Drive north on Closter Dock Road on a Saturday morning and the Northern Valley reveals itself in small signs: a Hangul banner above a bakery, a queue outside a tofu house, a mother steering two children toward Korean school. The Koreans in Closter, New Jersey have made this quiet Bergen County borough one of the most concentrated Korean American communities in the country, and they have done it without erasing the town’s old Dutch bones.
The Place
Closter is a small borough of roughly 8,800 people on 3.3 square miles in the Northern Valley of Bergen County, hard against the New York state line. Its name comes from the Dutch klooster, meaning a cloister or quiet place, and Dutch families like the Vervalens settled the area around 1710.
The railroad arrived in 1859 and turned the farms into a commuter suburb, earning Closter the nickname Hub of the Northern Valley. Incorporated in 1904 out of old Harrington Township, it is today an affluent town with a median household income well above $180,000 and tree-lined streets of generous colonials.
How It Became Korean
The story of Korean Closter is really the story of a corridor. Koreans did not land in Closter first. They came up the Hudson from Manhattan and across the George Washington Bridge, settling first in Fort Lee in the 1970s and 1980s, then pushing north and west as families prospered.
The Fort Lee beachhead
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act reopened America to Korean immigrants after decades of exclusion. Many of the first arrivals to North Jersey were professionals, doctors, engineers, small-business owners, drawn by proximity to New York City jobs and, crucially, by reputation for schools.
Fort Lee, at the foot of the bridge, became the entry point. As you can read in the story of the Koreans in Fort Lee, that dense, high-rise town became the commercial heart of Korean Bergen County, its Linwood Plaza and Main Street thick with restaurants, banks and groceries.
It mattered that Fort Lee was the first stop in New Jersey across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan, where many Korean immigrants ran businesses or worked. A worker could keep a job in the city and a household in New Jersey, paying a fraction of Manhattan rents. For a wave of immigrants determined to put down roots and educate children, that arithmetic was decisive.
What began as convenience hardened into community. Once a Korean grocery, a Korean bank branch and a Korean church existed within a short drive, the next arrivals had every reason to settle nearby rather than scatter. North Jersey’s Korean geography was set, and Closter sat at its far, leafy edge.
Climbing the valley
Fort Lee was where you arrived. The Northern Valley was where you aspired to live. As first-generation immigrants built capital, they followed the same instinct that drove every striving American suburbanite: better schools, bigger lots, quieter streets.
The towns of the Palisades ridge filled first. Englewood Cliffs and Tenafly drew Korean professional families in the 1980s and 1990s, with Korean Americans eventually reaching roughly 15 percent of Tenafly’s population.
From there the migration moved north along Piermont Road and County Road into Cresskill and on to Closter, Demarest and Haworth, the three towns that share a high school.
Why Closter
Closter offered the thing Korean families prize above almost everything: a school feeder pattern that ends at Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest, on Knickerbocker Road, which draws its students from Closter, Demarest and Haworth.
The high school’s reputation acted as a magnet. Korean parents, many of them educated to graduate level and intensely focused on their children’s futures, bought into the district deliberately. The result was a virtuous loop: more Korean families raised the visibility of the schools, which in turn drew more families.
By the 2010 census, Korean Americans made up 21.2 percent of Closter’s population, around 1,771 people. In 2000 the borough had ranked seventh in the entire nation for the share of residents claiming Korean ancestry among municipalities with at least 1,000 such residents. The Asian share of the borough overall passed 35 percent by 2020.
From cloister to community
What makes Closter unusual is how recent and how complete the transformation has been. Within a single generation, an old Dutch commuter town became a place where you can buy banchan, worship in Korean and enrol a child in Saturday Hangul lessons without leaving the Northern Valley.
The institutions followed the families. Korean Presbyterian churches put down roots, including New Life Church of New Jersey on Harrington Avenue and Ellim Korean Presbyterian Church, while the larger Chodae Community Church anchored the corridor just to the north in Norwood and Northvale.
Alongside the churches came the academies. Korean parents brought with them the hagwon tradition, the after-school cram schools that supplement regular education, and a constellation of tutoring centres and music schools grew up to serve the Northern Valley’s ambitious families. Saturday Korean-language schools, meanwhile, gave the American-born children a thread back to the language of their grandparents.
The commercial fabric thickened in step. Korean bakeries, tofu houses, barbecue restaurants and small markets opened in and around Closter Plaza and along the surrounding roads, so that the daily rhythms of Korean life, the bread run, the church potluck, the after-school pickup, could all unfold within the borough.
The Landmarks
Closter Plaza, Vervalen Street and Closter Dock Road. The borough’s commercial heart, a 1960s shopping centre that the developer EDENS rebuilt between 2013 and 2016 into a 208,000-square-foot open-air centre anchored by Whole Foods and Target. Its remade storefronts and dining options reflect the community that shops there.
Tous les Jours, 40 Homans Avenue. A branch of the Korean-founded Asian-French bakery chain, where families queue for soft milk bread, red-bean pastries and birthday cakes. It is the kind of everyday Korean fixture that signals a town has truly become home.
Jaws Topokki, Closter. A specialist in tteokbokki, the chewy rice cakes in fiery red sauce, alongside gimbap and tempura. It is comfort food for the second generation and a draw for teenagers after school.
New Life Church of New Jersey, 283 Harrington Avenue. A Korean Presbyterian (PCA) congregation that blends traditional hymns with contemporary worship and runs children’s and community ministries. For many immigrant families the Korean church is the first and most durable social anchor.
Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest, 162 Knickerbocker Road. The shared high school for Closter, Demarest and Haworth, opened in 1955. It offers Korean at honours levels and has a Korean Language and Culture Honor Society, a measure of how deeply the community is woven into the schools.
The Korean Community Center, 100 Grove Street, Tenafly. A short drive south, the KCC serves the whole Northern Valley corridor with cultural programmes, elder services and integration work, the institutional backbone of Korean Bergen County that Closter families lean on.
Where They Came From
Korean immigration to America surged after 1965, and the families who reached North Jersey came overwhelmingly from urban South Korea, above all from Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi province. They were, by and large, an educated and professional wave: physicians, engineers, accountants, entrepreneurs.
That origin profile shaped the kind of suburb they sought. Coming from a country where academic achievement is the great social ladder, they gravitated to towns defined by their schools. The Northern Valley, with its regional high school and its quiet affluence, was a near-perfect match.
Chain migration did the rest. One family’s success in Closter brought relatives and church friends, and the corridor thickened town by town until the Korean presence became self-sustaining, with its own groceries, churches, academies and bakeries close at hand.
The pull was also generational. Some who first arrived as students or young professionals in New York later moved their ageing parents over to join them, three generations resettling within a few miles. The density of Korean institutions in Bergen County made that possible in a way few other American suburbs could match.
Closter Today
Closter today is a town comfortable in its dual identity. The Dutch street names and the 1904 borough charter sit easily alongside Korean churches, hagwon-style tutoring academies and a Whole Foods that stocks Korean staples for the families who fill the parking lot.
The community is also maturing. The children of the first arrivals have grown up through the Demarest schools, gone to selective universities and, in many cases, come back to raise their own families in the same borough. That second generation is bilingual and bicultural, equally at home with tteokbokki and the SAT.
The Korean imprint shows up in quiet ways. A Korean name on the borough’s school honour rolls, a Hangul flyer pinned in a coffee shop, a Korean Language and Culture Honor Society at the regional high school. None of it announces itself loudly, which is precisely the Closter style.
It is not without tension. Across the Northern Valley, debates over academic pressure, real-estate prices and the changing character of old towns surface periodically, as they do in every fast-changing suburb. But Closter has absorbed its transformation with notable ease, and the borough that began as a Dutch quiet place has become, without losing itself, one of Korean America’s most settled suburban homes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Koreans live in Closter, New Jersey?
As of the 2010 census, Korean Americans made up about 21.2 percent of Closter’s population, roughly 1,771 people. The town’s overall Asian share rose above 35 percent by 2020, making the Koreans in Closter, New Jersey one of the most concentrated such communities in the country.
Why did so many Koreans move to Closter?
Korean families were drawn to Closter chiefly by its schools, especially Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest, and by the borough’s affluence and quiet. Most arrived after first settling in Fort Lee and then moving north up the Northern Valley corridor.
Is there a Korean part of the Closter shopping area?
Closter Plaza, rebuilt around 2016 with Whole Foods and Target, is the commercial heart, and Korean fixtures like the Tous les Jours bakery on Homans Avenue and Korean restaurants such as Jaws Topokki serve the community there.
What Korean churches are in Closter?
Korean Presbyterian congregations include New Life Church of New Jersey on Harrington Avenue and Ellim Korean Presbyterian Church. The larger Chodae Community Church anchors the corridor just north of Closter in Norwood and Northvale.
How does Closter relate to other Korean towns nearby?
Closter sits at the northern end of a Korean corridor that runs from Fort Lee up through Englewood Cliffs, Tenafly and Cresskill. Families typically moved north along this chain as they prospered, with the Koreans in Closter, New Jersey representing one of its most established outposts.
Where did Closter’s Korean families originally come from?
Most came from urban South Korea, especially Seoul and Gyeonggi province, arriving after the 1965 reform of US immigration law. They were largely a professional and well-educated wave, which shaped their preference for school-focused suburbs like Closter.
If your family’s story passed through Closter, or any of the places Koreans have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a flat in Seoul to a colonial off Closter Dock Road, to wherever you are now.