• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.175-195
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• 1997

This study attempts to understand new immigrants' socio-economic adaptation by linking them with the restructuring economies in large US metropolitan areas. Selecting Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Atlanta, we examine the industrial distribution of employed Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups with respect to the industrial change experienced between 1980 and 1990, and residential concentration represented by higher location quotients. The findings are that new immigrant groups are employed in overall industrial sectors close to that of total population and their large residential concentrations are displayed near downtown as well as outlying areas. These suggest that new immigrant groups experience different socio-economic adaptation from those generalized in the previous European immigrants, concentrated in manufacturing sector and near downtown area. This study proposes that divergent economic restructuring across metropolitan areas and new immigrants' backgrounds should be considered for better understanding of immigrants' economic adaptation in the current economic restructuring and its spatial manifestation in the US contexts.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.161-190
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• 2015

The purpose of the study is to explore how isolated immigrant adolescents seek and use necessary information when they are unable to use significant information sources-their peer groups-in the period of transition before new peer groups are established. Sixteen recently arrived Korean immigrant adolescents were recruited and a mixed method including surveys and in-depth interviews was used through three research phases. This study gained a preliminary understanding of isolated immigrant adolescents' information world: how they interpret their current situations and daily hassles, seek (or do not seek), and utilize information to cope with their daily life problems, and evaluate their use of information, including library systems and interpersonal sources. Five main emergent themes were analyzed from the findings and pertinent theories/models to interpret these unique features were suggested and discussed. The contribution and limitation of the study and future study are suggested and discussed.

• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.201-210
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• 2014

Purpose: To provide an in-depth analysis of the physical changes in and marital experiences of immigrant women in Korea, considering the differences in their cultural backgrounds. Methods: A qualitative research methodology with a phenomenology perspective was used. Data were collected through interviews from four focus groups and through in-depth interviews from five individuals. Data analysis was carried out using Colaizzi's phenomenological analysis method. Results: Twenty-four participants from nine different nations were interviewed. Three phenomenological theme clusters were identified and six sub-themes were derived. These comprise: "emergence of physical changes", "experienced symptom with negative result", and "coping with my body". The derived themes comprise: "struggling for my body to survive", "changed body after pregnancy and delivery", "diagnosed as normal but", "neglected my health", "using familiar care", and "unfamiliar health service system". Conclusion: Immigrant women by marriage in Korea are new subjects of nursing care. Their physical changes and experiences in coping with marriage at an early stage of immigration as described by themselves provide valuable information for nursing professionals. Cultural differences, problems specific to women, and our social conditions regarding minorities and our patriarchal tradition that discriminates against women affect their health problems. We strongly recommend that nurses should actively determine and engage in the health problems of immigrant women.

• Studies on Life and Culture
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• v.52
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• pp.57-84
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• 2019

For married immigrant women, social participation is a process of meeting and interacting with community members on a continuous or regular basis. Community participation of married immigrant women has an important role not only in adapting to the new environment but also in improving their quality of life in terms of their self-esteem and life satisfaction. It also forms an important social network of the community and strengthens social capital. However, their social participation should be based not on the level of 'adaptation' or 'settlement', but on mutual awareness that respects and accepts the social and cultural background of migrant women and their native countries, that is interculturalism. Unlike multiculturalism which emphasizes cultural differences, interculturalism emphasizes mutual understanding and mutual interaction among various cultures based on universality. This study examines various theories and policy models of the multiculturalism, and introduces the recently discussed interculturalism. Then, this study applies the issue of the migrant women's social participation by conducting and analyzing a qualitative research. This study took deep interviews with leaders of three selected social economic organizations and conducted Focus Group Interviews with major participants of those groups.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.42
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• pp.321-359
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• 2021

This paper examines the unique features of Korean farmer's music-or nongak-in Hawaii by exploring three nongak groups from different decades beginning in the 1970s. The first community-based nongak group began in the 1970s, with the establishment of the Wahiawa Korean Seniors Club. In the 1980s, there was another group supported by the Kalihi-Palama Immigrant Service Center. And in the 1990s, the Hawaii Korean Farmer's Music Assoiation, which is still active, was founded. I ullustrate the overall changes made by the three nongak groups as follows. First, they show a shift from social groups playing music to a music group doing social activities. Second, from a group of people negotiating their music, through a group led by musical leadership, to a group with a leader who created his own musical leadership. Third, from a music group began out of a pseudo-shaman ritual, through a group purely playing music, to a group adding samulnori and further creating a new rhythmic pattern. These changes occurred because, while the members are all first-generation immigrants, their experience of nongak in the motherland was different because of their age differences. In addition, they emerged because the level of awareness and acceptance of samulnori-which has gained huge popularity in Korea-were different.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.191-219
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• 2020

This paper aims to identify the key features of the novel writing of Korean American immigrants and their meaning as one aspect of movement and contact occuring in the early modern period. The late return of the novels written by Nakcheong THUN in the 1930s is significant in that it restored ideas on the diversity of early modern mobility and confronted the history and culture of immigrants who were excluded from records and memories. Not only are these novels a product of the phenomenon of immigration, but they have also created a crack in the dichotomous perceptions of domination and subordination, center and periphery by envisioning it as a space that creates new history, culture, institutions and values. These novels treat the free love of intellectual, emotional, and ethical figures as a central event, demystifying Western free love, and at the same time, a society divided by various identities including class, race, and gender. The novels by Nakchung THUN visualize the active exchange between the immigrant and the indigenous community through the character of Jack, and imagines the heterotopia as a place where not for the immigrants' utopia, but for everyone's coexists. These novels have declared a kind of memory war on the subordinate and marginalized contact zones. The contact zones of the immigration area had been a place for experiencing extreme conflicts and discords, and at the same time, it has served as a place where various groups and communities are connected. The contact zones were common areas of solidarity and creation before being subject to division and occupation. The contact zones are far from the border or borderlands, so it is not a fixed and immutable deadlock. As a world free from central domination the contact zones have been a space that preoccupied history and culture through various encounters, and have been a community.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.233-243
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• 2016

Purpose: This study aims to investigate and explain the influence of personal characteristics on female immigrants' perception and attitude towards the Korean food culture. Methods: Exploratory research was performed by conducting a self-administered survey. A purposive sampling method was used to recruit 289 participants to determine their level of information awareness, perception and familiarity with Korean food culture. Results: Female immigrants' mean FNS score was 3.70. FNS score decreased in women from Northeast Asia, women who received higher education, and in urban women. The level of information awareness of Korean Food culture was 3.47, which was above average. Women from Southeast Asia had a higher level of awareness about cooking methods and table setting. Females living in the countryside and those who had lived for more than 7 years in Korea had higher levels of information awareness than other groups. Women from Southeast Asia perceived that Korean food is spicy; on the other hand, women from Northeast Asia discerned that Korean food is pungent and is prepared scientifically. The neophilic group more positively recognized Korean foods based on taste and nutritional value than did the neophobic group. Subjects living in the countryside were more likely to evaluate nutritional value, scientific aspects and artistry higher. The research also found that the neophilic group and immigrants who had lived for more than 7 years in Korea were significantly correlated with the familiarity with Korean food culture. Conclusion: The findings provide an initial step towards developing a customized education program for female marriage immigrants to adapt and to become familiar with Korean food culture with a comprehensive understanding of personal traits for accepting a new food culture.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.299-315
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• 1993

Koreans are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in America. Stress responses and stressors among this large cultural minority has been rarely been studied by nursing researchers. Adjusting to life in foreign country produces a great deal of stress. Differences in culture, language, expectations and social behavior can lead to misunderstandings between health care providers and clients. These misunderstandings are not well accounted for in health assessment. This study investigated the relationship between life events or / and daily activities as a stressor and the symptoms of stress among a sample of Korean immigrants in America. The symptoms of stress scale (SOS) was used to identify stress responses and open-ended questions were used to identify life events and daily activities considered by the respondents to be stressful. A simple random sample of 283 subjects was selected from the Directory of the Korean Society of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle. Demographically, the subjects ranged in age from 20 to 69 years, and the percentage of women and men was approximately 50% each. Almost ninety percent of the subjects were highly educated, 17% owners of business, 19% white collar professionals, 14% employed in sales or as skilled /unskilled labor, 27% as housewives and students and 3％ had no occupation. The total group SOS mean was 0.8042 ; the SOS men for man was 0.7371, and for women was 0.8713. The stress response of this subject group was high, -the stress response of women higher than that for men. In an earlier study(June, 1992) with another sample, the total mean SOS score was similar to this one. The main stressful life events or / and daily activities were, in order, economic problems (N=97), interpersonal problems (N=68), children care problems (N=258), health problems (N=49), communication problems (N=42), family problems (N=38), worry about future career (N=36), and religious problems (N=25). There was a significant difference in the SOS means between the group that expressed life events or / and daily activities to be stressful and the group that did not. Interpersonal relationships and economic and family problems were stressors for those who complained about peripheral manifestations. cardiopulmonary symptoms, central-neurological symptoms, gastrointestinal symptoms, muscle ten-sion, habitual patterns, depression, anxiety, emotional irritability and cognitive disorganization. In summary, interpersonal relationships and economic and family problems influenced stress response manifestations. Income, the number of people in the family, the year of immigration. the level of education, and marital status were related to physiological and psychosocial stress responses.