The literature on Korean Americans shows that many historians in Korea have studied Korean immigrants in the New York area during the colonial period. It also shows that there are enough sociological studies of the Korean community in New York in the post-1965 period. But there is a paucity of the literature that covers the intermediary period between 1948 and 1965. Since the Korean-American Association of Greater New York was established in 1960, it has made minor efforts to collect data on the Korean community.

The author immigrated to New York in the early 1970s and became keenly aware of the lack of data on Korean immigration history in the New York area. In order to collect and preserve data on Korean Americans, Cho looked for books from Korea focusing on Korean immigration history in the United States, checked U.S. libraries for data on Korean Americans, and conducted many tape-recorded personal interviews with elderly Korean community leaders for oral histories.

This study examines the Korean community in the New York-New Jersey area during the period of 1948 and 1959 based on data the author has collected thus far. Specifically, it covers Koreans' immigration patterns and growth of the Korean population, settlement patterns, business patterns, and ethnic organizations during the intermediary period.

*This article was originally published in the Journal of Choong-Ang Historical Studies, Volume 36 (2012): 535-572. The Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College would like to thank the journal for giving permission to post the PDF file of this Korean-language article on Korean American Data Bank.