Korean Merchants Reconsider Stance of Downplaying Crime

Korean-American leaders, taking a more aggressive stance condemning violence against inner-city merchants, said Monday they plan to go public with their outrage over the weekend shooting of a 9-year-old girl during a robbery at her parents’ mini-mart.

The shooting of the Korean-American girl, allegedly by a black gunman, comes at a time of unsettled relations between the two communities, which have been divided over the high-profile trial of a Korean-American grocer for fatally shooting an African-American teen-ager.

Unlike African-American leaders--who have responded angrily when blacks were killed by Korean shopkeepers--the Korean-American community has traditionally sought to downplay such tensions. They have depicted the incidents as crimes without racial overtones when the suspects were black.

No one has characterized Saturday’s shooting in South-Central Los Angeles as racially motivated. Police speculate that the robber fired because he feared that the child--still in critical condition Monday--might be able to identify him.

But Korean-American leaders say the incident will spur them to speak out more forcefully against attacks against Korean merchants, 19 of whom have been slain on the job over the last decade in Los Angeles County. Their reluctance to do so in the past, they believe, has caused undue attention to be focused on instances of Korean merchants killing blacks.

“It’s probably time we start vocalizing some of our frustrations,” said Gary Kim, president of the Korean American Coalition. “We are losing the media battle.”

On Monday, Korean community leaders were making urgent phone calls, holding behind-the-scenes negotiations and planning news conferences. They were undecided on the message they would deliver, but they said it will be aimed at airing their anger and grief outside of the Korean press.

“Koreans have not played that game,” said Jai Lee Wong, a consultant with the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations. “Our thinking and strategy have to change in order to be more effective.”

Part of the problem, some Korean-Americans say, is that their immigrant community is still relatively new to the country and has yet to surmount cultural and language barriers. Merchants, they add, tend to be among the most recent arrivals, interested more in economic survival than community activism.

“The political game and dealing with the media is something that’s very far from their minds,” said Marcia Choo, program director at the Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution Center.

Another problem, say community leaders, is that they have no convenient targets at which they can direct their anger.

African-American leaders, such as Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell, have launched boycotts of Korean-owned stores where blacks have been killed. But Korean-Americans say their problem is not with blacks, but with criminals who kill merchants.

“Where do you protest? Who’s your audience? What’s the end result?” asked T. S. Chung, an attorney whose parents were attacked by robbers when they ran a small grocery. “The Korean community feels very powerless.”

The media-savvy Bakewell, in fact, beat the Korean-American community to the punch, announcing on Monday that he will hold a news conference of his own today to condemn the shooting.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district encompasses the site of Saturday’s shooting, said he did not consider the incident to be a black or Korean issue, but rather a graphic illustration of the violence that pervades the city.

“The levels of violence . . . are simply intolerable,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be turned into a racial situation to recognize that what happened is indefensible.”

The shooting left the only child of Hong and Soon Kang in an intensive care unit with a bullet lodged in her chest. The girl, whose name was not released, had been in the back room of the Shell gas station and convenience mart on Broadway and Century Boulevard when a black man in his early 20s entered the store about 6:30 a.m., police said.

The man allegedly hopped over the counter and ordered her parents at gunpoint to lie face down on the floor, then grabbed more than $500 from the register, said Detective Kurt Miles.

“There was very little conversation other than ‘I want your money, give me the money,’ ” Miles said.

Police said the man then pointed the gun at the girl, who was sitting crouched in the corner with her knees drawn up to her chin. He fired one shot, which went through her left leg and struck her in the chest. Her parents were unharmed.

“We are just speculating that the little girl sat and looked at him through the entire robbery and that this was an attempt to keep a witness from identifying him,” Miles said. “It was directed at the little girl. It was an attempt to kill her.”

Miles said he was hopeful that two men who were in the parking lot and may have witnessed the robbery would come forward. He also said a videotape from the store’s security cameras had been taken to a crime lab, where the recording was being enhanced in hopes of identifying the assailant.

Meanwhile, the Shell Oil Co. on Monday offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect.

“There’s really no indication this was racially motivated in any way,” Miles said. “It was just a senseless shooting.”