Learning to Understand : Korean Grocers and Black Neighbors Slowly Find Empathy for Each Other

Chulmo so, kosaeng un saso handa . Buy your hardships before you get old.

The old Korean saying--a warning that troubles should be dealt with early in life in order to build character--became all too real for Korean grocer Hyung Kim when he opened a small market in South Los Angeles a decade ago.

Kim and his wife, Connie, Korean nationals who emigrated from Japan, learned through their hardship after setting up shop in a neighborhood saddled with poverty and violence. Customers looked on the Kims, who spoke little English, with suspicion. And the Kims’ attitudes toward their neighbors also were hardened by repeated incidents of shoplifting.

But the Kims hung on to their Royalty Market, and slowly their understanding of different groups of people has deepened. Over time, the Kims have grown less suspicious of their neighbors--and some neighbors, in turn, more accepting of them. These days, they are extending credit to some patrons--a small but significant act of faith. And, laying off a security guard who was once on their payroll, the Kims have customers who watch for intruders from outside the neighborhood.

About four miles north of Royalty Market, O. Hyop Kwon, owner of Lucky Liquor, continues to employ security guards. After a few minor problems with customers, Kwon grew concerned that theft and unruliness might escalate. But like Royalty Market, the shop has its share of defenders among customers.

“These days, the guard here has an easy job,” said a customer, Decatur James, 61. The retired railroad worker had just bought a wine cooler and a 15-cent single Kool cigarette at Kwon’s store.

“The old men on the street see to that,” James said. “Anyone who comes messing with the store, they’ve got trouble with us. Some of us care about one another down here.”

In Los Angeles County, where more than 2,500 Korean immigrants own small markets and liquor stores, individuals like O. Hyop Kwon and Hyung and Connie Kim are beginning to change the strained relationships that embitter many low-income neighborhoods. At 62nd Street and San Pedro Avenue, from behind the checkout counter, the Kims have tried to get to know their neighbors, and in some cases, they say, they have succeeded.

“Like many Korean store owners, I used to think a business is just about making money,” Kim said. But now, he added, he and his customers are learning to “behave like neighbors.”

The Kims don’t dwell on some of the grimmer aspects of grocers’ experiences--in November, there were two robbery-murders at Korean-owned liquor stores in Los Angeles, a flare-up of violence that in 1986 claimed the lives of five grocers. Nationally, the yearlong boycott of two Korean vegetable stands in Brooklyn, N.Y., has focused widespread attention on relations between African-Americans and Korean-Americans.

Beyond the fatal violence, there are everyday tensions. Grocers in ethnically mixed neighborhoods nationwide have been criticized by customers, especially African-Americans. The complaints include disrespect to shoppers, exorbitant prices, and the grocers’ failure to make contributions to the communities that support them. The grocers have responded, clashing verbally with customers at checkout stands or scuffling in the aisles as they attempt to subdue shoplifters. Assault charges have been filed by and against Korean merchants in several cities.

In Los Angeles, efforts have been under way since 1986 to mediate differences between Korean-Americans and African-Americans, said Jai Lee Wong, a consultant to the County Commission on Human Relations. The commission founded the Black-Korean Alliance, the first of several local groups to begin working to improve relations through face-to-face meetings and the opening of mediation centers. Although there are signs of progress, Wong and others believe the situation still is fragile.

“As the economy gets worse, it’s the poorer people who suffer most. We can expect to see more hostility, more people depressed, and, it’s too bad, but probably more robberies,” Wong said.

Originally from Seoul, the Kims bought Royalty Market after spending 28 years in Japan, where they suffered government-sponsored racial discrimination that has been against the law for decades in the United States.

As Koreans, the Kims lived under sanctions imposed by the government on non-Japanese residents. Apartheid-style laws all but barred them from becoming citizens and condemned them to perennial “foreigner” status. The Kims’ two sons, born in Tokyo, also faced barriers to gaining citizenship.

” ’ Chosenjin! ‘ Japanese people would call us that,” Hyung Kim said. “It’s a nasty word for Koreans, a slur.”

The Kims, like many Koreans, came to Los Angeles and set up shop in a predominantly African-American neighborhood south of downtown.

Kim saw African-Americans, he said, as “people who have been pushed down on by society.” In his eyes, the long history of exploitation suffered by black Americans mirrored the financial penury endured by Koreans brought to Japan as cheap or indentured labor.

But as he worked at the store, Kim’s idealism about his customers began to fray. Some of them shoplifted canned goods, snacks and other items stocked in the market.

Kim also became frightened and callous because of the violence around him. From customers, he heard about shootings near his market. He often found fresh graffiti scrawled on the walls of the store.

As the atmosphere grew tense, Kim began to overreact with his customers. Once, a woman in line leaned on his electronic scale, Kim said. He asked her to stop, but when she did not, Kim thought she was being antagonistic, and brusquely lifted her arm off the scale.

Startled, the woman hit him over the head with a metal rod, he said. Kim chased her with a gun. When they reached the parking lot, Kim fired once into the air. The woman ran off.

Over the next few weeks, business almost came to a halt as customers, upset over the incident, avoided the store. Eventually, though, their anger abated and they returned.

But Kim remembered his error.

“My actions were bad,” Kim said. “The customer was bad too, but I should have had a bigger mind about the whole incident. I hope I know better now.

“You live with people and you learn about them,” Kim said. “African-Americans have quite a history here. Not such a pretty one, as far as I can tell. The slavery and the discrimination . . . that legacy does its damage on many children’s lives and the lives of those children’s children--like the people living in this neighborhood.”

Kim learned, too, from his failure to communicate.

“My biggest fear was when the phone would ring,” Kim said in Korean. “It is so stressful when you can’t make yourself understood. To be able to converse in Korean and have others know ‘ttaack’ (exactly) what it is you’re saying, and then to come to America and not to be able to speak English--all of a sudden, I am virtually a mute.”

But Kim now manages a limited grasp of English, an improvement over the days when “all I could try to do was smile,” he said.

Yet, even now, a smiling visage doesn’t smooth all rifts, some of Kim’s customers say.

Across the street from the market, Dwain and Don Gray have been working at A & G Auto Repair for 17 years. They refer to Kim as “Harry,” and, until last winter, the brothers both were regular customers. Don still goes often to Royalty. Dwain stopped.

“It wasn’t such a big thing,” Dwain Gray, 34, said about an incident at the shop in which Kim cursed at him, mistaking him for another customer. Gray said Kim continued his tirade even after he realized who he was yelling at.

“Harry and I were cool until then. Maybe he was feeling ill that day or something, but it really hurt me, being cursed out in front of all those people in the store. Even his wife was shaking her head.”

The Kims said they have made many such mistakes. But many misunderstandings, they said, were born of a constant frustration of dealing with petty thefts.

“To see someone steal something you’ve worked hard for,” Connie Kim said, “it’s natural to get angry. You can’t help it.”

Kim said she and her husband have developed ways of handling the problems before they escalate.

“After awhile you begin to see why people take things without paying. Then, you begin to think about preventing it from happening again. You call a child’s parents, or you let the shoplifters know they can’t come into the store for a few weeks or a month. I’ve seen them looking so sorry, standing across the street, asking friends to come in and buy things for them.”

Her husband added: “What many grocers don’t realize is it’s not about black people stealing from Koreans. It’s a problem of people with no money.”