Andrew Kim came to America to get an education. Nothing more.
But when he graduated from Cal State Long Beach and returned to his native Korea in 1969, Kim didn't like what he found. Good jobs were hard to come by, and the political situation was topsy-turvy.
"There weren't that many opportunities," Kim recalled recently. "I was there a couple months, and I came right back to the U.S. and said this is the place I would stay."
Since then, Kim has created something of an all-American Asian family. He runs a firm that manufactures custom food processing equipment. His wife is a real estate agent. They live with their three children in a comfortable home nestled in a cul-de-sac in Fullerton.
Their eldest boy is studying journalism at the University of Texas. Kim's 12-year-old son is the No. 2 tennis player for his age bracket in Southern California. Only his daughter has become immersed in her roots, taking time to learn the Korean language, attend a Korean church and sing in its choir.
Andrew Kim's tale is one of many playing out these days. From Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Asian newcomers have arrived in droves, landing in America. And especially in Orange County.
For some, merging into the Western world has been a struggle laced with disappointment and sorrow. But others have flourished, gliding upward through the ranks. They are among the captains of the computer industry, the academic standouts, the eminent masters of music.
Today they all will be honored in an event rife with symbolism. President Bush will venture to Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley to pay homage to Asians and Pacific Islanders, who together make up the fastest-growing racial group in the United States.
Organizers expect more than 30,000 people to attend the 9:30 a.m. event. There will also be ancestral dances, food, and displays of ethnic crafts and skills. Bush will deliver a noon speech that aides say will both celebrate Asians in America and underscore the escalating importance of the nation's economic and political relationship with Pacific Rim countries.
The President's visit promises to train the national spotlight on the county's vast and burgeoning Asian community.
During the 1980s, the number of Asians in the county jumped threefold, rising to nearly 250,000 people, or 10% of the county's population.
The Vietnamese community alone ballooned 271% to 71,822 people, making it the largest Asian group in Orange County, according to 1990 U.S. Census figures.
The Chinese (41,403 people in the county), Korean (35,919) and Filipino (30,356) populations also increased dramatically, hurtling them past the Japanese, who only a decade ago were the largest Asian contingent in the county but now are fifth, with 29,704 people.
Nearly 4,000 Cambodians fled their war-torn homeland and established a life in the county during the 1980s. There are also 2,227 immigrants from Thailand, 575 Hmong and 79 Melanesians in the county, to name a few such groups.
Along with their belongings, these newcomers have imported a chorus of distinct languages, cultures and customs that have helped change the face of the county. Today it's a more cosmopolitan community, a polyglot place where one often finds a Korean or a Thai in the corporate boardroom or behind the counter at the neighborhood video store.
Not all of the county's Asians, of course, are fresh to this land. Most of the Japanese and many of the Chinese here have been around for generations.
Many have already made their mark, among them notables such as Dr. Sammy Lee, an American of Korean ancestry and a two-time Olympic diving gold medalist who lives in Huntington Beach, and international tennis star Michael Chang, the son of a Chinese expatriate.
The new wave of Asians is by and large foreign born. Although authorities have no firm figures, they estimate that at least two-thirds of the county's Asians are immigrants from far-flung homelands.
Many of the Vietnamese newcomers arrived in the county to live with relatives who had already set down roots. The sprawling Vietnamese enclave in Garden Grove and Westminster, for instance, evolved from a core group of refugees who were evacuated after the war to temporary lodgings at Camp Pendleton. These refugees from a war-torn land trundled up Interstate 5 and discovered Orange County. Now their friends and relatives are following.
"What's happening in Orange County isn't at all unusual," noted John Liu, a UC Irvine assistant professor of comparative culture and himself a second-generation Chinese-American.
"It has to do with chain migration," he said. "Original immigrants act as a magnet for others. And the clustering that follows is a normal process. You've seen it before in the Chinatowns of Los Angeles or San Francisco."
