[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

[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.

[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.

[34] There is a 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.

[25][36] 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.

[44][45] 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.

[48] 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.