At the end of the 19th century Hawaii’s sugar cane farming needed vast numbers of laborers. Through their request in 1902 Allen, the US ambassador to Korea met up with Emperor Gojong recieved consent for Korea’s first foreign immigration. Following the sermon of Reverend Jones of Naeri Church many were moved and 121 church members boarded the USS Gaelic in December of 1902 as the first official immigrants to Honolulu Hawaii. Naeri Church planted the first Methodist Korean Church in Hawaii for the immigrants and such Korean churches acted to help further immigrants settle in and the church took the role that the Korean-American churches have still today as places of worship and communication between the community. The immigration to Hawaii happened very quickly up to 1905, a total of 7,415 people over 65 journeys immigrated to Hawaii.
But since the immigrants who had come were labor focused, the men outnumbered the women 10 to 1 and as time passed, the issue of men who had far surpassed their marriageable age but could not marry became a big problem in the settlement process. And so because of these arising issues and situations the solution appeared through the concept of picture brides. Girls who sailed across the Pacific with big dreams to marry someone they had never once seen before in their lives except through a faded photo, we call them the picture brides.
Upon their arrival the brides went through years of sadness and anger as the age difference between the bride and the husbands were often significant. To them the exploitation of the sugar cane field owners, the struggle for survival and yearning for their home country has been left as a long history of unspoken anger, injustice and resentment. All the same they sought stability for the sake of their families and with new found energy and economic strength reached into various professions and made time to support the Korean independence movement, thus they welcomed a new beginning. The church-centered communities that the immigrants established carried on as they move into the U.S mainland. Even today their influence can be seen in the church-centered communities that exist in North America and in Korean communities all around the world.