Koreans in The Philippines - Migration History

Migration History

The history of Korean settlement in the Philippines can be divided into five phases. The first, lasting until the end of World War II, consisted of just a few disconnected individuals. Jang Bogo of Unified Silla was said to have visited the country as early as the 8th century. However, there was little further contact until over a millennium later, in 1837, when Andrew Kim Taegon and two other Korean Catholics took refuge in the Philippines after fleeing a riot in Macau, where they had been studying. They lived in a monastery near Lolomboy. Around 1935, a few itinerant ginseng peddlers from Uiju, North Pyongan (in present-day North Korea) arrived in the country via Vietnam. Finally, some Korean soldiers came with the Imperial Japanese Army when it occupied the Philippines during World War II; three, also from Uiju, are known to have married local women and chose to remain in the country permanently. One of them, Pak Yun-hwa, went on to establish the Korean Association Philippines Inc. in 1969, which would grow to become the country's largest Korean organization.

The second phase of Korean settlement in the Philippines consisted of the war brides of Filipino soldiers who fought on the side of the UN Forces in the Korean War. About 30 moved to the Philippines with their husbands in the 1960s; in 1975, they formed the Mothers' Association.

Beginning with the third phase, migration began to take on a more economic character. With the growth of the South Korean economy, companies in labour-intensive manufacturing industries responded to increasing wages by relocating their operations to other countries, including the Philippines, beginning in the 1980s. As a result, managers of enterprises both big and small, along with their families, began to increase. The fourth phase, in the 1990s. saw an expansion in the variety of Korean businesses in the Philippines; South Korean businesspeople not from just manufacturing companies, but import-export businesses, restaurants, and construction companies, all founded ethnic-specific business associations in this era.

The fifth phase of migration history, beginning in the late 1990s and 2000s, saw the number of students increase. The influx of students coincided with a more relaxed visa policy of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) aimed at attracting foreign students. It was also marked by growing influence and engagement by the various Korean associations with mainstream Philippine society. For example, the Merchant Association, formed in July 2001 and renamed as the Financial Expert Union Association in 2002, helped to regularise the status of South Korean entrepreneurs who had been working without a proper visa, while the South Korean Used Automobile Import Association fought against a newly introduced prohibition on the importation of used cars, and the Travel Company Association worked with the Philippine Department of Tourism to resolve visa and licencing issues for South Korean tour guides who hoped to work in the Philippines.

In the early 2000s, the Philippines also began to become a transit point for North Korean refugees leaving China en route to South Korea, similar to the manner in which the country turned into way-station for Vietnamese "boat people" in earlier decades. The Philippines is one of just three Southeast Asian signatories to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the other two being Cambodia and East Timor). Hwang Jang-yop passed through the Philippines after he defected in 1997. In 2001, seven members of a North Korean family transited through Manila. A group of 25 North Korean refugees used the Philippines as a transit point in 2002. According to a U.S. diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks, the number would grow to more than 500 annually by 2005; the Philippine government continued to cooperate quietly with the South Korean government to permit transit of refugees, but reacted coolly to suggestions of admitting North Korean refugees for settlement. Bureau of Immigration records do not show any North Koreans residing legally in the country; however, unnamed BI sources quoted by the media claimed that some North Korean defectors had blended into the much larger South Korean community in the country and settled down there.