A Move To The Country More Asian Americans Escaping Urban Life, Doing Business In Rural Areas

Tired of their expensive lifestyle in the Seattle area, Henry and Grace Kim moved out to Index with their two youngest children and bought the grocery store.

The move made them the first Asian American entrepreneurs in that Cascade Range community of 141 people.

“I am 52 years old,” said Henry Kim, chatting outside the rustic general store, with snowcapped mountains looming in all directions. “I was thinking of a place to retire. It’s beautiful here.”

Ten miles to the west, the Ko family from Korea runs a gas station and grocery market in Startup, a town of 620 people. They moved from Baltimore three years ago after two robberies at their convenience store.

Like their white counterparts, some Asian Americans are moving to the country to escape crime and the high cost of living in urban areas. In smaller towns, they are enjoying safer schools, lower housing and land costs and more tranquillity.

The number of Asians and Pacific Islanders in Washington state’s rural counties grew 52 percent to nearly 16,000 people during the first half of this decade, according to the state’s Office of Financial Management.

The figure is slightly higher than the 49 percent jump in the Asian-Pacific Islander population in the urban counties of King, Snohomish, Pierce, Kitsap, Whatcom, Island, Thurston, Spokane, Yakima, Benton and Franklin during the same period.

Asian Americans, however, are not new to the countryside. Ron Chew, director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, notes there have been Japanese American farmers, Filipino cannery workers and Chinese restaurateurs there in the past.

But a large-scale move is a more recent phenomenon, Chew and other experts said, prompted partly by shifting economic opportunities, diminishing quality of life in urban areas and telecommuting opportunities offered by computers.

Meanwhile, some immigrants gravitate to the countryside for other reasons.

More than 1,000 Hmong refugees in Washington - many of them farmers from the remote mountainous regions of Laos - have settled in agricultural areas such as the Snoqualmie Valley, said Fong Cha, president of the Eastside Hmong Association.

Many other Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants have settled in the Yakima Valley and in Chelan, Cowlitz, Skagit and Pacific counties, according to the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance.

For many, especially those struggling with the English language, starting a farm or business is easier than competing for jobs that require better communication skills or expose Asian Americans to discrimination, experts said.

But Asian Americans can face chilly receptions in rural areas as well - at least at first.

“In the beginning, they didn’t like us,” said Jung Ko, the Startup store owners’ 26-year-old son. “Customers would throw their money down, spill things and scream at us if we didn’t understand them right away.

“But we were used to that. We would tell them: ‘Sorry, we can’t move back to Korea. We came to live and die here.”’

Kim said his store in Index was broken into twice in the first six months he owned it. And the previous owner failed to tell him a nearby campground would close the year he took over the business - a change accompanied by a 35 percent drop in sales.

“Some people said they don’t like ‘Orientals’ to be here,” said Kim, who quit his auto-body-repair job at a Bellevue, Wash., car dealership to move to Index.

“One crazy guy told me to ‘get the hell out of here’ and almost ran over me with his pickup truck,” he said. “But I am not scared.”

Area residents, many of whom use postal boxes at the Kims’ store, had a mixed reaction to the family, said Claudia Kiel, clerk-treasurer for the town of Index.

Most of the locals - a mixture of low-income mountain dwellers, outdoor guides, educated retirees and entrepreneurs - are pretty open-minded, she said.

But some cracked mean jokes about the Kims, she said. And many were disappointed with changes the Kims made to the funky old store, which now looks “kind of junky,” she said.

But, over time, the Kims and Kos say, they have made friends in their new communities.

“We moved in on Dec. 31, and by Thanksgiving, farmers were bringing us (samples of) their crops,” Ko said.

Now, longtime area residents “come to chat and show us their newborn babies. We feel like we belong here now.”