Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean
Subject: Re: This post has no title
From: ghiselli@vax1.umkc.edu
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 20:02:28 GMT
Organization: University of Missouri - Kansas City

In article <14AUG199215340985@juliet.caltech.edu>, tychay@juliet.caltech.edu (Chay, Terrence Y.) writes:

> 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.

       [The L.A. Times article text deleted, but should be read.]

The following is exerpted from the San Francisco Chronicle, August 19, 1992.
(p. D6)

		MENTAL SCARS REMAIN FOR L.A. RIOT VICTIMS
	      Wounded Still Plagued by Simmering Bitterness

              		by Ashley Dudd

	Three months ago James Kang was a typical high school student in
Glendale.  Now the 18-year old Korean American seems lost and bitter, still
struggling to make sense of an attack that turned out to be a horrible mistake.

	Kang's hip was shattered by a rifle round that mangled his insides as
it ricocheted in his body.  A bullet in the neck killed his close friend,
18-year old Edward Song Lee, in the same attack on a Korea-town sidewalk.

	When police finally sorted out the shooting, they discovered that Kang
and Lee had been shot by fellow Koreans who mistook them for looters in the
confusion of the riots.

	"I still can't forgive for this," Kang says, sinking into a couch in
his family's apartment.  "It didn't need to happen this way."

	After three months, Kang is still tormented by the attack.  He has
undergone two operations and still limps.  He has lost weight.  In his old
clothes he looks skeletal.

	As he recovers, Kang is spending much of his free time as a volunteer,
helping distribute food to residents of Koreatown hard hit by the riots.  He
finds some solace in aiding his community.

	But he has been unable to forget those few, brief minutes of shooting
and the sight of his friend dying in front of him.

	"I have hatred for a lot of people now," Kang said.  "That's all I
have is hatred and anger."


> 
>   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!