The Story of Dream_Picture Brides

In a cemetery in Hawaii, you can easily find a tombstone with a picture of Korean names. Who were these Koreans and how did they end up buried in this land far away from their homeland?
Esther Kwon, aged 94, who used to work as a human rights lawyer in her younger days, said that she knows their stories well. She told us about the Koreans who came to Hawaii about 120 years ago,
Early morning on January 13th in 1903, a steamship named SS Gaelic docked in at Honolulu Harbor.
On board were about 100 Koreans hoping for better lives.
They were the first Korean immigrants in Hawaii and wanted to start new lives. They suffered from backbreaking work under brutally demanding foremen in sugar plantations only to earn 1.25 dollars per a day. Between 1903 and August in 1905, approximately 7,400 immigrants, most of them male, arrived in Hawaii over 65 journeys. They wanted to have their own families but it was very hard for them to find women in Hawaii who were willing to marry them. Finally, they decided to find Korean women who would be willing come to Hawaii to marry them. After exchanging photos of each other, the women left their home to go to Hawaii holding only a photo of their future husband in their hand. People called them picture brides. Far away from their home and families, picture brides started new families, gave birth to their children and educated them while living a very harsh life in poverty. And they have been forgotten with the passage of time. It has already been about 120 years since the first Korean immigrants stepped on the Hawaiian soil. The first generation immigrants and the picture brides who married them all passed away. But the descendants of picture brides—their children and grandchildren—still live in Hawaii. How do they remember the picture brides?
These are the individual stories. Mary Zarbough, aged 103, a daughter of the late Chun Yun-hee who left 24 cassette tapes of oral record and filled 7 notebooks as evidence of her life as a picture bride. Esther Kwon, aged 94, a daughter of the late Lee Hee-kyeong, the picture bride who got arrested and imprisoned after she traveled to Korea and delivered independence movement funds even after she settled down in Hawaii. Robert Young-hi Ko, aged 92, a son of the late Park Mal-soon, the picture bride who did whatever she could do to educate her children from running a laundry to a grocery store, a carnation farm and a guest house. Mike Irish who runs Hawaii’s largest kimchi factory and is a grandson of the picture bride Cho Sook-ja who used to cook him delicious Korean meals. Lee Donohue, former chief of the Hawaii Police Department and a son of the picture bride Lee Phil-deok, a strong mother who raised her children even though she couldn’t speak any English. We met the descendants of the picture brides who were born and are living in Hawaii. By looking at their lives, we retrace the lives of the Korean diaspora and ruminate on the meaning of the great legacy that is a family.