Kyopo | Korean Americans and Korean Foreigners throughout the world

Well, Wikipedia defines Kyopo or Gyopo as…

The terms gyopo or dongpo in Korean refers to persons of Korean ethnic descent who have lived the majority of their lives outside Korea. It can also mean simply any Korean who lives outside Korea.^[1]

^Origins

^{Large-scale emigration from Korea began as early as the mid-1860s, mainly into the Russian Far East and Northeast China; these emigrants became the ancestors of the 2 million ethnic Koreans in China and several hundred thousand ethnic Koreans in Central Asia.[2][3]}

 ^{Korea under Japanese rule}

^{During the Japanese colonial period of 1910-1945, Koreans were often recruited or forced into labour service to work in mainland Japan, Karafuto Prefecture, and Manchukuo, especially in the 1930s and early 1940s; the ones who chose to remain in Japan at the end of the war became known as Zainichi Koreans, while the roughly 40 thousand who were trapped in Karafuto after the Soviet invasion are typically referred to as Sakhalin Koreans.[4][5] According to the statistics at Immigration Bureau of Japan, there were 901,284 Koreans resident in Japan as of 2005, of which 515,570 were permanent residents, and another 284,840 were naturalized citizens.[6][7] Koreans amount to 40.4% of the non-Japanese population of the country. Three-quarters of the Koreans living in Japan are Japanese-born, and most are legal aliens.[citation needed]}

^{Aside from migration within the Empire of Japan or its puppet state of Manchukuo, some Koreans also escaped Japanese-ruled territory entirely, heading to Shanghai, a major centre of the Korean independence movement, or to the already-established Korean communities of the Russian Far East. However, the latter would find themselves deported to Central Asia in 1938.[citation needed]}

 ^{After Korea independence}

^{After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Ethnic Koreans in China (Chaoxianzu) became one of the officially recognised as one of the 56 ethnic groups of the country. They are considered to be one of the “major minorities”. Their population grew to about 2 million ethnic Koreans in China; they stayed mostly in northeastern China, where their ancestors had initially settled. Their largest population was concentrated in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, where they numbered 854,000 in 1997.[3][8]}

^{Korean emigration to America was known to have begun as early as 1903, but the Korean American community did not grow to a significant size until after the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of 1965;[citation needed] now, roughly 1.4 million Koreans live in the United States.[9] More than 2 million ethnic Koreans live in the U.S., mostly in metropolitan areas. A handful are descended from laborers who migrated to Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A significant number are descended from orphans of the Korean War, in which the U.S. was a major ally of South Korea. Thousands were adopted by American (mostly white) families in the years following the war, when their plight was covered on television. The vast majority, however, immigrated or are descended from those who immigrated after the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 abolished national immigration quotas.}

^{Europe and Latin America were also major destinations for post-war Korean emigration. The largest Korean community in Europe is in Germany, but the largest European Koreatown is in London.[citation needed] Korean immigration to Latin America was documented as early as the 1950s; North Korean prisoners of war migrated to Chile in 1953 and Argentina in 1956 under the auspices of the Red Cross. However, the majority of Korean settlement occurred in the late 1960s; as the South Korean economy continued to expand in the 1980s, investors from South Korea came to Latin America and established small businesses in the textiles industry.[10] Brazil has Latin America‘s larget Koreatown; there are also Koreatowns in countries such as Argentina, Guatemala. Mexico City‘s Korean population is estimated to be around 300,000.[citation needed]}

 ^{Shifting focus of emigration}

^{Emigration to America became less attractive as a result of the Rodney King riots, during which many Korean American immigrants saw their businesses destroyed by looters; South Korean media reports on the riots increased public consciousness of the long working hours and harsh conditions faced by immigrants to the United States.[11] Instead, the development of the South Korean economy, the focus of emigration from Korea began to shift from developed nations towards developing nations. With the 1992 normalisation of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, many citizens of South Korea started to settle instead in China, attracted by business opportunities generated by the reform and opening up of China and the low cost of living. Large new communities of South Koreans have formed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Qingdao; as of 2006, their population is estimated to be between 300,000 and 400,000.[12] There is also a small community of Koreans in Hong Kong, mostly expatriate businessmen and their families; according to Hong Kong’s 2001 census, they numbered roughly 5,200, making them the 12th-largest ethnic minority group.[13] Southeast Asia has also seen an influx of South Koreans. Koreans in Vietnam have grown in number around 30,000 since the 1992 normalisation of diplomatic relations, making them Vietnam‘s second-largest foreign community after the Taiwanese.[14] Korean migration to the Philippines has also increased due to the tropical climate and low cost of living compared to South Korea; 370,000 Koreans visited the country in 2004, and roughly 46,000 Korean expatriates live there permanently.[15]}

 ^{Return migration}

^{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, where his father Kim Il-sung had been serving in the Red Army.[16][17] The largest-scale repatriation activities took place in Japan, where Chongryon sponsored the return of Zainichi Korean residents to North Korea; starting from 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 the South. However, word of the difficult economic and political conditions filtered back to Japan, decreasing the popularity of this option. Around one hundred such repatriatess 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.[18][19] South Korea, however, was a popular destination for Koreans who had settled in Manchukuo during the colonial period; returnees from Manchukuo such as Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan had a large influence on the process of nation-building in South Korea.[20]}

^{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. In 1985, Japan began to fund the return of Sakhalin Koreans to South Korea; however, only an additional 1,500 took this offer, with the vast majority of the population remaining on Sakhalin or moving to the Russian Far East instead.[21]}

^{With the rise of the South Korean economy in the 1980s, economic motivations became increasingly prevalent in overseas Koreans’ decisions of whether to repatriate and in which part of the peninsula to settle. 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.[22] Similarly, some Koryo-saram from Central Asia have also moved to South Korea as guest workers, to take advantage of the high wages offered by the growing economy; remittances from South Korea to Uzbekistan, for example, were estimated to exceed USD100 million in 2005.[23] Return migration through arranged marriage is another option, portrayed in the 2005 South Korean film Wedding Campaign, directed by Hwang Byung-kook.[24] However, the Koryo-saram often face the most difficulty integrating into Korean society due to their poor command of the Korean language and the fact that their dialect, Koryo-mar, differs significantly from the Seoul dialect considered standard in the South.[23]}

^{Until recently, return migration from the West has been much less common than that from Japan or the former Soviet Union, as the economic push factor was far less than in 1960s Japan or post-Soviet collapse Central Asia. However, an increasing number of aspiring Korean Americans singers and actors, frustrated by their inability to break through stereotypes in Hollywood, choose instead to go to South Korea through talent and modelling agencies; prominent examples include singer Brian Joo (of R&B duo Fly to the Sky) and actor Daniel Henney (who initially spoke no Korean).[25][26] [27]}