Europe is once again arguing about immigration: who should be allowed in, what newcomers owe the countries that receive them and what those countries owe the people whose labor they need. But there is an uncomfortable historical irony here. The wealthy societies now debating how many foreigners they can accommodate were often built, in part, by people who left poorer countries to do the jobs others would not. Korea knows something about this. Before the world queued up for its music, films and skin care, Koreans were traveling to the mines of West Germany, the hospitals of Europe, the construction sites of Saudi Arabia and the battlefields of Vietnam. They were the foreigners, the workers, the people whose labor was welcome even when they were not. One way to understand what it means to leave your country in search of a better life is to watch someone else do it. That’s why after giving my students lectures on Confucianism and Buddhism, on the fall of the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty and arrival of Japanese colonization, on the division of the peninsula, the internecine Korean War and th