A Call to Action in Koreatown

As April comes to a close, Los Angeles is reminded again of this time 13 years ago when parts of South L.A., Pico-Union and Koreatown erupted in anger and flames. Images of African Americans and Latinos pouring into the streets, driven by poverty and frustration, were indelibly etched into the minds of all Americans. For the Koreatown community, this year’s anniversary comes with the news that poverty in Koreatown today is greater now than in 1992.

A new report written by one of us and the staff of Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates shows that 13 years after the Los Angeles civil unrest, economic conditions in Koreatown for the working poor have deteriorated. Real wages for working families declined by 17%; as many as 150,000 residents -- the vast majority of them Latino and Korean -- are living in poverty.

To survive, many residents are taking on two or even three full-time jobs. Families live squeezed together, sometimes seven people to a room, in substandard apartments. Children go without regular medical checkups and dental care. Even serious illnesses are treated with over-the-counter medicines in the absence of affordable health insurance. The reality of daylong waits at the local free clinic competes with the frantic work schedule that allows for no time off.

The poverty rate throughout the city in the last decade increased from 36% to 43%, and the cost of living has skyrocketed, fueled by housing and healthcare costs. Communities such as Koreatown that are in the nexus of the affluent and the poor (Hancock Park and Pico-Union) have felt this squeeze the hardest.

As one part of the globalization process cuts the wages of manufacturing workers, another part of it brings thousands of investors from Asian countries and drives up the real estate value. There are neighborhoods in Koreatown where one apartment complex consisting of two to three families sharing one-bedroom units stands next to another apartment complex with the latest and most luxurious amenities, including military-grade security devices.

The economic problem in Koreatown is not the lack of jobs but the lack of jobs that pay living wages ($36,800 for a family of four) and provide crucial benefits such as healthcare. Korean-owned businesses -- with grocery stores the largest private employer -- represent a large share of the local labor market. Our study found that the 700 Latino and Korean workers at these six large markets earn an average of $7.27 an hour, and only 22% had employer-provided health insurance.

In the end, poor wages and the lack of heath insurance represent a shifting of the cost from employers to the public, whose tax money will eventually have to reckon with the accumulated effects of these decisions. The scale of this problem demands greater public involvement in ethnic communities.

It is the Koreatown community itself, however, that must start showing leadership on addressing poverty. In particular, private employers must take greater responsibility over the economic and social welfare of their employees. Local businesses that now pay minimum wages with no benefits could make a big difference in the community by starting to offer wages and benefits that would lift families out of poverty and provide them with a better opportunity to secure their American dream.

Edward J.W. Park, an associate professor and the director of Asian Pacific American studies at Loyola Marymount University, is an author of a new report on Koreatown conditions. The Rev. Won-il Kim is a professor of Jewish Bible/Old Bible studies at La Sierra University.