My Korea Town.
-by Jewel Hana Chung
In all honesty, I don’t know if remember much about Korea Town. I grew up in
Orange County, LA for the first eight of my years but soon moved away to South
Korea. When 15 years old, I had to revisit a map of California to figure out where I
grew up for the first eight years of my life. This neighborhood at one point was the
only world that I knew, yet I knew so little. When I returned to the States a couple of
years later, I found myself trying to assimilate into an entirely new place in the
suburbs of the Midwest in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
When asked to reflect upon my relationship to LA’s Korea Town, I googled “K
Town” and found some familiar California roofs and buildings that I see on every
other block of Cerritos, CA. Realizing that this was not enough for me to reflect, I did
the second-best thing to do when I’m confused: I called my Umma. I asked her if I
have ever been to Korea Town and she said, “of course” followed by a chuckle.
Somewhere deep-down memory lane I can squeeze out a snippet of me spilling some
oh-deang while eating some nice warm soondubu at BCD next to my oppa playing his
GameBoy.
This is part of my story. Korea Town has not been part of my present nor future. I
don’t know if I feel sad, happy, confused, or all of it and those in between. Before I
committed myself to writing this piece, I doubted myself and wondered if I am
qualified enough to talk about this place: Korea Town, a place so distant, while
memories of it snuggled into the stories of my upbringing.
But one thing is for sure: I am not attached to a singular place. It takes an extra step or
rather long moment (with some googling) for me to familiarize and understand my
memories to a place, like Korea Town, that I’ve always known of growing up. When
thinking about place, life as an Asian American immigrant in the United States has
alluded to an invisible yet firm identity of a perpetual foreigner. I am told that this is
not my home while certainly this is all that I know.
Place has never meant a piece of land that my family owns nor a beach house that has
been passed down by my great grandparents. It rather always looked like both a
familiar and foreign place where my family would go searching for the best Korean
food in town. Or familiarizing myself with the local grocery stores, while learning
how to pronounce “Meijer.”
As I scrap pieces together to patch up the gaps of my education on Asian American
history, a recent event that came into my view in relation to Korea Town was the 1992
LA Riots.
These are some things I learned. The death of Rodney King and the acquitted verdict
of his death was broadcasted all over the world. Only two years prior to this, a Korean
business owner shot Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old African American girl, in her
liquor store. In response, there was a communal grieving and physical mourning that
took shape in the form of protests. LAPD decided to guard and stand along the white
suburbs. A ‘strategic’ placement of ‘control.’ The next closest neighborhood was K-
Town. Soon all over the news were images of African Americans pulling Korean
Americans out of their cars, beating them up, and burning down their shops. In
response, Korean immigrant men were on top of their shops with rifles, as all Korean
men are drafted in their early twenties, ready to protect their shops. And amongst this
multi-layered crisis, leaders from African American and Korean American
communities gathered to discuss how to move forward. And one result of the
renaming of ’92 LA Riots to 4/29 that reframed and created a civic motto: We’re all in
this together.
I never learned how deeply Korean Americans were involved in this event. Racial
discrimination was not much of a topic while growing up. We had other urgent things
to make sense of, like adapting to my new school and figuring out how to quickly pass
by my puberty. Therefore, this was not part of my childhood narrative nor my
worldview. And so, what? Does this even have anything to do with me 30 years later
in 2022? I’m only 21 for heaven’s sake!
I do not attempt to answer this question in this one sitting nor desire to. But what I do
know is that I don’t quite find myself in Korea Town—perhaps occasionally visiting
the Korean Embassy (there’s too much traffic, anyways). I find plenty of amazing
Korean food outside of LA’s Korea Town. Then again, when I walk down the streets
of any city in America, I see neighborhoods divided racially. And accordingly, I sit
under large shades from trees in one while I find myself passing by liquor stores and
small streets on another.
This is my place. Or rather, a place, that looks, smells, feels, tastes like that for a
specific reason. And when I learn more about these reasons, I find myself not being
okay with what I find. I’m not here to conclude this question for with you with my
answer, but all I know is that I begin to ask questions. “How did you feel when you
were seeing Roof Koreans on TV?” to my parents or “What did you learn about the
’92 LA riots growing up?” to my African American childhood friend. This begins
conversations and hopefully informs the way that I want to continue living life
alongside them.
This is my place. And I deserve to take up my space. On this commitment to a life of
asking questions about the ‘ordinary’ places and things I see, I find myself learning.
Learning how to better engage with my myself, my neighbors I walk by on a stroll in
nice LA weather, and strangers I run into when running up to my favorite boba spot. It
is okay that I do not know everything about the places I’ve been. But it’s not okay for
me to ignore it.
So, for me, a 1.8 generation Korean American woman in her early twenties, the
history of my neighborhoods or the streets I occasionally walk has everything to do
with me.
To learn more:
Roof Koreans: How Civilians Defended Koreatown from Racist Violence During the 1992 LA
Riots | The Libertarian Institute
How the killing of Latasha Harlins changed South L.A., long before Black Lives Matter - Los
Angeles Times (latimes.com)
The Lessons of 4/29: How the LA Riots Transformed the Korean-American Community | Under
the Hollywood Sign (wordpress.com)
Tags: 4/29, LA Riots, 1992, Korea Town, Korean American, Latasha Harlins, Rodney
King, Roof Koreans
Rest in Peace.