China’s Growing ROK Communities

How ROK Citizens Make Their Living in China

Many ROK nationals study trade and Mandarin in China, then return home to try and find a job that will allow them to come back to China as expatriates. However, increasing competition in China’s major cities has made such positions difficult to get. Current statistics show that Beijing’s Korean community breaks down along the following lines: 10 percent are expatriate employees of various kinds, around 17 percent are students, 25 percent are self-employed, and the remainder are family members who are not employed.

A Korean expatriate in China earns an average of RMB 20,000 a month, two-thirds of which can be put aside as savings. In comparison, a similar pay packet in the ROK would leave little after living expenses are covered. Korean companies also provide allowances for expatriates’ family dependants, such as school fees for children. Work hours are short in China compared to those in the ROK.

Self-employed Koreans mostly run service sector businesses, such as restaurants, groceries, sauna rooms, beauty shops, and retail businesses selling garments, jewelry or cosmetics.

Many Korean businesspeople in China are engaged in Sino-ROK trade. All the Korean garment, jewelry, cosmetics and medicine shops in Wangjing sell genuine Korean commodities shipped from the ROK. In the past, patriotic Korean expatriates preferred ROK-made commodities over Chinese brands, but as they adapt to local life they are increasingly buying cheaper China-made commodities. According to one anonymous Korean shopkeeper in Wangjing, this shift in shopping preferences is making life difficult for Korean retailers.

WHEN the first ROK businesspeople settled in Qingdao back in 1989, they were as alien to the locals as any other profit-savvy foreigners. Two decades on, the Koreans have become an organic part of the beautiful seaside city looking across the Yellow Sea to the Korean Peninsula. According to the online ROK news site Chosunilbo, there are now over 1 million ROK nationals living in China, residing mainly in China’s eastern metropolises such as Qingdao, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Shenyang.

Korean Influx

“For many ROK nationals, Qingdao is their second home,” says Hwang Jae-won, a representative of Qingdao’s Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. The European-style seaside town is the preferred place of residence for many Koreans in China, due to its pleasant surrounding and proximity to the ROK. “In most cases, the entire family moves to Qingdao C the husband works in a Korean business, the children study in one of the grade schools, and the wife studies Mandarin in a Chinese school while taking care of the family,” explains Hwang Jae-won. In Qingdao’s Chengyang District, there are more than 3,000 Korean businesses of all sizes. It’s a measure of the community’s size and importance that the local China Unicom branch operates a telecom office specifically for ROK citizens, with all services provided in Korean.

Qingdao is far from China’s only significant ROK community. Beijing also has a large, and growing, Korean population. Wangjing New Town in Chaoyang District, eastern Beijing, is the largest residential community in Asia. One-third of its 300,000 residents are ROK nationals. Blocks 3 and 4 in Wangjing West Garden virtually form a ROK Town nestled within the Chinese community, with 80 to 90 percent of the population of ROK origin, according to the Wangjing Sub-district Office. Apart from Wangjing’s decent housing conditions and living environment, many Korean residents opt to live here because the ROK Embassy and many Korean companies are located in the eastern part of the city. Beijing’s Capital International Airport is also within easy reach.

The road signs and shop facades around blocks 3 and 4 are written in Korean; school buses are packed with Korean kids morning and afternoon; and many of the community facilities, such as the hospital, the kindergarten, restaurants, shops and gyms, are run by Koreans. Korean beauty shops are also predominant in the area. Wangjing West Garden even has Korean postmen and real estate agents. In fact, the majority of the area’s service people C including nannies and shop assistants C are Chinese of Korean origin who speak both Mandarin and Korean. In 2005, the Nanhu Police Station, in the vicinity of Wangjing, employed an ethnic Korean policeman, and opened a service window for Korean residents. To cater to their needs, the China Telecom Wangjing outlet sells an international calling card specially tailored to ROK citizens.

The rapid growth of China’s ROK communities is attributable to the rapid expansion of trade and economic activities between the PRC and the ROK. When the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1992, their bilateral trade volume stood at merely US $5 billion. A decade and a half later it exceeds US $100 billion. China is now the ROK’s largest trading partner, and is also the ROK’s biggest investment and export destination.

At the end of 2005, the LG Economic Research Institute issued a report examining the reliance of the ROK economy on China. It found that around 1.5 million of the ROK’s 22.5 million working population are engaged in export and import businesses directly related to trade with China. When these workers’ families are factored in, the report concluded “3 to 4 million ROKcitizens rely on China for their livelihood.”

According to Dr. Shen Danyang of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation C an affiliate of the Ministry of Commerce C 80 percent of ROK investments are in manufacturing projects, mostly in eastern China. Since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the number of ROK citizens moving to China has increased at an annual rate of 40 percent.

Cultural Blending

Sin Yeong-su has been publishing Beijing Bulletin since 1998, a publication designed to help his compatriots understand China and Beijing’s way of life in particular. The 63-year-old is also the former chairman of the Association of ROK Citizens in China. Like all expatriates, Koreans can either choose to maintain their native lifestyle, or adopt a more local way of living. “Most of our daily consumer goods are Chinese-made, and our food is a mix of Chinese and Korean,” explains Sin. His two sons and one daughter have finished university in Beijing, but Sin recently sent his second son back home, because his Mandarin is fluent but his Korean is dreadful C something the Korean elder is far from happy with.

Like Sin’s son, Woo Dong-seok’s daughter speaks better Chinese than Korean, but Woo is more relaxed about the situation. “Be where you are and belong to where you are” is his philosophy. Woo was the first ROK national to make his home in Wangjing in 1999. After 10 years in advertising, he switched to cosmetics in 2004, and is very satisfied with his marketing performance. He sent his daughter to a Chinese school, and has made many Chinese friends. To maintain a Mandarin environment, he chooses not to have a satellite antenna for receiving ROK television. “When I’m old, I’ll go and live on Hainan Island [in south China]. I’ve been away from my country for so long I can’t return, simply because I’ve no friends there.”

Like Woo Dong-seok, many Koreans in Beijing have developed a sense of belonging, and feel a great deal of affection for the city. On the evening of July 13, 2001, when Beijing won its bid to host the 2008 Olympics, the Wangjing New Town community organized a celebration that lasted through the night. The organizers were local ROK nationals.

The modern exodus of Koreans to China is the largest single migration to a foreign country in the ROK’s history. It’s not uncommon for ROK nationals to want to remain in China after living here for an extended period. Many are held by the same factors that initially lured them to the PRC. Living expenses in China, even in relatively expensive cities like Beijing, are a fraction of those in the ROK. Residents of Seoul can pay 10 times as much for agricultural products as residents of Beijing. In the ROK, a nanny’s monthly salary translates to around RMB 8,000 a month. A Chinese nanny of Korean descent in Beijing costs around RMB 800 per month. Due to the immense pressure on space in Korea, golf is a luxury sport accessible to only the top 20 percent of salary earners. In contrast, nearly all Koreans living in Beijing play now and then, including many housewives who play after seeing their husbands off to work.

Profits are also to be made in China. ROK nationals dominate Wangjing’s local catering industry, for example. In a good business season, a portion of stone-bowl rice costs around RMB 5, and sells at RMB 33. A popular restaurant can sell as many as 400 servings on a busy night.

Cultural Conflicts

As always when different cultures come together, the influx of Korean immigrants has not pleased everybody. An anonymous Chinese housewife in Wangjing complains that her Korean neighbors like to buy packaged fruit and vegetables. This expensive shopping preference has, she claims, helped push up the area’s cost of living. “The fruit and vegetable prices in Wangjing are higher than those in other neighborhoods,” she complains bitterly. “We have to go a long way to farmers’ markets in other areas.”

Having a Korean neighbor also makes a difference for some Chinese residents. Ms. Wang says her Korean neighbor always keeps his door open, and a constant stream of friends flows in and out. They hobnob and laugh without any consideration of whether they are disturbing others. According to a doorman at Wangjing, many Korean men are tipplers and can often be seen stumbling home drunk at night.

The complaints aren’t all from the Chinese side, though. Korean Kim Jeong-mi says, “All my neighbors are Chinese, and I can hardly communicate with them because of the language barrier. Living in a strange country, we Koreans need help and assistance, but no one in the community organizes social occasions for neighbors to communicate. As a result, I’ve hardly made any Chinese friends. The real estate management often puts up notices in a language we cannot understand, which can cause misunderstandings.”

Beijing Bulletin publisher Sin Yeong-su points out that though China and the ROK share many cultural and social similarities, some conflicts are inevitable in mixed communities. In an effort to promote communication and understanding between Chinese and Korean residents, the ROK Embassy once organized a meeting between its ambassador and Chinese citizens in Chaoyang District.

Despite some problems, however, many Chinese residents are happy to have Koreans as neighbors. Shi Jie, an office worker in a foreign company, likes to observe how her young Korean neighbors dress and spruce themselves up. “Korean young men look smart and the Korean women are very good at makeup; even a hairpin can make a difference if it’s worn by a Korean girl.”

In discussing Korean communities in China, Tsinghua University’s associate professor of sociology, Zhang Xiaojun, says a modern metropolis should be heterogeneous. This extends not only to the residents’ nationalities and ethnicities, but also social groupings. Blue and white collar workers, old-time Beijingers and rural immigrants, Koreans and a multitude of other foreigners all contribute to the fascinating, globalized culture of China’s modern capital. It is this mix that makes contemporary Beijing such an intriguing, vibrant and culturally rich city.

Where Are the ROK Communities?

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) established diplomatic relations in 1992. By 1997, the number of ROK nationals in China had reached 100,000. Three years later the number had doubled, and by 2005 some 500,000ROK nationals were residing in China. Currently, 14 Chinese cities have Korean communities exceeding 10,000 people, including Beijing (120,000), Qingdao (100,000), Shanghai (65,000) and Tianjin (50,000).

Apart from Wangjing, Beijing’s main Korean-inhabited area is in the university district of Wudaokou. The 30,000 Koreans here are mostly students.

Qingdao has over 5,500 ROK businesses and a permanent ROK population of 50,000. When the transient population is factored in, the local Korean community numbers some 100,000 people.

Xita, in the northeastern city of Shenyang, is a compact community of China’s ethnic Koreans. It was also home to the first concentrated settlement of ROK nationals venturing into China in the early 1990s. The first Korean shops and saunas opened here. The area’s nickname is “Lesser Seoul,” and Xita Street is the world’s second-largest Korean street, beaten only by the one in Los Angeles.

Shanghai’s Gubei, Tianjin’s Meijiang and Guangzhou’s Yuanjing districts all have large ROK communities. New housing projects in these areas come complete with satellite antennas for receiving ROK TV programs, and local real estate agencies offer Korean services.