Learning Business’ Languages : Multilingual USC Course Helps Riot Victims Rebuild

Pang Kim still remembers clearly the day the interior decorations store he built with his wife, Hye, was destroyed in the 1992 riots.

“Everything was completely burned,” Kim said of his original Living Art store in Koreatown, which was 2 1/2 blocks from its present location. “My wife started crying. I had a helpless feeling. Ten years of effort were in there, and they were all gone.”

The Kims were eager to rebuild, they said, but they felt disoriented and vulnerable--until they enrolled in a business course aimed at helping Koreatown merchants rebuild after the riots.

Now, Pang Kim says, their business, which makes the bedding Korean newlyweds traditionally give their in-laws, is stronger than ever. “No one can break my business, because I have a good foundation with that knowledge,” he said.

Tonight, in a ceremony at the Harvard Grand Hotel in Koreatown, the Kims will be part of the 70-member first graduating class of the 13-week multilingual business program. The program is sponsored by the Alliance for Neighborhood Economic Development, a unit of the Korean Youth and Community Center, and the Entrepreneurial Training Program at USC.

The program is a small but important part of a $1.6-million effort by the city of Los Angeles to teach 1,200 people the basics of running a small business in the wake of the rioting that destroyed more than 10,000 firms and caused $1 billion in damage.

“What has really been articulated in community meetings is the need for providing ownership opportunities of local businesses to local residents,” said Marilyn Lurie, a director in the city’s community development department.

Also among the 70 students--most of them Korean Americans or Latinos--are former grocery and convenience store owners who have opened self-service laundries, restaurants, an indoor swap meet and a store that sells dehydrated fruit.

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Juan Zamora lost everything when his shoe-making business was looted and burned. He has since opened a larger store, Calzado Don Juan (“Footwear by Mr. Juan”) and employs five people who make leather shoes, wallets, belts and other items.

Zamora credits his business class, which was taught in Spanish, with giving him the know-how to build a solid foundation for the second time around.

“I’m planning to make my business bigger than before,” Zamora said. “The class reinforced that. I have more confidence.”

Although the students had little, if any, formal business training, almost all had years of experience running mom-and-pop stores in Koreatown, Pico-Union and South-Central Los Angeles, said Patrice Wong, director of the Alliance for Neighborhood Economic Development.

“These people know how to run their businesses. Most of them had operated a business for over a decade,” said Sun Chung, a public accountant who taught 45 students in Korean and English. “It’s just that the riots happened and they lost their whole business. We taught them how to rebuild and protect their businesses so that nothing like this will ever happen again.”

The classes met once a week and used a USC-designed curriculum that focuses on basics such as marketing, accounting, employee management and legal considerations. Special emphasis was given to doing business in a multicultural community, Wong said.

When they finished the classes, students wrote business plans to help them secure financing through alternative loan programs in the community, Wong said. Twenty students have finished their business plans so far, she said.

Jesus Arguelles, a management consultant who taught business classes in Spanish and English, said this is the first time the entrepreneurial courses have been taught in languages other than English.

“We are making history,” Arguelles said. “A lot of the thriving smaller businesses in Southern California are not English-speaking,” but they are making money and creating jobs, he said.

After the riots, the Korean neighborhood development group sought assistance from the USC Business Expansion Network, which helps the small-business community and provides entrepreneurial training, to help Koreatown merchants rebuild.

“As we were cooperating with them, together we identified this need for additional entrepreneurial training and looked at how we could solve the problem together,” said Debbie Esparza, executive director of the USC Business Expansion Network.

Wong and Esparza secured funding from Los Angeles city and county agencies, found bilingual instructors and offered the class free to riot victims in Koreatown--which is about half Latino--and neighboring communities. More classes will be offered in September, as soon as new textbooks can be printed, Wong said.

She said the key to the program’s success is the instruction in students’ native languages.

“Sometimes concepts and words in English are difficult to explain in English--things like amortization or depreciation, “ Wong said. “One woman in our Asian class who has very limited English-speaking skills went through a program in English and maybe understood a tenth of it. When she went through our class with the Korean (instruction), things really started to jell.”