The Great Escape : Korean Merchants Drawn to County After L.A. Riots

San Choi, 52, marks the beginning of his new life by the second day of the Los Angeles riots, which forced him to flee his Compton grocery store, then stand helplessly as strangers burned it to the ground.

He had built a profitable business over 17 years, but could only watch as his store and $600,000 in uninsured merchandise disappeared in smoke and flame.

“Now I start over. I’m going to try again right here,” he said last week in front of the Oxnard liquor store he is buying. “Safety is the first thing now.”

Even before the riots, Korean-American merchants from Los Angeles had begun to move to Ventura County.

Since then, the trend has accelerated to a point where local business brokers say they have many more potential buyers than there are small businesses for sale.

“Since the riots, I get calls from about seven new people every day,” said Ventura broker Sam Lee. “That’s three times as many as before. They all say, ‘I want to get out of L.A. now.’ They feel like it’s going to happen again.”

The calls are often from Korean-American merchants, about 3,000 of whom suffered losses from arson or looting during a week of civil unrest in late April and early May.

But an increasing number of east Indian, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian merchants--also wary of Los Angeles--are relocating their businesses to Ventura County from central Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, brokers said.

Ventura County’s draw, brokers and buyers said, is the same for the Asian merchants as it is for newcomers of all ethnic groups and professions--low crime, good schools and mild weather.

And, in the case of the riot’s refugees, small businesses are still somewhat affordable in several blue-collar communities around the county, especially central and south Oxnard.

That is important since many riot victims were uninsured or underinsured and bring only modest government disaster loans to their new businesses.

“I have so many people calling me to find them something to buy,” said Steven Kang. The Moorpark broker said he has sold four small Oxnard markets to Los Angeles merchants since July for prices ranging from $65,000 to $105,000.

Kang’s client list has ballooned to 300 since the riots, and he has 40 customers searching for dry cleaning businesses alone, he said.

Oxnard city records show that since early June nearly a dozen Koreans have purchased stores selling groceries, liquor, fast food, shoes, clothing and furniture. Additionally, 14 Vietnamese, Chinese and Indian merchants have set up shops in Oxnard this summer, records show.

The 25 new business licenses are nearly triple the rate of new licenses to merchants of the same ethnic groups for the first five months of 1992.

Broker Lee said he represents Koreans buying seven stores in Oxnard, Ventura, Santa Paula and Fillmore. Several of the deals are awaiting approval of federal Small Business Administration emergency loans arranged for riot victims, he said.

Other buyers are from the San Fernando Valley, where increasing youth gang problems have bothered merchants for the last several years, Lee said.

“They were saying, ‘It’s still OK,’ ” Lee said. “Now they’ve changed their attitude completely. They’re saying, ‘Wait a minute. Who’s next?’ ”

Ken Park, a prominent small-business broker in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, said Ventura County is a primary destination for departing merchants, who within the last two weeks have begun to receive their insurance settlements and low-interest disaster loans.

“I always recommend Ventura, Oxnard and Santa Barbara first if they don’t want to stay near Los Angeles,” Park said. “I believe in the next five years most of the grocery stores and liquor stores in Ventura County shall be purchased by Koreans.”

About 750 of the 3,000 Korean merchants with riot losses probably will relocate once they receive government loans or insurance payments, said Jin Lee, a leader in the Assn. of Korean-American Victims of the Los Angeles Riots.

“They know what part of the country is good to live in,” Jin Lee said. “They say they’re going to San Diego and Orange County, and Ventura County is one of those places too.”

About 50% of the merchants who relocate their businesses, Park said, will stay near Koreatown, moving only to affluent suburbs nearby.

But he said that perhaps 10%--or 75 merchants--will move to Ventura County. Korean merchants are also moving in large numbers to Bakersfield, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange County and San Diego County, he said. And some are scouting out the Pacific Northwest.

The influx of Asian merchants has been the most tangible consequence of a crush of interest in Ventura County by both homeowners and businessmen in the wake of the Los Angeles riots.

In the first two weeks after the uprising, people intent on escaping urban violence crowded local open houses and barraged salespeople with questions about moving here, real estate agents said.

But few customers could follow through, because a poor housing market has kept them from selling their homes in Los Angeles County, the agents said.

“The desire was there, but you’ve got to sell your house first. It’s a vicious circle,” Ventura agent Harry Feldman said.

Jane Caldwell, a Korean-American real estate agent in Oxnard, said a wide spectrum of potential buyers from Los Angeles County are still scouting out Ventura County.

“Not only Korean-Americans, but a lot of Caucasians,” she said. “People find Ventura County very, very tranquil. They have just discovered this area. But they have to have businesses or some sort of employment before they can relocate.”

Some workers and businesses who already had a foothold have moved here since the riots.

The Robert M. Hadley Co., a 63-year-old aerospace parts business, has begun to move its 120-employee central Los Angeles operation to a branch plant in Ventura for safety concerns.

“There was a long-range plan to move out of Los Angeles, but the riots were the catalyst for the action,” company Treasurer John R. Hadley said.

Though Hadley’s old plant near the Los Angeles Coliseum escaped with only broken windows, a strip mall and a market just a block away were burned to the ground, Hadley said.

Alfonso Tristan, a 39-year-old Oxnard maintenance mechanic, had commuted to his Compton home on weekends until a terrifying incident during the riots forced him out of the inner city.

Tristan and a friend were using a corner pay phone to set up a youth soccer match when two armed men demanded their cash.

Tristan’s friend resisted, was shot five times and survived only because the assailant ran out of bullets as he tried to fire into the victim’s head, Tristan said.

“When this happened, we knew it could strike our own house,” Tristan said last week, shortly after settling with his wife and three children into a home in south Oxnard. “Now we don’t have any bars on our windows. We don’t hear many ambulances or police cars. We don’t hear anybody shooting at night.”

Generally, though, it is in Ventura County’s Korean community that the riots created the most change, speeding up a cycle of immigration that was already gathering momentum.

Asians made up only about 5% of the county’s 669,000 residents in 1990, but they represented the fastest-growing racial group in the county.

The Korean population has shown extraordinary growth--nearly tripling from 1,220 in 1980 to 3,035 in 1990. Many local Korean-Americans say that the pace of growth has quickened, especially in the past two or three years.

That can be seen in Oxnard, which has at least six Korean churches and several dozen Korean-run businesses. There are also Korean churches in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley. Those two cities, plus Oxnard, are home to two-thirds of the county’s Koreans.

Korean businesses are concentrated particularly in south Oxnard, along Saviers and Pleasant Valley roads and Channel Islands Boulevard. And many Koreans live in the same area, said Rev. Myung Do Chang, pastor at the Korean Presbyterian Church of Ventura County.

Chang said he thinks the movement of Koreans here has just begun.

“Some people are coming from Los Angeles,” he said. “But the Korean church pastors are expecting more Koreans to come here in the future on account of that riot.”

Kyu Dae Lee, 47, is hoping he will be one of those. Lee lost his Koreatown home appliance business during the riots.

“It all burned. Totally lost. I’m looking for a new start,” he said last week while examining a Saviers Road appliance store that is for sale.

“My friend talked to me about Oxnard,” Kyu Dae Lee said. “He said Oxnard is a very good location. Near the ocean. Good fresh air. He said this area is safe.”

As is the case with several new Korean and east Indian purchasers along Saviers Road, Kyu Dae Lee said he plans to commute to work from Los Angeles County because he cannot sell his house there.

Some owners said they were in the process of buying stores in Ventura County before the riots, but were interrupted by the violence. Young Kim, who closed a deal for a Saviers Road market in June, was the manager of his sister’s south Los Angeles store until it was burned down.

“He thinks it’s better here than in L.A.,” said Alex Kim, the merchant’s brother. “And it’s still pretty close to L.A.”

That proximity to Los Angeles’ Koreatown--the business and cultural heart of the city’s large Korean community--is one reason hundreds of Korean merchants have given Ventura County a serious look, brokers said.

The county is also a manageable commute from merchants’ homes, many of whom live in Glendale, Van Nuys, Panorama City and elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley.

Despite the county’s allure, however, many merchants have found they cannot afford Ventura County’s most affluent cities--Ventura, Camarillo, Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks.

“I have a lot of potential buyers, but the terrible fact is that rent is high in Ventura County, and housing prices are very high in Ventura County and business prices are very high in Ventura County,” said Camarillo real estate agent Soon Andersson.

“That has disappointed many who want to move here,” she said.

Ventura dry cleaners owner Jane Doo, whose extended family lost more than 10 businesses in the riots, said none of her relatives plan to move to Ventura County because they found the businesses they could afford were not profitable enough to make the move.

“All of them will try to rebuild, and then to sell as soon as possible,” Doo said. “Everybody knows it’s going to happen again soon.”

San Choi, who fled his Compton grocery then watched it burn, said he reluctantly came to the same conclusion. But he decided his loss was too great to rebuild in Compton.

Conscious that many black customers thought Korean merchants’ prices were too high and their service rude, Choi said his family spent 17 years trying to “do my best for my customers.”

He lived in Compton for 14 years, until his three children graduated from Compton High School and went to college, and he was close friends with many of his neighbors.

But tensions increased in 1991, Choi said, when Korean store owner Soon Ja Du killed 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, whom Du accused of trying to steal a bottle of orange juice.

Then in the riots, a group of teen-age strangers swept through Choi’s Long Beach Boulevard store, leaving the merchant standing, stunned, among his friends and neighbors on the sidewalk across the street.

“I never expect the riots,” Choi said, “because this is America, you know.”