Drive east out of the Orange County basin on the 91, watch the strip malls thin and the land tilt upward, and you arrive somewhere that feels engineered for arrival. The Koreans in Anaheim Hills did not build this hillside enclave of cul-de-sacs and oak canyons, but over the past three decades a steady current of Korean professional families has folded itself into it, drawn by the schools, the quiet, and the short drive down to the markets and churches of north Orange County.
The Place
Anaheim Hills is the affluent eastern shoulder of Anaheim, a master-planned community of roughly 47,000 people tucked into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. It is a place of curving roads, three-car garages, and homes that climb the slopes above Santa Ana Canyon Road, a master-planned community first developed in the 1970s.
The median household income here sits well above $160,000, far higher than the city of Anaheim as a whole. That gap is the whole story: Anaheim Hills shares a city name with the Disneyland flatlands to the west, but almost nothing else.
It is a suburb that markets itself on golf, hiking trails, and good schools. For a generation of Korean families moving up and out of the older immigrant corridors, that pitch landed precisely.
How It Became Korean
The Korean story in Anaheim Hills cannot be told from inside Anaheim Hills alone. It begins a few freeway exits to the northwest, in the older Korean heart of Orange County, and it moves uphill from there.
The Garden Grove beginning
Orange County’s first sizeable Korean settlement formed in Garden Grove in the 1970s, the years when a cluster of Korean shops and churches along Garden Grove Boulevard hardened into what locals called Little Seoul. By 1980 there were more than 11,000 Koreans in the county, most of them anchored to that strip.
The early arrivals were classic first-generation entrepreneurs. They ran dry cleaners, liquor stores, and small groceries, and they planted churches with a diligence that would define the community for decades. Garden Grove was where the foundation was poured.
Those early decades were defined by long hours and thin margins. The first generation built businesses that could be run by a family, banked the proceeds, and poured nearly all of it into one thing: getting the children into the right schools. That single-minded focus on education is the engine that would eventually carry families up into the hills.
The 1990s move north and east
The 1990s scattered that concentration outward. After the 1992 Los Angeles unrest, many Korean families left both Los Angeles and the older Orange County core, and a clear pattern emerged: they moved toward safer neighbourhoods and, above all, better schools.
They settled in Buena Park, Fullerton, Cypress, La Palma, and Irvine. North Orange County became the new centre of gravity, and the corridor along Beach Boulevard filled with Korean restaurants, bakeries, and supermarkets. The county now holds the second-largest Korean American population of any county in America, behind only neighbouring Los Angeles.
The climb into the hills
Anaheim Hills was a later and quieter destination than Fullerton or Buena Park. It had no Korean business district to seed a community, and it never developed one. What it had was the thing second-generation and upwardly mobile Korean families wanted most: a top-tier public high school and a calm, well-kept neighbourhood with room to breathe.
So the migration here was residential, not commercial. Families bought into the hillside, enrolled their children at Canyon High School, and kept their Korean life, the groceries, the church, the after-school academies, anchored down the hill in Fullerton and Buena Park. The pattern mirrors what happened in nearby Yorba Linda, the other affluent hillside city just to the north that drew the same kind of Korean household.
That arrangement, an affluent bedroom community paired with a dense ethnic commercial corridor a short drive away, is the defining shape of Korean life in this part of Orange County. It also describes the hillside enclaves of Chino Hills and Diamond Bar across the county line.
A community measured in households, not storefronts
Because the Korean presence here is residential rather than commercial, it does not announce itself in neon Hangul signage the way it does on Beach Boulevard. The Asian share of Anaheim Hills runs to roughly a fifth of the population, and Koreans are a visible part of that, though the neighbourhood’s own statistical breakdowns are too coarse to pin an exact Korean figure.
You read the presence in other ways. In the SAT prep flyers, in the church carpool lines on Sunday mornings, in the steady traffic heading down Imperial Highway toward the markets, and in the surnames on the honour rolls at Canyon High.
It is a presence that prizes blending in. For many of these households, the whole point of the climb was to live in a neighbourhood defined by good schools and quiet streets rather than by ethnicity. The Korean character of Anaheim Hills is something carried inside the home and re-gathered at church and market, not stamped onto the streetscape.
The Landmarks
Canyon High School, 220 South Imperial Highway. This is the magnet that drew many Korean families to the hillside in the first place. It is one of the highest-performing public high schools in Anaheim, with a 96 percent graduation rate, an International Baccalaureate programme, and proficiency scores that run far above state averages. For families weighing a move, the school district line is often the deciding factor.
Anaheim Hills Festival, 8020 East Santa Ana Canyon Road. The community’s central shopping centre, a sprawl of Target, a grocery anchor, restaurants, and a cinema. It is where the hillside does its everyday errands, the unglamorous civic centre of a neighbourhood that has no traditional downtown.
Oak Canyon Nature Center, 6700 East Walnut Canyon Road. A 58-acre stretch of three adjoining canyons with four miles of trails and a small interpretive museum. It is the kind of quiet, free, well-maintained green space that sells a neighbourhood to families, and on weekends its trails fill with multigenerational walking groups.
Anaheim Hills Golf Club, 6501 East Nohl Ranch Road. An 18-hole municipal course threaded along a creek and shaded by old oaks and sycamores. The course is part of the original early-1970s vision of Anaheim Hills as a rural, low-density alternative to the basin, and it remains one of the neighbourhood’s signature amenities.
H Mart, 5111 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park. A short drive down the hill, this is the Korean supermarket that anchors the weekly shop for many Anaheim Hills families. With its food court, banchan counters, and aisles of Korean staples, it is the closest thing the broader community has to a town square, even though it sits two cities away.
The Source OC, 6920 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park. A Korean-Californian shopping and dining complex on Beach Boulevard, home to K-pop and stationery shops, karaoke lounges, restaurants, and a CGV cinema. It is where the second generation goes for the parts of Korean culture that a supermarket cannot supply.
Walnut Canyon Reservoir. The open-water reservoir set into the hills above the neighbourhood, a recurring backdrop in the Anaheim Hills landscape. It is fenced and off-limits, but its blue expanse against the dry slopes is the image many residents picture when they think of home.
Where They Came From
The Korean families of Anaheim Hills trace back, like nearly all Korean Americans, to South Korea, with the largest early waves leaving the country after the liberalising 1965 changes to American immigration law and through the economically turbulent decades that followed. Many came from Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi region, the dense urban heart that has long supplied the bulk of Korean emigration.
But the more immediate origin point for Anaheim Hills is internal. These households rarely arrived in the hills straight from Incheon airport. They came up from Garden Grove, over from Fullerton, across from Buena Park, and out of Los Angeles Koreatown, climbing the income and housing ladder one move at a time.
That two-stage journey, abroad to an immigrant gateway, then gateway to the suburbs, is the through line of Korean settlement across Orange County. Anaheim Hills sits near the top of that ladder.
Anaheim Hills Today
Today the Korean presence in Anaheim Hills is established but understated. It is a community of homeowners and professionals rather than shopkeepers, and its institutions, the churches, the markets, the academies, mostly sit down the hill rather than on it. That is not a sign of weakness. It is the shape success tends to take.
The families here live a kind of dual-address life. The home, the school, and the hiking trail are in Anaheim Hills. The Sunday service, the weekly groceries, and the Korean bakery run are a fifteen-minute drive northwest into the denser Korean corridor of north Orange County, the same corridor that serves nearby Fullerton and Buena Park.
What you find on the hillside is a quieter form of belonging. It is measured in school rankings and property values, in second-generation kids who code-switch between English and Korean at the dinner table, and in parents who made a deliberate climb out of the gateway neighbourhoods so their children could grow up exactly here. The community keeps company with the other affluent Korean and Asian enclaves of the region, from the city of Cypress to Irvine further south.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there many Koreans in Anaheim Hills?
Koreans are a real but understated presence among Anaheim Hills’ substantial Asian American population, which makes up roughly a fifth of the neighbourhood. The Koreans in Anaheim Hills are concentrated in residential life rather than in a visible business district, so the community is felt more in schools and churches than in storefronts.
Why did Korean families move to Anaheim Hills?
The main draw was schools, above all Canyon High School, along with the neighbourhood’s safety, quiet, and upscale housing. Many Korean families in Anaheim Hills moved up from older Orange County hubs like Garden Grove, Fullerton, and Buena Park in search of a calmer, higher-ranked place to raise children.
Where do Anaheim Hills Koreans shop for Korean groceries?
Most drive a short distance down the hill to the Korean supermarkets along Beach Boulevard, especially the H Mart in Buena Park at 5111 Beach Boulevard. The Source OC, also on Beach Boulevard, adds Korean restaurants, cafes, and entertainment.
Is Anaheim Hills the same as central Anaheim?
No. Anaheim Hills is the affluent hillside community in the eastern part of the city, with much higher incomes and a very different character from the flatland neighbourhoods near Disneyland and downtown Anaheim. The two share a city government but little else in daily life.
Where is the nearest Korean business district to Anaheim Hills?
The closest dense Korean commercial corridor runs along Beach Boulevard through Buena Park and into Fullerton, a roughly fifteen-minute drive northwest. Garden Grove, further south, holds the county’s original and historic Koreatown.
How did Koreans first settle in Orange County?
The first sizeable Korean community in Orange County formed in Garden Grove in the 1970s, growing into a district known as Little Seoul. From there, families spread north and east through the 1990s into Fullerton, Buena Park, Cypress, and eventually the hillside suburbs like Anaheim Hills.
If your family’s story passed through Anaheim Hills, or any of the places Koreans have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the apartment blocks of Seoul to a cul-de-sac above Santa Ana Canyon Road, to wherever you are now.