Korean Closes Store That Blacks Picketed

Bringing an uncertain end to yet another urban clash in Los Angeles, a Korean American hat shop owner whose business was picketed in February by the Brotherhood Crusade is closing her South-Central store.

“I’m too weary and too afraid to continue,” said In-Suk Lee, 53, who operated the Accessory Shop on Vermont Avenue for 13 years and had a small but loyal core of customers who bought perhaps six hats on a good day.

Lee hasn’t reopened her business since Feb. 13, after an estimated 30 African American protesters, mobilized by the Brotherhood Crusade, arrived at her business charging that the Rev. Lee May, pastor of First AME Church in Pasadena, was refused service because he is a black man. May and the Brotherhood Crusade demanded an apology and a meeting with the owners of the store.

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In a March 6 letter to May, Lee apologized for what had happened and asked for his “forgiveness.” She also explained the circumstances that led to the “unfortunate incident.”

May said the letter was “insufficient.”

He is not “out to destroy” her business, he says, but shutting the store doesn’t end the controversy for him.

“Even if she closes the store, I’m still pursuing [the issue],” May said. “I am trying to make some good come out of it. I am trying to make other Koreans more sensitive to African Americans.”

By meeting with Lee, May said, he hopes to culturally “sensitize” and educate her in dealing with blacks and other minorities. Without meeting with her, he cannot accomplish that, he said.

But so far the two sides have been at an impasse.

“Who is gaining from this?” asked Sang-Won Shin, pastor of the Church of Philippi in North Hollywood, which Lee attends.

“As a fellow Christian minister, I find pastor May’s attitude difficult to understand,” Shin said. “Why is it so difficult for a man of God who preaches love to forgive?”

May suggested that Lee, too, should think about what it means to love as a Christian.

The dispute began Jan. 20, when May entered the store to buy a hat for his wife after a funeral in the neighborhood.

According to May, he was about to ask for some help when “one of the owners--I assume--came to me and said they were sorry, it was a store for women only,” May said. “He kept saying, ‘Women only. Women only. No men. No men.’ ”

As Lee tells it, it was a friend of her husband, visiting the store, who had the exchange with May.

She continued to run her business as usual, she said.

Then, three weeks later, on Feb. 13, more than a dozen black men she had never seen came to the store one after another. She kept her door locked, she said. Next thing she knew, protesters showed up outside. Frightened, she hurriedly closed the store and went home, and she has not reopened her business since.

Lee said the thought of a meeting with May and possibly others scares her.

“It may be difficult for African Americans, who come from a verbal culture to understand, but Koreans avoid confrontations--even among ourselves,” Shin said. “For a woman of Mrs. Lee’s age and background to meet face-to-face with non-Korean males in this context is unthinkable,” the Korean minister said.

The situation is exacerbated by Lee’s limited English, the trauma of having lost another business during the 1992 riots and working in a rough neighborhood for 13 years, he said.

In her letter to May, which Shin helped her write, Lee said:

“I want to apologize to you from the bottom of my heart that last time you dropped by our store as a customer, I inadvertently allowed an unfortunate incident to happen. When you walked into my store, there were two elderly women customers, who were about to make purchase. But when they saw you, they hesitated.”

Sensing that the women were nervous about the presence of an unfamiliar male, her husband’s friend told May the place was a “woman’s store” and asked him to leave, she wrote. “Mr. Kim has said that he deeply regrets what he did and wants to seek your forgiveness,” she wrote.

Lee said she wanted to follow May out of the store and apologize, but she did not want to make her husband’s friend lose face.

May said that when he went to Accessory Shop on Jan. 20, all he wanted to do was buy a hat for his wife. Instead, he said, he was “kicked out of the store” in a blatant act of discrimination because he is an African American male.

There were two Asian men and an Asian woman in addition to two black women in the store, he said. “All I know is that all three [Asians] were united in wanting me to leave the store,” he said. He said he wants a “face-to-face dialogue” with Lee “so we can address the issues.”

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Shin, to whom Lee turned after she fled the store, said native English speakers have no idea how difficult it is for Korean immigrants, who come here as adults, to confront native speakers in English. “Even though I am a minister, I prefer to write because I have so much difficulty with spoken English,” Shin said.

Shin said that when more than a dozen black men sent by the Brotherhood Crusade came to the store to show that there was a pattern of discrimination against black males, Lee was “traumatized.”

“Is it hard to understand that a woman who lost a business during the riot would be scared?” Shin asked. “Was what Mrs. Lee did so reprehensible that she has to close the business?”

Brotherhood Crusade leader Danny Bakewell said: “It was unfortunate that she chose to close rather than extend a simple apology to right a wrong that she acknowledged that she made. It had to be a public apology to the Rev. May and the community because she publicly embarrassed him and degraded him.”

Lee says she can’t cope with the lingering controversy anymore.

“I don’t know how long we can continue in this state,” Lee said. “Right now, my married daughter and a second daughter are helping us. But they don’t have much money either.”

“Sometimes I’m so weary I just think to myself, I’ll be liberated from all this trial when I die,” said Lee. “We made a mistake, but is it something that cannot be forgiven?”