Koreans in Argentina

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Korean Argentines
한국 아르헨티나 (Korean)
Coreano-argentinos (Spanish)
Argentina South Korea North Korea
Korean Argentines at the Korean stand of the 2012 Gastronomic Patio held in Buenos Aires
Total population
9,579 (by birth, 2023)[1]
22,847 (by ancestry, 2021)[citation needed]
Regions with significant populations
Buenos Aires, especially Flores and Balvanera (formerly known as Once)[2]
Languages
Spanish · Korean
Religion
Majority: Protestantism
Minority: Catholicism and Buddhism[3]
Related ethnic groups
Koreans · Korean Americans · Korean Brazilians · Korean Uruguayans

Koreans in Argentina (also known as Argentine Koreans or Korean Argentines) form the second-largest

The United Arab Emirates, and Southeast Asia.[4][5]

Nevertheless, the relevance of the community and especially its weight among the Korean communities has been hailed on more than one occasion. For example, the Centro Cultural Coreano-Argentino (Korean-Argentine Cultural Center) was created with its headquarters precisely in Argentina.[6]

Migration history

Beginnings

Records still exist that show the presence of a few Koreans in Argentina as early as 1940, when Korea was still a Japanese colony.[7] However, the first well-known Korean migrants to Argentina were twelve North Korean prisoners of the Korean War who declined the repatriation offered them under the terms of the Korean Armistice Agreement and chose instead to start a new life on another continent; they were finally resettled in Argentina in 1956 and 1957 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.[8]

South Koreans first came to Argentina in the 1960s, under an intergovernmental agreement between the two countries. The first ones began arriving in 1962 as re-migrants from among the communities of Koreans in Paraguay and Koreans in Chile.[9] However, the date most often identified as the start of Korean migration to Argentina is 14 October 1965, when a group of thirteen families from Busan arrived by ship in Buenos Aires en route to Choele Choel in Río Negro Province.[8][10] Between 1970 and 1978, five hundred more families, totalling 2,800 individuals, arrived in Argentina, with the Argentine government specifically intending them to settle in less-developed rural areas of Argentina. They were supposed to have agricultural experience in Korea; however, few actually did.[9] Due to the lack of economic infrastructure and employment opportunities in those regions, they resettled in urban centres.[11]

Mass migration and re-migration

The largest and most noticeable influx of Korean immigrants to Argentina began in the 1980s.[12] The total number of migrants between 1965 and 1985 only amounted to roughly 6,000 but began to increase sharply after that.[13] By that time, South Korea was a modern and industrialised country, but the sharp recession provided a significant push factor for overseas migration; the signing of the Acto de Procedimiento between the Argentine and South Korean governments that year established and outlet for that migration.[9] Obtaining residency was not cheap; businesspeople who sought to establish themselves and obtain a residency permit had to invest US$100,000.[12] The population peaked at an estimated 50,000 individuals in 1996.[13][failed verification]

In the late 1990s, migration largely came to a halt, and the size of the community began to decrease; there were a few cases of new migrants who came for family reunification , and some others were deported from the country, but the largest cause of the diminution of the community was re- migration, largely to Canada and the United States.

Argentine economic crisis.[15] After reaching a nadir of 15,500 individuals in 2003, the population recovered to 19,171 in 2005 and then 22,024 in 2009.[5][16] The Korean population remained roughly stable at 22,354 people in 2011; among these, 7,420 were Argentine nationals, 14,340 had permanent residency, four were international students, and 590 had other types of visas. Almost 90% (19,864 people) were recorded as living in Buenos Aires or its vicinity.[4]

Employment

Many of the Korean immigrants who arrived in the 1980s possessed professional qualifications in fields as diverse as pharmacy, accounting, and history; however, due to the language barrier, and also the desire to get the maximum return from the capital they had invested in Argentina, they went into small businesses in which all members of the family could contribute their labour.

rotating credit associations.[19] In the 1990s, members of the locally educated 1.5 and second generations moved away from small business and again branched out into the professions which their parents had abandoned, typically medicine, fashion design, and architecture.[2]

Inter-ethnic relations

Koreans in Argentina are better-integrated with the local population than

Korean Brazilians.[20] Argentines initially perceived Koreans as hard-working, intelligent, and honest, but their image took a turn for the worse in the 1980s, precisely as more began arriving in the country—instead, they came to be viewed as exploiters and opportunists.[17] Koreans' entry into the textile industry provided ample fuel for ethnic friction as they outcompeted their co-industrialists through hard work, consisting of twelve- to fourteen-hour days, and use of cheap labour, limited not just to family members but, in some publicized cases, illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bolivia as well. Xenophobic news reports falsely accused them of stealing electricity from power companies, thus cementing in the public mind the idea that the Korean immigrants thrived at the expense of the rest of Argentina. Since Argentina has a rigid class stratification system and their popular national identity is based on an exclusive European racial representation, Koreans inevitably stirred resentment towards their presence.[21]

Children of Korean immigrants also had a difficult time getting accepted as Argentines due to their parents' poor command of the Spanish language, different food, and different customs such as taking off ones' shoes at the front door of the house. In a process common to ethnic minorities in all societies, the second generation conceived the values of the mainstream to be universal, while placing less worth on those of their ancestral culture.[17] In response to their exclusion from the identity of "Argentine", youth of Korean descent often cling to a purely local identity, such as "Porteño" (used to refer to people from Buenos Aires), thus avoiding the need to categorise themselves by ethnicity or nationality. Ethnic Korean women are often fetishised by Argentine men.[22]

In many cases, it is not until they go overseas, especially to the United States, that ethnic Koreans who grew up in Argentina are accepted as full Argentines; their Argentine accent functions as a marker of distinction and identity in the diverse Spanish-speaking community there.[14]

Culture

Language

Most Koreans in Argentina speak both Korean and Spanish, with varying degrees of proficiency.

Korean cinema and Korean television dramas to study it more fully.[25]

Religion

The majority of the Koreans in Argentina are

K-Pop

In recent years, many Argentine youth have become interested in Korean culture due to the rise of K-pop. The Korean Cultural Center in Buenos Aires sponsors the largest K-pop festival in Argentina and it attracts thousands of participants every year. In 2017, participants arrived from 16 different countries in Latin America.[27]

Other traditions

Korean martial arts remain widely practised among the Korean community of Argentina, and have also made significant inroads in the rest of society. In addition to taekwondo, which has a following in numerous countries, the globally less-common shippalgi is quite well known in Argentina, practised actively by more than 70,000 people. Its growth largely resulted from the 1970 immigration to Argentina of Yoo Soo-nam, one of the world's foremost masters in the art. The efforts of Yoo, who taught shippalgi at the Colegio Militar de Campo de Mayo from 1971 until 1980, resulted in its adoption by the Special Operations Group of the Federal Police.[28]

Argentine asado (grilled meat) is popular among Koreans just as among other communities, but they typically eat it with kimchi as a side dish rather than the more common salads or French fries.[22]

In 2005, the Club

Lobos, Buenos Aires which plays Football, this is quite common with immigrant communities in Argentina, since the Spanish, Italian and Armenian communities already had clubs of their own. They play in the fifth division league, Torneo Argentino C
.

The Kim Yun Shin Museum of Fine Arts, Argentina's first art museum of Korean motif, opened its doors on 8 December 2008. The institution, located at 2945 Felipe Vallese St. in the Floresta District, was created on the initiative of Kim Yun Shin, a South Korean painter who graduated from Seoul's Hongik University and has resided in Buenos Aires since 1984.[29]

Education

Instituto Coreano Argentino

Instituto Coreano Argentino, a South Korean international school, is in Buenos Aires.[30]

Cenotaph

A cenotaph honoring the first arrival of korean immigrants in argentina stands in LaMarque.[31]

Notable individuals

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ "Datos sociodemográficos por país de nacimiento". RENAPER - Dirección Nacional de Población. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
  2. ^ a b Bialogorski 2005b, p. 3.
  3. ^ a b c Bialogorski 2005a, p. 279.
  4. ^ a b 재외동포 본문(지역별 상세), Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2011-07-15, p. 172, archived from the original on 2012-05-26, retrieved 2012-02-25
  5. ^ a b 재외동포현황 - 중남미 [Status of overseas compatriots - Central/South America], Overseas Korean Foundation, 2005, archived from the original on 2009-04-14, retrieved 2008-09-27
  6. ^ "Palabras del Director". argentina.korean-culture.org.
  7. ^ Bialogorski 2005a, p. 277
  8. ^ a b Bialogorski 2005a, p. 278.
  9. ^ a b c d Mera 2001, p. 2
  10. ^ Mera 2006, p. 4.
  11. ^ Maldonado-Salcedo 2007.
  12. ^ a b Bialogorski 2005a, p. 280
  13. ^ a b c Migration Dialogue 1996
  14. ^ a b c Maldonado-Salcedo 2007
  15. ^ Bialogorski 2005a, p. 282
  16. ^ 재외동포현황 [Current Status of Overseas Compatriots], South Korea: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2009, archived from the original on 2010-10-23, retrieved 2009-05-21
  17. ^ a b c Mera 2001, p. 7.
  18. ^ Bialogorski 2005a, p. 281
  19. ^ Bialogorski 2005a, p. 284.
  20. ^ Mera 2006, p. 7.
  21. ^ Maldonado-Salcedo 2007.
  22. ^ a b Maldonado-Salcedo 2007.
  23. ^ "Korean language school: South America", Overseas Korean Educational Institutions, South Korea: National Institute for International Education Development, 2002, retrieved 2008-10-25
  24. ^ Bialogorski 2005b, p. 4.
  25. ^ Courtis 2005, pp. 143–144.,
  26. ^ Mera 2001, p. 3
  27. ^ [ttps://web.archive.org/web/20170610165945/https://www.efe.com/efe/america/cultura/el-universo-conceptual-del-k-pop-latino-invade-buenos-aires/20000009-3293399 "El universo conceptual del K-pop latino invade Buenos Airesh"]. 2017-06-10. Archived from the original on 2017-06-10. Retrieved 2017-06-10.
  28. ^ Bialogorski 2005a, p. 289.
  29. ^ "Abrió sus puertas el nuevo museo de arte coreano", TELAM, 2008-12-08, archived from the original on 2011-05-31, retrieved 2008-12-10
  30. ^ Home. Instituto Coreano Argentino. Retrieved on 2015-09-21. "Asamblea 1840 CIudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires Argentina CP C1406HVU".
  31. ^ "한국이민최초정착비". Encyclopedia of Korean Culture.
  32. ^ "DiCaprio Who? The Other Leo". UCLA International Institute. 2004-08-20. Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved 2014-10-04.
  33. ^ Scanarotti, María Noel (2012-10-25). "El 'Chino' de Graduados, una revelación impensada". Clarin. Archived from the original on 2014-02-01. Retrieved 2014-10-04.
  34. ^ "Conocé a Chang Sung Kim, el 'chino' de Graduados: 'Soy más argentino que el dulce de leche'" [Meet Chang Sung Kim, the 'Chinese guy' from Graduados: 'I'm more Argentine than a dulce de leche']. Ciudad. 2012-09-08. Retrieved 2014-10-04.
  35. ^ "정원·수영장이…" K팝스타 박제형 대저택 공개 (in Korean). 2012-03-27.

Sources

Further reading

External links