25만불 이상 들고 한국을 떠나는 중상층이상이 최근 한인 미국 이민의 실태라는 군요.

 

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Restless Koreans, Stifled at Home, Head Overseas
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

 
SEOUL, South Korea — Jeong Seung Keun's apartment sits on a high floor of a recently built skyscraper, affording a fantastic view of the city. Modern art hangs on the walls. Fancy exercise equipment sits tucked away in a corner.

Indeed, just about everything in Mr. Jeong's home speaks of a successful life, from the elegant clothes worn by his wife, who attentively oversees their two children's homework, down to the Calloway golf bag propped up by the door, ready for an early morning outing.

For all of his comfort, however, Mr. Jeong, a 43-year-old civil engineer, wants out. Like hundreds of other high-achieving South Koreans each year, he has decided to emigrate to the United States, where he figures his family's life, if not necessarily richer, will be far more enriching in personal terms.

"I've walked an elite path all of my life in Korea, and it would be easy to spend the rest of our lives here," said Mr. Jeong, who is a managing director at one of South Korea's major international construction firms. "But the United States is the center of the world these days, the country with the most to offer. We have a saying, if you want to meet the tiger, you have to enter its cave, and I want our children to grow up according to American standards."

The profile of those who emigrate from South Korea has changed significantly in less than a generation, a shift that reflects the country's dizzying economic rise.

In the 1970's and 80's most South Koreans who left their country were from the lower middle class and went abroad because they thought that was the only way they could improve their economic status. Once in the United States, they often founded mom-and-pop grocery stores in depressed urban neighborhoods, working endless hours, sacrificing themselves for the education of their children.

Now, South Korea's economic takeoff and democratization, which began in the 1980's, have created widespread opportunity and hope. Fewer people are seeking their fortunes abroad — and those who do increasingly tend to be among the most successful, those who find that even the newly affluent and open South Korea cannot match their ambitions.

In 1980, 29,572 South Koreans were issued immigration visas to the United States; the number last year was just 6,696.

"Up until the early 1990's, the push factor out of Korea was much more important than the pull factor from the United States," said Bernard Alter, the consul general at the American Embassy in Seoul, adding that immigration to the United States has sharply declined. "Levels are probably one-fifth of what they were in the 1980's, but proportionally, the investor category has become much more important."

High achievers of the upper middle class who leave today often do so with $250,000 or more in savings. Their reasons include a yearning for the wide-open spaces not found in South Korea, one of the most densely populated countries, and an itch for more professional stimulation.

Better education for children remains another huge part of the equation, although in these cases the switch is often from the best that South Korea has to offer to elite American schooling. South Koreans like the Jeong family say they expect that in the United States their children will learn things like individuality and problem-solving that they feel are missing back home.

"My daughter, who is 11, has to work until 11 p.m. every night just to finish her homework," said Mr. Jeong's 39-year-old wife, Kyung Woon, who said she eagerly looked forward to their move to the Seattle area later this year.

"Things are so competitive in Korea there is no time for children to play," she said. "In America, she will be able to get a good education and relax sometimes, which makes you well-rounded.

"Besides, I think there is more fresh air there."

Generally, American consular officials say, the United States is happy to receive well-heeled immigrants like the Jeongs, who will be entering on investor visas, which, among other qualifications, generally require an investment of more than $100,000 in a business in the United States. The Jeongs' plans include investing immediately in several small retail store franchises, to develop a stream of income until Mr. Jeong can find work in his own profession again.

The Jeongs are arranging their relocation, including their American visas, through an emigration service run by Kang Young Ho, the chief executive officer and founder of the Nammi Emigration Corporation, a pioneer 13 years ago in a field that has now grown crowded with international relocation services for this country's upper middle class.

"I myself emigrated to Canada in 1971, with my wife and son, and $200 in my pocket," said Mr. Kang, a voluble man with a loud laugh. "Everybody was like that back then."

Asked what motive for moving is most frequently cited by his clients, without hesitating Mr. Kang, whose company relocates about 50 families to the United States and 200 to Canada each year, said English-language education.

"Before, people were going to make money and survive, but now it is to raise their children in English," Mr. Kang said. "We are one of the worst countries in the world for English education. Even our English teachers can't speak English."

The consolidation of the English language's place as an indispensable tool in business and many other fields, in the 1990's, coincided with the most profound period in South Korea's economic transformation.

"The people who hire my services think of $100,000 as peanuts," Mr. Kang said. "They are doctors, professionals, civil servants, and most of them made a killing with the explosion of real estate values."

As upscale emigration has become more and more popular in South Korea, recently, many professionals have begun to eschew the services of companies like Mr. Kang's, which cost $15,000 or more, pooling information, both tactical and practical. Sometimes they do business together in their new country of adoption.

Kim Jong Kap, a 37-year-old manager with the Industrial Bank of Korea, banded together in an online group with about 30 other South Korean accountants who have passed the accreditation test of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and are seeking to emigrate and set up businesses in the United States.

Mr. Kim, whose wife, a cancer researcher at Columbia, lives with their two small children, plans to join them in August. He invited three other men he had never met in person, all C.P.A.'s who have been talking up American business ventures online for weeks, to meet a foreign journalist at a downtown hotel.

"There's nothing bad about Korea, but the company I work for doesn't really have a lot to teach me anymore," Mr. Kim said. "We view America as the frontier, and I want to experience it."

Kim Song Ho, his online acquaintance, plans to move to the United States this summer too, even though this month he will marry a women with a big job — and salary — at the Korea Stock Exchange. Mr. Kim is not sure yet whether he wants to set himself up in Los Angeles, Chicago or Atlanta. Whichever he chooses, at least for now his soon-to-be wife, will stay behind.

"I know that in America I'll be rewarded for the amount of work I do, and not just designated to a position and stuck there," Mr. Kim said. "My fiancée is behind me all the way. Even if I have to struggle, she says, she wants me to have the reward of being a self-made man."