Remembering Riots : Anniversary: Three years after the violence, volunteers repair houses, and African and Korean Americans worship together.

Three years after fiery rioting swept across Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney G. King verdicts, Nelson Daniel received a remarkable windfall Saturday.

A swarm of 30 volunteers descended on his small, ramshackle house near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, furiously hammering, sawing and painting as they completely renovated the dwelling free of charge. They rebuilt his porch, installed new kitchen cabinets, painted the walls inside and out and put in a new furnace.

“This is one of the best things that’s ever happened to this city and to me,” said Daniel, his words nearly drowned out by the vigorous racket of workers from Christmas in April, a nationwide group that rebuilds the homes of elderly, disabled and low-income people.

The activities of Christmas in April--which fielded nearly 1,000 volunteers Saturday in South-Central Los Angeles--were just one of the ways in which Angelenos marked the third anniversary of the riots.

Black and Korean American artists put on a joint exhibit. Young graduates of a job-training program threw a party. And computer enthusiasts took to the Internet to debate the broader causes of the 1992 upheaval that killed more than 50 people and wreaked $1 billion in property damage.

On Friday night, blacks and Korean Americans worshiped together at a Baptist church in South-Central, singing, praying and shouting amens as their ministers exhorted them to live in peace and harmony. More than 2,000 Korean-owned businesses were destroyed in the rioting, reflecting years of tension between shopkeepers and black residents.

“This was the most moving experience I’ve had since I came to America,” said Jae-Yol Kim, whose South-Central grocery store was burned to the ground three years ago and who had never been in a black church before.

Despite such celebrations, much of the property damage from the riots remains painfully visible, especially in South-Central, and some residents are angry that more work has not been done.

“It’s going to take more than this,” said a man clipping hedges as he watched Christmas in April workers fix up a home next door on West 53rd Street. “This is not even the crumbs of the pie.

“You can do this house, but there are a lot of houses like this,” said the man, who declined to give his name. “You can’t come out and renovate every house.”

About 250 of the 607 properties--some of them housing multiple businesses--that were seriously damaged or burned to the ground remain vacant, according to an estimate by RLA, the private riot-recovery agency formerly known as Rebuild L.A. Most of the empty lots are in South-Central, said Linda Wong, RLA’s chief financial officer.

“You’re talking about 30 years of neglect in those communities and people are just coming to grips and finding out how slow the work is,” she said. “We haven’t quite seen all the physical manifestations of revitalization yet, but part of that is due to the fact we have to build a strategy and infrastructure from the ground up.”

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Wong said most damaged businesses in Koreatown and the Crenshaw district have been rebuilt. In other riot-scarred areas, private firms and local churches and community-based neighborhood groups have expressed interest in retail and housing uses for the weed-strewn lots.

As for RLA, the agency, formed at the behest of city and state government officials, continues its strategy of seeking to assist small and medium-size businesses in impoverished areas of the county.

RLA, due to remain in operation until 1997, recently helped a group of biomedical corporations form an industry council, and is seeking to jump-start similar efforts with the toy, computer hardware, metalwork and other industries.

As yet, RLA has not found a successor to board Chairman Lodwrick Cook, who recently announced his plans to resign. The agency’s next meeting is not scheduled until late May and it made no special plans to commemorate Saturday’s anniversary.

Moreover, despite the passage of time many people continue to disagree sharply over the underlying causes of the riots, as evidenced by the wide variety of opinions expressed by computer users who signed on to the Internet to take part in an on-line “conference” sponsored by an urban-affairs class at Cal State Long Beach. Rioting erupted immediately after four white police officers were acquitted by a jury in Simi Valley of beating King during a traffic stop.

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The riots were “merely an excuse to loot and rob, and to express racial hatred toward white people,” typed one person.

But others talked of unemployment, oppression and misunderstanding among the races. Alex Hartley, a leadership training consultant for the Nickerson Gardens Resident Management Corp., a tenants group at the Watts housing project, wrote:

“Unemployment and hopelessness and the increasing demonization and marginalization of whole communities such as ‘South-Central Los Angeles’ or ‘East Los Angeles’ create a climate of fear in the minds of people who don’t even have a clue as to where these mythical communities are located.”

Meanwhile, an exhibit highlighting the works of Korean American and black artists was presented at galleries in Koreatown and South-Central.

“It’s very normal for people to have conflict,” said Roland Charles, curator of the “Collaborations” exhibit.

“But the true essence of an artist is his ability to work it out.”

Among the works on display is “Interpolation,” two canvases hung side-by-side by black artist Gary Williams and Korean artist Byong Ok Min. Streaks and multi-colored shapes appear to connect the two works. The artists said they tried to avoid fire, blood and other violent images associated with the riots.

By far the largest commemorative effort was sponsored by Christmas in April, which formed a South-Central chapter after the riots.

Volunteers from the group tackled renovation jobs at 20 houses, two community centers and a high school in South-Central.

At 75-year-old Jessie Lee Smith’s house on West 53rd, the workers repaired faulty plumbing, replaced sagging flooring and put in a new electrical system.

Volunteer Pat Krugh of Lomita, busy digging new flower beds in the front yard, said working at the house was a pleasant reminder of how she once cleaned walls and did other chores for her grandmother.

“It feels good to help people,” she said. “You don’t get any glory. It’s just an internal glow.”

Times staff writers Paul Feldman and K. Connie Kang, editorial assistant David Grimm and librarian Maloy Moore contributed to this story.