Nuclear Test Turns Gaze to Distant Homeland

Concern percolating for weeks through the local Korean American community came to a head Tuesday as news of North Korea’s purported test of a nuclear weapon sparked anger, worry -- and a small measure of hope -- in Koreatown markets and cafes.

The news dominated the front pages of local Korean-language newspapers and television news programs in Los Angeles, which has the largest urban population of ethnic Koreans of any region outside the Korean peninsula.

“This is a very dangerous time for our country,” said the Rev. Joanne Kim, associate pastor of World Vision Church in Porter Ranch. “Even if you don’t have family in Korea, it is our country, our home. We listen to the news and we worry.”

Some Korean emigres said the news seemed to provoke more angst here than it did in South Korea.

“Maybe Korea is used to living with the threat of war, but it was a shock to Korean Americans,” Jonathan Kim of Arcadia said. “We feel very concerned about our country.”

Despite repeated threats by North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong Il, “we didn’t expect this kind of thing,” said Kim, who came here from Korea 25 years ago. “We are shocked to see it go this far.”

Some are angry at South Korea as well, blaming the conciliatory approach taken by the democratically elected president of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, who has sent aid to help relieve periodic famines in totalitarian North Korea.

“We spent a lot of money to help them, money that was supposed to be used for food. And they used that money to make nuclear weapons,” said Kunyoung Shon, a sports broadcaster here. “We support them because they are hungry and this is what we get.

“It makes me very angry,” said Shon, who spent three years in the South Korean military before coming here 13 years ago. “The older generation in South Korea suffered so much” during the Korean War. “Now there is this danger of another war. People are frightened. And we are worried about our families there.”

Some hope North Korea’s defiant gesture will galvanize other countries to isolate the rogue nation. “Now that they recognize the threat, maybe different nations will come together for peace,” said Arcadia’s Kim. “Maybe this is what it will take.”

But others fear the situation is so volatile that efforts to punish North Korea could push an irrational Kim Jong II to target South Korea for nuclear attack.

“I’m worried about my brother, and my mother, who lives very near the border” with North Korea, said Yun Soo Kim, a photographer with the Korea Herald Business newspaper.

Seoul, where 25% of the country’s population lives, is only an hour from the North Korean border. Family members there feel betrayed and vulnerable, Yun Soo Kim said.

“You hear the word ‘shocked’ a lot when people here talk about the situation,” said Maureen O’Crowley, marketing manager for Los Angeles’ Korean Tourism Organization. “What I think they’re really feeling is profound disappointment.”

North and South Koreans “are the same people, they’re brothers,” O’Crowley said. Maybe South Koreans “thought that would carry a little weight. ‘We’ll be nice to them and coax them out of this.’ ... They tried so hard.”

In some ways, the South Koreans are more apt to take the news in stride than their countrymen here, she said. “After all, they’ve been living with their northern neighbors making noise since the 1950s.

“The Koreans here have pulled out of it and are looking back, thinking more in an American way,” Crowley said. “They look at a country that’s divided and can’t come together. That’s a painful thing. It’s their homeland that’s at risk.”

More than 1,500 Korean Americans met to pray for their native country earlier this month at the Glory Church of Jesus Christ, which meets in the old Grand Olympic Auditorium near downtown.

The special two-hour service drew parishioners from more than a dozen churches, “worried not just about the bomb, but the whole situation between North and South Korea,” said church secretary Lisa Chang.

“The general concern was that prayer is really needed among Koreans,” Chang said. “We felt that South Koreans don’t feel it as much as we feel it over here. Maybe they’ve been brainwashed.... Or maybe they feel that they don’t really need it because the United States is protecting them.”

Koreans here have no such illusions, said Kayla Lee, who immigrated here three years ago.

Here, she said, “people are angry because there has been so much talking, so much hope” that North Korea would respond reasonably. “Now, most of the people don’t want any more talking. Now, we just pray.”

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sandy.banks@latimes.com