THE SUNDAY PROFILE : One Man’s Vision : As an architect, Ki Suh Park knows how to build dreams. But he has discovered that building a sense of community is much trickier. As an activist, he works not on new structures but on developing and restoring common ground.

Morning’s light splinters through the towering atrium of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Ki Suh Park--in suit and tie--kneels, licks his finger and rubs hard at a scuff mark snaking across the terrazzo floor.

The expansion of the center was, in terms of architecture, the most demanding project of Park’s 33-year career. For more than seven years, it was pure agony, he says. But since its opening in 1993, agony has given way to excitement. No, he says, it is more than excitement. He stands, breathes deeply and looks up into the 150-foot glass canyon.

“It is exhilaration.”

Park, who in 1986 became the first Korean American named to the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, is the managing partner of Gruen Associates in Los Angeles. The firm, with Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in New York, headed the consulting team for the convention center.

As an architect, Park sees through walls to steel beams and concrete foundations the way a doctor sees through skin to bones and tissue. It is with the same vision that he views his work for RLA (formerly Rebuild L.A.). There, too, he sees through walls.

The day after the violence, Park surveyed Koreatown on his way from his office in West Los Angeles to a meeting in Downtown. He drove without stopping, shocked by what he saw. On Western Avenue, he passed Koreatown Plaza, the only piece of his work in the community, a building that, he says, “is special in my heart.”

The Plaza escaped serious damage, but its survival did little to console Park as he came upon the layer of smoke hanging ghostlike over the city. He had seen such destruction, such smoke before, as a young man in his homeland.

Park’s interest in architecture grew not from visions of grand buildings, but from the sight of rubble, structures destroyed during the Korean War. As he viewed Koreatown, he realized for a second time that someone must rebuild, not only the buildings but also the peace.

In Korean culture, a person’s 60th birthday is cause for special celebration. It marks a rebirth. In 1992, the year of the riots and of Park’s 60th, he vowed to devote more attention to the needs of his city.

“Our survival and the future of the city depend on it,” he says. “The whole world lives in this city, and if we can make it happen, this can be the model for the future of the entire world.”

This is an uncertain time for Korean Americans, particularly the first-generation U.S. citizens. As they look to their native land, they again fear the threat of war, heightened by concerns about North Korea’s nuclear program. And as they look back upon the riots, they see the ashes of the dreams that brought them here.

As he stands beneath the convention center’s sheets of tinted glass, like a stargazer under a desert sky, Park describes a colleague’s recent observation that standing in its south lobby is like being outdoors, that from inside one can connect with the city and the sky and the trees planted out front.

“The light is beautiful this time of morning,” Park says.

He walks to the far wall and kneels again. He studies the floor, which doubles as a map of the Pacific Rim, then carefully points to a spot. “This,” he says, “is Pusan.”

It is where his vision began.

The strength and spirit of a building, like that of a person, arises from within and begins with a vision of what might be. When people speak of Park, they remark on his ability to see how minute details affect a complicated picture, on the way he can look at wreckage and see wondrous possibilities.

Park’s coming to America is an unlikely story involving war, a letter to the Los Angeles Times, a couple from Montebello, a congressman from Indiana, writer James Michener, artist Norman Rockwell. And a vision.

When Park was 6, his father, an agriculture researcher, and mother left Seoul to work in the country. They left Park, the second of nine children, with his grandparents so he could continue to attend city schools.

He was a diligent student. Korean schools, reflecting years of Japanese colonialism, operated under a system that imposed great competition among students. They were seated according to class rank, and Park was always near or at the top.

He entered law school right out of high school, but about two weeks into classes his life changed dramatically. He awakened one morning in 1950 to find the streets claimed by tanks and Red Army soldiers. Fearful that he would be forced into their ranks, Park, then 18, went into hiding.

He recalls how, for the next several months, he moved back and forth between his aunt’s home and grandparents’ home, where the furniture had been crammed into a back room, leaving a two-foot crawl space.

“Guests are coming.” That was the warning his elders would give if soldiers approached the house. One day, Park and his older sister were reading when they heard their grandmother’s voice: “Guests are coming.”

He and his sister scrambled behind the furniture, crouching low to the floor. Park heard footsteps. Spotting an open book, Shakespeare written in Japanese, on a hallway desk, the soldiers suspected they had interrupted something. Park and his sister remained still, afraid to breathe, as the “guests” pushed against the furniture. Finally, he heard them go.

On another occasion, two younger brothers buried themselves in a hay pile, narrowly escaping the surging bayonets of soldiers.

Three months later, Park volunteered for the South Korean national guard, surviving on a diet of salt water and rice for 1 1/2 years. He then managed a canteen for the Red Cross in Pusan and, later, worked as a translator for the U.S. Joint Advisory Command, also in Pusan.

Amid the destruction of the war, Park decided to become an architect. There would be a need for people to rebuild the country. He told soldiers at the canteen that he wanted to go to America to become an architect. They encouraged him to write letters to U.S. newspapers requesting a sponsor.

He mailed three such letters, but only one was published. In May, 1952, the Los Angeles Times ran his letter, which was read with interest by Muriel McClelland of Montebello. She was touched by Park’s words:

“I am anxious to continue an education in the United States in order to be of value to the rebuilding of Korea following cessation of hostilities,” he wrote. “I am sure that you will readily understand that the present condition of Korea requires our younger generation to carry on war to gain final victory at all cost against the Red Communists and to concentrate our efforts to aid in the rehabilitation of the war-devastated country.”

Now 92 and living in Florida, McClelland recalls that she had just finished reading Michener’s “Voice of Asia” when she saw the letter. She wrote to the author through his publisher, and he responded from his Bucks County, Pa., home.

While Michener, married at the time to an architect, wanted to help, he said he could not give money to an individual. Instead, he set up a scholarship fund at East Los Angeles Junior College, where Park planned to enroll.

Meanwhile, Jerry Rockwell, a U.S. soldier in Pusan, was also writing letters. In one to his father, Norman Rockwell, he told Park’s story and asked what could be done to help. The artist went to a friend, James Canfield, who agreed to be a sponsor. Then-U.S. Rep. Ralph Harvey of Indiana had also heard about Park and signed on as a sponsor. With everything in order, Park faced one final obstacle: getting here.

Soldiers put him on a single-engine military plane bound for Seoul, where he could ask his grandfather for air fare. It was Park’s second trip on an airplane, and he was nervous. His first had been marked by gunfire. For nearly 10 years, he would have nightmares about being hijacked to North Korea.

His grandfather, the first Western-educated doctor in Korea, had money and land but preached to young people the importance of earning their own way, as he had. But the elder Park, sensing his grandson’s desperation, bought him a ticket and threw in $80 to get him started in his new life.

On March 1, 1953, Park arrived in Los Angeles with simple gifts--silver chopsticks and a Chinese scroll. The next day, he began his studies.

Park stayed with the McClelland family, working around the house after school. He would never ask his sponsors for money, and he would never meet Michener or Rockwell. But Harvey visited and set up a trip to Washington D.C., where Park shook the hands of Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy.

Park was consumed by education, yet he missed his family and homeland. He would sometimes mix ketchup and hot sauce and pour it over rice to soothe his craving for kim che , a spicy Korean staple.

After 1 1/2 years of junior college, Park received a scholarship to UC Berkeley. He went on to earn separate master’s degrees in architecture and city planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

There is no trace of bitterness in his voice as he describes mailing resumes all over the country after graduation. No one seemed interested, despite his outstanding credentials. Finally, in 1961, he landed a job with the firm owned by Victor Gruen, who had fled Vienna in 1938 to escape Hitler. In a profession dominated by white male power players, Gruen provided opportunities for ethnic minorities and women.

“There was a lot of discrimination,” he says. “Nobody wanted to hire me, but I ignored it because in the end those who excel will overcome. As I get older, that’s not good enough. As a group, we must fight discrimination.”

Gruen Associates was an egalitarian island, but Park recalls searching for a first apartment here with wife Ildong, also a first-generation Korean American, whom he had met and married at Berkeley. They would walk up to buildings with “For Rent” signs posted, only to be told the unit had been rented. Days later, the sign would still be there.

They eventually found an apartment on Westmoreland Avenue, near Downtown, and now have a home in Westwood.

Gruen gave Park the chance to practice city planning as well as architecture, and he worked with the same intensity he showed as a student. In 1968, he became a vice president.

Thom Mayne, managing partner at the Morphosis architectural firm in Santa Monica, worked with Park in the early 1970s.

“He was very demanding, very rigorous,” Mayne says. “For a period there, he went through about a jillion secretaries. . . . I would write memos and he would send them back to me with corrections.”

Yes, Park says, he is demanding, circumspect. He still edits memos. He still believes he can accomplish more today than he did yesterday, and that has been his driving force.

“I had such faith in the future,” he says, “faith that if I work really hard and do my best, opportunity will open up for me, and that’s what attracted me to come to this country. I still believe in that.”

Coming to America changed Park. Since leaving Korea in 1953, he had become an architect, a husband and father. Almost without realizing it, he had become American. Park decided against returning to South Korea and in 1966 became a U.S. citizen.

In 1972, he was named a partner at Gruen, and nine years later became the firm’s managing partner. At the recent national convention of the American Institute of Architects at the L.A. Convention Center, Park became the first Korean American to receive the Whitney M. Young Jr. Citation, in honor of the late civil rights leader who in 1968 challenged architects to assume professional responsibility toward social issues.

But these are not things he mentions when discussing his accomplishments. What he is most proud of are the three sons he raised with Ildong, who worked for 10 years as a research associate at UCLA Medical School.

David, 34, graduated from UCLA and Boston College Law School. He is a litigation attorney here. Kevin, 27, graduated from Harvard, studied at Oxford University and this month graduated from Harvard Medical School. Edwin, 22, also graduated this month, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Administration and International Affairs at Princeton University. He will attend Harvard Law School. Including Ki Suh, the family of five includes three Phi Beta Kappas.

As Park has grown older, he has come to learn that his children and granddaughter are the measure of his success, the source of strength and spirit that rises from within.

“How do you know where you are in the ocean unless you have a benchmark?”

One must have a reference point, Park says, a place from which to decide where to go. To work hard, to struggle, is to swim in circles unless one has bearings.

To understand other people, and the problems they face, one must practice empathy.

“The best way to do that is to really listen to you,” Park says, “to understand how you thought, the process you went through, why you did what you did.”

Beginning in 1969, he embarked on a 25-year project that would teach him a lesson and change his life: planning and designing the Century Freeway from Los Angeles International Airport to Norwalk.

It would disrupt the lives of many people who lived along the corridor. During numerous public hearings, the residents described the harm it would do to their communities. About 21,000 people were ultimately displaced by the 17-mile roadway.

“I used to look through my eyes on everything, form an opinion from my eyes,” he says, “but I learned that you really have to have empathy for other people, how they see the same thing,” Park says of the project.

Empathy became a word he used often. He cannot drive the freeway, which finally opened last year, without seeing the good, the people it serves, as well as the bad, the lives adversely affected.

“The benefit is great, but there are thousands of people who got hurt in the process. That’s part of the process. Our public policy has to be compassionate to take care of those who are unduly hurt. That absolutely has to be done.”

Park is credited with routing the freeway to minimize its impact and helping to create programs, including job training, to assist displaced residents.

“He was a leader in that regard,” says Charles O’Connell, L.A. deputy district director of Caltrans. “He heightened everyone’s sensitivities concerning the role of government in being a sensible partner.”

Park brought together residents with elected and government officials to discuss the project. He encouraged them to listen, to find a benchmark in the ocean. During the freeway planning process, he began to shed his diffident nature. Previously reluctant to express his views, he opened up and became less self-conscious about his accent, more confident in himself. He learned that what you say is more important than how you say it.

“If it comes from your heart, that’s what matters most. To feel empathy doesn’t mean that you are more interested in what other people feel than what you feel yourself. I value my ideas, my perspectives as much as anybody else’s. You have to have your own ideas, otherwise you are nobody.”

In the early days of Rebuild L.A., when tensions were high and fingers were being pointed, Park was instrumental in creating a constructive atmosphere as co-chair of the Racial Harmony and Discourse Task Force.

“He stressed that it was so important to be able to step inside the other person,” co-chair Marilyn Solomon says. “His attitude and style and sensitivity surfaced quietly but with determination and a clear-eyed sense of what was appropriate to ease tensions.”

When the family of Latasha Harlins, a black youth killed in 1991 by a Korean American store owner, formed a foundation and approached the group about turning the store into a community center, Park persuaded the mortgage holders to meet with the family. The Korean bankers agreed to give them time to raise money.

RLA is one step toward racial harmony, Park says, but the journey is long, and there are many walls. Beyond them, he sees hope. That, too, is part of his vision. Racial harmony is mandatory for economic vitality, he says. It is not only a humane goal but fundamental to restoring confidence in the city.

RLA was formed in the aftermath of the 1992 civil unrest to enhance economic development and create jobs in neglected areas. About one-half of the structures sustaining major damage during the disturbance were owned by ethnic Koreans, says Linda Griego, RLA president and CEO. And of the 10,000 people who applied for emergency Small Business Administration assistance, nearly half had Korean surnames.

Park is frustrated that, despite all the words that were spoken, many victims have been neglected.

“Koreans have made substantial contributions in this city, but look what happened during the civil disturbance,” he says. “We didn’t get help from anywhere. That shows you we have to generate a voice. We not only have to work within our community, we also have to work with other ethnic groups to build strong alliances and develop common ground.”

Park, who chairs the Korean American Coalition, believes that Korean Americans were targeted during the violence and continue to be misunderstood.

“It is a stereotype that Koreans come here with money and go into the poorer neighborhoods and take the blood out of them, put nothing back in. That’s simply not true,” he says.

Much of the negative attention has centered on Korean-owned liquor stores in black communities. Some have charged that the proprietors are greedy, rude and refuse to hire locals. Others say there are simply too many liquor stores in their neighborhoods.

“I don’t know what’s right or wrong,” Park says, “but if the community thinks that the abundance of liquor stores is hurting community interests, then the public or city should work toward reducing the number. If so, proper compensation should be given to the current liquor store owners.”

RLA is asking Korean business owners whose liquor stores were destroyed to consider opening grocery markets. Some may make the change, many have moved, and others will never reopen. More than 300 buildings citywide remain vacant and face demolition.

“Sometimes,” Park says, “I feel like a tiny grain of sand. But you can’t remake the world overnight or remake the city overnight. The question is: Are we even taking the first step?”

But even a tiny grain of sand can be a benchmark in the ocean, and Park knows from his own life that work and faith and vision make many things possible. And from moments of agony come moments of excitement.

No, not excitement.

Exhilaration.

Ki Suh Park

Age: 62.

Native? No. Born in Korea, lives in Westwood.

Family: Married for 37 years to Ildong Park; three grown sons.

Passions: Helping the city to achieve peace.

On working toward racial harmony: “Our survival and the future of the city depend on it. The whole world lives in this city, and if we can make it happen, this can be the model for the future of the entire world.”

On job discrimination in the early ‘60s: “Nobody wanted to hire me, but I ignored it because in the end those who excel will overcome. As I get older, that’s not good enough. As a group, we must fight discrimination and make sure some of the things that have happened in this society are minimized.”

On his drive to succeed: “I had such faith in the future, faith that if I work really hard and do my best, opportunity will open up for me. And that’s what attracted me to come to this country. I still believe in that.”

On his approach to a difficult problem: “I used to look through my eyes on everything, form an opinion from my eyes. But I learned that you really have to have empathy for other people, how they see the same thing.”