Koreans in Argentina

Koreans in Argentina (also known as Argentine Koreans or Korean Argentines) form the second-largest Korean diaspora community in South America and the 16th largest in the world, according to the statistics of South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Their population declined by more than 50% between 1997 and 2003. Despite the small rebound in their numbers since then, they have been surpassed in size by the rapidly growing Chinese Argentine community (which since the 1990s has been increasing non-stop and is expected to become one of the biggest immigrant groups in Argentina, together with Paraguayan, Bolivian and Peruvian immigrants). In the 2010s decade, the Korean community in Argentina has fallen behind Korean communities in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, The United Arab Emirates, and Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, the relevance of the community and especially its weight among the Korean communities has been hailed on more than one occasion. For example, the Centro Cultural Coreano-Argentino (Korean-Argentine Cultural Center) was created with its headquarters precisely in Argentina. Records still exist that show the presence of a few Koreans in Argentina as early as 1940, when Korea was still a Japanese colony. However, the first well-known Korean migrants to Argentina were twelve North Korean prisoners of the Korean War who declined the repatriation offered them under the terms of the Korean Armistice Agreement and chose instead to start a new life on another continent; they were finally resettled in Argentina in 1956 and 1957 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. South Koreans first came to Argentina in the 1960s, under an intergovernmental agreement between the two countries. The first ones began arriving in 1962 as re-migrants from among the communities of Koreans in Paraguay and Koreans in Chile. However, the date most often identified as the start of Korean migration to Argentina is 14 October 1965, when a group of thirteen families from Busan arrived by ship in Buenos Aires en route to Choele Choel in Río Negro Province.