Before Saigu: The Church Avenue Boycott from the Korean Owners of ‘Red Apple’

At the center of the 1990 Church Avenue boycott in Brooklyn were the two Korean migrant owners – Bong Jae Jang and his brother Bong Ok – of the Red Apple grocery shop. Following an altercation between the owners and 18-year-old Haitian resident Jiselaine Felissaint, the Red Apple shop became the unfortunate, almost-cathartic focal point for the disenfranchised African American community of Flatbush.

The following article from the Korean Times English Edition, written by Sophia Kyung Kim, takes a look at how the boycott disrupted and affected the Jang brothers’ lives that, for many Korean immigrants in the post-1965 Immigrant Act era, was more complicated than they originally thought.

An American Tragedy

By: Kim, Sophia Kyung (August 15, 1990)

Brooklyn New York
Brooklyn shopkeeper weathers a storm of racial hatred

Bong Jae and Bong Ok Jang were once just two nameless, faceless Korean greengrocers slaving to earn a living in the mean streets of New York City. But a hassle with a customer over $1 in mid-January triggered a boycott of their Brooklyn neighborhood store-the Red Apple-by African American activists, mostly outsiders.

Suddenly the two brothers were catapulted into the national limelight.

Their plight has once again focused media attention on the tension between African Americans and Korean merchants. Entangled in a Kafkaesque turmoil, the Jangs are moved around like pawns in a chess game by politicians, African American activists, Korean community leaders, the media and legal and law-enforcement systems. The two have endured more in six months than most people do in a lifetime.

Financial ruin. Criminal prosecution. Death threats. Marital stress. A multi-million- dollar lawsuit. Family separation. Lifethreatening sickness. Media invasion. Through it all, the two brothers have somehow kept their store open for more than six months.

Maybe it’s the immigrant spirit The Jangs like to call it “Korean guts.”

An end to the boycott seems nowhere in sight. But the brothers have no plans to shut down. They believe they have done nothing wrong. They are standing up for their rights.

“I cannot close my store or it will mean that I gave in to injustice,” says the older Bong Jae Jang, a lanky man who weighs 152 pounds, stands 5 feet 9 inches tall and speaks in broken English.

“If the boycott affected only us, we might have given up, but it affects all Korean merchants in New York City,” says his younger brother, Bong Ok, a stout man with a thick mop of curly black hair. “If we close, other Korean businesses would be in jeopardy. We’ll fight it all the way, even if it takes two years. We will never close,” he said.

Bong Jae Jang arrived in New York City from Korea one cold winter day in 1983. He was a dirt farmer’s son and an ex-construction laborer who earned money in the scorching deserts of Saudi Arabia. Like countless compatriots before him, he was determined to try his luck at pursuing the American Dream.

That dream was also tangible to his younger sibling. Bong Ok. He followed his “hyung” (older brother) to America a year later.

But today their dreams of the good life have turned into a nightmare. Since January, about 30 African Americans-watched by police officers-have been picketing daily in front of their store and another nearby Koreanowned store, Church Fruits. They have been harassing customers through bullhorns, imploring them to spend their money elsewhere.

The boycott was precipitated by an incident on Jan. 18, when Jiselaine Felissaint, a 46-year-old Haitian woman, accused the older Jang of beating her after trying to search her purse for stolen merchandise. Felissaint has slapped Red Apple with a $6 million lawsuit.

Her allegations are “all lies,” says Bong Jae, 36. He wasn’t even at the store when the incident occurred, he says. In fact, he had just returned from the barber when the police arrived and arrested him.

According to Bong Ok, Felissaint bought $3 worth of merchandise, but gave his cashier wife only $2. When she was asked to pay the full price, she spat on his wife’s face, threw peppers and cussed at her. The customer had to be restrained when she began throwing store merchandise all over the floor, he says.

According to Deputy Inspector Robert Noonan of the New York Police Department’s? 70th Precinct, Felissaint received no serious physical injury and had only a scratch on her face. Prior to the incident involving Felissaint, his store, located on Church Avenue and East 19th Street, had no trouble with customers.

“We provided good service to all,” he says. “We come from a merchant family in Korea. We were taught that the customer is king.”

The pickets-many of them activists from outside the community-have been hurling racial slurs at the two brothers on a daily basis. They have threatened customers who venture into Red Apple.

Such tactics have had an impact, as gross revenues have plummeted from $15,000 a week to $1,000. Seven employees have been laid off. The brothers have had difficulty paying the store’s monthly $3,100 rent. Their legal fees have already surpassed $24,000.

The store has been able to stay open because the Korean Produce Association of New York has been donating about $7,000 a month since the boycott started.

Private donations, ranging from $5-$ 100, have also been coming in since the publicity. “It’s comforting to know that there are people on our side,” the younger Jang said. “The Korean community has supported us a great deal. We are thankful for all they have done and are still doing for us.”

Ethnic pride also seems to be at stake. “I want to show the boycotters that we Koreans are not weak. We are never weak. Do you know that Koreans have guts?” the older Jang asks. But even he acknowledges that the boycott has tattered him emotionally and physically. At the urging of his family, Bong Jae rested for five days at a health clinic seven hours from Brooklyn.

“I was in deep agony over why black people would do this to me, why they hated me,” he says. “I was enraged over city officials. They are paid by taxpayers’ money, but they lied and seemed to be doing nothing to help me. I couldn’t control my temper. When I hear the boycotters making noise outside, I would get nervous, have headaches. People suggested that I be hospitalized so I could forget everything and maintain my sanity.”

Against his doctor’s advice, Bong Jae returned to work July 5, immediately after his release.

“My counselor told me to rest, but I cannot,” he explains. “If I don’t physically show up, I will have lost in the eyes of the boycotters.”

Both high school graduates, the Jang brothers were born and raised in Tongduchon, a small town outside of Seoul. In between army service, the older Jang harvested crops on his father’s farm and peddled “yontang” (briquet coal) with his father.

Adapting to life in America wasn’t easy. The two brothers worked 16hour days at Korean mom-and-pop stores. They cleaned fish, pressed clothes and stocked grocery shelves.

After six months Bong Ok almost gave up, to return to Korea. But his brother persuaded him to stay. The two soon managed to save enough money to rent a grocery store. Self-exploitation was the name of the game. They and their wives had toiled 16 to 18 hours thereevery day fortwo years.

In June 1988, the brothers pooled their savings of more than six years and took out loans from friends to purchase Red Apple for $70,000. Their former employers also helped by giving them credit and discounts on merchandise.

The clock never stops ticking for the two brothers. For them, there is neither day nor night. Before the boycott, a typical day at Red Apple for Bong Jae would dawn at 11 p.m. He would drive 1 1/2 hours to the New York Terminal Produce Market in the Bronx to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. He would then catch a nap inside his truck outside his store for an hour or two until his younger brother arrived at 8 a.m. to open the store. The two would then unload and arrange the produce on the display shelves.

Breakfast is usually a bowl of instant ramen, the staple breakfast formany Korean greengrocers. The older Jang’s day would end at 4 p.m. He would go home to catch four or five hours of sleep. Meanwhile, his younger brother would continue operating the store until 8 p.m.

The boycott couldn’t have happened at a worse time, say the Jangs. “We were paying people back as we had promised,” Bong Ok says. “Now we are in financial disaster.”

Then in April, doctors found a tumor growing on his 2 1/2-yearold son’s brain. The toddler underwent brain surgery and was hospitalized for 26 days. In the midst of the boycott he and his wife were “emotionally devastated,” says Bong Ok.

“I was absolutely tormented. I couldn’t help but wonder why we had to be victims of racial discrimination by blacks? Why now, when we were almost making it?”

Jang says that his son’s prognosis is good, but he must still receive medical check-ups twice a month.

The brothers say the first two months of the boycott were the most difficult. They had never experienced anything like it. At one time, as many as 300 demonstrators were outside the store.

“Many times I broke down and cried,” says Bong Ok.

The two received so many death threats that they had to disconnect their home phones. The older Jang had to even send his wife to stay with her sister in Dallas. He was initially alarmed by the death threats, says the younger Jang. But the huge volume of calls soon made him numb. Now if callers threaten to burn down his store, Bong Ok tells them, “If you burn down my store, I am going to thank you. I am going to get $1 million in insurance and move to California.”

The boycotters and their sympathizers have thrown stones at the Red Apple. Windows have been damaged. The owners’ tires have also been punctured. At times, he has been tempted to physically retaliate against the boycotters Bong Jae acknowledges. But he’s managed to restrain himself so far.

“I could fix the punctured tire with $8, $10, but if I hurt them, which sometimes I feel like doing, then I would be the loser,” he says. “I want to show them how long we Koreans can endure the situation.”

As time passes, he gains more strength, the younger Jang explains. It became clearer to him that his family “hadn’t done anything wrong or bad to deserve such hardship.”

The boycott has given the two brothers lots of free time to read. Two months after the boycott, the older Jang did something he had never done before: He began reading about African American history and the biographies and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

“I tried to learn about how they became leaders, how blacks came to this country,” Bong Jae says. “Under such difficult circumstances, the blacks are trying to survive and they have their roots deep in this country.” Community support seems to be tipping the scales in favor of the grocers. The Jangs know it, too.

“I cannot let my supporters down by closing the store,” the older Jang says. “As long as my black customers want me, support me, I will never close this store.” Many letters of support have been coming from in from all over the country-Miami, Chicago, San Diego, Atlanta, Seattle. “This morning, I received a phone call from a Korean man in Canada. He said he was going to send me a $100 money order,” says the younger Jang.

“It’s a small group of outsiders intimidating an entire community. They have this neighborhood petrified,” says customer Deborah Shore, who recently spent a few days voluntarily helping the Jangs at their store. She read an excerpt from one of the almost 100 letters the store had received in just two days.

One Brooklyn resident wrote, “There is no mistake about my African heritage, but I find the boycott of your store to be unjustifiable and racist. Black people who have suffered from racism should be the last to practice racism. Why don’t the boycotters protest against the selling of drugs in our neighborhood, where blacks are killing blacks?”

The Jangs have also received many calls from Jewish merchants, informing them that 10 to 20 years ago, their stores were also targets of similar boycotts by outside agitators. “(The Jewish merchants) say it lasted only 10 days, but you lasted six months. You have strong will,” Bong Jae says.

But time is slowly ticking away. It’s anybody’s guess when the boycotters will go home. Bong Jae Jang, however, is certain of one thing. “This store is my life. I will never give up. I came to America with a strong will. I started my business with empty hands. And I can stand again, even if I fall.”