From: tychay@juliet.caltech.edu (Chay, Terrence Y.)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean
Subject: This post has no title
Date: 14 Aug 92 23:34:00 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41


soc.culture.korean'ers!

  The end of this post will include an article taken from the LA Times after
the third day of the riots.  It's a long article, but it has a nice touch at 
the end, so you might want to read it. =]
  The koreans = violent hypothesis might also be interpreted from the behavior
of ROK troups in the Vietnam War.  From people I have talked to who met ROK
soldiers in that war, the impression seems to be that they were extreemly good
soldiers but somewhat harsher than US troops.  All this is understandable when
one considers the situation, but the possible misinterpretation _does_ exist.

Andrew Kim:
  For some reason, my node did not get your FAQ post until well after I had
written mine.  Please consider my post as a vote for YES on Should we have a 
faq?  BTW: You can take the Braves, but then I'll take the Yankees. (It may seem
like a ripoff now, but wait until Steinbrenner dies.  I am sick of "Battle of
the Bays" and would like to see a "Subway Series" ;-) .)

All that "logic" stuff- my contribution:
  "Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientist
   understand its branches but not its roots.  Science does not need
   mysticism and mysticism does not need science, but man needs both."
                                    -Fritjof Capra, _The Tao of Physics_

this is my .sig, deal with it.

          -terrychay
                 TYCHAY@CITJULIE.BITNET
                 tychay@juliet.caltech.edu

-----------------------begin article--------------------
from The Los Angeles Times (Washington Edition- Microfilm)
     Saturday, 2 May 1992, page A1 and A10

"Looters, Merchants Put Koreatown Under the Gun"
--Violence: Lacking confidence in the police, employees and others armed
           themselves to protect mini-mall
By Ashley Dunn, Times Staff Writer.

  In the shadow of a flaming mini-mall near the corner of 5th and Western,
behind a barricade of luxury sedans and battered grocery trucks they built
Firebase Koreatown.
  Richard Rhee, owner of the supermarket on the corner, had watched as roving
bands of looters ransacked and burned Korean owned business on virtually every
block.
  But here it would be different.
  "Burn this down after 33 years?" asked Rhee a survivor of the Korean War, the
Watts riots, and three decades of business in Los Angeles.  "They don't know
how hard I've worked.  This is my market and I'm going to protect it."
  From the rooftop of his supermarket, a group of Koreans armed with shotguns
and automatic weapons peered onto the smokey streets.  Scores of others carrying
steel pipes, pistols, and automatic rifles, paced through the darkened parking
lot in anticipation of an assault by looters.
  "It's just like war."  Rhee said, surveying the makeshift command.  "I'll
shoot and worry about the law later."
  From tiny liquor stores in South Central Los Angeles to the upscale boutiques
in Mid-Wilshire.  Korean store owners have turned their pastel-colored mini
malls into fortresses against the looter's tide.
  For many store owners, the riots have become a watershed in the struggle for
the survival of their community.
  They have become vigilantes, embracing a new brutal code of order that has
inflamed the fragile relationship they had worked hard to forge between
themselves and their black and Latino customers.
  For some Koreans, the violence has sparked a renewed call for concilation
between the races.  But for others, the world has become framed in a blind and
vindictive anger.
  "We have to stay here," said Dong He Ku, a student at Los Angeles City College
who went to kelp defend Rhee's California Mrket.  "All the victims are always
Koreans. The [looters], they are like beasts.  They are not men."
  Korean shop owners and their supporters have lashed out at police, saying 
they have begged for protection from vandals, who have left a swath of Koreatown
in ashes.  Now many have decided to fight for themselves.

  "Where are the police?  Where are the soldiers?"  asked John Chu, who was
vacationing in Los Angeles when the riots broke out and rished to help Rhee
defend the California Market.  "We are not going to lose again.  We have no
choice but to defend ourselves."
  Koreans from throught the area have rushed to Koreatown spearheaded by a small
group of elite Korean marine veterans, heeding a call put out on Korean language
radio stations for volunteer security guards.
  "The police cannot help us now," said Tony Ji, a Korean-born seafood seller
from El Monte who camed to the California Market with his brother after work on
Thursday."
  Even with the guns they seemed at times overwelmed by crowds of looters.  For
hours Thursday, Jay Rhee, no relation to Richard Rhee, and other employees
at the mini-mall at Santa Monica and Vermont, several miles north of Koreatown
fought a back-and-forth battle with several hundred looters who surged into the
parking lot, retreated when police arrived and returned shortly after the police
left.  Jay Rhee estimates that he and others fired 500 shots into the ground and
the air.  "We have lost our faith in the police." he said.  Where were you when
we needed you."
  One of the largest armed camps in Koreatown was at the California Market.  On
the first night after the verdicts were returned in the tria of the four 
officers charged in the beating of Rodney King, Richard Rhee, the market store
owner, posted himself in the parking lot with about 20 armed employees.
  They barricaded the entrance to the store with pallets of bagged rice and
boxed cabbage.  A long stack of shopping carts covered the front windows.
  The first night they had no problems.  But Thurday brough a disastrous round
of looting that raged all around them.  By late afternoon a fire broke out at a
mini-mall a half-block away.  They watched for hours from the parking lot as it
burned to the ground.
  The shooting began as evening fell Thursday.  The first carload of rioters was
repulsed with a burst of gunfire into the air that littered the parking lot with
empty cartridges.  They frightened off a second and a third carload of shooters.
  As curfew fell around 7:30 p.m., the looters dissappeared, leaving only Rhee's
men at the California Market and the group of neighbors still trying to put out
the fire in the nearby mini-mall.
  Late in the evening another Koreatown shop owner called warning Rhee that a
carload of looters was heading their way.  The men raced to a coner of the lot
to meet them head on but the car never came.
  "This scares me," said the haggard Rhee, who had not slept since the verdict.
  After the false alarm, the night settled into an uneasy calm as the traffic
on Western Avenue dwindled to a trickle,  The guards on the roof came down to
the parking lot to drink soda and eat pastry.
  "It's quieter tonight."  Rhee said Thursday from his post at one corner of the
parking lot.  "I think the curfew has affected it a lot."
  The men relaxed, although they continued to receive reports of violence
through the night.
  One Korean merchant drove by and told them a Korean was killed near 3rd Street
and Hobart Boulevard.
  The men huddled around a radio tuned to a Korean-language station.  The 
station reported 200 police uniforms had been stolen.  "So we must check to be
sure," the announcer said.  "We cannot trust a person just because they are
wearing a uniform."
  Another report of a Korean restaurant on fire in Reseda was broadcast and the
station announcer asked the owner to repond.  The men grow grim.

  At 10:30 p.m. the calm is shattered as several police cars pull up and a group
of officers barrels out, leveled weapons at the Koreans.
  "Get your hands up!" an officer yelled.  "Hands up! Stand up! Hands up!"
  The Koreans stood frozen for a moment, uncertain what the officers wanted.
  "Hands up!" the officer yelled again as a floodlight from a police car
scanned the group.
  For a moment, the two groups stood motionless before each other.
  "Wait," an officer finally said.  "This isn't it.  They're all Koreans."
  The officers returned to their cars and sped off.
  The Koreans chucked in relief.  A few minutes later a single squad car pulled
up next to the parking lot and stopped.
  Richard Rhee stared at the black Los Angeles police officer at the wheel.
  "William, is that you?"  Rhee asked.
  The officer nodded and smiled back.
  "Stay here with us." Rhee said.
  The officer smiled and shook his head.  "I wish I could." he said before he
drove off into the night.

Times staff writer Laurie Becklund contributed to this story.
------------------------End Article--------------------------

boy are my fingers tired!
Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean