Tenuous New Alliances Forged to Ease Korean-Black Tensions

There were the accusations, and then the shouting, then the robberies and sometimes the murders--followed by the meetings, the promises and the prayers. For the last four years, the relationship between Los Angeles’ black community and Korean merchants has been marred and patched up more than the most troubled Hollywood marriage.

The friction started several years ago when Korean immigrants first opened retail businesses in South-Central Los Angeles, home to a large segment of the city’s black population and where business start-up costs are comparatively low. Korean immigrants hung signs along major boulevards over much of the city, especially the inner-city area, in such volume that Los Angeles became the largest center of Korean commerce in the United States.

The culture clash, the language barrier and the resentment from blacks on how they were treated as customers and from Koreans on how they were treated as merchants led to conflict.

Communication Lacking

When Korean merchants were robbed, and some murdered, many protested that blacks had targeted them for crime. When blacks could not get jobs or get the service they wanted from Korean merchants, many asserted that Koreans were discriminating against them.

The problems were met with calls for better communication and led to the formation of a Los Angeles County Black-Korean Community Relations Committee and various church associations to improve relations between the two groups.

Now, in the latest development, out of the tension between some of Los Angeles’ black residents and its Korean merchants has come something more than talk to cool tempers--the forging of a new, although still tenuous, political accommodation between the ethnic groups.

A fear of being excluded from important political decisions, as they felt they were a year ago when the Los Angeles City Council battled over ethnic political boundaries, has led to “Koreans becoming increasingly politicized, questioning the process, seeking to get involved much earlier than other Asian immigrant groups,” said Michael Woo, a Chinese-American who is the only Asian on the City Council.

As a response, some black politicians who represent areas that have significant numbers of Korean-owned businesses have begun to diversify their staffs to include Koreans, and there is talk of joint business and construction projects between blacks and Koreans.

Noticeable Presence

Koreans are a small but growing segment of the ethnic mix of Los Angeles--80,000 as of last year, according to estimates made in the process of redrawing the city’s political boundaries, compared to 33,066 people of Korean heritage counted in the 1980 census. While the Korean population is dwarfed by the city’s 500,000 blacks, the Korean business presence in the black community is strong and noticeable. Because Koreans live in various areas throughout the city and county and are not concentrated--except where they do business--their voting strength has also tended to be diluted.

Increasingly, however, “Koreans want to be plugged in,” said Councilman Robert Farrell, a black lawmaker whose predominantly black 8th City Council District has an increasing number of Korean-owned businesses. “They have the money but they don’t have their own (people) in political positions of influence, they haven’t had time to develop their own. Blacks have that but they would like more access to capital that can help rebuild their communities. It could be a profitable relationship, because most young bright blacks choose to go into corporate America and are not entrepreneurs. So we need to find new ways to open up massive economic opportunities for blacks.”

Talk like this was almost nonexistent in 1983, when repeated reports of conflicts between blacks and Koreans in South-Central Los Angeles began to strain relationships. The everyday complaints and problems have not disappeared. But the current political moves, while still in the early stages, are part of “an outgrowth, a way of turning something negative into something positive, and for mutual political and economic benefit,” Farrell said.

Councilman Nate Holden, who is also black and who represents part of Koreatown, the mid-city area with a heavy concentration of Korean-owned businesses, has hired as an aide Charles J. Kim, former executive director of the activist and youth-oriented Korean American Coalition. Farrell reshuffled his staff in May and has hired Sun Young Chang, a multilingual Korean who is a former planner for a Korean developer.

Farrell also is trying to forge new economic ties between the two groups. For example, he has sought to bring black contractors and architects together with Korean businessmen, some of whom have been major campaign contributors to several politicians. A Korean businessman, John C. Moon, was the biggest single contributor to Mayor Tom Bradley in 1980-81 with a $20,000 donation. Architect Ki Suh Park gave $20,000 to Bradley from 1982 to 1985. Park is one of those whom Farrell has encouraged to explore business possibilities with black contractors.

Park, who came to the United States in 1953, remembers the discrimination he faced when Los Angeles landlords refused to rent to him. His support for Bradley, he said, has been based on the “longtime agreement we share on civil rights issues” and not on any attempt to smooth over bad feelings between blacks and Koreans. But, he added, Farrell’s attempt to involve him and other Korean Americans, and blacks, in joint projects “can’t hurt between two groups who I believe have more in common than they think.” Park is part of the “second wave” of Korean immigrants, those who arrived after the Korean War ended in 1953. A smaller number, only a few thousand, came to California around the turn of the century. The largest group, a third wave, has come since 1965, when U.S. immigration laws were relaxed.

Language Barrier

The average Korean in Southern California has been here only about seven years, said Eui Young Yu, chairman of the Korean Studies Center at California State University, Los Angeles. Most Korean immigrants arrive already trained as professionals, technicians or craftsmen, but the language barrier causes many to avoid corporate jobs that require fluency in English, Yu said. Many open small businesses instead.

The flight of major grocery chains from South-Central Los Angeles in the late 1960s after the Watts riots left a wide opening for independent “mom-and-pop” stores. The family run stores typically become full-time interests, leaving little time for political activity, Yu said. If they do get politically involved, these immigrants would be more likely to turn out, as many did recently, to demonstrate against the government in South Korea, he said.

But the immigrants’ political focus is slowly shifting from Korea to the United States, Yu said. “As you live here a longer time it’s a natural transition. Sort of like New Yorkers moving to L.A., who say they hate it, get to like it, and before you know it they’re going to L.A. (City) Council hearings.”

Among Koreans, change of this kind became evident two years ago, as hundreds of Korean-Americans packed the City Council chambers in an unsuccessful battle to get the city to finance a senior center in Koreatown, Holden’s aide Kim said. And last year, when a federal lawsuit forced the council to redraw lines to create a majority Latino council district, blacks banded together to make sure that they did not lose representation. Asian-American groups fought to save Woo’s seat. The Koreans, while also supporting Woo, wanted to try to keep Koreatown in one council district to consolidate their political strength.

‘Valuable Lessons’

After the redistricting controversy broke out last year, Tong Soo Chung, an attorney and member of the Korean American Coalition, went to a meeting of the Korean Federation of Los Angeles, the largest and most influential Korean community group. Chung explained the importance of redistricting to the federation, and on the spot raised $3,000. Ultimately the courts threw the Korean claim out of court but “we learned some valuable lessons we can use in the future,” Chung said.

Chung, 31, born in Korea but a U.S. resident for 17 years, is a member of what Koreans call the “1.5” generation (foreign born but long-time U.S. residents) that is bicultural and eager for more Koreans to participate in the American political mainstream.

“The Korean community is still internally dominated by those who are monolingual (speaking only Korean) and there is need to get more bilingual people involved in the political process,” Chung said. “We have the prior political experience of other Asians, the Chinese and Japanese who came here long before most of us and faced terrible discrimination, and especially blacks, to learn from. We’re very grateful to blacks for the civil rights we have in this country. We are, especially someone like myself, an attorney, enjoying the fruits of their labor here without having worked for them.”

Woo Chul Lee, co-chairman of Los Angeles County’s Black Korean Community Relations Committee and vice president of the Korean Federation, said that even those who have not been in the United States long “have to be organized in this system. It’s time to wake up; we’re paying taxes. We have to get involved.”

Attitudes like that create the opportunity for a political marriage of sorts, as Farrell sees it. Blacks can help Koreans enter the political mainstream and Koreans can help more black business people in financing their business ventures, he said.

Apprehensions Run Deep

But Arthur Song, a Korean American who ran unsuccessfully for the City Council this year in a district where the voters are largely black, said joint business projects of the type Farrell is promoting “may not mean much at the street level,” where apprehensions between blacks and Koreans still run deep.

Song’s council campaign was an example of both the strides made in black-Korean relationships and the continuing strains, fueled by cultural misunderstanding and economic competition.

Song, an attorney and cousin of former state Sen. Alfred Song, ran for the seat in the 10th District, which covers central Los Angeles west of downtown. A third-generation American, Song is a Democrat who supported the Rev. Jesse Jackson for president in 1984. John Floyd, a black attorney now based in Washington who was Jackson’s California campaign coordinator in 1984, ran Song’s campaign.

“I have fought racism all my life,” Floyd said in a recent interview. “And the hate mail Art got disgusted me. At candidate forums, there were always questions relating to his ‘Korean-ness,’ questions like, ‘So what are we going to do about all the Koreans owning all the stores?’ ”

Booker Griffin, a black activist who also supported Song, said he saw the Song candidacy as a way “to join with the Korean money base and get away from the paternalistic Westside money base that controls black politics in this town. Some people don’t understand we have to come to build new coalitions that benefit us. Results deserve loyalty, not the color of skin, but I had people suggest to my face that I was an Uncle Tom when I supported a Korean.”

Support From Blacks

Yet, Song said, “I also had many black people come up to me after candidate forums and give me support, and they sometimes shouted down those trying to nail me to the wall on the black-Korean issue.”

“When I got the question about Koreans owning all the stores I tried to put it in context not of black-Korean but of black vs. newcomer,” Song added. “When Koreans eventually move out of South L.A. neighborhoods like Jews did, like Italians did, then it will be the black vs. spotted leprechaun story or blacks vs. Greeks, or whoever may come next. That’s the truer picture of what the problem is than characterizing it as a racial problem. The issue that’s not being discussed enough really is an internal economic problem (that) the black community has to face . . . and come to grips with.”

‘Entrepreneurial Spirit’

John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, agreed that blacks must encourage more of an “entrepreneurial spirit” in the black community so that more stores are owned and operated by blacks. But, he stressed, in the meantime, there is still no excuse for “the fact that the Urban League continues to receive complaints on a regular basis from blacks who say they resent rude treatment they get from Korean merchants.”

“Whether that be because of language difficulties or what, if you’re going to do business in a community, it’s important to be good neighbors and sensitive, for instance, in showing that by hiring more black employees,” Mack said. “The merchants argue, of course, that theirs are family oriented businesses, and there is merit to that. But when making money off a community that has high unemployment and social problems, it doesn’t sit well with people who live there to say you just can’t afford to hire some of the people who are keeping you in business.”

Some black resentment also stems from the erroneous perception that Koreans receive special government loans. Actually, Yu said, most Korean immigrants “come here as middle-class people with savings.” In addition to bank loans, immigrants also pool their money through the kye , an informal banking system, Yu said. The system, similar to one that has been used by Caribbean blacks, involves a group of family and friends who regularly invest a certain dollar amount. By lottery, and sometimes based on need, one person is chosen to get the sum.

Incorrect Perceptions

Some of the Korean resentment against blacks, in turn, is based in the incorrect perception that Koreans are the chief victims of crime in the black community. Raymond Johnson Jr., president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, pointed out that “gang problems have for many years affected black merchants in the black community every day. But when black criminals kill black people it doesn’t seem to attract much publicity.”

Tensions between the two groups often result in petty arguments being treated as racial incidents. In the Crenshaw area, black barbershop owner John Stewart complained to the NAACP, angry that his Korean neighbor, John Park, had put up a car wash stall that partially obscured Stewart’s shop sign. Later, in interviews, Stewart, although still bitter, conceded that the problem was not primarily a racial dispute but a business one. An indignant Park said that although he had the right to put up the car wash stall on his gas station property, “probably I should have said something” to his neighbor first.

In another recent incident, a Korean store owner in South Los Angeles ran after three boys, aged 10, 11 and 12, after they allegedly took goods from shelves and threw them around the store. The woman proprietor fired one shot from a pistol in the pursuit. Had a bullet hit one of the boys, said Lt. Jerry D. Trent of the Police Department’s South Bureau, “it would have been a disaster. . . . You can imagine the uproar.”

Councilman Holden said he hopes that the presence of his Korean aide will help lessen problems between black and Korean communities.

“Charles Kim is not going to work just with Koreans, he’s going to work in the black community, too, to bridge the gap,” Holden said. “But I’ve also got to say I don’t like this segregation that’s come up in this country lately. I don’t like the idea of a black this and a Korean that, a Filipino this and a Jewish that. I was raised with the idea of integration. Everybody sooner or later is going to have to adjust to that in this country.”