Michael Vince Kim

Michael Vince Kim

The coastal town of Progreso, where Korean immigrants first arrived on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, in 1905. Photographed on 1 September 2016.

In 1905, around 1,000 Koreans arrived in Mexico aboard the SS Ilford. They alighted in Salina Cruz in the state of Oaxaca, and then traveled by steamboat to Progreso, on the Yucatán Peninsula. The Koreans had departed an impoverished country and were promised future prosperity, but were destined instead to be indentured laborers—a form of bonded contract labor in which they were forced to work for low wages for four or five years.

The immigrants were set to work on henequen plantations, in harsh conditions. Henequen, a variety of agave plant used in rope making, generated vast revenues for Mexico. The immigrants (most of whom were men) worked side-by-side with local Mayans, often learning the Mayan language in preference to the Spanish of their masters, and many went on to marry local Mayan women. Most laborers expected to return to their homeland, but by 1910 Korea had been incorporated into the Japanese Empire, and so many decided to stay in Mexico. With the decline in demand for henequen after World War I, a number of Koreans went on to seek work elsewhere in Mexico and in Cuba. Second-generation Korean-Mexicans often lost their parents’ language and traditions. More recently, young people of Korean descent are proving eager to pick up again on their cultural heritage.

Michael Vince Kim (b. 1986) is a Korean-Argentine photographer based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

While studying Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, his interest in Koryo-mar—a Korean

dialect spoken by ethnic Koreans in the former Soviet Union—led him to Kazakhstan and

Uzbekistan for his project Far From Distant Shores, portraying the descendants of Koreans

deported there from the Russian Far East in 1937. He continued this exploration of diaspora and identity with Aenikkaeng, a photo essay on the Koreans who, in 1905, were deceived into indentured servitude in Mexico.

He was selected as one of Magnum Photos’ ‘30 Under 30’ in 2015. In 2017, he was awarded first prize in the People Stories category of the World Press Photo Contest and was a participant in the Joop Swart Masterclass.

His work has been exhibited internationally and published in TIME, The New York Times, National Geographic, and M Le Magazine du Monde, among other publications.