‘Seoul House’: Rap Opera to Social Commentary : Stage: Set in a Korean-owned store in a black neighborhood, the multimedia piece has found itself mirroring recent news events.

Y. David Chung and partners Pooh Johnson and Chuck Tobermann weren’t trying for social commentary when they created “Seoul House (Korean Outpost)”--a multimedia theater piece that, it is probably safe to say, is the first electronic rap opera set in a Korean-owned convenience store in a predominantly black neighborhood in Washington.

But both Chung and Johnson, who wrote the music with Tobermann, acknowledged this week during a rehearsal of “Seoul House” at Los Angeles’ Korean Youth Center that headlines reflecting conflicts between Asian store owners and black patrons have followed “Seoul House” around the country.

“Every place we do it, there’s some outbreak of tensions,” Johnson said.

Chung said that the show’s first performance in Washington in 1988--in what he described as a “bombed-out K mart--a very alternative space”--occurred during a peak in such incidents. When they took the show to New York’s Harlem last year, the city was fraught with conflicts between Korean shop owners and blacks. New York’s continuing problem gained national attention in 1986, when blacks picketed two Korean-owned produce stores after minor arguments over money escalated into a boycott.

And the Los Angeles debut of “Seoul House” also comes on the heels of a more serious incident--the March shooting death of a black teen at a Korean-owned market in South Los Angeles.

Chung, 31, and Johnson, 33, said the piece--which blends ancient Korean mask theater traditions with contemporary music and video--was not intended as a commentary on recent flare-ups between Asian store operators and their black patrons. “It’s not a political piece,” Chung said. “It’s intended as an artwork first--as a theater piece, and as an opera.”

“Seoul House,” Chung said, explores the isolation of the Kim family in their new habitat--rather than any conflicts with the surrounding community. “Seoul House” is set in the store’s stockroom, away from the customers; the family views the world outside on the security monitor’s video screen. The masks the characters wear, Chung said, further illustrate the wall between the Kims and their environment.

The story is told in seven operatic “tableaux”--incorporating rap, jazz, blues, electronic music and traditional Korean folk music--by the members of the Kim family and the regulars who come into their store: Mr. Choi, a successful Korean businessman who is the Kims’ American business liaison; the Salesman and the Delivery Man. The opera opens with “The Grandmother’s Pricing Song,” as Old Mrs. Kim sings of the monotony of pricing and dreams of her old life in Korea--and uses her pricing gun as a percussion instrument throughout the opera.

The Los Angeles production of “Seoul House” has a local cast except for Virginia-based Clearance Giddens as the Delivery Man. Giddens is more often called “Black Elvis” because of his regular career as an Elvis impersonator.

“We added ‘Korean Outpost’ (to the title) because it’s almost like they’re going into some kind of zone--not a war zone, exactly, but some kind of new zone,” Chung said. “Here, they tell me you don’t have the stores with the bullet-proof glass--in Washington, it’s much bleaker, I guess. You shop by pointing at things; there’s no human contact.”

The opera will be presented tonight through Sunday at the 90-seat Theater of Arts by the Korean Youth Center, as one of the events of Asian Pacific Heritage Month. The production was funded by a $10,000 grant from Kraft General Foods Inc.

Chung, the son of former Korean diplomats, worked in his family’s various convenience stores and cleaning businesses in Washington during high school and college, but by that time had been in the United States for years and had always attended schools that instructed in both Korean and English.

“Seoul House,” he said, grew more directly out of the experiences of relatives who emigrated from Korea later and opened their stores, facing culture shock and language barriers head-on.

Chung and Johnson have completed another opera, “Five Stations of the Cross,” which Johnson describes as the story of “a poor dishwasher who has a bad day at the track.” But Chung is best known in the Washington area as a painter and printmaker; he also recently completed a mural for the Washington Metro subway system.

Chung said that since “Seoul House” was presented in Washington, he has become involved in a task force on black-Asian relations in that city. And, although “Seoul House” does not address that issue specifically, he called the show “a good starting point for discussion.” Chung said that Washington-area schools are considering a short video version of “Seoul House.”

“It would be good if they go ahead with that,” Chung mused. “It shows a little bit of their (Koreans’) scene, a little bit of their culture . . . one or two incidents tend to get blown out of proportion. It comes down to a lack of information about people. . . . I’ve had performances where people will stand up and ask questions about whether the Koreans were sent here by the CIA, and whether each family was given so much money and told to buy up all the stores in the neighborhood.”

Chung added that the Deliveryman in “Seoul House” represents the voice of the community, confused about how the old neighborhood is changing. “He’s a Korean War veteran--and he sees that his world is changing, with all these different people coming and going,” Chung said.

“He makes a subtle comment about that--he complains about (the Koreans) jacking up the price of cigarettes. In some places in Washington, they have soul food restaurants run by Korean people, and he’s amazed at how they’ve adapted.”

* “Seoul House,” Theatre of Arts, 4128 Wilshire Blvd. 8 p.m. Through Sunday. (213) 383-5218.