Activism Opens Generational Rift in Koreatown Workplaces

In a dispute with implications for the future of Los Angeles’ Koreatown, a group of community organizers and hundreds of immigrant restaurant owners are waging a bitter fight over wages and working conditions.

But underneath, it is a power struggle between generations, stemming from different political and cultural values and aspirations. The rift also underscores the diversity within the Korean American community, entrenched cultural and language gaps, and the accompanying alienation between the generations.

The outcome may well set the tone for the course of Korean-owned small businesses, the backbone of the Korean American economy in Los Angeles, where more people of Korean ancestry live than anywhere outside Asia.

Activists, mostly “1.5 generation” Korean Americans in their 20s and 30s--born in South Korea but reared here--accuse predominantly immigrant Koreatown restaurant owners of exploiting employees by violating minimum wage, overtime and safety laws.

Employers charge that members of Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, better known by its acronym KIWA, are self-styled leftist “bullies,” bent on destroying businesses with disruptive demonstrations and picketing under the pretext of representing workers. If there are problems, restaurants owners say, they want to deal directly with the appropriate agencies, not KIWA.

Koreans own about 300 restaurants and cafes in the Koreatown area, employing nearly 2,000 workers, according to statistics from the Korean Restaurant Owners Assn. and KIWA. Nearly a third of the workers are non-Koreans, mostly Latinos.

Some Fear Economic Harm

The protracted dispute, pitting KIWA’s eight staffers and their impoverished constituents against the Koreatown establishment, has split the insular community along political and class lines. Should the stalemate continue, some fear that the Koreatown economy, already in bad shape, will suffer irreparable harm.

“Why are these kids trying to destroy their parents’ businesses?” complained Peter G. Lee, owner of Chung Soo Oak restaurant, who considers KIWA an “unnecessary evil” in Koreatown. “If this group is really what its name says it is, they should be counseling us non-English-speaking immigrants by informing us about American laws and being helpful.”

That is precisely what KIWA is trying to do, said Executive Director Roy S. Hong, 37, who in 1992 co-founded the organization with Danny Park, a high school classmate from San Francisco.

“We don’t believe we are hurting our parents’ generation,” Hong said. “We believe we are helping our parents’ generation correct the problem that will go a long way to building a better community. If they don’t treat these people right, it’s going to come to haunt them.”

A recent federal probe of 43 randomly picked Koreatown area restaurants found that 200 workers were underpaid by $250,000, the Labor Department said. All but two of the restaurants had violated the labor laws.

Kyung Ai Hah, owner of Sa Rit Gol Korean restaurant, which was picketed by KIWA, said she would close her business rather than give into KIWA’s “intimidation.”

Hah charged that KIWA’s “exaggerated claims” exacerbated the differences between her and her former employees.

“If my business goes under, that means I will be unemployed, along with my 14 employees. How is KIWA helping workers, if they lose jobs because we can’t afford to stay in business?”

Hong said that Hah is well off. “She drives a Mercedes-Benz and plays golf every day,” he said.

“That man should go work for the FBI,” Hah shot back.

After 26 years of grueling immigrant life, Hah said, she is leasing her first Mercedes. She is also president of the Korean American Mothers Assn. As for golf, Hah scoffed: “How can a woman who runs a restaurant have time to play golf every day?”

Approach Called Radical, Disrespectful

The clash is a poignant chapter in the American passage of one of the largest, best educated and most successful Asian immigrant groups in Los Angeles.

“It is inevitable that you’re going to have conflict along these axes, which include generational, economic and cultural,” said UCLA law professor Jerry Kang, who is a Korean American. “The community is now large enough with enough different sorts of people with different agendas to tolerate differences.”

Still, the passage is a painful one.

Koreatown business owners complain that KIWA’s approach is radical, disrespectful and political. They also criticize KIWA for seeking support outside the community, and charge that it does not seem concerned about Koreatown businesses adversely affected by the financial crisis in South Korea.

Hong acknowledges that some businesses are struggling. But if the cars some of them drive is an indication, they are doing quite well, he said.

Sue Park, whose family restaurant, Baek Hwa Jung, has been the target of picketing for six weeks, accused KIWA members and their supporters of acting like “gangsters.”

On July 19, placard-carrying KIWA supporters with bullhorns entered her restaurant and disrupted business. “We lost $500 worth of business that day,” she said.

KIWA alleges that the Parks owe one former employee $29,728 in back wages and another $1,774. Both are Latinos.

The Parks say they have no idea how KIWA arrived at the figures.

On a recent evening, 14 placard-carrying protesters demonstrated in front of the restaurant for an hour as six police cars and 12 officers stood by.

“Boycott!” they shouted, as they walked in a circle in front of the restaurant, handing out leaflets to would-be customers. “No wages, no peace!” the demonstrators shouted.

Inside, Won Tek Park, 65, owner of the restaurant, shrugged sheepishly: “What can we do?”

The Parks rejected a KIWA-drafted $12,000 settlement proposal, saying they could not afford it. But Hong said the Park family owns a nice home and a sizable commercial property, a new van and that Sue Park drives a Volvo.

“It so happens that my 1990 Volvo, which I bought secondhand, has more than 100,000 miles and that Dodge Ram in the driveway belongs to a friend,” she said.

“Who are these people, anyway--snooping around to check where we live, what kind of cars we drive? What standing does KIWA have?”

If there are problems over wages between them and the employees, they will handle it with the Labor Department, she said.

Group Is Unique in the Community

KIWA, operating on a $250,000 annual budget, donated mostly by private foundations, is unique in the Asian American community in Southern California. It is the only Asian American group devoted to helping low-income immigrant workers.

“They’re controversial, but they’ve raised for public consciousness the importance of dealing with low-income workers,” said Stewart Kwoh, president of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. “I may disagree with some of the tactics at times, but I agree with the attempt to organize low-income workers and try to resolve many of their issues.”

KIWA co-founder Danny Park, son of a Presbyterian minister in San Francisco, said his group’s goal is to see a transformation of Korean immigrants’ mind-set that tends to view the people at the bottom of the economic ladder as inferior because of the Korean emphasis on education and hierarchy.

The literal English translation of KIWA’s Korean name is Workers’ Counseling Center.

The name itself has become controversial as many business owners question why it goes beyond “counseling” workers to representing them through a variety of means, including legal action. They also ask why the group is representing non-Koreans, when it calls itself Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates.

Hong’s response is that the work of an organization evolves with time and that KIWA must represent people of other ethnicities, too, because the fate of Korean Americans is tied to non-Koreans.

Little Attention Paid to Elders’ Customs

There is a family-like atmosphere among KIWA staffers, most of them UCLA and San Francisco State University graduates, who earn less than $20,000 a year. Hong, who dropped out of San Francisco State because he was eager to work for a union, earns $38,000 annually.

KIWA members pay little attention to time-honored Korean emphasis on appropriate attire, gestures and deference to elders in business dealings.

Frank Kim, owner of a Koreatown restaurant who recently settled an employee complaint with KIWA, said he was offended by a KIWA staffer who came to see him.

“She came in blue jeans, dragging slippers,” Kim said. “She looked like she had come to fight. She was so disrespectful I felt like slapping her.”

“Age plays a significant role in Korean culture,” said Charles J. Kim, executive director of the Korean American Coalition, a Los Angeles-based civil rights group. “When they [KIWA people] come and don’t play this cultural game, even if they [business owners] know they did something wrong, they are not going to back down. Once they get emotional--Koreans are stubborn--they’ll say, ‘Nuh juk-ko, na juk-ja’ (You die and I die).”

KIWA scored a major victory in April when its six-month campaign against Cho Sun Galbi, a popular restaurant known for barbecued beef, resulted in the reinstatement of a fired cook with back wages.

That settlement has raised KIWA’s profile and has engendered fear and loathing among small business owners who view the case as a bad precedent.

“It is a growing pain,” said UCLA’s Kang.

When an immigrant and ethnic community is small, it tends to resist internal dispute vigorously because it is concerned about survival, Kang said.

“Now the Korean community is strong enough to tolerate that conflict. That is another way of viewing it--as a good sign.

“The ultimate question, however, is what people will do when they are conflicted with a choice. . . . It’s going to be very painful.”