Fatal Shooting in Holdup Stirs Sorrow, Not Surprise : Crime: Friends, neighbors of a store owner killed in area south of Koreatown say the incident simply reflects danger faced by merchants.

After nearly a decade behind the counter of Superior Liquor Store on a gritty stretch of Pico Boulevard, Paul Park knew the dangers of doing business.

Fellow merchants in the mostly Latino community just south of Koreatown said Park had been robbed before and kept two guns behind the register for protection. The neighborhood’s street-wise youths said the shopkeeper would sometimes flash his weapons just to remind them who was boss.

And in an odd bit of irony, gang members six years ago painted a colorful mural on the side of Park’s store that depicts a merchant of Asian descent firing a gun at a bandanna-clad robber. The cash register reads: “No Sale.”

So as word spread that the 46-year-old Park had been fatally shot during a holdup the night before, the news generated shock but not much surprise among friends and customers who filed past the padlocked metal gate sealing off the market’s entrance.

“After 6 p.m., it’s very dangerous around here,” said Moon Kim, 40, who owns a grocery store two blocks away. “I asked him many times: ‘Why do you work alone? Why don’t you hire somebody?’ He didn’t answer me.”

Park--who friends said was struck five times in the abdomen, leg and arm--died Sunday morning at County-USC Medical Center. It was not known how much cash, if any, was taken from his store.

Witnesses described the suspects as two black men, but Los Angeles police said there was no indication that race played a part in the shooting. The robbers entered the store about 6 p.m. Saturday, fired at Park with a .38-caliber or .357 magnum pistol and fled southbound on Fedora Avenue, said Lt. John Fletcher.

“He’s Korean and they were black, but what does that mean?” Fletcher asked. “We have robberies all the time in this city. Unfortunately, he was a victim.”

Relations between the African-American and Korean-American communities have at times been strained by violent encounters involving blacks and Korean merchants, many of whom do business in economically depressed neighborhoods.

African-Americans have complained that the shopkeepers treat them rudely and with suspicion, a factor that some believe contributed to the fatal shooting this year of a 15-year-old black girl by a Korean-born grocer who accused the girl of shoplifting.

Korean-American leaders complain that undue attention has been focused on instances of merchants killing blacks, while at least 11 Korean-born shopkeepers have been slain on the job in Los Angeles County in the last two years. They tend not to view such conflicts in racial terms, but as an unfortunate side effect of serving crime-plagued communities.

“It’s nothing about race, it’s just about robbery,” said Gilbert Torres, 24, a security guard at a Korean-owned restaurant, as he stood outside Park’s store Sunday.

“What a shame,” said Blanca Aquila, who has lived in the neighborhood 34 years. “I think a lot of people are just jealous of the Koreans. They come here to work. You don’t see them on the corner, drinking or doing bad things.”

Park, who friends said had two children, chose to work on a tough corner. Six-foot-high gang graffiti are scrawled on the surrounding buildings, proclaiming the neighborhood as the Playboys’ turf. Even the mural outside Park’s store, commissioned in 1985 by Community Youth Gang Services, an agency that deals with gang violence, has been hit with numerous rounds of unwelcome spray paint.

“The main problem is drugs,” said Luis, who works at a tire store across the street. “It doesn’t matter if you are Korean, black, Spanish or gringo. There’s lots of people who will kill you for a dollar.”

Inside Park’s store, behind the beer signs and cigarette ads that are plastered over the windows, a bloodstained towel sat in a hand basket. A pair of slippers, hastily discarded, were lying on the floor.