UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS - SIX MONTHS LATER : Separate Lives / DEALING WITH RACE IN L.A. : Koreans Confront a Need for Change : The need to make connections with other communities has become apparent in the months since the riots, but their own community is divided in many ways.

These are agonizing times of self-reflection for Koreans in America.

From the dimly lit bars of Los Angeles’ Koreatown to the campuses of East Coast universities, the same questions are asked again and again: Where did we go wrong? Why were we targets of such fury? What is our future in this country? Where do we go from here?

Not only did they see their hard-won achievements reduced to ashes overnight, but they were forced to confront the reality that a society they believed was humane and just had turned on them.

“The economic holocaust we experienced has affected every Korean in America and elsewhere,” said K. W. Lee, editor of the Korea Times’ English edition in Los Angeles, whose observations of Korean-American life span half a century. “The L.A. riots gave us a shocking recognition that we must make connections with other communities.”

But that will not be easy for a community plagued by contentious internal divisions, lack of leadership, bitter generational conflicts and an apparent unawareness of how its customs and insular ways have been seen by outsiders.

Chong-Sik Lee, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on Korean nationalism, said Koreans must simply become more savvy and consider how their behavior may be interpreted by those unfamiliar with their culture.

“They work all the time, hardly spending any money,” he said of Korean business owners. “When they accumulate a little money, one of the first things they do is buy a nice car, then an expensive home.”

But this materialistic quest--mainly a way to show off to other Koreans--has had an unintended side effect. “When blacks see Korean merchants drive a nice car, they say: ‘They’re making money off of us. Those damn Koreans are sucking our blood,’ ” said Chong-Sik Lee. “What blacks don’t know is how much sacrifice Koreans make to buy their cars and homes. They don’t know that they’re killing themselves to keep up with the Kims.”

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It may be stretching the imagination for the average Southern Californian to see a link between the behavior of today’s Korean-American community and ancient Korea. But the connection is real--and difficult to overcome. Many of the barriers to the community’s assimilation into the mainstream are rooted in a value system predating the founding of the United States by more than 400 years.

Until the 20th Century, a caste-like system of the upper-class yangban and lower-class ssangnom was practiced. Even today, a deeply rooted hierarchal way of viewing the world is pervasive in thinking, behavior and language.

“I’ll be 40 years old in a few years, and I’m the father of three. But I’m forever young to the elders in the community, who still look at me like a kid,” complained political consultant Charles Kim, an unsuccessful candidate for the Cerritos City Council in 1990. Kim, a child of Koreatown who coined the term “1.5 generation” to refer to Koreans who came here as children, founded the Korean American Coalition a decade ago with attorneys T. S. Chung and Duncan Lee.

To Koreans, one’s level of education, social standing and age matter greatly. So when two Koreans interact, they quickly size up each other’s status with a finely developed Korean sixth sense--called nunchi-- and act accordingly.

American-born Koreans fail this test. Often they speak no Korean, know little about their ancestral culture, customs or history and commit such gaffes as failing to preface an elder’s name with a title.

These seemingly minor errors become irritants that impede cooperation between young and old, professionals and shopkeepers, even between Korean-born and American-born.

Young-Soon Han, whose Crenshaw District market was burned to the ground on April 29, expressed the view of many Korean immigrants: “We just can’t communicate with the American-born generation. They seem to have nothing in common with us except for their appearance. It’s so disappointing.”

For example, Han said that after the unrest, victims were invited to seek counseling by a social agency operated by younger Korean-Americans. “I went there four times and came to a disappointing conclusion that these people were more interested in counting the number of people who came, so they can get more funding for their organization, than helping us.”

Such distrust has left the Korean-American community unable to forge a common vision and attain the political muscle that should come with its large population and financial resources.

Jai Lee Wong, the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission’s Asian affairs specialist, says the community’s elders must make room for younger leaders.

The first generation, she said, doesn’t understand (American-style) politics. “They never criticize elected officials when they meet with them. They always bow and say, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ They give money to politicians, but they never ask for anything in return. Younger people may suggest that they do, but they won’t listen.”

Said Yohng-Sohk Choe, a community elder who serves on the Wilshire Community Police Council: “Our community has to unite and work together--young and old, side by side. I see the difference in the attitudes of Koreans before April 29 and after April 29. There is a new consciousness.”

But more than generational differences must be resolved. For the community to make inroads into the mainstream, many Koreans may have to change their fiercely individualistic nature.

To a Korean, compromise--the essence of democracy--is viewed as weakness. And while this stubbornness has historically served Koreans well in preserving their homeland’s cultural identity, it has worked against their efforts to gain acceptance in this country.

“When three Koreans get together, they establish three organizations,” said poet Ko Won, who teaches English at UC Riverside and has lived in the United States since the 1960s. “There is no doubt that, individually, Koreans excel. But they have a hard time coming together as a group.”

In interviews with The Times, dozens of Korean-Americans from coast to coast said they must join forces to create an agenda and then establish a nationwide organization to lobby for it.

“In Sacramento, we (Korean-Americans) don’t even exist,” said Bong-Hwan Kim, executive director of the Korean Youth Center, the biggest Korean-American social service agency in the nation. “Our only chance is to work with others.”

Korean-Americans now are talking of establishing a national Korean-American legal defense fund and a national museum as focal points to bring people together.

“One of the benefits of the riots is that it forced different groups within Southern California’s Korean-American community to support each other,” said Young-Oak Kim, a Los Angeles native whose immigrant parents ran a grocery at the corner of Figueroa and Temple streets in the 1920s and ‘30s. Kim, a retired U.S. Army colonel who has been active in the community for decades, said: “I find groups that normally do not work together reaching out. I like what I see.”

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Already, there are signs that Korean-Americans in Los Angeles also have begun to reach beyond themselves. In recent weeks, community leaders have:

- Formed an interagency council to bring different community organizations under one umbrella to help riot victims.

- Held a children’s health care day in Koreatown, during which 15 Korean-American physicians donated service to predominantly Latino youngsters.

- Asked Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams to include Korean-Americans in the formation of advisory committees for eight police divisions.

- Stepped up efforts to sponsor cultural and educational trips for African-Americans while initiating a literary program during which Korean-American poets perform readings in black churches.

There is also renewed interest in revamping Koreatown. Unlike Little Tokyo and Chinatown--developments that were planned with the help of the Community Redevelopment Agency--it evolved bit by bit as Korean entrepreneurs bought property where they could afford it.

The result is that most of Koreatown is a jumbled mixture of storefront shops, small shopping plazas, restaurants, supermarkets, hotels and car lots with no plaza or a center.

Urban planner H. Cooke Sunoo, a third-generation Korean-American, sees much potential in Koreatown. He is challenging community leaders to help turn it into a vibrant urban center attractive not only to Koreans but to all Angelenos and tourists.

Sunoo, who heads the city’s Hollywood Redevelopment Project, has suggested that a new plaza could be built to capitalize on the fact that Metrorail will pass through Koreatown.

Whether the Korean-American community, had it been more unified and focused, could have escaped the vast destruction of the riots is, of course, impossible to answer. But one thing is clear: The unrest was a wake-up call, shaking an entire community into the realization that its future depends on the difficult task of creating a new way of life.

“We have to accept the proposition that we cannot live in isolation,” added K. W. Lee. “If we do not accept and carry out this proposition, we will find ourselves swept up in more firestorms. This is a lesson for us.”

Koreans in Los Angeles

The Korean-American community in greater Los Angeles is at a crossroads, with the riots rekindling fears and resentments. Here is a glance at the Korean community based on a Los Angeles Times poll of more than 750 adults reached by telephone.

Virtually all the adults in the county’s Korean community (98%) were born in Korea; almost half have lived in the United States for less than a decade.

How many years have you lived in the United States on a permanent basis? Less Than 5 Years: 29% 6-10 Years: 31% 11-20 Years: 34% 21+ Years: 6% *

Are your business and financial transactions conducted mostly with Koreans or non-Koreans? Mostly non-Koreans: 24% Equally: 26% Mostly Koreans: 19% Exclusively Koreans: 16% Don’t know: 3% Exclusively non-Korean: 12%