Fear of Crime Robs Many of Dreams in Koreatown

It was approaching midnight at St. Agnes Korean Catholic Church south of Koreatown, and a group of lay leaders were about to adjourn a workshop when three young men brandishing guns burst in and shouted: “Hands up and don’t move!”

The robbers shot Moon-Kyung Park in the right arm and took wallets, watches, wedding rings, cellular phones and beepers from 22 men, who had come from as far away as San Diego to attend the training seminar. After demanding car keys, the gunmen sped away in a Cadillac belonging to one of their victims.

“We thought the church was our last sanctuary,” said Park, a San Fernando Valley resident who was released from the hospital last weekend with the bullet still in his arm. “We never thought this could happen in a house of worship.”

News of the June 9 robbery and shooting spread quickly through Koreatown, where the fear of crime has sent a powerful ripple effect through the community’s economy. Merchants and residents say crime and the memory of last year’s riots have driven customers and tourists from the once-thriving business district.

“People are scared to death to come to Koreatown,” said George Hwang, a Koreatown real estate agent, whose office building was destroyed during the riots.

Add the effects of a lingering recession, and the result is a sharp increase in bankruptcies and a doubling in foreclosures of businesses and homes owned by people of Korean ancestry, according to Koreatown attorneys and accountants.

“These are very difficult times, not only for Korean-American business owners, but (for) professionals such as doctors” who have offices in Koreatown, said attorney Myron Kim, who handles many bankruptcy cases.

“Non-Koreans don’t realize the dire financial predicament we face,” said Sung-Ho Joo, president of the Korean American Grocers’ Victims Assn. “Our members are facing foreclosures and bankruptcies through no fault of ours.”

The estimated 350,000 Koreans and Korean-Americans in Southern California live in areas as wide-ranging as Koreatown and nearby Hancock Park to Pacific Palisades, Pasadena, Cerritos, Orange and Huntington Beach.

But no matter where they live, Koreans still consider Koreatown their cultural, economic and social center. On earlier weekends, more affluent Korean-American families from the suburbs regularly brought their children for an outing that was also a Korean experience.

After a lunch of bulgogi (barbecue beef) and a bowl of naeng-myon (favorite noodle dish), they might have browsed in Koreatown Plaza stores and gone to one of several large Korean supermarkets to stock up on ready-made kimchi, delicacies and an array of mit-banchan side dishes.

These days, because of the perception that Koreatown is dangerous, suburban families do not come to Koreatown. Instead, entrepreneurs are going to Cerritos, Hacienda Heights and Torrance to bring businesses closer to where the affluent live. This spells bad news for established merchants in Koreatown.

Eui-Young Yu, a sociology professor at Cal State Los Angeles, said he never used to think twice about attending functions in Koreatown at night. “But now, like everybody else, I’m afraid to go to Koreatown,” he said. “Even in the daytime, I’m careful where I go, where I park my car.”

Hyang Joo, still unemployed and depressed more than a year after rioters destroyed her family’s market in South-Central Los Angeles, said the anxiety over becoming a crime victim has made her a virtual prisoner in the Koreatown apartment she shares with her husband and their two young children.

“Even when my children want to go outside to play or ride a bike, I won’t let them,” she said. “I don’t know much about the American legal system, but it doesn’t seem right that people who commit (a) crime using a gun get out in no time at all.”

Crime figures for Koreatown are unavailable because the community is split between two Los Angeles Police Department divisions--Wilshire and Rampart. Figures on the number of crimes committed against Korean-Americans are also hard to come by.

But according to the Korean American Bar Assn. of Southern California, from Feb. 5 to March 13, 11 people of Korean ancestry were killed or seriously wounded in Los Angeles County. Many of these incidents occurred during robberies, and all but two occurred in Koreatown or in South-Central.

“It’s getting to the point where you feel like you can’t even go to the bank without being followed by a robber,” said George Hwang, whose wife was robbed at gunpoint as she was leaving a Koreatown restaurant after lunch.

Yu, the sociologist, has been keeping his own record, mostly through Korean-language newspapers, and said crimes against Koreans and Korean-Americans have doubled since 1990. That year, eight Koreans were killed during robberies in Los Angeles County, compared to seven during just the first four months of this year, Yu said. Similarly, based on his own data, Yu is convinced that other crimes against Koreans and Korean-Americans have also doubled.

Beyond the numbers, the fear of crime is widespread. It carries powerful emotion when relayed by one friend in Koreatown to another in Glendale. Or to a cousin in Seoul.

Even when the crime occurs outside the heart of Koreatown--the St. Agnes church robbery occurred two miles south--the community lumps it all in as Koreatown.

In the six weeks prior to April’s verdicts in the Rodney G. King federal civil rights trial, a rash of violent crimes against Koreans led many to believe that their community was being targeted. They held candlelight vigils in front of City Hall to publicize the incidents and to urge more police protection.

Community leaders believe that placing Koreatown under one police division would be a start.

“Right now, neither Rampart nor Wilshire is accountable,” said John H. Cho, planning director of the nonprofit community group Koryo Health Foundation, who works and lives in Koreatown. “Each passes the buck to the other.”

“Koreans were very, very discouraged to call police because response is so slow,” said Charles Park, chairman of the Koreatown Crime Task Force, a nonprofit group founded by business owners and professionals in 1988 to combat crime in Koreatown.

But Capt. Peggy York of the Wilshire Division said Koreatown receives plenty of attention from the LAPD. “We have a lot of outreach in the Korean community,” York said, noting that a Koreatown substation is staffed with Korean-speaking personnel and is open from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. daily except Sunday.

In the Rampart Division, Officer Andrew Voge, who has worked in Koreatown for three years, said the LAPD is more actively educating residents and merchants to help the police do their job better.

The Korean community in Los Angeles dates to early this century, when thousands left Korea to escape Japan’s colonization of the country and to wage a resistance movement from abroad. Early settlers delivered groceries and lived among Irish and Jewish immigrants in what today is Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles.

In the late 1960s, Koreatown began developing around Olympic Boulevard as new immigrants began moving in and opening businesses. Today, the boundaries of Koreatown are not clearly defined, but its core area stretches from Vermont Avenue on the east to Western Avenue on the west, Olympic Boulevard on the south and Beverly Boulevard on the north.

Although an overwhelming number of Koreatown businesses are Korean-owned and the major Korean institutions are located there, a minority of the neighborhood’s residents are Korean. South of Koreatown lies the heavily Central-American enclave of Pico-Union, whose residents also suffer from increasing crime.

“When someone is going to rob you, they don’t ask you where you come from,” said Oscar Andrade, executive director of El Rescate, a community services center for Latinos in the Koreatown and Pico-Union area.

Andrade said much of the crime in the area does not get reported because of the community’s “lack of confidence and trust” in the Police Department. But he said he is hopeful that the situation will change with Chief Willie L. Williams’ emphasis on community-based policing.

When Korean immigrants with capital poured into the area in the 1970s and ‘80s, Koreatown’s rapid growth seemed limitless. Unlike Los Angeles’ Chinatown, which attracts locals and tourists wanting to get a taste of Chinese food and culture, Koreatown business owners did not go out of their way to market it to non-Koreans.

“People who came in the 1980s brought an average $200,000 (from selling their homes),” said real estate agent Sang Hahn, who helped many immigrants start businesses in Los Angeles.

Between 1972 and 1987, when more than 30,000 Korean immigrants entered the country annually, the number of Korean-owned businesses in Los Angeles County increased 40-fold, to more than 17,000. That translated to $25 billion in annual sales, according to a report by the UCLA Center for Pacific Rim Studies.

Southern California became home to the largest number of people of Korean ancestry outside Asia, and Koreatown became the symbolic capital of their community.

Chull Huh, secretary general of the Korean-American Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, which represents more than 500 businesses with billions of dollars of investment in and near Koreatown, said the future of Koreatown depends on curbing crime.

If the fear of crime persists, he and other business leaders believe that Koreatown will lose not only local patronage but investment and tourists from Korea. Decreased Korean investment began after the 1992 riots, but the current problems have made matters worse.

“The image of Los Angeles is very, very bad in (South) Korea,” said Richard Park, owner of Paradise Travel, one of the oldest travel agencies in Koreatown. “In Korea, people think there is going to be another explosion in L.A.”

Other business and community leaders echo Huh’s apprehension about the threat to the vibrant economic community, created by the energy, hard work and ukji ( chutzpah ) of Korean immigrants.

“I wonder if people who run this city realize what the demise of Koreatown could mean for Los Angeles,” said Huh. “Koreatown generates many millions in tax revenues and many jobs for Los Angeles.”

Koreans went into a blighted area and turned it into a thriving community because they had a dream, said Yu. “When I go to Koreatown these days, I feel so sad. The dream is gone. The will is gone. The riots broke us not only financially but spiritually as well. The way the Korean community was treated by Los Angeles is scandalous.”

Over the years, numerous Koreatown organizations have tried to tackle the crime problem, but with only limited success.

In July, 1989, Park’s Koreatown Crime Task Force hired the San Fernando Valley-based Westridge Security Service to patrol Koreatown at a cost of $13,000 a month. “We saw crime decrease dramatically,” he said. After five months, however, money ran out and the patrol was stopped.

But the Korean Watch Team, begun by a group of ham operators more than two years ago, continues. Numbering 30 men and women, the volunteers patrol the northeastern portion of Koreatown three nights a week.

“We drive 20 miles a night, using our own car, gas and radio,” said Khi H. Ahn, a Koreatown businessman who founded the team. “We won’t even take a free cup of coffee from anyone.”

Armed only with ham radios, Mace and flashlights, they patrol in groups. With the force of numbers, they have made many citizens arrests leading to the conviction of more than five dozen people, Ahn said.

Two months ago, Korean-American veterans started another self-help outfit, the Tae Kuk Crime Prevention Center. The team, consisting of nine men who receive only token salaries, patrols from 10 a.m. until midnight daily in two new patrol cars donated by a Korean-American veterans organization.

As dedicated as these groups may be, their actions are viewed mostly as a psychological deterrent to would-be criminals.

Korean churches are also involved in the battle against crime. The U.S. Anti-Crime Christian Campaign, to which more than 20 of the largest Korean churches in the Los Angeles area belong, has been urging the White House to help. Thus far, however, the group has only one supportive letter on White House stationery to show for their efforts.

“Crime transcends Koreatown, South-Central, Los Angeles and California,” said Suk-Jeum Lee, the campaign’s chairman. “The solution has to come from the White House. Every day more than 5,000 people in America become victims of murder, rape, robbery and assault.”

Citing international law enforcement statistics showing that 19.9 people were killed for every 100,000 people in Los Angeles in 1991, compared to 1 for every 100,000 in Seoul, he asked how a civilized country can tolerate these figures.

The problem is so grave that even Korean entrepreneurs, who have thrived on their hamyon-dwaenda (“we can do it”) philosophy, are showing signs of wavering. “I wish I could feel more optimistic, but I worry about the future of Koreatown,” Huh, of the Korean-American Chamber of Commerce, said.