보건복지부 대표홈페이지

Introduction

In recent years, concern over the increasing problems of Korean American adolescents in the Korean American community of the Los Angeles Area has been publicized by mass media, schools, and human service professionals. Growing problems include maladjustment in school, conflicts with parents, low academic achievement, school dropout, substance abuse, involvement in youth gangs, and a variety of emotional problems. These problems may severely curtail these young people’s opportunities to become productive adult participants in the American mainstream.

The U.S. census has shown dramatic demographic shifts in the Korean-American population since the 1980 U.S. Census: A doubling of the absolute number of Korean Americans and a sizable increase in the proportion of Korean American children and youth (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1983, 1990). Specifically, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area has attracted the largest concentration of Korean Americans in the United States numbering approximately half a million.

Most of these Korean Americans in the Los Angeles area are first generation immigrants. Naturally, many of them have difficulties in adjusting to the US culture. They are overwhelmed trying to learn its language and social norms, and in adapting to often incompatible living styles. Commonly, they encounter problems of alienation, isolation, and psychological distress. Due to this inability to effectively integrate into US culture, their future opportunities, as well as their children’s, to become productive adult US citizens may be jeopardized.

In fact, a number of Korean American adolescents in their critical period of development are growing up in circumstances which may impair their sense of self, and consequently, restrict their chances for successful lives. For example, they must deal with the discrimination common to racial and ethnic minorities while the contexts of their everyday lives fail to provide the support essential for a healthy sense of self.
Consequently, they may enter into negative life experiences leading them into various juvenile problems.

Unfortunately, partly due to the relatively short immigration istory of Korean Americans in the U.S., research on Korean American adolescents has been extremely limited providing very little information about this younger population. Hence, the Korean American community and professionals serving the community are in dire need of empirical data on the failings of its adolescents in order to develop intervention and support measures for the alleviation of those problems.

Therefore, due to the scarcity of publicly available information, the main purpose of the present study is to explore mental health related problems of the adolescents in the Korean community in the Los Angeles area and publish the findings for mental health facilitators and community agencies in the Korean American Community.
The outcome of this study is expected to provide new insights into the problems that the adolescents encounter, their coping mechanisms, and the impact of these problems on their education and family life. It must be added that this report is provisional and will be followed by a version which presents practical information for community agencies, policy makers and mental health service providers in order to curtail this increasingly disruptive trend within the Korean American Communities throughout the US.