had no trouble finding Koreans from a wide range of social classes willing to sail to Hawaii.

[4] According to Dr. Wayne Patterson during his speech to the Royal Asiatic Society, the transfer of Koreans to Hawaii was against the US Emigration Laws regarding foreign Contract Laborers.

Some of the same American business people who overthrew the Hawaiian Monarchy were in collusion with Dr. Horace Allen and Deshler to conjure up a plan to get away with breaking the US Emigration Laws to deal with Japanese worker's strike problems.

[citation needed] Within a century the Korean population in America grew rapidly, from roughly seven thousand to about two million.

[5] King Gojong (1852–1919) reigned in Korea at the time of the first migration to America and played a crucial part in the lives of Koreans abroad.