A Store of Knowledge to Help Merchants : Community relations: In Inglewood, Korean business owners and black youths participate in a program aimed at avoiding confrontations.

A band of six youths sauntered into the small, Korean-owned shop with a blasting boom box and an attitude, making a beeline for the clothing racks and the neatly arranged display tables.

Asked by the store owners if they needed assistance, the youths merely became more and more careless, knocking merchandise to the floor, rummaging roughly through the racks and turning orderly rows of athletic shoes into messy heaps.

The initial smiles on the faces of the Korean shop owners turned from welcoming to uncertain--and then to desperate.

“I’m going to call the police!” the Korean man shouted, trying to gain control of the situation.

“Freeze!” shouted the stage manager, Inglewood public information officer Truman Jacques.

The scene was actually a mock drama, the first of several staged in a make-believe store set up in an Inglewood City Hall conference room Wednesday night for an audience of about 75 Korean business owners.

Put together by Mayor Edward Vincent and Korean activist Bob Lee, the program is part of a joint crusade the two men have launched to promote better understanding and cultural awareness between African-Americans and the Asian business owners who now play a major role in the commercial life of inner-city neighborhoods in the Southland.

“We wanted to act instead of just react to confrontations that we thought could happen,” Vincent said, addressing the group at the start of the program.

Between the scenes, local youths, Korean-Americans with stores in Inglewood and several city officials shared their fears, their feelings and their suggestions on avoiding such confrontations.

“What happened,” said Jacques, the first to offer an analysis of the scene, “was the storekeeper lost control early on.”

Though Lee termed the workshop a success, he said more work needs to be done to get all the participants to be “upfront and . . . honest and tell your feelings.”

Wednesday night’s program intended to show the Korean businesses owners, who run an estimated 350 businesses in Inglewood, what their property rights are and what situations warrant a police response.

The role-playing, however, was perhaps more effective in depicting the problem than in offering remedies. The youths complained vociferously that when they enter an Asian-owned store in groups, they are followed around the premises by shop owners who automatically assume they have come to steal merchandise.

“What’s the excuse when two go into a store and they get followed?” asked one of the youths, 16-year-old Monique Aguilar.

“The reason why we follow them,” countered a female shop owner, “is there are so many times when I saw someone stealing something.”

Alex Perez, a police public information officer, suggested that shop owners hire one of the neighborhood youths as a security guard. The guard would know the store patrons and could relate to them in a way that would keep them from getting out of control, Perez suggested.

Nevertheless, when the amateur actors improvised a scene with one of the youths playing a security guard, the situation inside the mock store changed very little. The guard seemed unsure and reluctant to take charge.

City Atty. Howard Rosten emphasized that mutual respect, as well as a sense of control, had to be established as soon as shoppers entered the store. That might include calling a customer “sir” or asking politely that the radio be turned down or off so as not to disturb the other customers, Rosten said.

“We’re going to do this again,” Lee said Thursday. “What we intend to do is to create a friendship between (the black and Korean) communities and an understanding. This is the first time we have tried this kind of workshop. I think the response was very good.”