Korean-Americans Ask Why Recovery Is Black and White

Korean-Americans call the riots Sa-i-gu , or Sa-ee-gu , depending on how they spell it.

Phonetic differences aside, it all means the same thing-- April 29 . In South Korea, important events are known by the day they occur. April 29 was the first of the three days and nights of rioting.

More than 10 months later, anger and depression linger from the violence, burning and looting suffered by members of the Korean-American community. But what galls them most is that everyone else seems to have forgotten their suffering.

More than 2,000 Korean-American businesses were destroyed, with a loss of $400 million--more than half the riots’ economic toll, according to a study by UCLA Prof. Paul Ong. Another study by the Korean-American Inter-Agency Council said only 28% of the victims have reopened their businesses.

Psychological devastation was severe. “Many of the victims have stated they have difficulty sleeping and have frequent nightmares about their burning and looted businesses,” the interagency council said.

Despite the severity of Korean-American losses, it seems most of the world views Los Angeles’ racial troubles in terms of black and white. This is particularly true now, with worldwide news coverage of the four cops accused of beating Rodney King. It will become worse when three blacks go on trial for beating a white truck driver.

Over and over, the King tape is played--white cops hammering on a black guy. Blacks and whites are interviewed on TV, predicting a riot or no riot. White and black politicians and business leaders conferring on post-riot aid. It’s as if there is no one else in L.A. but blacks and whites.

It is the same story in the campaign for mayor. The candidates have all but ignored the troubles of the Korean-American community, saving their promises for bigger constituencies.

Although L.A. County’s Korean population has increased 140% in the last decade, it totals only 145,431. Of these, just 72,970 live in the city of Los Angeles, which has more than 3.5 million residents. So, the Korean-American vote in L.A. elections is very small.

“We are as politically powerless as we were a year ago,” said T. S. Chung, an attorney and political activist.

He said L.A.’s Korean-American community has been ignored in proposals by the Clinton Administration and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown to make South-Central a model of recovery. “These are all good,” he said of the plans. “But nobody is proposing doing anything for the Korean business people.”

On the street, these feelings are apparent in a dispute between African-Americans, Latinos and Korean-Americans over rebuilding burned South-Central convenience stores that sold liquor, beer and wine. Most of the stores were owned by Korean-Americans.

The Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Treatment has mounted a strong campaign against granting city permits for reopening in neighborhoods where there is opposition. The campaign is particularly strong in black neighborhoods and has the support of African-American City Council members and other black political leaders.

Korean-Americans, with no clout at City Hall, believe that they have been locked out of the discussion. This exacerbates anger that remains from the riots, when the Los Angeles Police Department and the National Guard failed to protect them.

“We are invisible,” Youngbin Kim, deputy director of the Korean Youth Center, told me. “We thought we were part of the community. We pay the same taxes. We go to the same schools. We thought we had the same police to protect us.”

The community’s feelings have been summarized in a powerful new film telling the experiences of Korean-American women during and after the riots. It will be shown at 2 p.m. today at the Norris Film Theater on the USC campus.

The most moving segment is the story of a Korean-American mother, Jung Hui Lee, whose son, Edward, went out with a friend to protect Koreatown stores. He was shot and killed by Korean-Americans who, in the darkness, thought he was a rioter.

I suppose you could use Edward’s death as an argument against self-appointed, ad-hoc armed forces. But in Koreatown, they don’t see it that way. They figure Edward would have been alive if the cops had been doing their job.

As a child in Korea, Mrs. Lee carried heavy stones to help with the resistance against the Japanese. But, she said, “How could I send my only son out into the riot? So I pleaded with him to stay. He said: ‘If the Koreans were all like you, it will happen again in 10 years. We can’t sit still.’

“I thought he would come right back,” she said. “That was the last time I saw him.”

The film is called “Sa-i-gu,” April 29, a day that will be remembered by the riots’ forgotten victims.