I have heard time and time again about Koreatown. "It's a rough area" "Don't go there after dark" "If you go there, get this Korean barbecue" and "If you go there; bring someone Korean". Serendipitously enough, in my dealings with various UCLA geography classes I had the pleasure of befriending Jaeseok Cho, a South Korean native who happily obliged to tour me around Koreatown to acquire some delicious soon tofu.
As we drove toward K-town, I couldn't help but notice the apparent lack of "seedy looking buildings". Sure enough, we were in Koreatown our very first sighting of a Koran sign.
Now it was official. However, I still wasn't seeing the characteristic shadiness; the sketchy, raw K-town that I had heard so much about.
There were still posh pseudo-strip malls with wedding boutiques and ambiguous wholistic alkaline water shops, but we pressed on.
We finally came across our first evidence of what I've heard of as the center of Korea town. Alas, an artifact suggesting whoever put this sign up doesn't intend on spending the money to have it cleaned. That or whoever it's supposed to work on doesn't care about a little scribbly graffiti.
We finally found our destination, The BCD Tofu House: a glorious, 24 hour dispensary of hot soon tofu, Korean barbecue, a-grade side-dishes all inside unexpectedly posh interior for any all nite diner to brandish. This is the turn just before going into the restaurant-I can't help but notice how within the same block, I saw shoddy-looking graffiti on proprietary signs, wedding-planner annexes and the obligatory "let's-improve-the-urban-visual-landscape-with-a-mid-avenue-botanical-island" and needless to say, it looked brand-spankin'-new. Maybe K-town is in the middle of a district-wide refurbishing? Only time will tell.
Sooooo our spread was awesome. We ate and drank and talked and Jaeseok imparted some much needed history and stories about South Korea to me. Apparently back in 1992 during the Rodney King riots, the mob pushed their way into Korea Town and were ransacking stores against a formidable small militia of Korean-Americans. Since joining the military is mandatory in South Korea the shop owners defended their livelihoods with fervor and even turned Gaju market (now an abandoned lot, soon to be a shopping center by the same owner) into a stronghold where they waited out the riots in defense because well, Koreans from South Korea "know how to shoot" from the army.
This is what remains of the Gaju market and its denizens. Interestingly enough, it appears as though Koreatown is going through a revitalization (thanks to Wikipedia) but also the Gaju website where they ask us to
"Please be patient with [them] as [they] expand
and grow into [their] next phase in providing [their] community with the best
shopping experience." This is their website. There is a backlash of community outreach, it seems, and an effort to change the reputation of Koreatown for good from a place of inner-city poverty and crime to a flourishing community where families can live safer than ever before.
Kling, Olin and Poster referred to communities that spring up as a result of suburbs becoming oddly sovereign self-sufficient communities where residents don't even have to leave their neighborhoods to find work and other bubbles of community. Koreatown, in whatever stage it's in, is on its way to being a post suburban community. Granted, it is more urban than a "peripheral" community, it is certainly building its infrastructure for the better (hence the mid-lane islands).
As we drove away, we saw the telltale signs of decrepitude in whichever form we wished as well as an entire street dedicated exclusively furniture annexes. An ambiguous "ethical drugstore" and the infamous Harbin Deer Antlers Trading co. which (yes) actually has a large selection of deer antlers. The Hanmi bank though, is a very popular bank which doesn't actually exist in Korea. It's a completely separate faction that functions only for Korean-Americans. Another example of the adaptable and formidable power of new groups arriving in a new place and changing that place with what they brought from home. A sort of democratic modeling of ones new environment. Hopefully in the future, there will be less scribbly graffiti and more places for solidarity to blossom.
