This is probably just me, but I had one big question after I finished watching Minari. How many Koreans were there in Arkansas back then?

I had a similar thought when watching the “This is Us” episode about Randall’s mother - I was not expecting to see Vietnamese Americans in Louisiana in the 1970s!

Minari takes place in 1983, and the “Birth Mother” episode of “This Is Us” starts off in the 1970s, and there actually is census data showing approximately how many Asian Pacific Americans there were in every state around that time - specifically, 1980.

According to that data, Asian Pacific Americans made up less than 1 percent of the population in Arkansas and Louisiana. Arkansas had the second-smallest percentage of Asian Pacific Americans in terms of its population (0.3%) and Louisiana had comparatively a lot more Asian Pacific Americans with just 0.6% of its population. Asian Pacific Americans made up less than 1 percent of the population of most states, and made up more than 2 percent of the population in just three Pacific states - Hawaii (60.5%), California (5.3%) and Washington (2.5%)!

Specifically, there were less than 600 Korean Americans in Arkansas in 1980 - 583 according to one count. There were, by contrast, many more Vietnamese Americans in Louisiana - there were 10,884 in 1980 by one count.

Since 1980, every single state (but Hawaii) has seen a large growth in the share of its population that is Asian Pacific American. While total numbers in 2010 were still low in some states, every single state (but Hawaii) saw an increase of at least 2.5 times, with Georgia’s Asian Pacific American population share increasing 9 times!