Koreans’ Jittery Valley Dreams : Entrepreneurs: Businessmen often find their quest for a paradise full of pitfalls, not the least of which is competition from fellow Asians. Nonetheless, their numbers proliferate.
In 1976, Ki Hwan Kim borrowed $25,000 from his family and became a pioneer in the San Fernando Valley. Then 39 and speaking little English, Kim ventured to Sepulveda and bought All Stop Auto Shop--the first Korean-owned body shop in the Valley.
Today, however, some of Kim’s fiercest competitors are other Korean-American entrepreneurs who recently migrated to the Valley from Koreatown, from elsewhere in Southern California and even straight from Korea.
“Back then, it was just me and one Japanese shop,” Kim said before launching into a story about how he overcame prejudice in his early years. “But now competition is too tough,” he said. “There are more than 12 Korean body shops in the Valley.”
Much the same can be said for Korean-owned flower shops, beauty salons, dry cleaners and restaurants in the Valley--all of which have proliferated in the last decade. While there are no precise figures, So Hyun Chang, publisher of a Korean-language newspaper and business directory for Valley residents, estimated there are 2,000 Korean-owned businesses in the Valley.
More than 900 of those rely largely on Korean customers for their business, he said, while a decade ago there were just 150 Korean-owned businesses that targeted Koreans in the Valley.
“Koreans believe there’s less traffic, better schools and less danger in the Valley,” said Won Yi, head of Wilshire State Bank’s operations in Reseda. The Korean-operated bank is based in Koreatown, but it opened a branch three years ago in Reseda. That office now has 700 business accounts, most of them Korean, Yi said.
Yi thinks the recent Los Angeles riots, which destroyed more than 850 Korean-American businesses in South-Central and Koreatown, will hasten what had been a slow but steady flight to suburbia.
Still, the Valley has hardly been a business utopia. While some Korean merchants have prospered from the influx of Korean-Americans--experts believe 10% of the 300,000 Koreans in the Los Angeles area live in the Valley--furniture stores and clothing retailers are among many Korean businesses that have failed recently because of the recession.
Korean businesses in the Valley have also been victimized by crime. In May, Lee Chul Kim was killed after robbers ransacked the cash registers in his Woodley Market in Van Nuys. And earlier this year, a brawl at a Korean restaurant in Reseda left one person dead and another paralyzed.
Such incidents and the recent riots “have scared away all my customers,” complained Jin-Hui Pak, who two years ago bought Taylor’s Cocktail Lounge & Karaoke in Panorama City.
“The night traffic around here is dead,” she said.
Below are profiles of three Korean businesses whose stories reflect the histories and struggles of an emerging entrepreneurial class in the Valley:
GROCER
Kook B. Kim flips open a blue notebook and runs his finger down a list of names. “These are all the people we gave credit to,” said Kim, owner of Midopa Oriental Market in Granada Hills. “We help our customers. They are like neighbors to us.”
Kim hopes such relations with customers, 70% of whom are Koreans, will help keep his 2-year-old market thriving. But the 60-year-old native of Seoul is clearly worried about the future.
To open Midopa, which is the name of a popular department store in Seoul, Kim and his son invested $250,000--raised from a bank loan, and his savings from a prior toy business in North Hollywood. Kim, a Granada Hills resident since 1984, started the grocery because he wanted to serve the growing Korean community.
Midopa carries Korean and other Asian foods that are not available in ordinary supermarkets. Many of the signs in Midopa are in Korean, and most of the workers are Korean-Americans. Kim, his son and daughter-in-law all work there. Last year, the 3,000-square-foot market grossed about $800,000.
But in May, just as Kim was finishing an expansion of his store to 5,000 square feet, H. K. Supermarket, one of the largest grocery stores in Koreatown, disclosed plans to open a big Oriental supermarket, sending shivers to the half-dozen small Korean grocers in the Valley, including Kim.
H. K.’s store in Van Nuys will be five times the size of Kim’s grocery and he was devastated by the news. “I can’t understand why they would do this,” he lamented. “Why would they want to come here and destroy all of us little markets?”
Yong Kim, a spokesman for H. K. Supermarket, which is run by several Korean businessmen, calls such concerns “nonsense,” and he argues that there are enough Korean customers for his supermarket to coexist with other smaller markets in the Valley.
Some Korean merchants in the Valley say a big market will help the Korean business community in the Valley grow. Other Koreans in the Valley note that if H. K. doesn’t come to the Valley soon, some other supermarket will.
“With the growth of the Korean community, it’s inevitable,” said Sam Lee, a real estate broker at Pinnacle Estate Properties in Northridge. Lee said he is getting more inquiries from Korean entrepreneurs thinking of making a foray into the Valley.
Kim, the Granada Hills grocer, is already preparing for that day.
In this month’s issue of Korean Valley News, a 5,000-circulation Korean-language newspaper, Kim and some other local grocers placed an ad stating prominently, “Our prices are cheaper than the (Korean) supermarkets in L.A.” Kim says the same thing in person to as many customers as he can.
RESTAURATEUR
During the worst moments of the Los Angeles riots, Chong Woon Park closed his Korean Bar-B-Que House in Canoga Park and retreated to his home in West Hills, where he reflected on his good fortunes. Indeed, only four years ago Park was living and working in the heart of Koreatown, which was riot-ravaged this spring.
Park, 42, immigrated to the United States in January, 1976, with $10 and a big dream: to run his own restaurant.
Like many newcomers from Korea, he settled in Koreatown, and for the next nine years labored as a cook for a restaurant there. He worked long hours, earning enough money to bring his wife, Yeun Shim, and their infant son to Los Angeles.
In 1985, Park made his move. Borrowing $20,000 from a close Korean friend, he bought a small sushi bar in Koreatown. Three years later, with savings from that business, a $30,000 loan from a Korean bank in Los Angeles and another loan from the same friend, Park took over the struggling Korean Bar-B-Que House for $135,000. Later that year, the Parks moved to a house in West Hills.
“The schools are better here than in the city,” said Park, who now has two children, both of whom go to public schools in the Valley.
Park also saw a business opportunity. Although there are three dozen Korean restaurants in the Valley today, there were about half that number five years ago. And while the Korean Bar-B-Que House under the previous owners was failing, Park had confidence in his cooking skills, which he had been developing since he was 14 years old.
Park said his 130-seat Korean and Japanese restaurant now grosses about $400,000 a year and is profitable. “I watch my costs and the quality of the food is good,” Park said.
In the aftermath of the riots, Park believes fewer Koreans in the Valley and Ventura County will drive to Koreatown for dinner. But Park isn’t relying on Koreans. Slightly more than half of his patrons are non-Koreans, but Park wants to increase that figure. To do so, he plans to advertise in mainstream newspapers. Right now he advertises only in Korean papers.
BODY SHOP OWNER
For Ki Hwan Kim, the golden age ended about five years ago.
It was about then that Kim, owner of All Stop Auto Shop in North Hills, began noticing his longtime customers--virtually all of them whites--were fleeing the mid-Valley for Ventura County and other places. Kim was able to pick up more business from the growing Korean community in the Valley. But he also met increasing competition from other Korean-operated auto repair shops nearby, and he found it hard to do business in the Korean way.
In Korea, it is common for consumers to aggressively negotiate discounts, resulting in intense price competition among merchants. Kim, who emigrated from Korea 27 years ago, says such practices often make it hard for him to compete. “I’m not a good businessman,” Kim admits. “If they ask for too much, I tell them to go elsewhere.”
Kim, 55, declined to disclose revenue figures, but said he and his three employees work on about 15 cars a week in Kim’s three-car garage, which is in a strip mall of auto-related shops.
Mountains, not business, first brought Kim to North America. A professional climber, Kim left Seoul, Korea, in 1965. He chose British Columbia, rather than Los Angeles, where his older siblings had immigrated, because he wanted to be near the Canadian Rockies.
After obtaining an engineering degree at Oknagan College, Kim moved to Los Angeles in 1971. When he arrived, his family told him: “If you’re Asian and you don’t know a trade, you won’t be able to survive in this country.”
So Kim learned to fix cars. And with $25,000 borrowed from his family, he bought out the owner of the body shop in 1976, where he had worked for a year.
In his first two years of business, Kim recalled: “I only had one or two customers a week. Many came by, looked at me and left. They doubted an Asian could fix cars.”
Disproving his skeptics, Kim built up his business to the point where he employed five workers and fixed 20 cars a week. “I didn’t make a lot of money, but I was very proud of my business,” he said. “My relations with customers was like a family. We appreciated each other.”
Today, Kim looks at his shop differently. “I don’t see a future in this business. The competition is too stiff and the customers, they ask for too much.”
Until now, Kim’s goal has been to provide a livelihood for his wife and two children. His dream, though, goes back to his love for the mountains.
“Someday, if there’s an opportunity,” Kim said, “I’d like to run a travel business, setting up tours for climbers and other adventurers.”
Where would he set up his dream business? “I think there’s still room in the Valley to do business,” he said. But, he added, “I’m not sure.”
