Angelenos Look to O.C. for Refuge After Riots : Unrest: Koreans and others in middle class weigh relocation, but county’s safe image may be misleading.

At 7 p.m. on Night One of the Los Angeles riots, Cheoljin Chung closed his liquor store on Florence Avenue just east of Normandie and started driving home. When his car telephone rang, he picked it up to hear his wife tell him his liquor store was burning, live, on television.

Now Chung is waiting for the $100,000 insurance check to cover the booze that burned. He plans to buy another business--this time in Orange County.

“I don’t like the South L.A. area,” he says, “and I am not going back.”

Another man who won’t be returning is In Haeng Lee. He owned a dry cleaning shop at Western Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard that burned during the riots. “Everything was lost,” says Lee, who lives in Fullerton. “I want to move to another location; I want to be near to my house.”

After the 1965 riots in Watts, many residents of Los Angeles, Inglewood and Compton pulled up stakes and headed for the suburbs. Demographers say the so-called “white flight” played a part in Orange County’s explosive population growth.

Now, at dinner parties and community meetings across Orange County, people debate whether Angelenos will bail out after the 1992 riots; they also wonder whether conditions are ripe here for an outbreak of violence.

Blacks, who make up less than 2% of Orange County’s population, have played down the chances of civil unrest, saying in interviews and public meetings that living conditions here are better than in Los Angeles.

But Latinos, who account for 23% of the population and more than half of Santa Ana’s residents, warned that conditions are bad in the barrios, and pleaded for help in battling gangs. The apparent informal consensus: The Los Angeles riots were a “wake-up call” for Orange County.

UC Irvine demographers Mark Baldassare and Cheryl Katz last month decried the “prevalent myth” that “what happened in Los Angeles could never happen here.” They said Orange County has to promote jobs and racial harmony, while preventing hate crimes and gang activity.

Baldassare and Katz also said the county “needs to get ready for a tide of migrants from Los Angeles. Just as with the Watts riots, the unrest will fuel considerable urban flight to Orange County.”

But they predicted that “rather than being largely ‘white flight,’ the exodus will include the middle-class of all races.”

In the tightknit Korean community of the Southland, rumors, gossip and news travel fast.

Tips on nice neighborhoods and good schools spread quickly. Even before the riots, Los Angeles Koreans looked enviously at Orange County, with what they saw as its better homes and nicer schools, according to local Korean leaders.

Koreans were aware that many blacks in South Los Angeles thought that the merchants’ prices were too high, the service too poor. Last year’s killing by Korean store owner Soon Ja Du of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, whom Du accused of trying to steal a bottle of orange juice, worsened relations between the two communities.

The Los Angeles residents stayed where they were for business reasons, Koreans say. Now, some have nothing to stay for: Their businesses burned. Others are willing to sell if they can find someplace reasonably priced in Orange County.

A southward movement down the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways would give a major boost to a still-small, but rapidly growing community, one that ranks behind only the Vietnamese among Orange County’s Asian groups.

A number of Koreans, like Lee, live in Orange County but have businesses in Los Angeles. One man was surprised to learn that eight members of his Fullerton church had their Los Angeles shops looted; another two were burned out.

“There’s not going to be any hard numbers anywhere” on how many Koreans are moving, cautioned Jerry Yu, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Korean-American Coalition, a political advocacy organization.

“With the feelings within the (Korean) community, it’s going to have to be an individual choice” whether to stay in Los Angeles. “Those feelings are fluctuating.”

Real estate agents say they have not yet seen signs of flight from Los Angeles to Orange County. But they said it takes time to sell a house or business and wouldn’t expect to see evidence of the phenomenon for several months, if it occurs.

Demographers say studies of white flight after the 1960s riots in Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit and elsewhere showed that racial disturbances or desegregation movements in cities were not the sole reason people moved. Rather, said William Fry of the University of Michigan, it played a part in the decision “for those who were going to move for other reasons.”

Yu says key elements in the decision of Korean business owners whether to remain in Los Angeles or pull up stakes include how much money they collect for destroyed businesses and how long it takes to get it; attitudes of blacks toward Koreans; and “what we hear from black politicians” about Korean merchants.

“Depending on these things, I think they’re going to decide whether they’re going to move or stay in Los Angeles,” Yu says.

Jin Lee, secretary-general of the Assn. of Korean-American Victims of the Los Angeles Riots, says that he has heard that “a lot of people are going to San Diego” after the riots. Still, he agrees that “you can’t tell right now” how many Koreans will leave South Los Angeles.

He says one problem with Orange County is that it costs twice as much for a liquor or grocery store as it does in South Los Angeles. But he stresses that Korean merchants “are looking for somewhere else, a safer area, that’s for sure.”

Koreatown South, as some call it, stretches along Garden Grove Boulevard, roughly from Brookhurst Street on the east to Beach Boulevard on the west. Nearly all the stores--bakeries, dry cleaners, pharmacies, ginseng sales shops--have signs both in English and Korean.

Inside Yun Ki (James) Hong’s real estate agency in Garden Grove, most of the writing on a board in the reception area is in the Korean script known as hangul. There’s an occasional word or two in English, and the prices are clearly written in a language known to all.

“Liquor store, $415,000” reads one; “liquor, Garden Grove, $120,000” reads another.

Hong has 23 agents working for him. Many of his clients are Koreans, usually selling to or buying from other Koreans.

Hong says that soon after the riot’s embers cooled he began getting “a lot of calls” from Koreans “looking for any kind of business in Orange County.”

Instead of the normal 20 or so inquiries a day, the number went to 40 and more, Hong says. Other callers asked if there were homes for sale.

Hong says he expects cash to change hands and clients to call in the moving vans only after insurance companies pay off riot losses or federal Small Business Administration loans come through, which could take weeks or months more.

“After those applications are processed, we expect the moves will increase a lot,” he says. “We expect a big increase in Orange County.”

In recent years there has already been a major increase, in percentage terms, in the Korean population of Orange County.

In the 1970 census, Koreans numbered fewer than 5,000. But in the 1970s, South Korea liberalized its emigration policy, allowing more of its citizens to go abroad, and the 1980 census showed 11,339 Koreans in Orange County, compared to 60,618 in Los Angeles County. (North Korea, one of the world’s few remaining Communist dictatorships, does not allow emigration).

In the 1980s, the number of Koreans in Orange County more than tripled, hitting the 35,919 mark, by the U.S. Census Bureau count. Korean community leaders put the number higher: The president of the county Korean American Assn. guesses 70,000 to 80,000.

Pyong Gap Min, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York City who has studied the Korean communities in Los Angeles and Orange counties, says that Koreans typically settle in Los Angeles or New York City, then after several years move to the suburbs. “A lot of Koreans in Los Angeles move to Orange County and buy homes and go to places where there are good schools,” Min said.

Min said the greatest percentage increases in Korean populations nationally during the 1980s occurred in New Jersey . . . and Orange County.

What was the impact of the riots on other minorities already in Orange County, such as blacks and Latinos? Well, Eddie Gage says folks are treating him nicer.

Gage is a black private investigator who also heads a group called Christians for African-American Unity and Self-Expression. He was raised in South Los Angeles and saw the Watts riots up close.

A Fullerton resident for 14 years, Gage, 32, says he’s used to people in Orange County locking their cars when they see blacks coming, or crossing the street. He says that since the riots, “people are overly friendly, like you’re going to hold a one-man riot in their store.”

He calls it the “pit bull syndrome,” where people pat a mastiff on the head and whimper, “Nice doggie.” Gage says other blacks have also told him that “white people around Orange County are nicer since the . . . riots.”

Overall, Gage says racial tensions aren’t as severe and blatant in Orange County as in Los Angeles “because the minorities are such a minority.” But he says the gap between rich and poor is vast.

“We have areas in Orange County as run-down as areas in Los Angeles and nothing is being done about that,” he says.

“I don’t see much of an effort to bring the poor up to the level of those who have more money,” he says.

But Gage believes police treatment of minorities is better here than in Los Angeles, and the gang problem pales in comparison to the one across the county line.

When Orange County motorists get stopped for a ticket, Gage says, “the only thing they’re concerned about is their insurance rates go up.”

And, Orange County as a whole is economically better off than Los Angeles, says Gage, and “that’s why so many people want to move to Orange County, because there’s more opportunity to have better homes, better cars and everything.”

A lot of Los Angeles blacks have thought of moving to Orange County, Gage says, “but most in the inner-city areas can’t see beyond their neighborhood. They’re in a bottle. Most of us who do want to go to another area have already gone.”

Frank Castillo says he and his fellow Latinos in Orange County face problems that include “crime and gangs and drugs and a high dropout rate.” Plus unemployment. Plus discrimination.

“I think it’s real sad that Los Angeles has to burn down for people to talk about racial problems,” Castillo told the Human Relations Commission last month. The Santa Ana social worker said the rioting, though deplorable, was “understandable.”

“For a few nights, everybody felt what it was like to live in fear,” Castillo says. “It was good for you to feel that,” he told the audience, “to see what the rest of us feel when we call police and nobody comes.”

Castillo spoke of a “silent rage” consuming minorities. Noting the rush to gun stores during the riots, he said that “instead of trying to do something about it, people are buying guns.”

In Santa Ana, where he has lived 25 years, “you hear the sirens, you read about the funerals. . . . The killings have been going on for years.”

Santa Ana lawyer Alfred Amezcua has been pushing city officials for more jobs and recreational opportunities for the young. Politicians “need to go the extra mile so we don’t find ourselves in a situation like Los Angeles is, five or 20 years from now,” he says.

Still, he says that in comparing unemployment rates, Orange County Latinos are far better off than their Los Angeles counterparts. “Here in Orange County we do have a high unemployed population within one segment of the community, the gang community, but the adult Hispanic community has a much better employment rate than South L.A. does.”

The lawyer says that “most of us” Latinos in Santa Ana could relate to the anger and despair of rioters, but didn’t share the depth of those emotions. While there are Korean merchants who “cater to the Hispanic community” in Santa Ana as Korean businessmen “cater to the black community” in Los Angeles, any tensions between the groups are minor.

Amezcua said he would like to see more Korean contributions to local programs and investment in Santa Ana, but calls the relationship between businessmen and their customers “generally positive.”

Myung Park, who has lived in Orange County for more than five years, says his Korean friends in Los Angeles “are very nervous” and are “concerned about the safety of their lives.”

He says Koreans in Orange County were “uneasy and nervous” themselves when the riots broke out the night of April 29, lest the problem spread across the county line. Their worry was exacerbated by panicky calls from friends and relatives in Korea, he said, who saw the riots on television there.

But now that the worry has eased somewhat, Park says Orange County’s Koreans must get out in the community, learn more about the county’s Latino and black minorities, and let members of other ethnic groups get to know the Koreans.

Park thinks Koreans have isolated themselves from other groups. “We do not do enough” to interact, he said. “We have to take part of the blame for the kind of things that happened in Los Angeles,” he added, for letting Korean business peoples’ relations with blacks and other minorities deteriorate.

Park, who worked in the prime minister’s office in Seoul before moving to America, said he thought he was “well-versed in the culture of America” when he immigrated. “But after moving here, I found I was wrong.”

He polished his English, watched his American counterparts in business and gradually increased his self-confidence in his new country, he said. He picked Orange County rather than Los Angeles because a brother, a surgeon, was already living here.

He says his main reason for leaving Korea was to help his three children, who range in age from 18 to 23, get a better education. He wanted to study in the United States himself 30 years ago, Park says, but it didn’t work out.

So, he says, “I want to have my dream realized through my kids.”