On a Saturday morning along West Orangethorpe Avenue, the parking lots fill before the storefronts open. A family lines up outside a gimbap counter, a grandmother carries a pink box from a Korean bakery, and three generations file into a tofu house for soondubu that arrives still bubbling. This is the everyday rhythm of the Koreans in Fullerton, a community that has quietly made this affluent north Orange County city one of the densest concentrations of Korean American life in California.
The Place
Fullerton sits in northern Orange County, a city of roughly 138,000 people with tree-lined neighbourhoods, a walkable historic downtown, and a reputation for good schools. It is older and leafier than the master-planned suburbs to the south, anchored by a 1925 Spanish-style downtown and by California State University, Fullerton, the largest campus in the CSU system.
The city is genuinely mixed: Latino, white, and Asian residents share its blocks, with Asian Americans making up close to a quarter of the population. Among that Asian quarter, Koreans are the single largest group, and they have shaped the city in ways that are easy to miss until you look for them.
How It Became Korean
Fullerton did not begin as a Korean town. For most of the twentieth century it was a citrus and oil community, then a comfortable bedroom suburb. The Korean story here is a story of arrival in waves, and of a steady northward drift up Orange County over five decades.
From Koreatown to Orange County
The first Korean Americans in Southern California clustered in Los Angeles after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 lifted the old national-origin quotas. Koreatown in Los Angeles became the cultural and commercial heart of the diaspora, a place of churches, groceries, banks, and restaurants. As families saved and prospered, many looked south for space and schools.
Garden Grove in central Orange County became the first major suburban landing point, so much so that it was officially recognised as the county’s Koreatown in 2019. From there, the community kept moving. Over time, north Orange County, Fullerton, Buena Park, La Palma, and Cerritos, drew younger families and newer businesses.
The 1992 turning point
The Los Angeles civil unrest of 1992 fell hardest on Korean-owned businesses, and it pushed thousands of families to reconsider where they wanted to raise children. North Orange County offered what they were looking for: quieter streets, strong public schools, and a short drive back to Koreatown when they wanted it.
Fullerton, with its established neighbourhoods and well-regarded schools, became one of the chief beneficiaries. The decade that followed saw Korean families buy homes around Sunny Hills and the city’s western flank in growing numbers.
The move was as much about safety and stability as about prosperity. Families who had watched a generation of work go up in flames wanted somewhere their children could walk to a good school and their savings could go into a house rather than a storefront’s insurance. Fullerton offered exactly that bargain, and word travelled quickly through the churches and the Korean-language press that carried so much of the community’s information.
Churches first, then everything else
For many Korean immigrants, the church arrived before the restaurant and often before the family was fully settled. Fullerton became home to an extraordinary density of Korean congregations, from small storefront fellowships to one of the most influential Korean megachurches in America.
Grace Korean Church, founded in 1982 by Pastor David Kwang-shin Kim, grew from a handful of families into a congregation of several thousand, and spun off Grace Mission University and a denomination with churches worldwide. The Korean church in Fullerton was never only a place of worship: it was a job network, a language school, a marriage market, and a soft landing for the newly arrived.
A professional, business-minded community
The Koreans who settled in Fullerton skewed toward small-business owners and professionals: shop and restaurant proprietors, doctors and dentists, accountants, and engineers. They valued education fiercely, and Fullerton’s schools, both the public high schools and the university, became part of the draw and part of the identity.
That orientation toward work and schooling produced a generation of Korean American Fullertonians who grew up bilingual, attended Sunny Hills or Fullerton’s other campuses, and stayed close to home. One of them, Fred Jung, would go on to be elected to the City Council in 2020 as Fullerton’s first Korean American council member, and then serve as mayor.
The Landmarks
Grace Korean Church, 1645 W Valencia Drive. Founded in 1982 by David Kwang-shin Kim, Grace grew from a few families into one of the best-known Korean immigrant churches in the United States. It seeded Grace Mission University and a worldwide Presbyterian denomination, and remains a Sunday anchor for thousands of Fullerton-area families.
West Orangethorpe Avenue corridor. The stretch of Orangethorpe through west Fullerton is the city’s unofficial Korean restaurant row, a run of strip malls packed with barbecue houses, soondubu counters, gimbap shops, and karaoke spots. It is where the community eats out, and where its food culture is most visible to outsiders.
Baro Gimbap, 2226 W Orangethorpe Avenue. A neighbourhood gimbap and Korean comfort-food spot on the Orangethorpe strip. Places like Baro are the everyday face of Korean Fullerton, the quick weekday lunch and the kids’ after-school snack rather than the special-occasion barbecue.
California Tofu Grill, 1993 W Malvern Avenue. A casual soondubu and tofu house off the western edge of the city, serving the bubbling stone bowls of soft-tofu stew that are a staple of Korean home cooking. It is the kind of unpretentious kitchen that keeps a Korean suburb fed.
Hamahippo Korean Kitchen, 2219 N Harbor Boulevard. A modern Korean comfort-food restaurant on Harbor Boulevard, the corridor that links downtown Fullerton to its northern neighbourhoods. Its clean, contemporary room reflects the younger, design-conscious Korean dining that has taken root across north Orange County.
Paris Baguette, 1659 W Orangethorpe Avenue. The Korean-founded bakery-cafe chain has become a fixture of Korean American suburbs, and the Orangethorpe branch fills with families buying soft milk breads, cakes, and coffee. It is a Sunday-after-church ritual as much as a bakery.
California State University, Fullerton. The largest campus in the CSU system, CSUF is home to a Korean American Student Association and an Asian Pacific American Resource Center, and it keeps a steady stream of young Korean Americans living, studying, and staying in the city.
Where They Came From
Most Korean Fullertonians trace their roots to the Republic of Korea, and within that to the great urban centres, Seoul above all, that sent so many emigrants abroad after 1965. Mayor Fred Jung himself was born in Seoul and came to the United States as a small child.
But the more immediate origin point for many Fullerton families is not Korea at all. It is Los Angeles. They, or their parents, first settled in Koreatown, built a foothold there, and then moved south and east as soon as they could afford a house with a yard and a good school district.
That two-step migration, from Seoul to Koreatown to north Orange County, is the defining shape of the Korean story here. It also explains why Fullerton’s Korean life is so closely braided with that of neighbouring cities, especially the dense commercial Koreatown that has grown along Beach Boulevard in Buena Park, just to the west.
Fullerton Today
Korean Fullerton today is less a single neighbourhood than a layer woven through the whole city. There is no single gated enclave: Korean families live across Fullerton, concentrated toward the west and the Sunny Hills area, sending their children to the same well-regarded schools that drew them in the first place.
The schools remain the quiet engine of all this. Sunny Hills High School and the city’s other campuses still draw Korean families the way they did in the 1990s, and Cal State Fullerton keeps a rotating population of Korean American students in town. Education was the original promise of the move north, and it is the thread that holds the second and third generations to the city even as the rest of life changes.
The commercial heart of north Orange County Korean life has, in many ways, migrated next door. The Source mall and the Beach Boulevard restaurant strip in Buena Park now serve as the regional Korean downtown, while Fullerton supplies much of the residential base, the churches, and a generation of Korean American professionals and leaders. The relationship runs in both directions, and it ties Fullerton to fellow Korean suburbs like Irvine to the south and the older Korean enclave of La Crescenta up in the foothills.
What endures is the everyday texture: the Korean churches that fill on Sunday mornings, the bakery boxes and the tofu houses, the Korean American kids at Sunny Hills and at Cal State Fullerton, and a mayor who arrived from Seoul as a five-year-old and grew up to lead the city. For a community that came north looking for quiet and good schools, Fullerton turned out to be exactly that, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Koreans live in Fullerton, California?
Fullerton has one of the highest concentrations of Korean residents in Orange County, with figures in the high teens of thousands and Koreans forming the largest single Asian group in the city. Orange County overall is home to more than 100,000 Korean Americans, the second-largest Korean population of any US county after Los Angeles.
Why did so many Koreans settle in Fullerton?
The Koreans in Fullerton came north largely from Los Angeles in search of quieter neighbourhoods and strong public schools, a movement that accelerated after the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest. Fullerton’s established neighbourhoods, good high schools, and proximity to Cal State Fullerton made it especially attractive to professional and business-owning Korean families.
Where is the Korean food in Fullerton?
The main Korean dining corridor runs along West Orangethorpe Avenue, lined with barbecue houses, tofu and soondubu kitchens, gimbap shops, and bakeries such as Paris Baguette. Restaurants like Baro Gimbap and California Tofu Grill serve the everyday Korean food of the community, with larger Korean dining and entertainment options just west in Buena Park.
What is the largest Korean church in Fullerton?
Grace Korean Church on West Valencia Drive, founded in 1982 by Pastor David Kwang-shin Kim, is the best known. It grew from a few families into a congregation of several thousand and gave rise to Grace Mission University and a worldwide denomination, and is one of the most influential Korean immigrant churches in America.
Is Fullerton’s mayor Korean American?
Yes. Fred Jung, born in Seoul and brought to the United States as a child, was elected to the Fullerton City Council in 2020 as the city’s first Korean American council member and has since served as mayor. He grew up in Fullerton and attended Sunny Hills High School, reflecting the community’s deep roots in the city.
How does Fullerton relate to Koreatown and Buena Park?
The Koreans in Fullerton are closely linked to both Koreatown in Los Angeles, where many families first settled, and to neighbouring Buena Park, whose Beach Boulevard strip and Source mall have become the commercial centre of north Orange County Korean life. Fullerton tends to supply the residential base and churches, while Buena Park anchors the shopping and nightlife.
If your family’s story passed through Fullerton, or any of the places Koreans have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From Seoul and the streets of Koreatown, to a churchgoing suburb in north Orange County, to wherever you are now.