UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS--SIX MONTHS LATER : Touched by Fire / A Legacy of Pain and Hope : THE DEFENDERS : One Became a Hero; One Wants More Firepower

For many Californians, the riots were more than a momentary blip on the screen--they were a flash point for lasting and fundamental changes in their lives. The devastation left a legacy of broken dreams for many, awakened a sense of social justice in some, unleashed anger and hatred in others, and rekindled a spirit of hope among others. Six months after the riots, Times reporters visited some of the people and places touched by the extraordinary events of last spring and on these pages we tell their stories.

When dawn broke in Koreatown after three days of rioting, Richard Rhee’s California Market at 5th Street and Western Avenue stood unscathed--not a window broken, not a candy bar missing, just a lot of bullet casings littering the parking lot.

At the height of the looting, Rhee and a band of supporters had turned the market into an armed fortress, firing thousands of rounds into the air to keep rioters away from stores on their block.

From the roof of his supermarket, men with shotguns and assault rifles peered down onto the smoke-filled streets. Scores of others--toting steel pipes, pistols and golf clubs--paced the darkened parking lot behind a barricade of Cadillacs and delivery trucks.

“Shall we kill them?” some men asked Rhee as they stood at the barricades. He told them to fire over the looters’ heads.

Carloads of looters zipped past in the smokey darkness, exchanging fire with the defenders. For hours at nearby shops, armed men fought back-and-forth battles with hundreds of looters who would surge forward into a tiny storefront, retreat and advance again to grab a few more items from the store shelves.

“It’s just like war,” Rhee said at the time. “I’ll shoot and worry about the law later.”

The shops that were defended largely survived the riots. But most business owners stayed home through the chaos and some even issued false alarms of looting through a Korean-language radio station to entice the armed vigilantes to protect their stores.

It was on one such bogus call that 18-year-old Edward Song Lee--the only Korean-American to die in the riots--was gunned down. He wasn’t shot by looters but by another group of armed Koreans who in the darkness mistook him for a rioter.

“A tragedy,” Rhee said, but one that “was bound to happen.”

For many, the image of Korean shop owners firing frenzied bursts into the air blurred the line between good and evil, and raised the unsettling issue of the fine line separating victim and victimizer, looter and defender.

But six months after the end of the riots, Rhee says he has no regrets about taking the law into his own hands--his market was saved, no one was injured near his camp and he feels a sense of pride that he did something when so many others chose to stay home and watch the chaos on television.

“If I didn’t protect myself, this market would have burned down,” he said. “I’m glad I did it.”

There have been few changes in his neighborhood since the end of the riots. The streets are clean and the smoke has cleared, but a mini-mall that burned on the second day of the riots still sits empty, its bare walls and steel supports a testament to the fires that swept through the block.

Business went down for a while after the riots, Rhee said, but it picked up and his supermarket is bustling again.

For Rhee, the change that lingers is the subtle alteration in his view of the city that he immigrated to 34 years ago to make his fortune, and was once proud to call his home. “Los Angeles will never recover from the riots,” he said. “I see a dying city.”

Rhee came to the United States as a student, fresh out of high school in Korea. He washed dishes, swept floors and slept just two or three hours a night to support himself.

With his meager savings, he started in business as a garment contractor and after more than a decade of seven-day work weeks hit it big in real estate. He owns a chain of supermarkets and several properties in Koreatown.

“My whole life is here in Koreatown,” he said. “I have to stay. After 34 years, where do I go?”

Rhee said many of his friends have already left the area to start businesses in other cities and even other states. He doesn’t blame them.

Those who have stayed, he said, have armed themselves to the teeth.

“More firepower now,” Rhee said. “We didn’t hurt anybody this time. Next time, I don’t know.”