I was watching on the Smithsonian app “The Lost Tapes: LA Riots” which had a lot of never before seen footage of the riots that happened 25 years ago in response to the Rodney King verdict. Â You can watch the entire episode at the above link. Â What I found of interest was the amount of footage featuring the attacks on Koreans in Los Angeles. Â This fact is often glossed over by the media when discussing the riots. Â Rioters were specifically targeting Korean businesses in retaliation for the shooting death of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shop owner during a confrontation.
Korean store owners defend their business during the 1992 LA riots. [CNN]The incompetent police response also featured heavily in the program because the first day of the riot they initially responded to rioters and then were ordered to pull out. Â Once they pulled out the gangbangers went on a rampage robbing stores and eventually other people joined in. Â By the second day the rioters had advanced on Koreatown and still the police would not respond. Â They left the Koreans to fend for themselves while they defended more affluent white neighborhoods. Â Due to the police not responding the firefighters stopped responding as well because they kept getting shot at when they tried to put out the fires. Â There was plenty of footage of shot up firetrucks.
The Korean shop owners had to take up arms to defend Koreatown from the rioters which is what saved that section of the city from being burned down. Â While this was going on Jesse Jackson was on the radio saying that he believed many of the fires were caused by people trying to get insurance payouts and not from rioters.
CNN recently published an article that discusses how little attention the attacks on Koreans during the riot received from the media:
Store owner Richard Rhee stands vigil, armed with a handgun and a cellular phone on the roof of his grocery store in the Koreatown area of Los Angeles on May 2, 1992.
The nearly weeklong, widespread rioting killed more than 50 people, injured more than 1,000 people and caused approximately $1 billion in damage, about half of which was sustained by Korean-owned businesses. Long-simmering cultural clashes between immigrant Korean business owners and predominately African-American customers spilled over with the acquittals.
The Rodney King verdict and the ensuing riots are often framed as a turning point for law enforcement and the African-American community. But it’s also the single most significant modern event for Korean-Americans, says Edward Taehan Chang, professor of ethnic studies and founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California, Riverside.
“Despite the fact that Korean-American merchants were victimized, no one in the mainstream cared because of our lack of visibility and political power,” Chang said. “Korean immigrants, many who arrived in the late 1970s and early 80s, learned economic success alone will not guarantee their place in America. What was an immigrant Korean identity began to shift. The Korean-American identity was born.” Â [CNN]
This is the experience many Korean-Americans learned from the LA Riots:
“I watched a gas station on fire, and I thought, boy, that place looks familiar,” he said. “Soon, the realization hit me. As I was protecting my parents’ shopping mall, I was watching my own gas station burn down on TV.”
That he ended up on a rooftop with a borrowed gun was never in Lee’s life plan. He had quit his job as an engineer at an aerospace company to pursue what he hoped would be life as an independent businessman, opening up three businesses in Koreatown.
“I truly thought I was a part of mainstream society,” said Lee, who immigrated with his family to the United States as a child. “Nothing in my life indicated I was a secondary citizen until the LA riots. The LAPD powers that be decided to protect the ‘haves’ and the Korean community did not have any political voice or power. They left us to burn.” Â [CNN]
The rest of the article goes on of course to talk about how bad President Trump is and how African-Americans and Korean-Americans need to unite against him.  I don’t think CNN is capable of writing an article any more without an anti-Trump bias.  Anyway I do recommend watching “The Lost Tapes: LA Riots” to get a better understanding of the LA Riots that happened 25 years ago.
South Korea is well known for its affordable and expansive cosmetic surgery industry, but still this number seems extremely high to me:
A vast proportion of Korean women have had either botox or filler treatments, a study out last Friday suggests.
Pharma giant Allergan polled 450 women aged 21 to 55 here, and 42 percent admitted they have had the cosmetic treatments. And a quarter of the women who have not had the treatments yet would be willing to have them in the future, while 17 percent said they would think about it.
Only 16 percent said they had no intention of getting the treatments, which either plump up the face to make it look more youthful or immobilize facial muscles so no laugh lines or other wrinkles form. Â [Chosun Ilbo]
It will be interesting to see if this fire was started intentionally to threaten the THAAD site in South Korea:
Another fire broke out late on Sunday near the site where the U.S. is installing the controversial anti-missile system called THAAD. It started at around 7:30 p.m. near the top of a mountain located closely to the golf course picked for the THAAD deployment in the country’s southern town of Seongju.
Firefighters are working to bring the fire under control but are having trouble in doing so due to darkness. The exact cause of the fire has not been confirmed yet. Â [Yonhap]
Here is horrible story about a 70 year old Korean woman on a dream vacation to Europe that was severely injured in the March 22nd terrorist attack in London:
Park, who sustained a head injury in a terror attack in London on March 22, is hospitalized at St Mary’s Hospital, London. She is photographed here on Friday local time. [KIM SUNG-TAK]Bang Young-sook’s mother was having the holiday of her dreams. An orchard farmer from Yeongcheon, North Gyeongsang, the 70-year-old Park was all smiles as she and her husband posed on London’s picturesque Westminster Bridge on the afternoon of March 22.
The couple’s group tour to Europe was paid for by their children. Britain was their first stop. After the photo was snapped, Park’s husband walked on while Park stopped to arrange her selfie stick.
That brief pause led to tragedy. Park’s husband heard screams and turned back. A car had ploughed into the pedestrians on the bridge – and his wife was among dozens mowed down.
The terror attack in London by a 52-year old convert to Islam killed five and injured 50. Five Koreans were injured and Park sustained the most serious injuries. The other four, people in their 50s and 60s, were discharged after being treated for fractures and minor injuries. Park is still in London’s St Mary’s Hospital. In the pandemonium on the bridge, Park fell and hit her head. She required brain surgery.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]
A Danish court on Wednesday upheld prosecutors’ decision to extradite Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of impeached former President Park Geun-hye’s friend at the center of a bribery scandal.
But it remains uncertain whether or when Chung will be extradited to Seoul, as she appealed again to a higher court.
Last month, the local prosecutors’ office decided to send Chung, the only daughter of Choi Soon-sil, back to Korea to face an investigation. But she filed an appeal.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]
With former President Park impeached and sitting in jail, Chung Yoo-ra is basically just a side show now.
The Joong Ang Ilbo has an update on the racial incident involving a Columbian man at a Busan Costco. Â His activism after the incident led to positive change at the Busan police department that handled his case:
Leonardo Mendoza and Shin Jin-yeong having a friendly chat in front of a supermarket after a severe racial discrimination case involving Mendoza in Busan. [SONG BONG-GEUN]After the incident took place, did the Busan Yeonjae Police Department chief (Ryu Sam-yeong) call to apologize?
That’s correct. On Sunday (April 2) night, three days after, he apologized, saying, “We do have training, but it was very insufficient and we will expand training pertaining to foreigners.” On the next day, I called again and requested to have an internal racial discrimination training session. I went for a lecture to the police station on April 5. When I met him at the chief’s office, he said, “Of police chiefs countrywide, I am the only one with a perm. Of policemen, there are those who dislike hearing a lecture held by a foreigner. I ask for your understanding even though the audience may be small.”
When I actually went to the lecture hall, there were 250 policeman cramped inside. The policeman who handled the incident at the time attended and apologized to me in person. I learned for the first time in my 16 years living in Korea that there was an external affairs section that investigated incidents involving foreigners.
What kind of thoughts did you have?
With all that’s happened, the police chief can be called a hero. Anyone can write or post something. However, the police chief went above and beyond what he had to do and went a step further. In the end, the incident ended on a positive note. I counted, and there are 252 police departments in Korea. The change at the Yeonjae Police Department cannot stop there. The remaining 251 police chiefs must take an interest in safety measures for foreigners.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but the Korean man involved in this incident ultimately giving a half hearted apology for the incident as well.
Could you imagine what would happen to South Korea if their nuclear reactors were struck by North Korean ballistic missiles causing multiple Fukushima like disasters across the country?:
South Korea’s nuclear power reactors have not been designed to deal with military attacks, a report submitted to a lawmaker by the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) showed Sunday.
The evaluation sent to Rep. Kim Jong-hoon of the conservative Liberty Korea Party revealed that the outer protective wall of local reactors were never meant to withstand a missile strike or other forms of concerted attacks.
The reinforced concrete walls are the last barrier built around reactors that can contain radioactive materials from being leaked into the surrounding area in the event of a serious accident.
“They have been designed from the outset only to remain standing in the face of typhoons, earthquakes and other forms of natural disasters,” the lawmaker said. He pointed out that the casing can deflect the blast of explosions and debris from the inside, although not from external strikes or even the kind of terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. Â [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but this just goes to show the importance of missile defense which certain people in South Korea actually want to handicap and leave critical infrastructure like this with less protection.
