IV.

Culture

Korean American parents place a strong faith in education as a means to ensure upward economic mobility for their children. Responding to parental pressure, Korean American students often achieve high levels of education. However, a significant number of Korean American children deal with unreasonable parental expectations. American stereotypes, which depict Asian Americans as highly motivated and uniformly successful students, place additional pressure on many Korean American young people.

An extremely high percentage of Korean Americans participate in organized religion. About 70 percent of the Korean American community attends ethnic Korean Protestant churches, as does about 25 percent of the population of South Korea. From the beginning, Christians have constituted a large majority of Korean immigrants to the United States. Nevertheless, the intensity of Korean American religious participation surprises many observers. Korean ethnic churches evidently play an important role in maintaining religious and ethnic solidarity within Korean American communities.