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CHAPTER 6 LEAVING THE ETHNIC ECONOMY: THE RAPID INTEGRATION OF SECOND-GENERATION KOREAN AMERICANS IN NEW YORK* Dae Young Kim At the time of the interview in 1998, Heesoo was a thirty-four-year-old woman born in Korea and raised in the suburbs of Maryland. She worked as a real estate developer for a major real estate acquisition and development company in New York. A graduate of a prestigious university in the midatlantic, she had also received an M.B.A. from an Ivy League university. Her parents were college-educated, but like many other Korean immigrants who had difficulty transferring their professions to the U.S context, they adapted economically by entering small business as grocers. During Heesoo’s childhood her father struggled with the business. By the time her sisters were growing up, however, the grocery stores were thriving, and, as she recounted, the family had made numerous corollary residential changes, from a lowermiddle -class neighborhood to upper-class neighborhoods. “When I grew up, we were very poor. When my younger sisters grew up, we were doing very well, so they are extremely spoiled. They have no values,” Heesoo added. In fact, Heesoo recalled moving nine times. At the peak of their business success, her parents owned three homes, one with a swimming pool, and purchased a new car every year. When Heesoo started attending college, however, the business started faltering, finally ending up in bankruptcy. Even during times of success her parents did not want Heesoo to continue in their line of work. For her own part, Heesoo was equally unwilling to inherit her parents’ business or to become an entrepreneur. Despite all the sac154 * All names of individuals reported throughout the chapter are pseudonyms. rifice and stress that her parents endured to run the business, Heesoo had no qualms about staying away from their line of work. She was more than satis- fied with the pay, responsibility, work schedule, and benefits package of her job as a real estate developer. Not surprisingly, she was adamantly opposed to trading more work time for the leisure her job afforded her; having seen how little leisure time her parents had, she had no interest in the increased income that the grocery business might bring her. She had also seen how meteoric and ephemeral that success could be as business mistakes led her father to financial failure. She was relieved to see the business close, but her parents’ financial difficulties created many obligations for her as she came to their aid. At the time of the interview Heesoo was most concerned with resolving her parents’ financial problems. Sharon was a thirty-three-year-old finance and strategy associate for a major financial firm when she was interviewed. She grew up in a suburb in northern California and attended a major state university in California. Her parents, although college-educated in Korea, turned to the motel business to earn a living in the United States. Growing up, Sharon, with her older brothers and sisters, worked in her parents’ motel. She knew that helping out in a family business was rather uncommon among her peers in school. Her parents had become quite successful from the business and retired. Like other middle-class Korean parents who wished their children to avoid small business as their occupation, Sharon’s parents pushed their children away from the motel business. Sharon recognized that her parents had had few occupational choices as immigrants and that the subsequent generation was in a better position to apply their educational credentials and language skills in securing professional jobs. Thus, Sharon had very little desire to become self-employed. Her concerns were marriage, family, and the question of how to balance work with family. KOREAN IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE SECOND GENERATION For many people, the idea of entrepreneurship evokes deeply idealized sentiments of mobility and financial independence. Natives and immigrants alike are drawn to the notion of striking out on their own to achieve financial success and freedom. Especially for immigrants, language difficulties, licensing requirements, and unfavorable labor markets may make entrepreneurship an alternative to secondary labor markets and, even more, the only means of combating unemployment (Light and Rosenstein 1995; Light and Gold 2000). In spite of the heavy costs that self-employment may entail, including long working hours, stress, and, at worst, business failure and financial trouLeaving the Ethnic Economy 155 [18.116.63.236] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 23:31 GMT...

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