4. Conditions were of desperation and despair in all of Korea, especially Seoul ,which had changed hands four times. ManyKoreans fled their homes to find refugee camps, but did not leave in large numbers until after 1965. Truce negotiations began July 10, 1951, but dragged on for months and men continued to die. The conflict became an issue in the 1952 U. S. presidential election, and finally, on July 27, 1953, an Armistice was signed at Panmunjom,establishing a demilitarized zone at the thirty-eighth parallel. Neither side claimed victory, but the Communists had been stopped by international forces.(The Story of America, Readers' Digest, page 457) The Korean Americans who came to the United States after the KoreanWar came in two separate streams. The first and smaller stream consisted of wives of military personnel and adopted children of middle class Caucasians. The larger second stream was a post-1965 phenomenon. The 1965 Immigration Act (Public Law 89-326) was signed into law onOctober 3, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This law ended what President Johnson called "a cruel and enduring wrong", the National Origins Quota System, which discriminated against Asians and other minorities. President Johnson declared that those who could contribute most to this country in growth, spirit, and strength wouldnow be the first to be admitted to this country. Family reunification provisions that dominates American immigration law aided the Koreans in achieving a family migration to the United States. The earliest Korean immigrants first settled in Hawaii but only a small percentage remain there. (A History of Multicultural America - Minorities Today, Page 31) Los Angeles, California has the largest concentration of Korean immigrants.Its Koreatown is located just west of the downtown business district, and stretches for miles. Small Korean businesses, often green grocers, also became a fixture in ...
