Asian features, he is both disappointed with this "untoward" resurfacing of his heritage in

his son and hurt by Lelia's response to it: "Though I kept quiet, I was deeply hurting

inside, angry with the idea that she wished he was more white. The truth of my feeling,

exposed and ugly to me now, is that I was the one who was hoping whiteness for Mitt,

being fearful of what I might have bestowed on him ." (285).

 Many psychological conflicts and insecurities of the protagonist in Native

Speaker are intertwined with, and echo, the dilemmas new immigrants faced as ethnic

interstitial subjects. Notably, the demographic profile of new Korean immigrants was

quite different from that of their predecessors in that these newcomers came mostly as

intact family units and had high educational and professional backgrounds since the 1965

act stipulated occupational preferences for skilled workers.280 According to Harry H. L.

Kitano and Roger Daniels, the history of Korean immigration to the United States

consists of three waves. The "first wave" of Korean immigration started in 1903 as sugar

planters in Hawaii recruited over 7000 Korean laborers, and it later included a small

number of students and politicians in exile escaping from Japanese colonial rule. After

the outbreak of the Korean War (1950-1953), the "second wave" of Korean immigrants,

war orphans, wives of American soldiers, and students, added to the small number of

Koreans in the States, but they did not form any distinctive ethnic community. With the

"third wave" or post-1965 immigration, Koreans now migrated into America in large

numbers, and Korean ethnic communities like Korea Town in Los Angeles started to

emerge in large cities around small business sectors.281

 The recent post-1965 Korean immigrants are unique in that they are not like the

old-timers, who were driven to migration by poverty, political reasons, and other