Koreans OK Plan to Distribute Riot Aid : Rebuilding: $5.6 million will be divided among merchants hit by unrest and $1 million will go to community projects.

After weeks of discord, an agreement has been reached over the distribution of $6.6 million in donations, raised in South Korea and Southern California, to aid Korean-American victims of the Los Angeles riots.

The accord ends a bitter conflict that included a protest by riot victims at the South Korean consulate, a lawsuit filed by an association representing the victims against the bank holding the money, and the bank’s transfer of donations to the Los Angeles Superior Court for safekeeping.

Under the agreement, $5.6 million will be divided equally among the estimated 2,400 Korean-Americans whose businesses were damaged during the riots. That will amount to about $2,300 per person.

The remaining $1 million will be used to fund community efforts, such as scholarships for young Korean-Americans and programs to improve race relations.

The donations included about $4.5 million sent from South Korea, and $2.1 million raised by local relief groups. The overseas money came in small donations from individuals, and larger amounts from corporations, said Consul Byung Koo Kung. None came from the South Korean government, he said.

Some Korean-Americans whose businesses were damaged or destroyed in the riots had hoped the entire $6.6 million would be divided among them. But Jay Park, spokesman for the Assn. of Korean American Victims of L.A. Riot, said Thursday his group is pleased. “Everybody is going to be happy. Basically we’ll give this donated money to those who were damaged,” he said.

“We feel very fortunate to resolve this problem,” said Soo Woong Jun, a liquor store owner who headed a committee of community representatives that hammered out the agreement Wednesday night, after four hours of contentious negotiations at a Koreatown restaurant. The dispute centered on how the money would be distributed among affected business owners and whether any would be used to benefit the larger Korean-American community.

“We’re lucky it didn’t have to go to court,” Jun said. “That would have been very embarrassing to the community.”

Late last week, the victims’ association filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court to force the California Korea Bank to release the funds sent from Korea directly to the group. The bank filed a cross-complaint Tuesday and deposited the money with the court. “That forces the parties who have a claim to the money to prove to the court who’s entitled to it,” said the bank’s attorney, Elise Ross.

Now that an agreement has been reached, Ross said she doubts the matter will end up in court.

Groups involved in local relief efforts--and some riot victims--had wanted the money handled differently. Some felt a guaranteed loan fund should be set up, allowing victims to borrow at low interest rates. But representatives of the victims’ association said their members were in such dire straits that all the money should be distributed immediately to them.

Also at issue was a request attached to the money raised in Korea, asking that 20% of the funds be used for the general community. But riot victim representatives balked, and two weeks ago about 200 of them demonstrated at the office of the Korean consul general in Los Angeles, threatening to try to have him expelled unless he released the money.

“You get 1,000 people together, they’ve got different ideas,” said Samuel Choi, president of the Korean-American Relief Fund Committee. “We are learning a lot of things by trial and error.”

Some say the conflict has highlighted a leadership void in the immigrant community. “There’s no widely accepted, established leadership,” said Bong Hwan Kim, director of the Korean Youth Center, which helped raise money.

The pact solves an immediate problem, he says, but “my concern is how the victims are going to come out of this, not only financially but emotionally and socially, and how race relations are going to be addressed. That’s the challenge.”