Koreatown Tolerance Is Model of Promise

When Sekyong Hong first laid eyes on Rudy Castillo in the Koreatown grocery store where they worked, she figured he was like most other non-Koreans who couldn’t understand her language, customs and people.

Still, she admitted to herself, “He was very handsome.”

Dating him was out of the question, Hong thought. What would her father think? He accepted only Korean boyfriends.

But Castillo wasn’t like most non-Koreans in Koreatown. Along with his job training at the Korean store, the Mexican-born stockroom clerk acquired another skill shared by a handful of Latinos in Koreatown. And when the time was right, he used it to break the ice with Hong and melt the cold shoulder the attractive cashier was showing him.

Leaning close, Castillo spoke to her in fluent Korean, one of the world’s more difficult languages, which he had picked up by memorizing prices on canned goods, names on sacks of rice and phrases uttered by supervisors, customers and voices on the radio during the three years he had worked at the Korean grocery.

“I could not believe what I was hearing,” said Hong, who married Castillo 1 1/2 years ago with her father’s reluctant blessing. “It was surprising.”

Her surprise would undoubtedly be shared by a great many Angelenos who are blithely unaware of Los Angeles’ Koreatown, where a remarkable mix of Latino and Asian cultures is occurring.

It is a community where a Latino stock clerk might sing along with the radio in perfect Korean, where dozens of Korean immigrant merchants learn Spanish before English, and where young immigrants born half a world apart secretly admire each other and, sometimes, fall in love. It is a community dominated by Korean businesses but where the majority of the residents are Latino.

‘Two Invisible Communities’

Strangely, in a city swarming with researchers and media, Koreatown’s dynamic melting pot has been largely overlooked.

“No one has written about it,” said Jeannette Diaz-Veizades, a professor at Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco who co-wrote a study of the Koreatown and Pico-Union neighborhoods with Edward Chang, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Riverside.

“It’s two invisible communities trying to struggle by,” Diaz-Veizades said. “It’s not a blatant conflict like blacks and Koreans. [Latinos and Koreans] are both immigrant, politically marginalized communities.”

But they are communities that may not stay on the city’s fringes for long. Taking paths that intersect, both are seeking a larger role in shaping Los Angeles’ future through politics.

According to the study and other informed observers, the communities share similarities that, over time, will allow them to work together.

“You have the Korean community, the Central American community and the Mexican community. All have the experience of being immigrant,” said Angela Sanbrano, director of the Central American Resource Center, a social service agency in Pico-Union. “You need to be an immigrant to understand what being an immigrant is like. That brings the two groups together in understanding each other more.”

Both Latino and Korean immigrants rely heavily on their children to translate English. Recalling her childhood, one Guatemalan woman said the pressure to decode letters concerning her family’s loans and bills, and to do her homework without help, “was unreal.”

Some Latinos and Koreans believe that their commonalities go even deeper, the study said. In interviews, Koreans spoke of similar physical characteristics with Latinos, including skin hue and raven-colored hair that women in both groups traditionally wear long.

“It’s funny that some Koreans say we look the same,” said Diaz-Veizades, a Latina. “There’s more of a sense of perceived similarity that might come from living together. The other thing is there’s a different expectation of immigrant groups than African Americans who’ve been living here a long time.”

Korean American professor Chang speaks like a man who has stumbled upon a strange new world.

Growing Relationship Despite Tensions

“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “For Koreans, it’s easier to speak Spanish than English. There’s less tension in terms of cultural differences, and the fact that they both don’t speak English fluently, so there’s no inferiority complex. If you were to hire an African American, he would speak the language better than you do.

“But I don’t think there’s a strong interaction between the [Latino and Korean] communities yet,” Chang said. “It’s going to take time.”

In fact, what is significant about Diaz-Veizades and Chang’s study is that it describes a relationship that is developing despite tension and mutual misunderstanding.

Castillo and Hong say their experience confirms that observation. As they stroll the sidewalks winding past Koreatown’s decaying Normandy-style apartment buildings, Latinos pay them no attention, Castillo said. But the Koreans they pass often bend toward each other and whisper.

“In the beginning, when it started out, I really didn’t like that,” Castillo said. “But now I don’t care. I’m not going to live my life by what other people say.”

Elen Park would prefer whispers when she walks past Latino men on those same streets. “When I see Latino men . . . sometimes . . . drinking beer,” she said, “they say, ‘Baby, hello!’ It bothers me.”

In high school, said Park, a 20-year-old who emigrated from Seoul with her parents five years ago, Latinos could be cruel.

“Because I was Asian, they called me chino [Spanish for Chinese] in a bad way,” said Park, a Los Angeles High School graduate. “I went on a school ski trip one time with a friend. When we walked, people behind us would say bad things. I felt really depressed. It made me want to go back to my country, where everybody speaks Korean.”

In Korea, silence among strangers is golden, she said. There’s no need for greetings from passersby.

“Korean culture is so different,” said Park, who worked at the California Market grocery with Castillo and Hong before Hong left to work at another Korean company.

“We don’t say hi on the street if we don’t know you,” Park said. “Korean people think it’s so strange.”

Overcoming Prejudice

At his store in Koreatown, Chong Yong Lee pinched a clump of skin on his forearm to make a point. “Honestly speaking,” said Lee, who emigrated from Seoul more than 20 years ago, “some Koreans think they are closer to white than black or brown, so they think they’re superior. I don’t know.”

That frank admission amazes Diaz-Veizades. “When I was studying black-Korean relations, it was astonishing to me the number of Korean people who were aware of their own racism,” she said. “They realized it was a problem.”

The study found that, “on the whole, Latino responses regarding Koreans were more flattering than Korean responses regarding Latinos.”

Yet nearly 75% of all Korean-owned businesses in Los Angeles have hired a Latino worker, according to research by UCLA assistant professor Kyeyoung Park.

One reason they do so is because Latino immigrants, like other newcomers to the U.S., are usually willing to work hard for minimum wage--$5.75 an hour in California--and tend to be less likely to complain than U.S.-born employees, experts said.

Castillo, who was promoted to assistant manager in charge of stock clerks at the California Market, feels somewhat more like a family member than just a worker.

But there are also cases where Latino employees are troubled by their relationships with Korean employers. That was reflected in a lawsuit against Fashion 21 and Forever 21, two clothing stores owned by the same company. Former Fashion 21 employee Linda Pedroza sued the firm, alleging numerous forms of discrimination and harassment.

Pedroza, a Latina, said her employers told her to inform white and African American job applicants that there were no openings. But they hired Koreans and other Asian Americans, she said.

After remarking that “you people are prejudiced,” Pedroza said, she was demoted from cashier and window dresser to cleaning person.

The store owners say that they never discriminated and that Pedroza was demoted for often arriving late and not returning promptly from a lunch break. She eventually quit and filed suit.

But Latinos aren’t the only workers with grievances in entrepreneurial Koreatown. Immigrant Koreans feel their pain, which is why the Korean Immigrant Workers Assn. was formed to represent workers in conflict with Korean businesspeople. At times, the organization also represents immigrant Latinos.

It is yet another sign of cooperation between the groups. Joanne Kim, who studies English now that she speaks Spanish, named her garment store LeNovia, a blend of Korean and Spanish names.

“I have a lot of contact with Hispanics” at the downtown shop, Kim said at her Koreatown class in English as a second language. “Every day I speak Spanish, and I am very close to my workers. Two of them are Hispanic, and half my customers are Hispanic.”

Los Angeles Police Officer Alex Kim of the Rampart Division, which covers half of Koreatown, says that sort of goodwill generally prevails on the neighborhood’s streets.

Sure, there is crime, he said, but most of it is vandalism and theft by vagrants. Homicides occur mostly between gangs and as a result of domestic violence. None of it, Kim said, involves a Latino gang against a Korean gang, or interracial couples.

Lessons From the Riots

But communities, like people, must sometimes go through hell before they get to heaven. For Koreatown, hell took the form of looting and fires during the 1992 riots.

It is well-known that African Americans took to the streets in South-Central Los Angeles after an all-white jury acquitted white police officers in the beating of motorist Rodney G. King. What’s now mostly forgotten is that looters composed mostly of Latinos picked up the torch in Koreatown, Park and Chang said.

Looting by Latinos there caught people off guard. As officers stood by, newspaper accounts said, looters swept into stores and took everything from canned goods to radios to sofas.

USC assistant professor Edward Park, a Korean American, called it “a bread riot” that spread because police failed to halt it. That failure shocked Koreans and forced them to reconsider their traditional isolation from local politics.

“I think Koreans learned some lessons from 1992,” said Chang, the UC Riverside professor. “One of the lessons learned is that they should be a part of a multiethnic community. The Los Angeles civil unrest taught them to reach out to other communities. I think that reflects on their willingness to learn and be a part of Latino food and culture.”

Harrison Kim, executive director of the Korean-American Chamber of Commerce of Southern California, said an effort was made to rebuild, reach out to others and become involved in politics.

Along Olympic Boulevard, Korean businessmen erected banners that read: “Experience Koreatown. Smiles on Our Faces, Love in Our Hearts.” The signs are the street-level greeting that individual Koreans often can’t bring themselves to speak.

“Koreans had always wanted their children to become a doctor or a lawyer,” Kim said. “Now, if they want to go into politics, the parents don’t discourage them. They encourage them.”

Strength in Numbers

The growing importance of immigrant Latino voters in Los Angeles is widely discussed today. If they now are joined by newcomers from South Korea, the two groups will bring some strikingly similar historical experiences to the electoral table.

For South Koreans, it was the Korean War with their northern neighbor and China. For Latinos, there were U.S.-backed wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Immigrants from both Korea and Central America saw peace and opportunity in the United States.

Koreans began to trickle into what is now Koreatown in 1905, Chang and Diaz-Veizades wrote in their study.

First, they settled on Jefferson near USC. Growth was unremarkable until the United States changed its immigration policy in 1965, leading to increased migration from Asia and other places besides Europe.

Between 1970 and 1990, the city’s Korean population swelled dramatically, becoming the largest Korean community outside Asia.

“You’re talking about the cream of the crop in Korea,” said Park, the USC professor. “They’re highly educated, highly ambitious and highly motivated. They’re five times more likely to have a college education than Koreans in Korea.”

And more likely to have money. As immigrants poured in, Koreatown spread to its present borders around a core area bounded by Vermont Avenue on the east, Western Avenue on the west, 8th Street to the north and Olympic to the south. But researchers say those boundaries have spread in some areas as far north as Santa Monica Boulevard, south to Pico, east to Hoover and west to Chenshaw Boulevard.

Some 500 Korean businesses worth about $2 billion dominate the community’s economic activity.

“Korean Americans own 33% of the properties along Western Avenue,” the study said. “All but 14 of the properties were purchased during the 1980s. One of the main reasons for this rapid expansion is the direct result of incoming capital from Korea, both legal and illegal, into the United States.”

But like movie sets held up by wooden supports, Koreatown is mostly a facade.

Latinos account for more than half of Koreatown’s 256,000 residents, according to a Los Angeles County Public Library analysis of ZIP Codes that cover the area.

That study was completed in 1990, before the 1992 riots and the resulting Korean exodus. Chang and Diaz-Veizades relied on more recent numbers for their study. They reported that Koreatown’s population actually is more than 70% Latino, many of them Central Americans who fled war at home.

Slightly less than half of Latinos in Koreatown and Pico-Union are Mexican born. Salvadorans are the second largest group, followed by Guatemalans and Latinos born in the Caribbean, the researchers said. Many Latinos in the area live in poverty, county and city statistics show. In Pico-Union, the poverty rate is 35%, more than twice the city average. Experts say Pico-Union’s poverty is somewhat reflective of Latinos in Koreatown.

In contrast, Korean-owned stores tower over the community and Korean language signs dominate what the eye sees. For Koreans, the sight is empowering.

They frown on anything that threatens their business, even popular Latino street vendors, who they say are dirty, according to the study.

Differences to Overcome

Latinos, on the other hand, often love the trucks that sell colorful fruits and vegetables that remind them of home.

But nearly 80% of Latinos said Korean-owned liquor stores were a problem in the community, according to the study. Most said they should be shut down or moved out of the neighborhood.

Diaz-Veizades said she sees such disagreements as natural, something to be discussed openly as the communities come closer together.

“I would say the relationship is one of learning to live together as neighbors and learning to respect each others’ presence and space,” said Angela Sanbrano, executive director of the Central American Resource Center. “I think what’s lacking is more opportunities for the communities to come together.”

But those opportunities are growing. Castillo has three brothers, two of whom are married to Korean women, who have given birth to Korean Latino children.

“When you speak Korean,” Castillo says, the “world opens up” for such relationships. “If you speak to them in English, or something different, they don’t accept it.”

Unless, of course, she speaks Spanish.