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6 Redefining the Boundaries of Traditional Gender Roles Korean Picture Brides, Pioneer Korean Immigrant Women, and Their Benevolent Nationalism in Hawai‘i Lili M. Kim In 1917 a petite, sixteen-year-old girl left her family in a small village in Kyoung Nam, Korea. With her long black hair neatly braided, she set off for Hawai‘i, where she was to marry a Korean man whom she had never met but whose picture she had seen through a “go-between.” She had heard that people “can collect money by rake” in America and hoped that her picture marriage would provide the opportunity to pursue wealth in Hawai‘i. She survived the grueling fifteen-day journey by sea that nearly left her dead from seasickness and arrived on the shores of Honolulu, to be met by Kim Ja Soon,1 her husband-to-be, who was all but unrecognizable from the picture he had sent her from his younger days. Nam Soo Young recalled,“When I see him, he was much older, an old man. I was surprised. He cheated his age ten years. He was twenty-five years older than I. ‘How can I live with him?’ I thought.” Trying to buy herself time, she asked to postpone the wedding for one week, but to no avail. With tears running down her cheeks, Nam married her husband and was released from the Immigration Station of Honolulu as the wife of Kim Ja Soon.2 Nam was one of an estimated one thousand Korean picture brides who came to Hawai‘i and the continental United States between 1910 and 1924.3 The far-reaching influence of Korean picture brides on the future of the Korean community in Hawai‘i is hard to exaggerate. Because sugar planters sought strong, healthy laborers, pioneer Korean immigrants to Hawai‘i mostly consisted of single men in their twenties, and a few married men who came with their families. By coming to Hawai‘i as prospective wives to Korean bachelor laborers, Korean picture brides solved the problem of the lack of marriageable Korean women in the early years of Korean immigration. Unlike the Chinese, who, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, remained largely“single”in the early twentieth century, pioneer Korean immigrants were able to marry picture brides, start families, and create a thriving next generation of Korean Americans.4 Furthermore, Korean picture brides significantly shaped and contributed to the Korean independence movement in the United States during the crucial years of overseas Korean nationalism, after Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910. Unlike the small number of pioneer Korean women who came to Hawai‘i with their husbands between 1903 and 1905, the picture brides had lived under Japanese colonial rule before coming to 106 Hawai‘i. Their sorrow over losing Korea to Japan and their determination to see Korea liberated made them active community members against the backdrop of the thriving yet bitterly divided Korean independence movement in Hawai‘i. Redefining the boundaries of traditional gender roles, Korean picture brides, together with the pioneer Korean immigrant women who came before them, contributed to the Korean independence movement in important and alternative ways. By demonstrating what I call benevolent nationalism—nationalism rendered through valuable social and economic services that focused on the good of the community and future of Korea—Korean picture brides and immigrant women expanded the scope of community activism and altered the contours of the Korean independence movement in Hawai‘i.At the same time, their organizational activities to promote Korean patriotism and to preserve Korean culture expedited their Americanization process by challenging and crossing the boundaries of Korean traditional gender roles. Korean Picture Brides Come to Hawai‘i The picture bride practice began after the United States and Japan reached the Gentlemen ’s Agreement of 1907, which stipulated that Japan would voluntarily cease issuing passports to all Japanese laborers coming to the United States. This restrictive agreement , however, allowed for the immigration of wives and children who wished to be united with their husbands and fathers in the United States. Unmarried Japanese laborers in Hawai‘i also took advantage of this provision by sending for picture brides. With Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, Koreans were considered Japanese nationals , and Korean laborers in Hawai‘i could also bring wives and picture brides from Korea under the Gentlemen’s Agreement Act of 1907. The Immigration Act of 1924 prohibited the immigration of anyone ineligible for citizenship and thus stopped...

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