Although studies of the historical development of modern Korean nationalism now routinely incorporate a variety of anti-Japanese movements that sprung up beyond the peninsula—in China, the Russian Far East, and even in Japan—the contributions of Koreans who immigrated to the United States often remain an afterthought. Significantly smaller in number and far removed from the Northeast Asian theater, the Korean diaspora in the United States and Hawaii (then a U.S. territory) has mainly served to provide a political backdrop for high-profile figures, such as An Ch'angho and Syngman Rhee as each pursued his nationalist agenda. Richard S. Kim, a specialist in Asian American studies, seeks to rectify this historiographical dismissal. His study makes two interlocking claims: first, that Koreans in the United States played an integral role in the nationalist movement, and second, that activities undertaken on behalf of the “old country,” by raising ethnic consciousness, helped shape their new identities as Americans.
In placing the spotlight on the immigrants to the United States, the author shows how their concern for the homeland formed the core of their political identity. In a chapter centered on the 1908 shooting of the American diplomat Durham White Stevens by two Korean nationalists, Kim describes disparate Korean communities in San Francisco (the scene of the crime), Los Angeles, Hawaii, and as far as Mexico coming together to raise funds for the men's defense, and to use the trial and ensuing publicity as a platform to protest Japan's presence in Korea. The Stevens case subsequently led to the forming of the Korean National Association (KNA), which at its peak spawned more than 100 local chapters, over 3,200 members, and two weekly newspapers (Sinhan minbo and Kungminbo) that were read throughout North America, Manchuria, and Siberia (pp. 41–42).
This early expression of diasporic community began to unravel within a mere decade as the March First movement and the Korean Provisional Government (KPG) emerged in 1919—ironically the very moment that modern nationalism appeared to be forging a united front. Various groups and personalities not only jockeyed to represent disparate Korean interests, they also held widely divergent expectations of the exiled government's role. U.S.-based groups, such as the Korean Congress and the Korean Commission, initially expected to form a partnership with the KPG, given that the latter was “almost entirely dependent on financial contributions from Koreans in the United States and Hawaii” (p. 67). When An Ch'angho traveled from California to Shanghai to take up his post as home minister, he carried with him the not inconsiderable sum of $25,000 collected from KNA members. Yet frequent squabbles over the KPG's political leadership, ideological orientation, and, not least, control over financial resources ultimately brought an end to their collaborative efforts.
By the 1930s, the nationalist movement in the United States had regrouped, with a younger generation pursuing a new agenda. Rather than pressing for diplomatic recognition from a demonstrably indifferent U.S. State Department, this new wave of activists instead sought to highlight to the American military Korea's potential utility as a useful ally against Japanese expansionism. Here Kim introduces the intriguing character of Kilsoo Haan, whose ruthless, tenacious, and imperious ways suggest a young Syngman Rhee. Seeking to capitalize on Americans’ emerging sympathy towards a beleaguered China, Haan formed the Sino-Korean Peoples League in an attempt to mobilize U.S. intervention in Manchuria to “combat ‘Japanism.’” Haan also employed more questionable techniques, such as producing an intelligence report that purported to reveal a vast Japanese conspiracy for world domination that included an attack on Pearl Harbor (p. 111). That the report's darkest prediction ultimately came to life does not diminish the fact that its “evidence” simply rehashed Americans’ racist paranoia about Japanese ascendance in the Pacific that had been bouncing around since World War I.Footnote 7 The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor did in fact provide a wake-up call to Koreans, when the U.S. government, notwithstanding previous agreements to the contrary, categorically designated them as citizens of Japan and submitted them to the very same battery of civil rights violations; efforts to change the Koreans’ status to “legal aliens” distinguishable from ethnic Japanese were unevenly achieved.
The book reveals much about the nationalist activities of Koreans in the United States during the colonial period, though it fails to portray the immigrants as people with interests other than the political. There is a tendency to reify the diasporic community as comprised solely of passionately engaged Koreans who organized life around seeking liberation. It is indeed ironic that this study seeking to shed light upon an overlooked dimension of the nationalist movement should discount the multiple experiences and attitudes that no doubt existed among the immigrant population. The author is far more successful in substantiating the book's second claim, that these activities provided a lesson in U.S. political and social practices that helped define Koreans’ new ethnic consciousness as Americans. In a little over four decades, Korean nationalists had achieved proficiency in areas as disparate as self-promotion and publicity, publishing, fundraising, community organization, pursuing legal action, government lobbying, and volunteerism. This hard-earned knowledge may explain why the majority of the immigrants, despite having devoted considerable personal resources toward the cause of Korean liberation, ultimately chose to remain in the once strange land that had since become home.
