VAN NUYS : Lack of Funds Limits Efforts of Korean Group

The lunch is simple and the narrow room sparsely furnished, but for the 30 seniors who gather in the makeshift cafeteria on the second floor of a Van Nuys shopping complex each weekday, the company is unbeatable.

“There are so many Koreans around here,” Yong Ok Joo, 80, of Panorama City said through an interpreter. “I’m not homesick any more.”

The seniors are members of the Korean Senior Citizens Assn., a nonprofit organization founded in 1984 to provide services such as free lunches, arts classes and English lessons to Koreans living in the Valley. Most of the seniors were sponsored by their grown children to come to this country and have been here for less than 10 years.

In its first year, the association had just 15 members. Yet in numbers that reflect the rapidly increasing Korean population in the Valley, the association’s membership has grown to 925. Faced with both an increased demand for services and dwindling resources, the association is struggling to keep its programs afloat.

Jeong Geon Lee, president of the association, said the organization has moved four times in the last nine years due to insufficient money for rent. Since early July, the lunch program has been housed in a cramped office space that an area businessman loaned to the association. But Lee said the arrangement is only temporary.

“We have very limited resources,” Lee said through an interpreter. “We are wandering like the homeless. If we had more space, we would probably have at least 80 people for lunch.”

With food provided by local food banks, the association provides 120 bags of canned goods to needy Koreans each month in addition to the 30 free lunches each day.

Between 1980 and 1990, the number of Asians in the Valley increased by 136% to nearly 100,000, according to census figures, with Koreans making up about 19% of the total. While no precise figures are available, indicators suggest that many Koreans have migrated to the Valley since last year’s riots, which destroyed 850 Korean-American businesses in Koreatown and South-Central Los Angeles.

Jeong Geon Lee said that without new funding, his organization will be unable to accommodate the influx of newcomers.

“We don’t say no to anyone,” Lee said. “But people come and they see we have nothing and they don’t come back.”