Saigu Retrospective: Black, Korean Youth Explore Ethnic Tensions in Stage Play

From the September 14, 1992 Issue

Author: Sophia Kyung Kim

The task of “easing racial tensions” in a city like Los Angeles – where certain urban policies and racist business practices led to deeper divisions between the Korean and African-American community – is a daunting one. But one of the key things to try in the beginning is to bring such divisions out into the open.

For Robert Lee, who at the time was a Special Assistant to Inglewood Mayor Edward Vincent, the approach was simple – bring a number of young high school actors to dramatize the common tensions between Korean American store owners and their black customers.

Here is the Korea Times coverage of this event.

Acting Up

By: Kim, Sophia Kyung (September 14, 1992)

[Headnote] Koreans, Black youths role-play situational conflicts Inglewood City Hall set the stage for a young cast of high school “actors” to dramatize common situations that flare up between KA merchants and Black customers. The idea was initiated by Robert Lee, a Korean American special assistant to Inglewood Mayor Edward Vincent. Lee said he wanted to ease racial tensions in Inglewood, where many KAs own stores. About 100 KA merchants were in the audience, joining the mayor, City Attorney Howard Rosten and Police Chief Oliver M. Thompson. “At a certain point in time, we stopped, froze the action on stage and asked both Koreans in the audience and Black ‘customers’ what their feelings were,” said Lee, who as Mayor Vincent’s special assistant organized the program. In one scenario, six Black youths enter a Koreanowned shoe store with loud music blaring from their boom boxes. They start sorting through the merchandise, some of which end up scattered all over the floor. The Korean merchant-who was plucked from the audience to play the role-doesn’t know if his customers are attempting to steal or not. He nervously tells them that unless they leave, he will call the police. At this point, Lee froze the action on stage and asked Thompson and Rosten to assess whether it was “proper time” for the KA merchant to call the police. The two city officials explained to the predominantly KA audience that it was not the right time to call in law enforcers because the customers hadn’t violated any laws. Instead, it was an “inhouse” matter. “If the Korean merchant calls the police, the customers get angry. The Korean merchant wanted to call the police because he was just afraid,” Lee said Two other scenarios were presented, including one in which a merchant suspiciously follows a customer around his store. Asked to explain his action, the merchant raises concern that the customer is trying to shoplift, a charge which the customer denies. Lee said the audience response to the two-hour event was “so good” that he plans to hold it again in the future. “(Both sides) can explore their frustrations,” said Lee. “Korean merchants learned from this, that they shouldn’t call the police too soon, try to work it out by themselves first, calm down their customers.” African Americans, on the other hand, learned that Koreans sometimes resort to calling the police too hastily because they don’t know how to handle a particular situation and merely want to keep order in the store, he added [Sidebar] A KA merchant and a group of African American youths simulate a conflict that can arise between shop owners and customers at Inglewood City Hall before an audience of KA merchants and Inglewood city dignitaries. [Author Affiliation] By Sophia Kyung Kim Korea Times

Saigu Retrospective: 1991, nearly 15,000 incidents of theft or assault related crimes in LA’s Koreatown

Many of LA’s Koreatown residents were living in a terribly volatile environment where a variety of crimes, including robberies and assaults, occurred nearly 40 times in one day, according to crime statistics for Koreatown in 1991.

Amongst those numbers are figures like “…48 murders, 84 rapes, 1,837 thefts, 2,024 burglaries, 2,162 assaults, 2,527 robberies, and 6,270 auto thefts and burglaries,” reported to the LAPD.

The unsafe and unprotected environment of Koreatown speaks to the police’s neglect of Southeast LA, to their indifference to the POC communities there and the tensions that broke out from such cases.

KA merchants trying to stem deluge of violence

Dateline: Koreatown, 1991.

Sept. 22: Chang Lee, 22. Shot and killed in evening outside liquor store on Olympic Boulevard in attempt to drive away in BMW when gunman demanded money and car keys.

Aug. 21 and 22: Shinchon Restaurant. Third Street and Oxford Avenue. Both owners and patrons robbed at gunpoint two days in a row.

June 20: Grace Han, 47. Purse snatcher flees with $4,000 in Hyundai from VIP Plaza parking lot on Olympic Boulevard.

The newspapers, radio and TV provide a sketch of the mean life on the streets of Koreatown, but the cold, hard crime statistics make the picture even grimmer. Yet the Koreatown Crime Task Force said it really isn’t that bad.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, about 41 crimes were committed in Koreatown daily in 1991, including assaults, burglaries, thefts and robberies.

Four people were murdered each month. Each day, 1 1 cars in the area were stolen, six others were vandalized or burglarized and five homes or businesses were broken into. Seven robberies and six assaults were reported daily.

“Im scared of living in Koreatown,” said Michelle Kim, a young single woman who has lived in Koreatown for three years. “I think it’s getting worse because I hear about more crimes everyday.”

“I feel crime is going up because, not only at night, but in the morning and afternoon, I hear sirens all the time and helicopters flying overhead” said Seong H. Chang, who had a car stolen outside his New Hampshire Avenue apartment.

According to the LAPD, crimes such as robberies, burglaries and auto thefts and break-ins, increased citywide in 1991. The same holds true for the Wilshire and Rampart precincts, the two stations covering Koreatown.

Charles Park, president of Koreatown Crime Task Force, said many Koreans complain that crime in Koreatown is jeopardizing their way of life, but if people look closely at crime statistics, they see a different story.

“It’s not better than before, but I don’t think it’s worse than other areas in the Wilshire or Rampart divisions,” he said. “There is no question Koreatown is a high crime area, but other areas are also.”

In the Koreatown area last year, the LAPD reported 48 murders, 84 rapes, 1,837 thefts, 2,024 burglaries, 2,162 assaults, 2,527 robberies, and 6,270 auto thefts and burglaries.

This area is encompassed within Beverly Boulevard on the north, Hoover Street on the east, Pico Boulevard on the south and Arlington Avenue and Plymouth Boulevard on the west

“The most serious problem is strong arm robbery with guns and knives,” Park said. “Whenever that happens, it’s not just a problem of being robbed. People are either maimed or lose their lives.”

Police reported 1,956 street robberies in 1991. That’s at least five a day.

The core of Koreatown – from San Marino to Third streets and Vermont to Western avenues – actually is safer. Within this area, only 682 street hold-ups were reported. That’s less than two daily.

According to Park, Koreans must share the blame for robberies. Koreans have an appetite for driving luxury cars, wearing lots of jewelry and expensive clothes and carrying large amounts of cash, all of which attracts criminals.

“The reputation is being built that whenever you hit Koreans, you’ll be richly rewarded” Park said. “We have to restrain from these expensive cars and jewelry and a lot of cash with them without a guard”

The task force has tried to educate the community through the Korean-language media to take precautions, such as not going out alone at night and parking in well-lit areas only.

“Some people just don’t listen. They’re the ones who will be robbed next time.”

Wiser residents have learned to watch out.

Kim said she locks the car door and makes sure the windows are all closed the moment she gets in.

When she drives into her apartment building garage, she waits for the gate to close first before she parks, and then looks around the garage before she gets out of her car, she said

She also checks her rear- view mirror to see if anybody is following her when she drives home, she said.

Chang, who once moved out of Koreatown to Hacienda Heights because of the crime, said he also checks his rear-view mirror.

“I always look back when I park in the garage and the street,” Chang said. ‘TfI think somebody is following me, I don’t go directly into the garage. I usually go somewhere else.

Even though he lives in a security building, Chang said he similarly takes a circuitous route to his apartment if he meets a stranger in the hallway or elevator.

“Everybody should do that You never know what’s going to happen in the elevator,” he said adding he simply refuses to go out at night

Auto thefts made up the biggest chunk of major crimes in Koreatown last year. Police said 3,906 were reported stolen, 40 percent or 1,546 were taken from the center of Koreatown.

That’s at least four cars stolen daily from the core Koreatown area bordered by Third Vermont, San Marino and Western.

[Sidebar]
Koreatown Crime Task Force president Charles Park (without cap) leads community patrol.

[Sidebar]
Map shows totals of selected crimes reported in each Koreatown district. The elevated districts indicate the core of Koreatown.

[Author Affiliation]
By Richard Reyes Fruto
Korea Times

Before Saigu: Korea Times Vows to Write For, About Korean Americans

Misrepresentation of people of color in mass media continues to persist even to this day. Many ethnic media organizations like the Korea Times took it upon themselves to challenge these problematic portrayals. In this editorial from journalist K.W. Lee, the Korea Times English Edition vowed to provide counter-voices to mass media portrayals of Korean Americans as “the recycled scapegoat for all the woes and ills, imagined or real, of the impoverished and crime-ridden black districts.”

As this editorial so eloquently puts it, “a million stories are in the making within the subculture of Koreatowns.”

Telling our story beyond the stereotypes

By: Anonymous, (August 15, 1990)

Editorial

In the whodunit movie “Chinatown,” a detective gives a smug explanation for an inexplicable series of events.

“It’s Chinatown,” shrugged the cop.

That’s pretty much how the power structure has reacted to happenings in Chinatown and other Asian enclaves in this nation of immigrants, ever since yellow people reached the shores of California a century and a half ago.

Things haven’t changed much. What’s worse, the anti-Asian tide has been on the rise.

Maybe Chinatown can be shrugged off in a three-word wisecrack, but Koreatowns – mushrooming across this vast continent -no longer should be or will be.

Korea Times Weekly – the English language voice of America’s Koreatowns – will see to that.

That’s mainly why Korea Times Weekly will debut in September-to make happenings in the largely immigrant, subterranean Korean American community “explicable” to the mainstream society.

This is an introductory issue leading to the forthcoming publication of a regular weekly.

These are volatile and trying times for the emerging Korean American community. Almost routinely in the mass media, the struggling newcomers from Korea are being pitted against another ethnic minority-often singled out as the recycled scapegoat for all the woes and ills, imagined or real, of the impoverished and crime-ridden black districts.

Amid the media hype and race-mongering, thousands of Korean Mom-and-Pop storeowners in the murderous inner-cities are putting their lives on the line in pursuit of that elusive American dream. The fire is with us now-no next time.

At this critical juncture, we must clear-not lose-our heads, reflecting upon who we Korean Americans are, where we are going and how we build relationships with our minority neighbors-especially blacks and Hispanics the white majority and the homeland we have left behind.

It’s no cliche that the vast majority of Korean immigrants have been able to make a relatively decent living by American standards. Through hard work, family unity, rugged individualism and educational drive, they have emerged as a productive and positive force in this new land of opportunity.

To outsiders, these urban warriors seem to thrive on hardship-like weeds sprouting from cracks in the scorching asphalt highway.

But one melancholy element afflicting the much-misunderstood and misperceived Korean American community is the crippling absence of a national English-language newspaper in a nation that communicates in English.

As a consequence, the minority’s minority continues to remain collectively fragmented, voiceless and powerless. In this nation of contending groups and interests, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

It may be a half-century late, but never too late to develop a national forum of issues and ideas for common goals. We must begin forging a new system of Korean American values beyond the narrow and often stifling confines of local residents’ associations, trade groups, churches, family clans and alumni circles. If we are to survive as a nurturing people, we must not leave behind the helpless, alienated, uprooted and unjustly persecuted in these strange streets.

Korea Times Weekly pledges to pursue three major objectives.

To the outside world, it tells our own story on our own terms.

Unseen and unknown to the mainstream media, a million stories are in the making within the subculture of Koreatowns.

Korea Times Weekly, in coming issues, will delve into the heart and soul of these hidden developments. Week in, week out, it will present a slice of life-warts and all.

It will not only be a catalyst for fuller participation in the American market of goods, ideas and politics, but actively fight against ignorance, bigotry, stereotyping and injustice that affect the new settlers.

It will maintain an on-going dialogue among the diverse elements in our community – between children and parents, the Korean-born and American-born, the old and young, and men and women.

A singular irony is that although we claim we came to this country for the future of our children, we don’t seem to know them.

We are like two ships passing each other without exchanging a signal in a starless night.

We must start developing bonds with our own children who are already in their late 30s. If we aren’t capable or unwilling to communicate and work with our own children, how can we ever hope to build continuity to our future?

Last but as important, this paper is committed to serving as a bridge to our heritage and our homeland. In this Pacific Rim era, the bridge-building role is crucial to the long-range survival of the Korean Americans as a self-respecting and cohesive people.

Call it the yo-yo syndrome.

Only a few years ago, America’s most influential newspapers depicted Koreans as sinister aliens. Then almost overnight we were called the model minority.

Now we are taunted and jeered as the exploiters of hapless blacks. We are none of these.

Like millions of immigrants before us, we are struggling in our own way to build a new life in a new land.

Think back to the “Koreagate” scandal. To most Americans, Korean meant the KCIA, Tong Sun Park and a brash attempt to buy congress.

Next, the Rev. Moon’s face hit the American mass media.

As Korean Americans who had nothing to do with the influence-peddling scandal, we were shunned by politicians and bureaucrats. Our children lived with cruel jokes and taunts from their unthinking peers.

We all bear scars from the period.

The bitter lessons of these ordeals have taught us that in times of trouble, an unorganized and powerless minority is sure to be pounced upon as an easy fall guy.

It’s about time we refused to be stereotyped by any medium at the expense of our humanity. We will not cower at the whims of any race-baiting effort.

To our surprise, a recent survey of our readers showed that the bulk of our subscribers believe its English edition is absolutely necessary for the younger generation.

This is not a Korean newspaper. Ours is a community newspaper with a Korean American outlook. We don’t take our adopted country for granted. We believe America is the greatest and freest land on earth and we aim to keep it so.

We are painfully aware of the factionalism that for centuries has cursed our people at home and abroad. With a vengeance, Korea Times Weekly will avoid factions, cliques and, above all, divisive politics in Korea.

As the English version of the largest Korean ethnic daily in America, Korea Times Weekly will strive to provide timely, accurate and fair reporting through a network of news bureaus and branches serving 20 major Korean American settlements.

What counts most at this newspaper is the product’s quality and its commitment to excellence.

We will not be dull, cluttered or gray. We will be bold and neat in appearances and concise, breezy and informal in style.

And we will never cease to explore the new frontiers of the Pacific Rim in order to set an example in crosscultural and inter-ethnic news coverage.

After all, there’s life after immigration. Let’s give ourselves a break from life’s daily grind, taking a few minutes for reflection.

Let’s go back to the future, along with your Korea Times Weekly companion.

You’ll be surprised everytime.

Before Saigu: New York Senator D’Amato Condemns Race-Baiting

It’s a brief, but a surprisingly media-savvy criticism from Republican New York Senator Al D’Amato who called media outlets out on their neglect of the 8-month Church Avenue boycott when the Korean store owners of the Red Apple shop were continuous victims of assaults and verbal slurs.

D’Amato condemns race-baiting

By: Anonymous, (August 15, 1990)

Korea, New York

U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) has urged the media to help end the controversial Church Avenue boycott by rekindling their focus on the anti-Korean bigotry, which he said is “human behavior at its most repulsive.

“After several weeks of intensive focus in May, the disgraceful boycott of the two groceries has already become a distant memory in the collective minds of the general media,” deplored Sen. D’Amato in a letter he recently sent to media companies.

He pointed out that most New Yorkers were unaware that the Korean store owners are still victims of verbal assaults and continuous barrages of vicious ethnic slurs from a “vindictive group with self-serving motives.

“In this day, when tolerance and understanding are more necessary than ever, the right to live free from discrimination is a special part of the constitutional right,” D’Amato stressed. “Nothing so tarnishes the fabric of our nation as the pitting of one group against another.”

Before Saigu: “Do the Right Thing” Director Spike Lee Urges Boycotters to…do the Right Thing

In his critically acclaimed film “Do the Right Thing,” director Spike Lee captured how fragile racial tensions between different Brooklyn communities resulted in misdirected actions against people ultimately not responsible for the institutional barriers placed on African-American communities. Much like how the film depicted Korean Americans as “scapegoats” as Lee puts it, the director urged the Church Avenue boycotters to stop venting their anger towards the Korean grocers of the Red Apple shop.

Lee explains his thoughts on the boycott in this Korea Times English edition article by Sophia Kyung Kim.

Spike Lee: Brooklyn grocers doing the right thing

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

Brooklyn New York

African Americans who resent Koreans setting up stores in their neighborhoods are doing the wrong thing by venting their anger at them, says director Spike Lee.

“Anything they’ve gotten, they’ve gotten because they’ve worked hard,” he says. “It’s amazing to me that Koreans in the course of three years own every fruit and vegetable stand in New York. I say more power to them.”

A Brooklyn native, Lee has become a sort of a spokesman on racism and race relations since the release of his controversial and critically acclaimed 1989 film, “Do the Right Thing.”

The comedy-drama explores fragile race relations between an Italian American pizzeria owner and his African American customers on a hot summer day in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The film also depicts a Korean husband and wife who run a produce store, and touches on their sometimes-tense relationship with their customers.

Lee’s views on Korean American merchants oppose those of the boycotters, who say Koreans are economically exploiting their people.

Through hard work and with family unity. New York City’s Korean American greengrocers are providing a “perfect example” of what African Americans should be doing, the 33-year-old Lee says. But African Americans today don’t have “a family structure (that) is still strong and intact” as Korean Americans do, Lee says.

In addition, American banks discriminate against African Americans who apply for business loans, he maintains.

Lee calls African Americans’ anger toward Korean American merchants “misguided energy.” The anger is “unjustified because (Koreans) are not harming anybody.”

Instead of becoming angry, African Americans should “take it out on themselves and do what they can” to advance economically, he believes.

While there is no doubt that African Americans are victims of racism. Lee continues, “There comes a point where you have to go on, knowing that you have to work 10 times harder to do what you want to.”

And that’s what Koreans have managed to do, according to Lee.

Black anger, festers when they see “foreigners” like Korean immigrants owning businesses all over New York City in a short period of time, Lee points out. “Instead of blaming themselves, their inability to build black businesses and be entrepreneurs, they are going to blame the Koreans.”

Asked about some African Americans’ demands that Koreans put some of their profits back into the community by giving jobs and donating to neighborhood causes, Lee comments, “That sounds like extortion to me … they should be ashamed.”

He also questioned whether people making those demands are “self-appointed black leaders or real black leaders.”

In “Do the Right Thing,” Lee says he tried to portray Korean Americans as “a people in a strange land trying to do the best they can. They are human like everyone else. English is their second language.”

Lee’s views on Korean-African American tension are reflected in a few of the film’s key scenes.

In one, three unemployed street philosophers comment about the Korean greengrocers across the street. One complains about how those Koreans, who haven’t been in the country for more than year, are already running a good business in their neighborhood.

Sweet Dick Willy reacts negatively to his friend’s bantering. “I’m tired of hearing that excuse. You ain’t gonna do a damn thing. You are going to sit your money ass on this corner. Where are you going to get your business?…That’s what I thought. I am going to go over there and give them Koreans more of my money…. You’ve got a lot of damn nerve, too. You got off the boat, too.”

Sweet Dick Willy saunters to the store and asks for beer. The Korean owner warily replies’, “No more free beer.”

“In that scene, blacks are using Koreans as scapegoats,” explains Lee.

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.”

Before Saigu: African American Perspectives of the Church Avenue Boycott

On January 18^th 1990, an altercation between 18-year-old Jiselaine Felissaint, a Haitian woman, and the Korean store owners of the Family Red Apple shop led to an 8-month boycott fueled by deep, ethnocentric divisions between local communities. The “Church Avenue boycott” or the “Red Apple boycott” was a strong outcry of those tensions, spearheaded by local activist Robert “Sonny” Carson who, according to the following Korea Times English Edition article, vowed that owners Bong Jae and Bong Ok Jang would “…never earn money from that community again.”

Here is the article in its entirety, published on August 15, 1990 and written by Sophia Kyung Kim.

A Black Perspective: Boycotters condemn merchant’s arrogance

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

Brooklyn New York

The man leading the seven-month-old boycott against two Korean-owned stores in Brooklyn believes that Koreans have no business doing business in the African American neighborhood.

For Robert “Sonny” Carson, three Red Apple employees are guilty as charged: accusing a Haitian customer of theft and then assaulting her.

“They became impatient at the woman’s attempt to pay the remaining dollar. She was attempting to get the money; they thought she was stealing,” said Carson, chairman of the December 12 Movement, a militant African American civil rights organization.

The 53-year-old Carson has been involved in other anti-Korean merchant boycotts over the years-in Harlem, Queens and Bedford-Stuyvesant. In 1974 he was convicted of second-degree kidnapping, and imprisoned for 2 1/2 years.

Red Apple’s neighboring store, Church Fruits, is also being boycotted because, “those who attacked the Haitian customer took refuge in that store,” Carson said.

On Jan. 18, Jiselaine Felissaint, a Haitian woman, said Red Apple owner Bong Jae Jang assaulted her and attempted to search her purse for stolen items.

Based on what witnesses and Felissaint have told Brenda Bell, chairwoman of the Flatbush Coalition for Economic Empowerment, she says, “She was accused of stealing two little peppers.

There was tussling, they approached her and grabbed her, held her with force. One kicked her in her groin area, which caused her to expel blood from her body,” she said.

According to Carson, community meetings were held shortly after the incident. Since, he said, the district attorney failed to prosecute the three men alleged to have attacked Felissaint, the African American community “responded by using the weapon that is supposed to be guaranteed-the right to assemble,” said Carson.

“It has been decided that the penalty for this attack on our community residents was that those two stores would never earn money from that community again,” he said.

Owner Bong Jae Jang was arrested the day of the incident and slapped with a misdemeanor assault charge. He insisted that he was at the barber shop when the incident occurred.

Five months later, charges against Jang were dropped after Felissaint said that the owner was not among those who beat her. Instead Jang’s younger brother, Bong Ok, was charged with misdemeanor assault after Felissaint identified him in two court-ordered police line-ups. The case is pending in court.

“There is a business principle in America that most businessmen adhere to: The customer is always right. That business principal was violated when the Korean merchants attacked this woman,” Carson said.

Through the boycott, African Americans have been taught to “not spend their money in a place where our women are not safe,” he added. “This boycott says all merchants who don’t respect us will be boycotted,” said Bell.

The boycott is now entering its seventh month. What happened to Felissaint at Red Apple now seems less important to the demonstrators than condemning Korean merchants as “blood-suckers” and advocating black economic empowerment.

Others like Bell don’t want to see any more Korean stores opening on Church Avenue, the site of the two boycotted stores-not even if their demands have been met.

“They don’t respect us,” said Bell. “We are the economy. We keep them alive. We receive them and we can close them. They make good money and return none of it to the community, not even the respect. We are fighting for our justice and equality.”

“Most Korean merchants in New York City seem to be rude and arrogant. I don’t know why,” said Carson. “Maybe they have become Americans, because white America is known to be rude and arrogant. The Korean merchants have taken on the attitudes of the white plantation owners. That is why they are confronted with situations like this.”

African Americans can work just as hard as the Koreans, but they aren’t being given the opportunities, Carson said. “We can’t get the capital from the banks,” he said. “There is a conspiracy to make sure blacks don’t own businesses. Because of redlining, banks are not financing to blacks.”

Carson complained of shopping at stores where Korean merchants “follow you around to make sure that you don’t take anything.”

As for Korean merchants’ complaints of theft, Carson said, “I don’t have any knowledge of that. But I have a small knowledge of accounting. In business, you anticipate that a certain part of your business is going (to be lost) to theft.”

Korean merchants should expect “some kind of antagonism” from the African American community because “they don’t live here, they don’t spend money here,” Carson said.

His people “came here in chains because we were brought here as a product, and that hasn’t changed too much,” Carson said. “You are not talking about an immigrant who came here willingly; I have a chip on my shoulder.”

The boycotters may represent a minority opinion, but their sentiments reflect the frustration of many African Americans who feel economically stymied, said City College of New York’s Charles M. Powell, an African American law professor specializing in racism. “But it is unfair that Korean Americans are being singled out in order to help economically African Americans,” Powell said.

“Koreans should be interested in assisting blacks, only because they are part of the entire community, part of the total mosaic.”

Mayor David Dinkins has the primary responsibility to help African Americans, Powell continued. He called on Dinkins to address the boycott by establishing citywide economic-development programs of which Koreans, as well as others, can be part.

As for Koreans’ purported disrespect for their customers, Powell said African Americans-encumbered by years of oppression-are “very sensitive” about the way others treat them.

“Our psychology is that everyone is disrespecting us,” he said. “We are pissed off at everybody.”

He said that he has received mixed service at the Korean stores he has frequented. “There are some who are outgoing and gracious and some who are cold.”

Powell believes the protest will fizzle as summer comes to an end. “After a while, the boycotters will begin to question what is happening, to destroy something that is not necessary. The next political issue will have them running. If the owners can hang in there, then they can outlast them.”

But boycotters like Bell said they will end their protest only when the two stores shut down for good. “They will close, they will,” she said.