Korean American Study

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6.

Changing the Business Plan:

Korean Merchants Try to Reintegrate into the South LA Community

Mainstream media often portrayed the 1992 crisis as an “ethnic” conflict between

African American and Korean Americans, but it was, and is, so much more

complex. From the long standing racial economic oppression and social

discrimination experienced in African American communities, to the exclusion

and exploitation of Korean and Latino immigrant workers and their families, to

the economic conditions requiring struggling immigrant storeowners to work 70-

and 80-hour weeks, to failed planning investment policies in our cities, to the

failure to convict the police officers who beat Rodney King, to the LAPD’s

decision to protect Beverly Hills while Koreatown, Central L.A., and South L.A.

burned-Sa-I-Gu was a moment of convergence of so many of our city’s and our

country’s social, political, and economic ills. The violence and pain of those days

was a distillation of the violence and pain of our times.

-Alexander Suh, Executive Director, Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance

Unfortunately the above quote by Suh didn’t make the dominant discourse on the 1992

Los Angeles civil unrest. The film Menace II Society is a perfect reflection of the

dominant discourse: it frames the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest as the result of “Black–

Korean tension.” However, Latinos were the largest segment of the population to be

arrested during the unrest. It is not possible to discuss the unrest without considering

either Latinos or Latino–Korean relations. Chapters 6 through 9 (also Chapter 5) aim to

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discuss the presence of Latinos in South LA and Latino-Korean relations, and then to

demystify the oversimplified narrative of racial and ethnic relations. These chapters will

offer a new understanding of the way Korean immigrant merchants developed new

business practices in the aftermath of the unrest, and how this reflected a broader

understanding of race relations that go beyond the Black-White binary.

The unrest raised fundamental questions about the current and future state of race

relations in Los Angeles, the nation’s most diverse metropolis (Bobo et al. 1994).

Unfortunately, even after the unrest, the dominant discourse defined race narrowly and

failed to go beyond the conventional “Black–White” racial framework. A debate between

John Hope Franklin and Angela Oh illustrates this binary racial framework. Franklin, a

distinguished Black historian, was chair of the Advisory Board of President Bill Clinton’s

Initiative on Race and Reconciliation. Oh, a Korean American criminal lawyer was a

fellow member of this Board. Oh called on the U.S. to go beyond a “Black–White

paradigm” and was rebuked by Franklin, who repeated his belief that “this country cut its

eyeteeth on racism with Black–White relations” (New York Post, September 30, 1997).

Franklin declined to broaden the panel’s focus to include all races and claimed that the

primary issue was still between Blacks and Whites. To believe, as Franklin did, that

Asian Americans and Latinos do not really count is to miss how race relations have been

evolving for decades; the unrest, with its multiracial cast of characters, illustrated this

fact.1

The Franklin-Oh debate reflects a larger debate on racism. Traditional narratives

tend to reinforce the idea that racism is “singular and monolithic” and will last forever

without changing (Goldberg 1990, xii). This prevailing, reductionist approach takes

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racism to be sexually or economically determined or the result of an “authoritarian

psychotic-group personality type” (Goldberg 1990, xxii). However, manifestations of

racism have evolved and are multiple, instead of remaining static and singular. Decades

of scholarship, beginning with Omi and Winant’s important intervention (1994), have

argued that race is not fixed, but is rather a contested and negotiated process. However,

researchers thus far have focused primarily on majority–minority relations, particularly

White–Black relations. Scholars have also ignored the structural processes in which racial

ideology and practice are constantly being rearticulated. Paying attention to power

relations and the structural process allows for a non-positivist approach to understanding

the relationships among ethnicity, ideology, and other social constructions. As Frederik

Barth (1969) insisted, ethnicity can only be understood as a process. This understanding

must come from a close examination of the history of intergroup relations and the ways

in which ethnic boundaries arise historically from these relations. Moreover, there is

much to be gained from John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff’s idea that ethnic genesis is

always rooted in simultaneously structural and cultural–historical forces, and that

ethnicity cannot be understood unless the social and historical situations for its

persistence are also revealed (1992, 50).

Although ethnicity came to assume a new meaning in anthropology with the

publication of Barth’s Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969), its structural functionalist

limitation must be noted. Barth (1969) rejected the idea that ethnic groups are definable

by some total inventory of cultural traits that their members share. Rather, the group is

always in the process of creating itself, with “criteria of membership” that it produces in

order to mark its boundaries (38). Jenkins (2001) criticized Barth for discussing the fluid

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nature of ethnicity but not “taking on board the more difficult questions about the nature

of collective social forms in which [he] is interested” (2001, 4825). Indeed, Barth’s

analysis has proven inadequate for understanding the ethnic confrontations, conflicts, and

violence that have become so common in the late twentieth century (Wolf 1994).

Whereas the persistence of ethnic identity was interpreted some time ago as atavistic,

ethnicity has become a much more significant factor in social relations since the

emergence of the nation-state (Williams 1989). In addition, as explained in Chapter 2,

various state agents play a critical role in the development of inter-ethnic tension.

An ethnographic perspective on the processes through which racial ideologies are

contested and re-articulated can contribute to our understanding of race (Gregory 1994,

25). This chapter examines the articulation of race and ethnicity in the context of both

ideology and practice through an examination of Korean immigrant merchants who were

directly affected by the “first multi-ethnic unrest” in 20th century urban America, and

Korean-Latino relations. My interviews also touch upon social and historical information

that helps define the shift in racial perception. My observations are based on in-depth

interviews with 71 Korean American merchants that were completed during 1992 and

1994 (19 before and 52 after the 1992 unrest).

Rodney King Beating and the 1992 Los Angeles Civil unrest

On March 3, 1991, Rodney King and two passengers were driving west on the Foothill

Freeway (I-210) through the Lake View Terrace neighborhood of Los Angeles. The

California Highway Patrol (CHP) attempted to initiate a traffic stop. A high-speed pursuit

ensued with speeds estimated at up to 115 mph first over freeways, and then through

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residential neighborhoods. When King came to a stop, CHP Officers ordered the

occupants under arrest. King was tasered, struck with side-handled batons, then tackled to

the ground and cuffed. In the videotape, King continues to try to stand up as the police

officers hit his joints, wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. Officers attempted numerous

baton strikes on King, with 33-50 blows hitting King, plus six kicks.2 The officers

claimed that King was under the influence of the dissociative drug phencyclidine (PCP)

at the time of arrest, which caused him to be aggressive and violent.3 Nonetheless, a

subsequent test for the presence of PCP in King’s system several days later turned up

negative.

The footage of an unarmed Black man being mercilessly beaten by White officers

resurrected “the long, black memory of whippings, lynchings, dismemberment, rapes,

and burnings,” and became a rallying point for activists in Los Angeles and around the

country (Stevenson 2013, 287). The verdict epitomized “the systematic bias of American

legal and political structures against Black people,” against the backdrop of decades of

socioeconomic decline, disenfranchisement, and despair in Black communities

(Economic and Political Weekly July 25, 1992). The LA District Attorney subsequently

charged four police officers with assault and use of excessive force (NYT March 6, 1992).

A year later, on April 29, 1992, on the seventh day of deliberations, the jury

acquitted all four officers of assault and acquitted three of the four of using excessive

force. The verdicts were based in part on the first three seconds of a blurry, 13-second

segment of the video tape that was edited out by television news stations in their

broadcasts. During the first two seconds of videotape, the video showed King attempting

to flee past one of the police offers. During the next minute and 19 seconds, King was

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beaten continuously by the officers. The officers testified that they tried to restrain King

prior to the starting point of the videotape but that King was able to fend them.4

The unrest started the same day of the acquittal in South LA and then spread to

other areas in LA over a six-day period. By 3:45 on April 29, a crowd of more than 300

people had appeared at the Los Angeles County Courthouse protesting the verdicts

passed down a half hour earlier. The first recorded attack involved theft and assault on

Korean property. About an hour after the acquittals were announced, mostly older

teenagers (“most likely gang members, judging from their style of dress and the constant

‘throwing’ of gang signs during the evening”), went to the Pay-Less Liquor and Deli on

Florence just west of Normandie (Hayes-Bautista et al. 1993, 441). They were stopped at

the door, and at that point, the storeowner’s son was hit in the head with a bottle of beer.

Two other youths threw beer bottles at the store’s glass front door, shattering it. “This is

for Rodney King,” one of them yelled.5

There was another disturbance at Florence and Halldale, a block to the east. A

young Black man, cheered on by several others, used an aluminum baseball bat to break

the windshield of a Cadillac with two White men inside. The man with the bat was

arrested, but police officers who responded to the call came under a barrage of rocks,

bottles, and anything else that could be picked up and thrown. After handcuffing the rock

thrower, the officers confronted a group of gang members who attempted to wrest him

away from their custody. Lieutenant Michael Moulin was at the scene and, seeing that his

officers were greatly outnumbered and that most were not wearing helmets to protect

them against the objects being hurled at them, ordered them to leave the area in the

apparent hope that the situation would de-escalate on its own.6 The crowd did not

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disperse, but instead grew larger and more violent. The absence of the police for nearly

three hours allowed the crowd to grow and culminated in the looting of stores and the

arson of various buildings (Hayes-Bautista et al. 1993, 442).

By mid-morning on the second day, the violence appeared to be widespread and

unchecked as heavy looting and fires were witnessed across LA County. Stores owned by

Koreans were widely targeted.7 Of the 4,500 stores destroyed during the unrest, more

than 2,300 were Korean-owned, and nearly every building in Koreatown was damaged.

Korean Americans, who made up only 1.6 percent of the city’s population at the time,

were disproportionately affected: approximately half the businesses destroyed belonged

to Korean immigrants, and another one-third of those damaged were Korean-owned.

According to several sources (the FBI, newspaper accounts, and interviews), Black

people deliberately targeted Korean-owned stores (Kim 2007).

A dusk-to-dawn curfew was established in some areas. The Southern California

Rapid Transit District (now Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority)

suspended all bus service throughout the LA area, and some major freeways were closed

down. In addition, hundreds of thousands of residents lost electric, water, and phone

service. All local schools, including some colleges, and LAX were closed (Stevenson

2013, 280). In addition, widespread looting, assault, arson, and killings occurred during

the riots. Approximately 3,600 fires were set, destroying 1,100 buildings (Christian

Science Monitor April 29, 2002).

A total of 53 people died during the riots (LA Weekly April 24, 2002). Black

people constituted 44% of those killed in all related deaths, while Latinos made up 31%,

Whites made up 22%, and only one Korean American was among the victims (Stevenson

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2013, 288). As many as 2,383 people were reported injured and more than 12,000 people

were arrested (Stevenson 2013, 280). The rioters were comprised of “an assortment of

people—mostly young and male, some who were petty criminals and gang affiliated, and

protesters” (Stevenson 2013, 298). Estimates of material losses vary between about $800

million and $1 billion (Time April 25, 2007). Of these losses, damage to Korean-owned

property was between $350 and $400 million. The establishments affected were diverse,

including grocery stores, swap meet shops, clothing shops, liquor stores, dry cleaners,

electronics shops, gas stations, jewelry shops, restaurants, beauty salons, auto shops,

furniture shops, and video shops. Mayor Bradley lifted the curfew on May 4, signaling

the official end of the riots. By then, the rioting had extended across the nation to New

York, Chicago, and Atlanta. Korean business owners faced a daunting, and for many

impossible, recovery. Most received very little, if any, aid or protection from the

authorities. Police Chief Daryl Gates left police headquarters to attend a political

fundraising event in West LA, even though at that very time rioting and arson were

escalating. He attempted to justify his action, stating, “There are going to be situations

where people are going to go without assistance…That’s just the facts of life. There are

not enough of us to be everywhere” (LAT May 5, 1992). Sensing that the police had

abandoned Koreatown and realizing they were being targeted; a number of Koreans took

security into their own hands, taking up arms and improvising security forces.

Storeowners called in to Radio Korea, a local Korean-language radio station, and

reported that they were being attacked and called for help from other Korean immigrants.

The community organized the Korean American Young Adult Team, squads of ten men

each who would be deployed to protect Korean properties from looters, armed with a

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variety of improvised weapons, shotguns, and semi-automatic rifles. Jong Min Kang,

President of the Korean American Business Association and Leader of Korean Young

Adult Team, was proud that Korean American community was able to rebuild:

When the police were missing in action, the young Adult Team that I mobilized

helped to defend the storeowners and our community. The lack of assistance was

again true when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came into

LA. Victims could not get the help of elected officials to access these funds.

However, through advocacy, we were able to negotiate with (Now a defunct)

Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (CRA), FEMA,

RED CROSS, The Employment Development Department (EDD), and Los

Angeles County Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) – altogether about

12 governmental organizations. I was also part of advocating to President Bush

for establishment of CRA to help victims.

Armed confrontations involving Korean merchants were televised, as in one well-

publicized incident where shopkeepers armed with M1 carbines, pump action shotguns,

and handguns exchanged gunfire with a group of armed looters, forcing them to retreat.

One of the most iconic television images of the riots involved Korean merchants firing

pistols repeatedly at roving looters. These merchants—jewelry store and gun shop owner

Richard Park and his gun store manager, David Joo—were reacting to the shooting of the

owner's wife and her sister by looters who had converged on the shopping center where

the shops were located. David Joo said, “I want to make it clear that we didn't open fire

first. At that time, four police cars were there. Somebody started to shoot at us. The

LAPD ran away in half a second. I never saw such a fast escape. I was pretty

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disappointed”(NYT May 3, 1992). Carl Rhyu, a participant in the Korean immigrants’

armed response to the rioting, was in the same situation: “When our shops were burning

we called the police every five minutes; no response” (NYT May 3, 1992).

After the acquittals and the riots, the United States Department of Justice sought

indictments against police officers who violated King's civil rights. Before a verdict was

issued, Korean shop owners again prepared for the worst; as fear ran rampant throughout

the city, gun sales went up. Some merchants at flea markets removed their merchandise

from their shelves, and storefronts were fortified with extra Plexiglas and bars. The media

reported that once again Korean Americans were arming themselves to prepare for the

worst, noting that a licensed gun seller in Koreatown, Western Guns, was selling a dozen

or more weapons a day. As John Lee, then Los Angeles Times reporter, pointed out,

however, the media failed to note that a gun shop on the Westside was selling more than

150 weapons a day.8

The media applied a double standard, scrutinizing Korean merchants’ gun

purchasing, but not White Americans’ fanatical gun purchasing that occurred

simultaneously. Lee, deployed to Koreatown during the unrest, also noted that the media

coverage was distorted: “They [Korean merchants] had itchy trigger fingers and would

shoot those who trespassed…however, rioters would drive up to Korean American stores

and open fire with automatic weapons…There were Koreans who laid down their

weapons, locked up their stores, and tried to avoid violence” (LA Weekly April 26,

2012).

In 1993, the shock of the unrest was still fresh in the minds of the Korean

American community. The average financial loss for storekeepers was $179,045, with

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individual losses ranging from $2,000 to $1,750,000 (Kim-Goh et al. 1995, 141). Only 35

percent of Korean American owners had been insured, and of those, many policies

offered limited to no riot coverage. The Korean American Inter-Agency Council

(KAIAC) reported that 75 percent of Korean American victims had not recovered from

the unrest one year later. Of the affected businesses, only 27.8 percent reopened within a

year. Some turned to high-interest loans to pay for their expenses and subsequently fell

behind in their mortgages, leading to the loss of their homes. The KAIAC report also

indicated that 15 percent of college-age Korean American youth whose families owned

stores in the areas of the riots dropped out of school because the stores were unable to

recuperate. According to a Los Angeles Times survey conducted eleven months after the

riots; almost 40% of Korean Americans said they were thinking of leaving LA (LAT

March 19, 1993). A second study about the psychological impact of the unrest on a

sample of 202 Korean American victims who sustained financial loss or physical injury

indicated that the majority of victims suffered from symptoms of post-traumatic stress

disorder. It was not surprising, then, that following the riots, the Asian Pacific Counseling

and Treatment Center in LA treated 730 Korean American victims for severe anxiety and

depression, somatic complaints, and psychotic symptoms (Kim-Goh et al., 1995, 139).

The unrest left a deep impression on the Korean American community,

particularly with regards to the way they viewed and interacted with the Black

community. This chapter will examine Korean storeowners’ perceptions of Black and

Latino customers, who, despite common narratives about the unrest, were just as

involved as African Americans. Since Korean-Latino relations have received little

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attention compared to Korean-Black relations, the following section hones in on Korean-

Latino encounters (see also Chapter 8).

Korean-Latino Encounters

Despite the media’s primary focus on the Black–Korean conflict, the 1992 unrest was a

multi-ethnic event. It initially began as a political expression of pent-up frustration and

anger by African Americans, but both its nature and demographic profile shifted as the

protest at Parker Center, located in downtown, led to the fulfillment of socioeconomic

needs, especially by low-income Latinos. The violence and looting shifted from South

LA north toward the racially mixed neighborhoods of West Adams, between the Santa

Monica Freeway and Pico Boulevard; by second day, rioters had invaded stores in

Koreatown as far north as Santa Monica Boulevard (Morrison and Lowry 1994).

Although the Latino population had risen to about half of South L.A., few Latino

elected officials represented the riot-torn areas in the early 1990s. There were also sharp

class distinctions among Latinos: those who lived around Koreatown were mostly poor,

recent immigrants who did not speak English. Of these, a good proportion of Mexicans

were undocumented, while those from war-torn El Salvador and Nicaragua were legal

immigrants who possessed only temporary status (Kwong 1992, 89).

Koreans referred to Latinos in many different ways, including “Seupaeniswi”

(Korean pronunciation of “Spanish”); “Seobaneoin” (meaning Spanish speakers in

Korean, and used only among older people), “Hispanic” (the most popular term),

“Latino,” “Mexican,” “Maekjak” (meaning Mexican worker; this alluded to the

perception of Latinos as steady and loyal workers for Korean employers), “Amigo”

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(friend in Spanish), “Hermano” (brother in Spanish), and “JJanggu” (meaning blockhead

or someone with tunnel vision, but in an affectionately teasing way). The shift away from

a more functionalist term, “Maekjak,” to a friendlier term, “JJanggu,” indicated a closer

relationship between these two groups, at least from the Korean immigrants’

perspectives. While these terms were used among Korean immigrants to refer to Latinos,

the terms “amigo” and “hermano” were often used to address them. One interviewee

reported that when he wanted to hire 10 Latino workers, he said, “I need Amigo 10,”

calling Latinos “friends” for instrumental reasons. “Hermano” was used in more informal

settings. The use of Spanish terms reflected the fact that Latinos were the majority of the

workforce at Korean business establishments.

In terms of the ways Latinos referred to Korean immigrant merchants, the most

common terms were “chino” (Spanish for Chinese) “coreano” (Spanish for Korean)

“cochino” (Spanish for dirty), or “ppali ppali people” (literally, those who ask you to

work as fast as possible). “Chino” implied a certain amount of contempt, reflecting Latin

Americans’ first contact with Chinese merchants in the 19th century.9 Just as Korean

immigrants were somewhat ignorant about the heterogeneity within the Latino

community, Latinos often failed to distinguish Koreans from other East Asian

immigrants; thus, the common use of “chino.” Nonetheless, some Latinos did recognize a

specific Korean ethnicity, and used “coreano.” “Ppali ppali people” connoted Koreans’

fast-paced work ethic, middle class position, employer status, and frequent commands to

hurry up.

While Black–Korean tensions were primarily based on a merchant/customer

relationship, Latino and Korean immigrants related to each other in myriad ways,

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including employer/employee relations, fellow worker relations, landlord/tenant relations,

neighbors, or merchant/customers. Even before the unrest, Korean-Latino relations were

sometimes antagonistic, though such tensions often went unarticulated. In the 2000

Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA) survey of restaurant workers, 30 out of

the 52 Latino workers had specific complaints about their treatment by Korean owners,

including low wages, unreasonable hours, no lunch breaks, and insults from their

supervisors.10 Korean employers tend to believe they treat Latino employees with

respect and fairness, but they often “reproduce[e] the subordination of Latinos,” and

safeguard Korean advantage in workplaces, albeit to a lesser extent than White and

Latino agricultural employers (Maldonado 2009, 1032). They also use race/ethnicity,

citizenship, or legal status as proxies for worker quality and as markers for the

desirability of workers. This racialized assessment reflects their hiring and recruitment

practices of targeting Latino worker networks to fill low-wage jobs. The invocation of

ethnic/cultural difference by Korean employers tends to normalize and fails to

problematize the ethnic segmentation of jobs and racial hierarchies at Korean-owned

business establishments.

Therefore, while African Americans encountered Koreans primarily as merchants,

Latino–Korean encounters took place in a wider range of situations, partly because of the

predominantly Latino employees at Korean business establishments. The situations were

“not a blatant conflict like Blacks and Koreans. [Latinos and Koreans] are both

immigrant, politically marginalized communities” (LAT, September 21, 1998). I was

surprised when I heard a Korean customer complimenting Latino employees’ Korean

language skills at a Korean-run supermarket in Gardena. In another case, a Nicaraguan

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church minister was invited to an after-lunch service for a Korean employer as well as

other Nicaraguan and Latino employees. At the service, the minister asked Latino

garment workers to express thanks for the chance to work in the U.S. Specifically, he

reminded his fellow Nicaraguans of the nearly 80 percent unemployment rate back home.

Despite a certain degree of inter-ethnic tension, young Latinos and Korean Americans

seemed to socialize in increasing numbers during my period of research. Miguel, a 33-

year-old Salvadoran car mechanic who worked for a Korean employer for more than a

decade, told me, “I would like to marry a Korean woman. That would be nice. You know

anybody you can introduce to me?” Both the Los Angeles Times and Korea Times

featured stories of interracial marriages between Latinos and Koreans, which partially

reflects an overall rise in interracial marriage more broadly in the U.S. Koreatown youth

were also influenced by other inner-city youth, including Latinos, in their conception of

gender and sexuality. I observed young Korean American women applying makeup or

wearing clothing in similar ways to Latinas, and some Latinas frequented Korean

cosmetics stores. Some U.S.-born Korean American children also complained that their

parents speak Korean and Spanish to them, but not English. On the other hand, some

Korean immigrant parents complain that their children speak Spanish, Portuguese, and

English but not Korean. Despite a certain degree of interethnic harmony, I found that

language barriers, cultural differences, and prejudices still prevented many Korean and

Latino workers, employers, and schoolmates from developing close relationships.

Four Korean Perspectives on Blacks and Latinos

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After the unrest, the Korean immigrant small business proprietors I interviewed

articulated four different constructions of race and ethnicity concerning African

Americans and Latinos. In the first, Latinos were thought of more positively than African

Americans, a view that developed before the 1992 riots. The second contradicts the first

one, in that African Americans were viewed more positively than Latinos. The third

construction portrayed both Latinos and African Americans negatively. Finally, there

were the interviewees who adopted a “big picture” perspective: the participation of both

African Americans and Latinos in the rioting made them more cognizant of the class-

based nature of the unrest, and they tended to blame the “system.” I now discuss these

four perspectives in detail.

More positive views toward Latinos than African Americans

The 1992 LA unrest reinforced some Korean interviewees’ notions of African Americans

as poor, uneducated, violent criminals, partly because media coverage focused on Black

mobs burning down Korean stores (Cho 1993). Many Koreans accused Blacks of

exploiting their more “authentic” Americanness and greater political power to hurt

Korean economic interests. One-third of interviewees (N=52) held this view. Perhaps it

was because “although at times [Koreans] have not helped to improve the situation of

Blacks in this country, they certainly didn’t create the inequality either” (Lee, cited in

Choi 1992, 95). However, while Korean merchants did have a choice and

contributed to the inequality that Black customers faced, and it was that perpetuation of

inequality that African Americans were protesting when they targeted Korean businesses.

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A positive view of Latinos and negative view of African Americans was

articulated by the owner of Jean’s Liquor Store (1992). Upon first immigrating to the

U.S., he wanted to work in the field of computer manufacturing. He had received his

engineering degree in Korea, but the credentials did not transfer to the U.S. Limited by

his financial resources, he bought a business in South LA. In justifying his negative view

of African Americans, he said that unlike Koreans, they lacked concern for their children:

For instance, once they receive their welfare checks, selfish mothers tend to buy

beer for themselves instead of things needed for their children. I know that I have

no right to judge others. Look at Mexicans living in this neighborhood. They

always work very hard, and yet they are often robbed by Blacks.

It was not apparent whether this merchant believed that the class of “selfish mothers” was

limited to inner-city Black women, but his observation spoke to interracial crime in the

neighborhood. He asserted that after Sa-I-Gu,11 his view of African Americans

deteriorated, while his view of “Mexicans” (a term he used to refer to Salvadorans as

well) remained positive. When I mentioned that the looters were not only African

Americans, he responded: “In the middle of Sa-I-Gu, once Blacks unlocked the stores,

then other people such as Latinos joined the looting. Well, the reason why more Latinos

than Blacks were arrested was due to the fact that police arrested them, not Blacks.”12 It

was not possible to verify whether his statement was true.

The owner of Right on Market on Arlington Blvd. (1993), whose entire store was

looted, lost $60,000 worth of property during the unrest. He also expressed a deeper

affinity with Latinos than with African Americans.

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“Spanish,” like the African Americans, are very naive. However, because they

think a little bit more like Asians, it is easier to understand and befriend them.

Blacks are very naive and simple-minded. They have no sense of right and wrong,

so I do not blame them and I have no hatred for them.

He’s clearly reinforcing racist notions about Blacks, but also infantilizing them. It’s not

the same as what previous person said.

Similarly, the son of Moon’s Market's owner (1993), a 26-year-old 1.5 generation

immigrant, spoke positively about Latinos: “‘Spanish’ are more afraid of going to jail.

They are more family oriented. They are not real Americans. They came here for a better

life like us.” My interviewees repeatedly commented on how similar immigrant

experiences and mentalities of Koreans and Latinos contributes to a greater affinity for

each other, i.e., a greater degree of shared work ethic, both don’t have as much historical

baggage in the U.S. as African-Americans, etc. (though Latinos have a much longer

history than Koreans).

On the other hand, he stated of African Americans:

Blacks are the most racist people alive. Why do they pick on the Korean

community because Rodney King got beat up? Why didn’t they burn down

Beverly Hills first! If Koreans were to be picked on, then this whole thing should

have blown up after the Soon Ja Du incident, but it did not. Of course, we can't

forget that media had a lot to with venting hatred among Blacks and Koreans, but

they didn’t make up something that was never there.

He seemingly disagreed with the parallels made by the African American community

with regards to the acquittal of four LAPD officers in the Rodney King trial and the

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aftermath of the Soon Ja Du trial. In other words, for Blacks, both incidents indicated the

devaluing of Black lives by the judicial system, and justified the anger directed at

Koreans during the unrest (Stevenson 2013). Finally, the owner of B&W Market (1993),

whose store was also looted and destroyed, expressed his affinity for Mexican

immigrants, while noting diversity within the Latino community: “There are indeed so

many different nationalities within the Hispanics, so it is hard to generalize about them.

But the Mexicans are much nicer, and I feel that they are culturally similar to Koreans.

For example, look at their food...they eat spicy things just like we do.”

What is apparent within this first perspective is that Korean immigrant

shopkeepers seemed oblivious to African Americans’ long history of struggle for

equality, including the Civil Rights movement, and the histories of the neighborhood in

which they had established businesses. This is in line with common views before the

unrest, reflecting Korean immigrant merchants’ defensiveness in the wake of much-

publicized Black boycotts of Korean stores. It is also relevant that these interviewees, as

direct victims of the unrest, were still traumatized from the violent racial conflicts, and

considered their Black customers a potential threat. Finally, this view perceived Black

and Latino participation in the unrest in contrasting ways, believing that while African

Americans instigated looting and burning out of racial antagonism, Latinos joined the

rioting passively, due to poverty and mob psychology. It is worth noting that this view

corresponded to the dominant public discourse on the subject.

More positive views toward African Americans than Latinos

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The second perspective viewed African Americans positively and Latinos negatively.

Many interviewees seemed shocked by the large number of Latinos who participated in

the looting, because they had held positive views of Latinos before the unrest. Mrs. Yu

(1993), a 50-year-old widowed mother of four, immigrated to the States in 1971, and had

run a market in Compton for the past 13 years. Her market was completely destroyed

during the unrest, and she lost nearly $500,000 in addition to experiencing emotional

trauma. However, her view of African Americans was positive:

Those Blacks who are educated are wonderful. The good ones always say “thank

you” and “please.” The nice Blacks are very nice. When I went back to my store,

several of my customers came, hugged me, and asked why something like this

should happen to such nice people like us. They were genuinely sorry for what

happened to us and I know that they meant it…The Blacks are more honest and

say sorry for what happened to us.

Helen (1993), a 33-year-old woman who immigrated to the U.S. in 1960, owned New

Star Market on Normandie Avenue and had similarly positive experiences with Black

customers. On the first night of the riots, she got a call from her Black neighbor telling

her not to go to the store because the rioters would kill her. Her Black neighbors also

saved her store from burning down. When asked how and why she thought the unrest

happened, she responded:

The main reason why this happened is [because] there was an [explosion] of

feelings of hopelessness among the Black community members. The verdict was

an excuse for the rioting. The primary reason for the riot was poverty and low

standards of living…Elderly Black customers came into the store after the riots,

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crying and asking how something like this could have happened. In America,

there is no fear of God. People need to come back to a real relationship with God

in order to get their lives straight.

Her view of African Americans was atypical among Koreans:

I don't have any difficulty with Blacks. When I was younger, my mother and

father ran a grocery store in South Central LA and all of their Black customers

used to call my mother “mama” or “umma.” Blacks are warmer people who show

gratitude willingly. I really like them. I miss many of my customers. They do treat

me well. They saw me pregnant with both of my boys and always ask about them.

Whenever I go into the store, I hug and greet them. I realize that other Koreans

cannot do this because they are not as physically affectionate. I can relate better

with some Blacks than Koreans. There are bad Blacks just like there are bad

Koreans. I try to see people as individuals and I firmly believe that with most

people, if you are nice to them, they will respond.

Deborah (1993) was a 1.5-generation, 38-year-old lawyer and mother of two

children who had a law office on Wilshire Blvd. She witnessed the fires and chaos

breaking out from her office window. While her view of African Americans did not

change after the riots, her view of Latinos deteriorated:

I used to think positively about Latinos and their contributions to this city. I was

happy to have them in LA and saw them as hard workers. However, after I saw

them looting the stores and trying to justify their actions by saying that it is OK to

steal, I [had] a big change in my attitude about illegal immigration. I am now

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totally against it and believe that we need to monitor the immigration system

more thoroughly. I am against them crossing the border.

She assumed the looters were undocumented and not here legally or citizens. Her views

of Latinos resonated with studies showing that Mexican immigrants are stereotypically

identified as undocumented and dangerous criminals (Gomberg-Muñoz 2010, 301).

Joyce (1993), a 36-year-old woman who immigrated to the U.S. in 1985, owned a

music store located within an indoor swap meet on Slauson Avenue that was looted and

burned. For many days, she could not sleep because of nightmares and held tremendous

anger against both African Americans and Mexicans. However, she seemed to justify

African Americans behavior, but did not attempt to understand Latinos:

Before, I thought that the majority of Blacks were lazy and undisciplined. Now, I

see that there may be other outside forces, which shape their attitudes and actions.

They [Latinos] don’t have a sense of wrong or right. I think they have low morals.

I heard that Mexican men are very girl crazy and cheat on their wives. They

whistle [at] another woman when their wives are standing right next to them.

Finally, the owner of King’s Market (1994), a business that suffered $150,000 in damage,

held more negative views about Latinos than Blacks, especially those in Latino gangs:

They [Mexicans and other Latinos] are equally wicked like Blacks. Whereas

Blacks do robbery only, Mexicans are crueler to the extent that they just shoot at

you even after taking money and other things.

Compared with the first, more positive view of Latinos, this more negative perspective

was not widespread: it corresponded to only 25% of interviewees.

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Negative perspectives on both African Americans and Latinos

A substantial number of interviewees expressed negative views of both African

Americans and Latinos, with feelings corresponding more to fear than resentment and

anger. One of my students whose family’s shoe store had burned down in 1992

recollected:

As my parents were coming home, they heard on the radio that a shoe store on

Olympic and Alvarado was being looted. They were not on the freeway for more

than a few minutes so they turned around and went back to the store. As they

drove up to the parking lot, they could see people running out of the store with

our shoes. According to the shopping center security guard, 15 to 20 African

Americans armed with shotguns, pipes, hammers, and other threatening objects

came and broke into the store…Instead of going to school the next day, and our

whole family went to see our shoe store. Nothing was left. The whole complex

was burned down. All we could see was the shelf of the building and a little fire

still burning in the back. That was my birthday.

Having experienced the ordeal first hand and hearing about the experiences of other

Koreans, she became very angry: “I hated all Blacks and Mexicans. These are not

politically correct terms but that is how I felt. I felt the Korean community was targeted

by the black community.” Although she personally thought the Korean merchant Soon Ja

Du had gotten off too easily and the verdict in the Rodney King case was unexpected, she

was upset that racial tensions led minorities to destroy their own community.

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A 51-year-old Korean immigrant, owner of Park’s Super Market (1993), lost

$450,000. He had owned his business since 1985 and all of his employees were African

Americans. His view of African Americans and Latinos deteriorated in the aftermath:

There is racial preference in the U.S. After the riots, our perception of African

Americans changed drastically. Initially, we wanted to be friends with them. But

both parties have built up now the wall between us even higher. The Hispanics

looted even more than the Blacks. Out of the 700 people that looted our store,

more than half of them were Hispanics. We also grew to hate Whites, even more

so than before. They are selfish and concerned solely with their own agendas.

After the interview ended, this man’s wife explained how she and her husband had tried

to live peacefully in South LA: “We did all we could. We got along really well with our

customers. In fact, we thought they were our friends.” She broke down in tears as she

explained the situation: “During the riots, even our friends joined in the free-for-all. If

God grants us, we will pack up and leave the second we can…But I can’t because I’d be

buried in debt.”

A similar perspective was offered by the owner of L.A. Frank’s Liquor store

(1993). When I interviewed him he was seated in an oversized director’s chair elevated a

foot off the ground and encircled by a large counter, looking more like a sheriff in a

Western film than a merchant in his fifties from South LA. In April 1992, he suffered not

only economic losses of $100,000, but also physical, psychological, and emotional

damage. He expressed disappointment in Latinos as well as African Americans:

These [Black] people are generally good...but ignorant. They need to work,

instead of relying on welfare. To the contrary, the Hispanics work, and still they

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looted! Their history is actually longer than African Americans. Therefore, they

live better than African Americans. But they are still the same [as Blacks]!

Wealthy property owners who owned numerous commercial buildings had similar

views on African Americans and Latinos. Young-ah (1993), a 51-year-old woman, and

her husband own five commercial buildings, including one in Inglewood. One-third of a

building they own in Long Beach was burned, and all of their stores were looted. She

experienced stress and insomnia, expressing fear of African Americans, and a stereotyped

view of Latinos:

I have an intense fear of Blacks. After the riots, I have been trying extra hard to be

nicer to them so that they will not destroy our stores again. When I am nice to

them, I hope I am giving them a good impression of Korean people. Although I

am nice to them outwardly I am truly scared and do not like them deep inside.

I feel very sorry for [Latinos]. They have to take all of the menial jobs such as

janitors and house cleaners. They are below everyone else. They are probably the

lowest status group in America, below Blacks. It's because they are illegal aliens

and can't speak English.

Similarly, Myung-ja (1993), a 49-year-old woman who has lived in the States since 1980,

was the owner of Young’s Fashion, a women’s clothing store at an indoor swap meet in

South Gate. She described how worried she was during the unrest:

I cried every day whenever I thought about what happened. I would be driving

and when I [thought] about it, I [started] weeping. When I [watched] TV or when

anyone talked about it, I cried. My eyes were filled with tears. I felt that under my

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skin was just water waiting to spill forth gallons of tears. I have an intense fear of

Black people now. I felt like I was going crazy and I had extreme paranoia.

When three Hispanic men walk in together into the swap meet, I get incredible

fear and panic. I am very suspicious of everyone. Everyone seems like a thief or

criminal to me these days. I fear Blacks a lot but there aren't too many around

where I do business. So I am more afraid of Mexican cholos [Mexican gangsters].

She generalized negatively about her Black customers as well:

I don't hate Blacks. I feel sorry for them because they have no education.

They are lazy and dirty and there is nothing that the government can really do

about that. In Korea, the poor people raise their children better than the rich

people. So, the Blacks have no excuse as to why their children are so corrupt

and without any morals. You cannot blame everything on poverty…When

Blacks come into my store; all they think about is stealing. When I see a Black

girl in my store, I tell m y employee to keep an eye on her. 100 percent of the

time, they are caught stealing-100 percent. Even when I am nice to them,

they steal. So whether I am polite or suspicious, they steal. They also come

into my store and make a big scene. They are so loud. When I see them like

this, I feel very sorry for them. They seem so ignorant and uneducated. I

know [Latinos] well because they worked for me for so long…When they are

amongst themselves they make fun of us Koreans. They gossip about us a lot. I

know this because my employee tells me. They look docile but they are

tougher and stronger than us. I noticed that they help each other out a lot.

They are what we Koreans were 30 years ago in Korea.

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The above quote is fairly extreme as it reinforces racist stereotypes. Nonetheless, she

tends to racialize a significant amount of work-related stress, which is caused by high

levels of criminal victimization, a variety of face-to-face interactions with culturally

unfamiliar and heterogeneous customers, and the financial precariousness of small

business ownership, as riot victim.

The owner of Century Liquor store (1992) also perpetuated racist stereotypes:

In a way, [Latinos] are similar to Blacks. From our perspective, they are mostly

thieves…I wonder whether they [Latinos] have any conscience at all. The only

difference is the fact that they do not file lawsuits against the storeowners after

shoplifting or robbery and that their leaders do not demand t’ose, site tax [claims

on a certain territory], particularly toward newcomers.

Even a decade after the unrest, there remained a general tendency in our dominant

discourse to view Latinos close to African Americans in a new racial hierarchy that

placed Whites (and to a lesser extent Asians) at the top. The negative feelings expressed

by Korean storeowners coincided with this tendency of the dominant discourse.

Class-based perceptions of African Americans and Latinos

Nopper (2006) noted a striking similarity of the criticism lobbied at both Black rioters

and public officials in the 1960s to that expressed by various Korean/Asian American

commentators toward the police and government regarding their responses to the 1992

L.A. Riots. Nopper asserts that perhaps the criticism lobbied at the police and public

officials is a structural perspective dictated not just by one’s racial position, but also by

one’s economic relationship to African American consumers (Nopper 2006, 84).

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Some Korean interviewees recognized the importance of class as a way of

distinguishing people of different races and ethnicities in U.S. society, even if it was not a

fully developed analysis or they did not attribute the situation directly to class. For

instance, a substantial number of interviewees seemed to distinguish between local Black

customers and Black community leaders, indicating their awareness of class status

differences within the African American community.

The interviewees also identified outside gang members (who were a class of their

own) as instigators of the looting and arson during the 1992 unrest, and differentiated

them from their local customers. In this way, the interviewees justified continuing to

conduct business with local customers, deliberately trying to forget the fact that they

witnessed their looting. In the aftermath of the unrest, Korean immigrant merchants

seemed to be more aware of class differentiation, in particular different levels of

education, and age differences within the Black community.

The Latinos who looted also challenged most Korean merchants’ construction of

race and ethnicity. Korean Americans interpreted African Americans’ participation in

looting as connected to their lack of family ties or a “culture of poverty,” but could not

attribute similar causes to Latinos. In their opinion, Latinos, like Korean immigrants,

worked hard and were family-oriented; and yet, they still participated in the looting.

Some merchants blamed Latino looting on other Korean merchants’ bad treatment of

Latino employees. Others distinguished between different kinds of Latinos in terms of

ethnicity, national origin, legal status, and/or class position.

Despite the overall perceptions of class as related to African Americans, some

merchants recognized that it was Black customers who saved their businesses during the

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riots. The owner of Benji Liquor Market on Vermont Ave (1993), a 54-year-old man,

immigrated to the U.S. in 1977. He incurred $100,000 in damages, although he was able

to put out the fire just in time, due to his Black customers’ warning. When he was asked

how and why the riots happened, he responded: “It was not a racial issue; it was more an

excuse for what I believe to have been a class issue.” He continued:

I have no special feelings for them [Blacks], they are just like everyone else…It

was an African American who helped salvage my store. Before the riots began he

warned me so I was able to get prepared. When I asked him why he did that, he

told me that it was because I was so nice to his kids. This person has a son that is

very cute, so I used to give him candy and tell him that I would like to make him

my own son. By simply being nice, I was able to build a friendship that helped

save my store.

Some Korean merchants attributed the unrest to systematic inequality, and not to

individual Black or Latino customers. A 52-year-old man (1993), the owner of B+W

Market on Vermont Ave., immigrated to the U.S. in 1989. He lost about $25,000 in

merchandise and planned on leaving at the end of that year. However, he did not blame

African Americans: “It’s the U.S. political system’s fault. The Whites are suppressing the

Blacks from going up. It’s the top people trying to keep down those on the bottom.

Cultural differences are here and will be here always. But that is not the cause.”

Similarly, some Korean store owners like the owner of Western Grocery (1992),

rationalized African Americans’ behaviors by citing poverty and drug abuse in the Black

community:

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I do not think I ever discriminated toward any other people, including Blacks. In

my opinion, Black problems are due to their extreme poverty, something like

moon village, taldongne, in Korea.13 They are poverty-stricken beyond our

imagination. I have seen three African American households living in a one

bedroom apartment upstairs.

The owner of ABIC Liquor Store (1992) also focused on the poverty of his

customers:

In principle, Blacks are simple and good-natured, but need education. During the

riot, I have seen Black gang members from outside our community, kkeomdungyi,

[“dark-faced Black folk”] load my stuff onto their truck and set fire to my store,

which was put out by my customers. Nevertheless, I interpret that they [the gang

members] did it not because of their hatred toward Korean Americans, but

because they wanted to express their dissatisfaction with the current system that

keeps them poor. According to our Korean proverb, “Without food for three days,

anybody can climb the wall in search of food.”

The owner of Pay-Less Liquor Store (1992) felt discouraged about the possibility

of improving relations with African Americans. Despite his negative perceptions, he

stated that during the riots, he shouted out “We are also Blacks,” a line from the

acclaimed Spike Lee movie Do the Right Thing. He thought his store would be saved

from destruction if he pretended it was Black-owned. When I asked him about Latinos,

he likened them to his Black customers:

Sometimes they [Latinos] bring fake checks to cash. They seem to be a neighbor

to Blacks. Despite their Catholic tradition, they were involved in [the] looting and

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destruction. From their participation, I could understand that this riot originated

from poverty. This reminded me of the Korean War [1950-1953], Yuk-I-O.14 We

all starved those days.

Indeed, older Korean immigrants who had experienced the Korean War were more able

to sympathize with poor people of other races or ethnicities, indicating the role of

intertextual memory in forming opinions and class-based sympathies toward other ethnic

groups.

Mrs. Koh (1993), a 50-year-old woman who immigrated to the U.S. in 1980, had

been running a One Hour Photo Shop on Crenshaw Blvd since 1990. All the machines

and camera equipment were damaged and the front windows smashed during the unrest.

Nonetheless, although she and her husband were also physically attacked, she was able to

differentiate looters from her own customers, stating:

Our customers are nice people. I don’t think of them as necessarily bad. But some

Blacks lack education (of life, of manners) and behave in less sophisticated

ways…the [Rodney] King verdict may have started this, but when we look at the

whole scheme of things, the Blacks have been ignored by White society and the

tension from that; Koreans got caught in the middle.

Mrs. Kim (1993), a 56-year-old mother of three, immigrated to the States in 1979,

and had run a book and gift store since 1987. She felt that Koreans had mistreated

African Americans, and that was why they were targeted. Immediately after the riots, she

felt fear and suspicion about every Black person she saw. However, as a Christian, she

tried to practice generosity:

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Many Blacks come into our store to ask for money. Oftentimes, I try to smile at

them and give them either money or small gifts. At least once a day, a Black

person comes into our store. I find myself trying to prepare something to give

them every day. If they come during lunchtime I usually share my lunch with

them.

Mrs. Lee (1993), a 54-year-old mother of one, immigrated to the States in 1971,

and had run a gas station in Compton since 1979. The looters came to their store with a

pick-up truck and took everything. However, the looting did not affect the way she felt

about African Americans and Latinos:

I really like Blacks. Although there are many who deal in drugs, I love them too. I

feel very sorry for them. I have been working in the Black community for so

many years now that I feel very close to them. Whenever my regular customers

meet me they always say, “Hi, Mom.” I really feel that people are much nicer

after the riots. I really appreciate the Black people making an extra effort to be

more polite and nice to me. If we were in [the Latinos’] situation, we would have

done the same thing. If we could understand the misery and poverty that they live

in, we cannot point fingers and judge them.

Like Mrs. Lee, a former nurse had nothing but compliments for African

Americans and Latinos in the aftermath of the unrest. Mrs. Han (1993), 53 years old and

widowed, immigrated to the U.S. in 1969. She has run a liquor and deli store on Vernon

for the past 4 years. She lost nearly half a million dollars’ in damages, as her business

was burned and destroyed; she was left with almost nothing after over 20 years in

America.15 In spite of this, her positive perception of other minorities didn’t change in

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the aftermath: “I felt no animosity towards Blacks before or after the riots...I have worked

with a lot of blacks as a nurse and as a business owner. I was very comfortable with them.

I didn’t have any troubles with them…I like Latinos, especially Mexicans. I have nothing

against them.”

The following exchange is excerpted from a discussion about Latinos among

three Korean immigrants (1994)—a painter with his own firm (P), a pharmacist and drug

store owner (Ph), (and a missionary)—who were taking Spanish lessons from a teacher

(T) at the Koreatown YMCA. They came to feel sympathetic towards Latinos, as they

realized that they racialized and ethnicized Latino working class lives, overlooking the

effects of poverty: .

Ph: We tend to look down upon them for various reasons—lack of education,

having many children, particularly teenage pregnancy, dependency on welfare,

etc. However, their close family ties seem to be similar to ours.

P: Yes, you are right. Their lifestyle is strikingly similar to us. For instance, when

I offered Korean hot and spicy food such as Kimch’i-kuk [soup made of kimch’i],

sundae-kuk [soup made of Korean sausages], and fish stew, they were able to

enjoy it so well.

Ph: They seem to care about jeong [a Korean concept meaning warmth, affection,

or love] like us. Friendship seems to matter a lot to them even in business

transactions.

P: I have hired many of them for my painting business. They work well and their

wage is inexpensive….I would give orders to my Hispanic employees in Korean

in my painting work….They often ask for workers’ compensation or sue Korean

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employers for that reason. Nevertheless, I say that they work better than Koreans.

They are handy men. Once they start to work, they work hard. They know how

to fix various things, even automobiles.

Ph: I also see them work hard when they need money. Otherwise they would like

to have fun without work. They often come late for work, as they often stay late

drinking beers.

T: Now, our generations know how to fix only one thing, not everything, but our

parents used to do that, didn’t they? [All agreed.] Why do you think that they

often drink a lot?

P: Perhaps they are lonely as they left their family members in Mexico.

Ph: There is a great heterogeneity within their community. For instance, Mexicans

living in Northridge belong to the middle class, unlike those living around Olvera

Street. One day a job candidate for my drug store told me that her father doesn’t

want her to work in dangerous places like Koreatown. I was surprised to hear that.

P: Yeah, I find people from Peru to be responsible and to have close ties to each

other. I also like people from El Salvador, toward whom I feel friendly.

Ph: I was really impressed with the fact that they really help each other. Once, one

of my Latino employees asked me to sponsor him in purchasing the house. He

bought it based on ten or twelve of his family members collectively. He reminded

me of the extended big family in Korea.

Early in the discussion, these Korean immigrant small business owners and

professionals presented somewhat negative perceptions of Latino immigrants. As they

discussed their everyday experiences with Latinos at their workplaces, however, they

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came to realize that poverty was prevalent among Latinos. They were also able to

distinguish between different Latinos, speaking about Latino culture and some

similarities to Korean culture. As a result, they began to feel sympathetic towards

Latinos, affirming the influence of perceptions of poverty in cultural processes.

Post-Unrest Hiring Practices in South Central

How did the traumatic effects of the unrest affect Korean immigrant merchants’

conception of race and ethnicity in their everyday lives? Hiring practices are one angle

through which to understand this issue. Before the unrest Many Korean storeowners

utilized a family and wage labor system, using both Korean and non-Korean labor for the

latter. Since the African American community demanded the hiring of local residents

before the unrest, I wanted to explore whether there were any changes in the hiring

practices of Korean immigrant merchants after the 1992 unrest. Before the unrest, 39

percent of paid non-family employees (N=64) in Korean-owned stores were

Mexicans/Latinos and 31 percent were Black employees, showing a slight preference for

Latinos rather than African Americans (see Table 7.1). In contrast, after the unrest, 52

percent of paid non-family employees (N=52) were Black employees and 21 percent,

Latino employees.16

As Jennifer Lee (2002) found, Jewish and Korean merchants in New York and

Philadelphia hired Black employees and managers to act as “cultural brokers” between

Korean storeowners and their predominantly Black clientele in order to minimize

arguments with their customers. Similarly, in my study, the newly built C+ C Market on

Vermont Ave hired an African American man from the neighborhood as a guard. He did

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not wear a uniform or carry any kind of weapon; his only task was to follow the

customers who came in and make sure no one caused any trouble. Because he was Black,

African American customers took it much better when they were told certain things. For

example, in one incident, the Korean business owner said something in English to a

customer, and they claimed not to understand. However, when the Black employee

stepped in and translated what she had said, the customer could no longer accuse the

merchant of being unintelligible. Essentially, the guard was there to deter shoplifters and

to intervene in any possible dispute between customers and the merchant. Nonetheless,

the use of Black security guards remains controversial among African American

customers, and this guard at C+ C Market was harassed and called a traitor so often that

he quit. Just like Black residents don’t appreciate Black cops restricting their freedom of

movement, I doubt they would look kindly upon security guards following them around.

After all, the guard is just another surveillance technique.

Although the hiring of Black employees requires a more in-depth investigation, it

should be noted that in South LA, Korean immigrant merchants began to hire African

Americans in significant numbers only after the 1992 unrest, perhaps because the

community demanded such change. They were unconsciously trying to appease Black

customers. This wasn’t completely successful as it wasn’t really addressing the

underlying issue: Black disempowerment, poverty, racism, etc. However, if they

employed Black employees before the unrest, it could have reduced the tension.17

The racial make-up of employees changed as employers halved the number of

Mexicans and Latinos they had hired, while increasing the number of Blacks employees

from 31 percent to 52 percent.

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Table 7.1: Racial Makeup of Non-Family Employees at Korean Stores in South LA

before April 29, 1992

No. of

employees

per store

Latino Korean Black Other*

0 (2

stores)

1 (2) 1 1 1

2 (3) 3 0 3

3 (3) 1 4 4

4 (4) 7 2 5 2

5 (2) 1 4 5

6 (2) 5 3 2 2

7

8 (1) 7 0 0 1

total 25 13 20 6* 64**

% 39.1 20.3 31.3 9.4 100

* Includes non-Korean Asian Americans, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino

Americans.

** 64 non-family employees for 19 stores (median number of employees: 3.4)

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Table 7.2: Racial Makeup of Non-Family Employees at Korean Stores in South LA after

April 29, 1992*

No. of

employees

per store

Latino Korean Black Other

0 (4 stores)

1 (2) 2

2 (3) 1 1 4

3 (3) 2 1 6

4 (4) 1 6 8 1

5 (1) 5

6 (1) 3 2 1

7 (0)

8 (1) 4 3 1

total 11 13 27 1** 52***

% 21.2 25.0 51.9 1.9 100

* Represents a different set of businesses than those present in Table 1, since not all

merchants re-opened their businesses after April 29, 1992.

** One was a Chinese American.

*** 52 non-family employees at 19 stores (median number of employees: 2.7)

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Thus, the specific attitudes held by merchants on race and ethnicity conflicted with their

hiring practices. Hiring more African Americans did not fully translate into new

perceptions of African Americans.

As we saw in the previous sections, in the aftermath of the unrest, Korean

immigrant merchants’ constructions of race and ethnicity reflected varied feelings not

only towards Latinos and African Americans, but also towards Whites, indicating

victimhood and a sense of betrayal.

Post-Unrest Korean Immigrant Merchants’ Constructions of Race and Ethnicity

As I discussed in previous chapters, the state’s response to Korean-Black tensions in the

1980s was ad hoc and used stopgap measures rather than broader policies. Before the

unrest, the state only intervened to manage interracial relations. Their policy included

efforts to incorporate and mobilize the leaders of each community, and focused on

interpersonal conflicts rather than assessing the structural causes (Ong, Park, and Tong

1994, 282). The 1992 unrest instantly transformed the political climate and actions of

local government, raising new concerns about urban poverty and racial injustice.

However, the LA mayor’s solution relied on the privatization of rebuilding efforts,18 and

new policies placed Korean merchants at a disadvantage with little consideration or

compensation. For example, the policy favored a campaign to “rebuild LA” without

liquor stores, barring Korean Americans’ efforts to rebuild many of their businesses (see

Chapter 7).

In the mainstream, state-connected media, armed Korean men were portrayed as

lawless vigilantes shooting at looters randomly, while women were shown screaming

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hysterically or begging and crying in front of their ruined stores (Choy et al. 1993). The

tape showing Soon Ja Du shooting Latasha Harlins, discussed in Chapter 2, was the

second most played video during the week of the 1992 riots. African Americans were

criticized for blaming others for their poverty, while Korean storeowners were

reprimanded for neither investing in the Black community nor treating customers with

respect.

Right-wing commentators denied that anti-Black racism played any role in either

the unrest or the King verdict. President George H. W. Bush addressed the country on

May 1, 1992, denouncing “random terror and lawlessness,” summarizing his discussions

with Mayor Bradley and Governor Wilson, and outlining the federal assistance he was

making available to local authorities. Citing the “urgent need to restore order,” he warned

that the “brutality of a mob” would not be tolerated, and that he would “use whatever

force is necessary.” Furthermore, Bush and other commentators indicted the programs of

the Great Society for creating the conditions that led to the unrest.19 Thus, they argued

for even more militarization and policing in the daily lives of poor minorities deemed

threatening to the public welfare, not to mention of shedding “the pathologies of the

decimated Black family” (National Review June 8, 1992).

Left-wing commentators, in contrast, interpreted the 1992 riots as an uprising and

massive protest, and not a random, senseless outbreak of mob violence. As discussed in

Chapter 1, South LA’s longtime major employers in heavy industry had been leaving the

area since the 1960s and were virtually wiped out during the economic recession of 1979-

1982. Furthermore, the War on Poverty and its programs, which had been lifelines in this

community, had been either curtailed or eliminated, with devastating social and economic

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effects. By the 1980s, Los Angeles embodied a remarkable paradox in which an

“accumulation of misery” existed alongside “spectacular displays of wealth” (Economic

and Political Weekly July 25, 1992).

Sociologist Rose Kim aptly wrote that it was the overarching society’s neglect of

the Black community and urban poverty that created the social environment in which

Korean Americans could be scapegoated for the riots (1996, 348). Angela Oh, in her

interview with The New York Times (May 2, 1993), expressed similar sentiments:

The place of Koreans in American society is lonely and precarious and has served

as a convenient buffer between the racism of the White majority and the anger of

the Black minority. Just as Korean-owned businesses, which suffered nearly half

the looting and vandalism in last year’s violence, became an outlet for the rage of

many rioters, Korean Americans here now view themselves as “human shields” in

a complicated racial hierarchy…We are perceived as being, as a people, greedy,

selfish, insulated and unwilling to become a part of America.

Worse, Korean Americans lacked political clout to appeal to the public, especially since,

for the most part; their perspective had been shut out of local and national media

coverage of the unrest. Within hours of the King verdict, most media coverage had

shifted their focus to rudimentary depictions of the “Black/Korean” or “Black/Asian”

conflict. What was missing from media coverage was in-depth analysis of why. While

describing Korean merchants as “vigilantes” and as running businesses that exploited the

Black community, the popular ABC news show Nightline invited prominent Black

leaders to air their views on Black–Korean tensions, but initially did not invite their

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Korean American counterparts. Prompted by protests from Korean Americans, Nightline

host Ted Koppel later invited Angela Oh to provide another perspective.

Television screens also bombarded viewers with images of desperate merchants

firing from the rooftops of their shops, but failed to show that these store owners,

abandoned by police and other law enforcement authorities, were returning gunfire

initiated by others (Park 1999, 51). K. W. Lee (1996), then editor of the Korea Times

English Edition, wrote of the 1992 riots: “It was our Warsaw. Of all places on earth, we

have met our own latter-day pogrom in the City of Los Angeles….20 It’s a textbook case

history of media scapegoating in these hard times, pitting a politically powerful but

economically frustrated minority against a seemingly thriving tribe of strangers.”

Similarly, film maker Kim Gibson (2003) commented: “I was angry, furious and enraged

by the way mainstream media covered the losses of Korean American victims…it

appeared as if we were the issue, we were the problem. We were never represented as if

we were…human beings.” The Korean American community also complained that the

media spotlight focused on poor African Americans who deserved pity and excluded the

impoverished Korean merchants who seldom had the insurance necessary to rebuild their

businesses; in other words, the media had reduced them to voiceless foreigners, and

greedy, vigilante storekeepers. Korean Americans also contested the way mainstream

media framed the riots as an event played out among minority groups—Blacks, Latinos,

and Asians. Instead, they stressed the role of the dominant White society plagued by

racism and stratification and reflected in the various state apparatus: the politicians who

ignored them, the police who failed to protect them. Other Korean Americans blamed

themselves, as if they somehow deserved what they got.

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Based on this new critical understanding of American society, many in the

Korean American community learned the importance of participation in political and

social processes. Political empowerment became an urgent and immediate goal. A

number of U.S.-educated 1.5- and 2nd-generation Korean Americans recognized this gap

and began to pursue representation in mainstream politics. It was no coincidence that six

Korean Americans were elected to local, state and federal political offices during the

1992 November elections.21 In addition to attributing the predicament of Korean

Americans during the unrest to political exclusion, progressive political leaders also

linked the events to Republican neglect of the inner cities and racial inequality in

mainstream political institutions, including the criminal justice system. Some sought to

build interracial coalitions (Regalado 1994), such as the Multicultural Collaborative

(MCC), Asian Pacific Americans for a New Los Angeles (APANLA), and the Asian

Pacific Planning Council (APPCON). These organizations demanded interracial and

inter-ethnic coalition-building in exchange for their participation in the rebuilding

process.22

To a certain extent, the unrest made Korean immigrants aware of institutional

racism, social and economic injustice, and the myth of the American dream of

meritocracy and hard work. Nopper (2010) urged readers to acknowledge the suffering

endured by Korean American merchants should be framed in the context of relative

privilege:

The collective experience of loss, both materially and psychically, involves the

mourning of conservative ideological commitments and the divestment of ill-

gotten (as the realization of value under capitalism is premised on exploitation)

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value. It is, moreover, the resentment of frustrated bourgeois aspirations by the

relative loss of status and working proximity to…the most despised classes of the

most despised racial group in the USA. (98).

As part of the immigrant bourgeoisie, Korean merchants’ racial discourse reflected

dominant American views. For instance, Kapson Yim Lee (1997), an editor of the

English edition of the Korea Times, asserted that Sa-I-Gu was a riot, not a “civil unrest,”

arguing that those who looted and burned down Korean immigrants’ livelihoods were

hoodlums and vandals, not average citizens rebelling against social injustice.23

Nevertheless, Korean merchants’ reconstructions of race and ethnicity also

conveyed aspects of oppositional ideologies, particularly as they recognized the structural

causes and the multiracial dimensions of the 1992 unrest. On May 2, nearly a week after

the violence erupted, about 30,000 mostly Korean Americans rallied in Koreatown to

offer a unified demonstration of support to those who had been victimized, calling for

peace and denouncing police violence. The protest turned out to be the largest Asian

American demonstration ever held in the city. Notably, the Korean American leadership

did not blame Black and Latino communities writ large for the looting and burning,

although a few demanded an apology from Black community leaders. Instead, they

critiqued American institutions—the media, police, and government— “for inciting

tensions, reinforcing economic and political inequalities, and indirectly instigating urban

violence” (Gold 2010, 146). Jin H. Lee, owner of a Compton store that burned down to

the ground, stated: “I do not hate the people who burned my store. I hate the government

that did not do its job because we are a minority” (LAT 10/27/1992). Moreover, many

Koreans attributed the causes of this urban violence to oppressive federal and state

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policies (Park 1999, 48- 49). What we can observe in my interviewees’ responses is the

co-existence of both race-based, rather prejudiced interpretations—perspectives that view

African Americans and Latinos as racialized others—and class-based explanations for the

unrest.

Korean immigrant merchants’ four different perspectives about other minorities,

as discussed above, illustrate how social inequality is often viewed in terms of race or

ethnicity instead of class. Steinberg (1989) rejected the prevailing notion that cultural

values and ethnic traits are the primary determinants of the economic states of racial and

ethnic groups in America. He argued that locality, class conflict, selective migration, and

other historical and economic factors play a far larger role not only in producing

inequality but in maintaining it as well. Comaroff and Comaroff (1992) are also correct

when they invoke Marx’s image of the camera obscura and write: “once objectified as a

‘principle’ by which the division of labor is organized, ethnicity assumes the autonomous

character of a prime mover in the unequal destinies of persons and populations” (59).

One can see this in the aftermath of the unrest, as Koreans initiated new hiring practices

and took on more Black employees (Park 1995/1996). However, this strategy had other

consequences, such as the pitting of African American workers against Latino workers.

The identification of African American workers as an alternative to Latino labor points to

“how the positioning of ethno-racial groups within the US labor queue is relational and

dynamic” and responds to historically specific articulations of race, gender, class and

state formation processes (Maldonado 2009, 1033). As the ethno-racial composition of

jobs change, we might expect the ideological terrain to change as well, though.

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It seems that the Korean American community at large was not fully aware of the

implications of their post-unrest hiring and business practices. A Korean television news

crew who accompanied me to South LA Korean-immigrant businesses in the aftermath

appeared to be uncomfortable with the racial makeup of the new business scene: they did

not know how to make sense of Korean woman merchants continually complimenting

their new Black female employees on their hairstyles and work ethic. Korean merchants

also changed other business practices following the unrest, such as attempting to treat

their customers with more respect and kindness to show that “the customer is king”; it

should be noted that this was partly in response to the fact that many Black customers

treated the merchants with apologetic politeness in the aftermath. These attempts to

rethink their behavior demonstrate that these merchants did not rely exclusively on

prejudice to interpret questions of race and ethnicity. Moreover, seeing Black–Korean

tension as a matter of Korean prejudice toward African Americans or vice versa does not

explain the shift in hiring practices. But merchants made a calculated decision to make

hiring changes, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve abandoned their prejudices.

Korean immigrants’ reconstruction of race and ethnicity raises several important

issues.24 First, there is a disparity between ideology/culture and practice/experience (i.e.,

political, economic, and social realities), although both factors influence each other. We

have seen contradictions between Korean immigrants’ racialized business practices and

their perceptions of other ethnicities, contradictions that neither ideology nor materialism

alone can explain. For example, hiring more African Americans did not fully translate

into new perceptions of African Americans. The trends reported and witnessed in the

aftermath of the riots lasted for several years. However, by the late 1990s, Korean

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business owners had reverted to relying on Latino employees, reflecting the increasing

dominance of the Latino population in South LA. Nonetheless, Korean immigrants

learned a valuable lesson from the unrest: hire local people. Before the unrest, their

employees were mostly Latinos, who were not necessarily local residents, supplemented

by African Americans and Koreans. In the aftermath, partially as a response to the

demands made by Black community leaders and partially as a reaction to Latino

participation in looting, Korean merchants increased the number of Black employees and

decreased the number of Latinos, which led some Korean merchants to actively pursue

hiring local people. However, as increasing numbers of African Americans moved out of

South LA, Korean merchants continued to hire local people, this time Latinos.

This analysis of racial/ethnic perspectives by Korean merchants reveals the

circularity of the discourse surrounding the ethnically segmented labor market. Some

Koreans blamed the unrest on Latinos, suspecting their Latino employees had helped

Latino looters target stores. Others failed to see the systematic racism and classism at the

root of the 1992 unrest. Still others saw class as the most fundamental factor in the social

and cultural construction of race and ethnicity. Race scholars often think of Black-Korean

or Latino-Korean relations as always polarized; however, they are much more complex.

Perhaps the best we can say is that prejudices are not deep-seated, and that with personal

interaction, people’s attitudes towards other races and ethnicities may change over time.

The next chapter takes us into the streets of South LA and examines how immigrants and

native minorities interacted with each other and with mainstream institutions in the

aftermath of the unrest.

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1 In addition, as many Ethnic Studies scholars have pointed out, there are places in the country where it’s never simply been about black and white. California is a prime example – where primary tensions always involved Chinese/Asians and Latinos. 2 "LAPPL - Los Angeles Police Protective League: Controversy over Rodney King beating and L.A. riots reignites” http://lapd.com/news/headlines/controversy_over_rodney_king_beating_and_la_riots_reignites/ lapd.com. Accessed 10-02-2015. 3 King knew that an arrest for a DUI would violate the terms of his parole. 4 The National Geographic Channel "The Final Report: The L.A. Riots" aired on October 4, 2006 10 pm EDT. 5 "LAPPL - Los Angeles Police Protective League: Controversy over Rodney King beating and L.A. riots reignites” http://lapd.com/news/headlines/controversy_over_rodney_king_beating_and_la_riots_reignites/ lapd.com. Accessed 10-02-2015. 6 "LAPPL - Los Angeles Police Protective League: Controversy over Rodney King beating and L.A. riots reignites” http://lapd.com/news/headlines/controversy_over_rodney_king_beating_and_la_riots_reignites/ lapd.com. Accessed 10-02-2015. 7 In 1990, two years before the Unrest, Koreans owned 1,600 out of a total 2,411, or two-thirds of all businesses in South Central. 8 The Westside or West LA is known for its affluent neighborhood, the majority population being White Americans. Koreatown is centrally located between East and West LA. and in relation to Koreatown and who lives there? 9 It’s generally ignorance about the differences between Asian ethnicities. It doesn’t always imply contempt though. 10 Please refer to the "Survey of working conditions in Koreatown Restaurants" at www.kiwa.org. 11 Koreans call what happened in 1992 in Los Angeles “Sa-I-Gu,” literally April 29, following the Korean tradition of using a date to refer to major political and/or violent events in their history. 12 During the Unrest, the LAPD shifted its longstanding policy of apprehending undocumented immigrants and turning them over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)—which is now Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE—for possible deportation. According to INS officials, undocumented immigrants accounted for more than 1,200 of the 15,000 people arrested. Many came from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Jamaica (Navarro 1993, 73). 13 Squatter settlements on hills are somewhat romantically called moon villages in Korea. They are often populated with poor people from rural areas who migrated to urban ones in 70s and 80s, and are notorious for low-quality living conditions. 14 For the best study on the Korean War, see Cumings (1981). 15 She became a sort of spokesperson for the Korean merchant community, talking to the media on behalf of victims of the Unrest. 16 Although 71 businesses owners were interviewed, for the purpose of the data on hiring practices, I included the same number of businesses that were present before the Unrest. 17 It is just a hypothesis. 18 See Rebuilding L.A.’s Urban Communities: A Final Report from RLA, published by Milken Institute (1997): “Business, government, and the community (a ‘three-legged stool’) together would bring prosperity to neglected communities by securing substantial outside private-and public-sector investments in large part by major corporations; by cutting red tape; and through volunteerism (1997, 11). 19 The Great Society refers to a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The new major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. 20 Pogroms were tactics of state-sponsored repression of a minority group; this situation is not analogous to that. 21 I was unable to verify how many Korean American candidates ran.

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22Angela Oh and Bong Hwan Kim played integral roles in the formation of MCC and APANLA. Cindy Choi was the founding director of MCC. In addition, the Los Angeles Times hired K. Connie Kang as a writer and the Department of Commerce hired T.S. Chung. They did this specifically to address lack of Korean representation. 23 Korean immigrant merchant interviewees used the term “riot” interchangeably with “Sa-I-Gu,” but their explanation of what happened indicated their understanding of the structural causes of the unrest. 24I am not suggesting they had a complete change of heart about this.