The first significant numbers of Koreans came to the United States in 1903, with about eight thousand Koreans going to work on Hawaiian sugar plantations between 1903 and 1905. Immigration numbers had an early peak during and after the Korean War in the early 1950s, when many students, orphans left parentless by the war, and wives of servicemen were allowed to immigrate to the United States.

More Koreans, and Asians in general, began moving to America in large numbers when immigration policies were reformed with the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. The number of immigrants from North and South Korea continued to increase in the 1970s through the 1990s, and often included entire families due to the changes in immigration law. By the 1990 census, nearly 800,000 Korean Americans were living in the United States, with about 73 percent born in Korea. About one-tenth of these people were...