ABSTRACT
The Korean diaspora is the dispersion of Korean people or people of the same roots or ancestry living around the world after leaving their motherland. Large-scale emigration of the Korean people began as early as the mid-19th century. The history of Korean immigration is largely divided into three types: the old immigration from the mid-19th century to the early 1960s, the new immigration from the early 1960s to the early 1990s, the return migration from the early 1990s to the present. Now, the Korean diaspora consists of almost 7.5 million people in 193 countries around the world. This number of Korean overseas nationals reaches roughly 10% of the total population of South and North Korea. Overseas Koreans have achieved upward social mobility in their host countries. In most countries, the successive generations of Koreans have achieved at least the middle-class positions with high levels of education. However, as the mainstreaming of the next generation of Koreans progresses, their ethnic culture and identity weakens, and instead the assimilation to mainstream culture accelerates. Interracial or interethnic marriage is quite common among the later generations; the children of mixed heritages tend to adopt the culture and identity of the dominant ethnic group of the host society.
