LOS ANGELES — It’s 8:30 p.m. on March 5. Los Angeles police officers in the Wilshire Division have made one of their first drunken driving arrests in Koreatown of the night.

Sergeant Alex Kim — one of only a few Korean speakers on third watch, which lasts from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. — has been called back to the station.

Kim enters the holding area, where a man in his 40s sits quietly, cuffed to a bench. He looks up sheepishly, eyes bloodshot, face red. He ducks his head as Kim approaches.

“Annyeonghaseyo,” Kim says.

“Annyeonghaseyo,” the man responds meekly, glancing at Kim’s badge.

“A woman said he was puking in front of her apartment complex,” says the arresting officer, who gives Kim the update. “Wilshire and Serrano. At the curb. When we got there, he was passed out at the wheel, with the car running.”

Kim turns to the cuffed man and asks in Korean if he knows why he’s here, then explains that he has the right to have an attorney present. The man says he understands.

“Where were you drinking?” Kim asks.

“At a café,” the man responds.

“What were you drinking?”

“Heineken.”

“How many did you have?”

“About two, three bottles.” The man falters and starts to fidget.

The arresting officer, who is white, cuts in.

“Soju?” he asks, with his arms folded. “No soju?”

The man shakes his head.

The officer looks at Kim, eyebrow arched.

Kim leans against the wall and explains to the man his options: a breathalyzer or a blood test. The man asks a series of questions: What’s the difference between the two tests? Where’s my car? Will this affect my insurance rates?

Kim answers, then adds, “The problem is not that you drank, but that you got behind the wheel after you drank.”

He looks the man over.

“Got a wife? Kids?”

The man nods.

“You should drink at home,” Kim says, as the man slowly makes his way toward the breathalyzer machine. “Think about your wife and kids. Think about what this does to them.”

Kim prompts the man to breathe into the apparatus.

“Gyesok (keep going), gyesok, gyesok, gyesok,” Kim directs. “Ye. Jalhaesseoyo (OK. Well done.)”

The man’s blood-alcohol level is 0.20, more than twice California’s legal limit of 0.08.

Sergeant Alex Kim (left) of LAPD’s Wilshire Division, along with another officer, lectures a 21-year-old who was caught rifling through the luggage of four young women who were staying at a Koreatown hotel.

“You need to stay here until you sober up,” Kim explains. “You can have your wife pick you up, but if you’re embarrassed, you can take a taxi.”

The other officer checks his watch. “It’s early,” he says. “Early for a DUI.”

Kim shrugs.

“Well, it is Saturday.”

Policing their own has proven to be a mixed bag for KA law enforcement officials. They’re defensive when fellow officers stereotype the KA community (“a bunch of drunks,” “always fighting over girls,” “crooks who prey on their own”), but they’re embarrassed when they see that the stereotypes come from somewhere. And then there’s discomfort and outrage when some KAs demand preferential treatment based on ethnicity alone.