Koreatown

A Koreatown (Korean: 코리아타운 Koliataun), also known as a Little Korea or Little Seoul, is a Korean ethnic enclave within a city or metropolitan area outside of the Korean Peninsula.

History

Koreatowns as an Asian ethnic enclave have only been in existence since the mid 1860s as Korea had been a territorially stable polity for centuries; as Jaeeun Kim describe it, "The congruence of territory, polity, and population was taken for granted". Large-scale emigration from Korea were only mainly into the Russian Far East and Northeast China; these emigrants became the ancestors of the 2 million Koreans in China and several hundred thousand ethnic Koreans in Central Asia.

Koreatowns in the western countries such as the United States, Canada have only been in place much later with the Los Angeles Chinatown receiving official recognition in 2008. Also many Koreatowns are not officially sanctioned where the only evidence of such enclaves exist as clusters of Korean stores with Korean signage existing only on the storefronts. In the 1992 Los Angeles riots, many Korean businesses were targeted where the signage only served to point out targets for rioters. In Philadelphia's Koreatown, anti-Korean sentiment was so strong that official signage was often vandalized as residents protested the "official recognition" of such areas, making many Koreatowns across the western countries never having official statuses that many Chinatowns receive today. Many Koreatowns today exist in a suburban setting as opposed to the urban settings of Chinatown mainly because many ethnic Koreans, especially in the western countries, fear crime that is often associated with the city dwellings and the higher quality of schools as education is often a top priority, which is why the Philadelphia Koreatowns exist in suburban settings such as Cheltenham, Pennsylvania instead of its original location in the Olney section of Philadelphia.