Koreans, Blacks Try to Forge Alliance : Riot aftermath: Groups try to regroup and deal with hardened racial attitudes. Most of the bridge building is taking place at churches and among community groups.

Last spring, the Black-Korean Alliance was on the verge of launching one of its largest initiatives in years--a merchant-customer code of good conduct that was to be posted in hundreds of businesses in South-Central Los Angeles.

The code had been designed to ease tensions that had been brewing for years among some Korean-American merchants and their customers in the economically depressed area--tensions that had been brought into sharp focus by the fatal 1991 shooting of 15-year-old African-American Latasha Harlins by Korean-born grocer Soon Ja Du.

But with the reading of the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case and the rioting, all bets were off.

Six months later, thousands of copies of the code remain in boxes around the city. And the county-sponsored alliance--the oldest, most formal forum for dealing with relations between the two ethnic groups--is casting about for a new role in a post-riot environment.

That environment, African-American and Korean-American community leaders say, is marked by hardened racial attitudes on both sides of the ethnic divide--and, indeed, among all racial groups in the city.

What is needed, they say, is a more substantive approach to race relations than telling merchants and customers how to treat each other. Piecemeal efforts--such as a series of recent “friendship” trips to South Korea by small groups of African-Americans--are helpful to individuals, community activists say. But the tours are woefully inadequate, they say, because they touch so few.

“On the street, there is a lot of frustration and a lack of trust,” said Angela Oh, a prominent Korean-American lawyer and community activist. “Some days I can feel a huge tidal wave coming, and I have no idea how to stop it.”

The riot, she said, thrust into bold relief the vulnerable economic and political positions of African-Americans, Korean-Americans and to some extent Latinos, causing them to become more suspicious of each other.

Similar sentiments were expressed by Joe Hicks, executive director of the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“The city is in a fundamentally changed position after the riot,” said Hicks, who also is co-chairman of the Black-Korean Alliance. “The situation is polarized, and our old model is no longer appropriate. We (in the alliance) have been meeting behind closed doors since April 29. We haven’t been able to construct the new model.”

Nor has a new approach been devised by other government agencies or traditional civil rights groups, he said.

If any post-riot bridges are being built between Korean-Americans and African-Americans, Hicks and Oh said, the work is occurring at the grass-roots level among individuals, church congregations and community groups.

Today, a group of prominent professionals--civil rights lawyer Johnnie Cochran and businessman Dal H. Lee among them--is sponsoring the first African/Korean-American Goodwill Golf Classic, a charity golf tournament. Proceeds will be used to provide scholarships to high-achieving students who promote good relations between the two ethnic groups.

Next week, the Council of Korean Churches of Southern California will hold a multicultural, ecumenical “festival of reconciliation” at a Mid-Wilshire hotel. The event will be open to all ethnic groups.

But at the forefront of the grass-roots movement have been pastors from the African American-Korean American Christian Alliance, a 20-church coalition formed a year ago, but only kicked into high gear this summer, in response to the civil unrest.

Its member ministers are hoping to effect reconciliation between their communities the same way that they save souls: one at a time.

Black members are in the process of planning seminars on African-American history for Korean-Americans. And in recent weeks, the Korean-Americans have helped coordinate tours to South Korea by two groups of African-Americans.

One tour, sponsored by a group of South Korea-based churches, was made up primarily of high school and college students. The other--consisting of clergy, journalists, community activists and business leaders--mostly was underwritten by the Korea-based Korean Press Center.

Nobody describes such efforts are a cure-all for the misunderstandings and hostilities between African-Americans and Korean-Americans. But for those who have taken part, the trips have had an impact.

“For the first time, I saw where the orientation of the swap meet comes from,” said Dr. Clyde Oden, recalling his visit to a bustling, early-morning marketplace in Seoul during a trip last month. “Everybody had their little stall, hundreds of them. It is as natural to them as playing basketball is for an urban kid.”

Oden, an optometrist who also is president of the Watts Health Foundation, said that like many others in South-Central Los Angeles, he had thought swap meets were created by Korean immigrants solely to exploit poor black Americans.

For the Rev. Jung Nam Lee, pastor of Valley Park Korean Baptist Church in North Hills, the trip was equally eye-opening. Lee left Korea a quarter of a century ago and had not been back.

“In America, I always think that I am not American,” he said. “In Korea, I began to believe that I am not one of them either. It’s very strange.”

Lee said the experience made him more committed to throwing in his lot with his fellow Americans, including blacks--for better or for worse.

Kerman Maddox, a Los Angeles radio talk show host and political and community activist, said he realized in South Korea that the brusque demeanor he associated with Korean-American merchants might not have been rudeness or racism.

“Korean people are not open and warm and friendly people,” Maddox said. “They are focused on work, work, work. They are incredibly focused, and they treat everybody like that: the Chinese, the Britons, the white people, us.”

Maddox said he also was surprised to find that older Koreans who had never left the country seemed to feel instantly connected to members of his tour group because of the Koreans’ warm memories of African-American soldiers who fought with them during the Korean War.

“They appreciated us. We heard that over and over,” he said. “It was something I had forgotten about.”

For 19-year-old Malaika Howard, a sophomore at UCLA, one of the most eye-opening experiences was an exhibit depicting conditions Korean people live under in Japan, where they are an ethnic minority.

“I saw Koreans for the first time as an oppressed people, a minority just like African-Americans,” said Howard, whose tour group returned from South Korea last week.

As a result of her travels, she said, “when I see a Korean-American face, I will always remember my trip and feel more of a connection.”

Chin Chang Song--an elder at Young Nak Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, one of the churches that helped organize the trips--said such tours prove that misunderstanding, not hatred, is at the center of any bad relations between Korean-Americans and African-Americans.

“Koreans hate nobody. Black people hate nobody,” Song said. “I think everybody will be OK.”

Activists applaud the efforts of the churches, but say such contacts go only so far. They note that the recent tours to South Korea involved fewer than 25 people.

“It would be difficult for someone who has just come back from Korea and seen a whole culture to say ‘those damn Koreans.’ All things help, and I would encourage more,” Hicks said. “But political people like myself are trying to get a larger political and economic sense of what is happening.”

Bong Hwan Kim, executive director of the Korean Youth Center and co-chairman with Hicks of the Black-Korean Alliance, said the economic causes of racial conflict must be understood if a new model for reconciliation is to be found.

And, he said, Latinos must be considered in the equation.

“When a community is economically depressed, flash points are going to occur along racial lines, but the causes are not racial,” Kim said. “If these were healthy communities, you would not have any black-Korean conflict.”