GARDEN GROVE : Group Discusses Culture Clashes

It’s a city already well-known for its rainbow of citizens. In one of its oldest neighborhoods, Korean businesses have moved in and some longtime residents feel displaced, like strangers in their hometowns.

The setting, though, is not a New York City borough. It’s Garden Grove, and in an effort to head off racial clashes that have occurred in other areas, residents have started getting together to discuss their differences.

Once a month, a group of about 20 people meet in what is informally called the “Korean-Anglo Dialogue.” Sponsored by the Orange County Human Relations Commission, the dialogue brings together Garden Grove residents with representatives of the city’s large Korean business community. Disagreements between the two groups first surfaced in 1989 when the City Council proposed an ordinance that would require English on all business signs in the city.

“I was down at the City Council chamber when the council was considering the sign ordinance,” recalled Ho Young Chung, who operates an insurance business that recently moved from Buena Park to Garden Grove Boulevard. “There I met Jane Powell and her husband (Ray). We were (on) both sides kind of mad.”

Chung was on hand to defend the Korean businesses against what some thought was a racial slap. The Powells were unhappy about the transformation of a once-familiar commercial district into what seemed an alien land with a forest of non-English signs.

The English-only sign proposal ended up being dropped, but Chung, a member of the Human Relations Commission, said he “started to think that what we needed was a dialogue between the two sides.”

Starting in March, the group began to meet, alternating between a Korean business and an American home.

Chung said an American walking into a Korean business may feel snubbed by the few, curt words of the merchant. “Many Korean businessmen only know a few words of English, or only feel confident saying a few words,” Chung said. “But people think they are being rude.”

Another sticking point between longtime residents and the Korean firms, which began to appear in Garden Grove in great numbers in the mid- to late-1970s, is that many of the Korean proprietors don’t live in the city.

Tom Kim, an insurance agent in Garden Grove since 1978, has his theories. “The Korean views a home as an investment,” Kim said. “If he buys a home in Garden Grove, it may appreciate 10%, but he’d hesitate to invest in a home if he can find one in another community that may appreciate 20%.”