I have lived in the U.S. for 30 years. Before settling in New York, I was also in California and met many Koreans from the Midwest and East Coast.

Working in finance naturally exposes you to people from diverse backgrounds.

The changes I have observed in the Korean immigrant community are, to be honest, interesting enough to be called a case study.

People raised in Korea tend to share similar traits. Whether from Seoul, Busan, or Daegu, despite differences in dialect, there is a common cultural denominator.

However, when these people come to the U.S., they become different individuals. They arrive for various reasons, in different ways, and at different times.

And there were people who could keenly identify those gaps.

On the surface, they appeared to be respectable businesspeople, but if you looked closer, they were engaging in check kiting, moving funds between accounts to buy time, inflating transaction records, maxing out credit cards and disappearing, and exploiting loopholes in auto insurance or leasing. They were people who repeatedly used these methods like a system.

The commonality among these individuals is that they never crossed the line into criminal prosecution. They precisely stopped at the level of civil disputes. They navigated the gray areas of the law with the precision of a calculator. I encountered this type of person a few times during my time in LA.

From just hearing the stories, they sound like impressive entrepreneurs, but in reality, they were either opportunists or were sustaining themselves through structurally risky transactions.

But were only Koreans like this? No. There were similar types in the early immigrant communities from Eastern Europe, China, and South America.

When a system is weak, there will always be those who exploit its loopholes. This is not a racial issue; it's a matter of incentive structures.

The financial system has become incredibly sophisticated. Credit histories, transaction patterns, and income flows are all connected through data. Even small anomalies trigger immediate flags. If you work in IT, you would understand that while it used to be rule-based detection, now ML-based anomaly detection operates in real-time. It is now nearly impossible to survive through loopholes.

The result? The 'yangachi style' has definitely decreased in the Korean community.

When you try to outsmart the system, the system catches you first. The ROI just doesn't work out. When the risk-to-return ratio becomes terrible, rational con artists naturally exit the scene. This is not because morals have improved, but because it no longer makes economic sense.

In my view, they are the dolai, and this is not an insult.

People who create Korean fusion dishes with unique combinations that shake up the American market.

People who go all-in on areas that others deem too risky, achieving great success in finance or IT.

People who are obsessively focused on one thing and ultimately create a market. The U.S. system fundamentally favors those who are at the tail end of the distribution rather than those optimized for the average.

What I've felt while living in America is that this country does not necessarily reward 'normal' people.

Instead, it gives opportunities to slightly crazy people, slightly excessive people, and those who seem a bit odd to others.

Look at Silicon Valley. How many of the successful founders there are 'ordinary people'?

When the system was weak, those who exploited loopholes could survive for a while.

But as the system strengthened, those positions disappeared, and only those who could dig in properly with their own methods survived.

Those who relied on loopholes eventually exited, leaving only those who create real value, even if they are unique.

This is not just a story of the Korean community but a pattern across the entire immigrant community in the U.S.

And this is why this country is still called the land of opportunity.

Is it fair? Well, I'm not sure. But it is certainly a country that gives opportunities to those who are genuinely a bit crazy.