By the end of the four days of violent rioting in South Los Angeles, one of Ellis Yunseong Cha’s friends had been shot in the head while trying to protect his check cashing business. A neighboring business owner’s hamburger stand was burned to the ground. Another friend’s store was also torched and destroyed.

“I never felt danger in my life,” said Cha, who owned a mattress factory and furniture store in the area since 1985. “But that was probably the first time, man, that I felt powerless.”

The rioting and looting broke out April 29, 1992 — an infamous day dubbed “Sa-i-gu” by Koreans — after four Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted for the brutal beating of African American Rodney King. The day after, a nervous Cha returned to his factory on South Avalon Boulevard.

An angry mob was still there.

At one point, Cha went to the back of the building and peeked out to check out the commotion. More than 20 people were on top of their cars, yelling and shouting with their fists clenched.

“I got so scared. So I said, ‘Let’s go home.’”

Home was Anaheim, less than an hour south of L.A. Although his businesses were untouched, Cha decided to sell them and instead buy a liquor store in Orange, a quiet city in Orange County. He and his wife and two children relocated in November 1992.

After the riots, Ellis Cha relocated to Orange County where he realized Koreans needed to get involved in their community. Cha is pictured here with some of his co-organizers of a nonprofit that serves underprivileged youth. Photo courtesy of Ellis Cha

Later, the memories of Sa-i-gu would push Cha to make changes in his new community.

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Cha was not alone in his decision to leave Los Angeles. Thousands of Korean-owned businesses, estimated to be worth about $400 million, were damaged. Many shop owners attempted but failed to rebuild their shattered businesses or recover from their losses. Others, like Cha, decided to relocate to Orange County, which had existing Korean hubs and appealed to suburbia-seekers.

In 1981, there were 64 businesses along a four-mile stretch from Harbor to Beach boulevards in Garden Grove, a precursor to what is now the Korean District, home to more than 1,200 Korean-owned businesses.

By the early 1990s, thousands of Koreans had helped to expand an enclave dubbed “Little Seoul,” which boasts the second largest population outside of L.A.’s Koreatown.

The Korean population in Orange County grew to more than 55,573 in 2000, up 48 percent since the decade prior, according to the census. In 2005, there were more than 75,000 Koreans living in the county and were mostly concentrated in the cities of Fullerton, Irvine, La Palma and Buena Park.

There are up to 3,000 Korean-owned businesses now in Orange County, though the surge has not affected a recent renaissance in L.A.’s Koreatown, said Jong Min Kang, president of the Korean American Business Association.

Kang said Orange County’s Koreatown is five times larger than it was in previous decades.