I was a reporter at the English-language Korea Times Weekly in Los Angeles from late 1990 to early 1993, and I covered the 1992 riots and the aftermath. I also reported on the events that led to the riots, starting with the shooting of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins by Soon Ja Du in March 1991. As a reporter at the Korea Times, I had what my former editor, K.W. Lee, would call a worm’s-eye view of those events, and as the only non-Korean on the staff (I am Filipino American), I also had an outsider’s view from the inside. What I witnessed was a story that was not as straightforward as the perception that most people have of those events based on what they read and heard from the major media outlets.

Much has been written about these events in the media and academic circles. Yet most of these accounts, retrospectives and commentaries tend to paint the matter in broad terms. For example, most accepted the notion about tensions between Korean immigrant shopkeepers and African-American customers, who accused the former of rudeness, clannishness and exploitation, and described them as newcomers and outsiders who went in and did business without giving back to or hiring from within the community.

The writer (back row, far left) during his days at the Korea Times Weekly.

These stories of conflict between Korean immigrant merchants and their customers generally ignored the details. The absence of these details unfairly stereotyped each and every Korean immigrant who brought enterprise to the poorest neighborhoods in their own quest for the American Dream.

In my opinion, mainstream TV reporters caused the most damage. They often played into the hands of street agitators and boiled it down to a problem blamed on rude merchants.

Few question that some merchants were rude. Indeed, I heard many Korean Americans joke that Koreans as a people are ruder than other ethnic groups. But from my experience as a reporter at the Korea Times, I came away with the impression that only a minority of merchants treat their customers this way. There were many who co-existed peacefully with their customers. My impression was based on numerous interviews with merchants and customers over 29 months. It was an impression wildly at odds with the image of race relations that came out at the various news conferences on the subject that I attended during that time.

More often, the mainstream media failed to make a distinction between the activists who organized the store boycotts and the customers who patronized the stores. The 1991 boycott of Don’s Market in Hawthorne, a small working-class city south of Los Angeles highlighted this distinction. On December 14, 1991, Wha Young and Soon Ye Choi’s market became the target of another boycott by African American activists after a 12-year-old girl claimed Mr. Choi beat her up. Mr. Choi had accosted the girl after suspecting her of shoplifting. While the Hawthorne city attorney’s office filed charges against him, the girl was also charged with petty theft.