Political Tours of Koreatown and Little Tokyo: Learning about Community Involvement By Jacqueline Pon and Ryotaro Isobe The feeling we got entering Koreatown on the morning of Sunday, February 15th was similar to the mood in Little Tokyo on the morning of Sunday, February 8th. We thought that it was strange that in both communities, the sidewalks were almost empty, and our tour group had no problems stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to talk about various landmarks. It was slightly depressing to see almost empty shops and restaurants on a sunny Sunday afternoon. We later found several reasons why these ethnic communities in Los Angeles are no longer in their prime. In Koreatown, the population has shifted over the years from being predominantly Korean to predominantly Latino. Today, Koreatown is about 60-65% Latino and about 30% are new Korean immigrants or the elderly. During our tour on a Sunday, we saw mostly single men walking around and not too many families. It is obvious that Koreatown is a working class neighborhood by just walking down the streets and looking around, but the number of high-end cars that we saw was amazing. Practically every car in our level of the mall parking lot was either a Mercedes-Benz or a Lexus. These cars were a stark contrast to their humble surroundings. This example highlights a reoccurring theme in Koreatown: the powerful and the powerless. The struggle between the two has kept Koreatown from becoming a community where parents want to spend their Sunday afternoons after church with their children. There was nothing aboutKoreatown that felt recreational; it felt more like a chore to come in to Koreatown to do grocery shopping and to eat a quick lunch. There are several components of Koreatown that hold most of the power and money of the community. All the others are expected to succumb to the will of these few. As with the relationship between Little Tokyo and Kajima Corporation, there is a similar relationship in Koreatown. A major landowner in Koreatown is the Korean American Federation (KFA). Most of the members of the KFA are first-generation Korean males who are either business owners or they have business interests in the community. While the KFA has supported several progressive campaigns and helped to produce the Koreatown Festival annually, it is widely known that the KFA collects funds from corrupt and underground activities that were previously done in Korea. One of the more popular business ventures in Koreatown is owning a night club. Nighttime hot spots, such as Le Prive, are popular because of underage drinking and “booking.” I had never heard about booking and was horrified when Chong and Sarah described it to me. “Booking” at a club is when a waiter pulls an attractive girl from her friends to a table of guys to drink with them. If the girl does not go willingly, then the waiter will take her by force and make her go to a certain table. The waiters do this for tips and some of the girls go willingly because they want free drinks and fruit. As degrading as it is, I could not believe that there are girls out there who, literally, want to be picked out like a piece of meat, just so they can score a free drink and some fruit.Chong did point out that this was similar to a Korean custom of meeting people, and that here in America is has to be done a little differently because of the lack of community. As we walked by Le Prive on Western Avenue, Steve mentioned that the creation of this night club caused the deletion of one of Tony Osumi’s murals. The restaurant and market industries in Koreatown are also powerful because of the amount of money these businesses bring in. Most restaurants and markets in Koreatown are successful ventures for one reason; cheap labor. The growth of the restaurants and markets in Koreatown has to be credited to the exploited immigrants who work the hard hours with little pay. Since the exploitation of immigrants in Koreatown is so obvious, the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocate (KIWA) is there to fight for the rights of immigrants. The Elephant Snack restaurant is a KIWA success story. KIWA was able to assist the restaurant workers in asking for back pay, benefits, minimum wage salary, and workers compensation. Today, the Elephant Snack has good labor practices in Koreatown, and KIWA encourages patronization of this restaurant. We also visited the Assi Market, and that was an interesting experience. KIWA is currently assisting former Assi Market workers to get their demands met by the management, and soon KIWA will be revamping its campaign to attack the problem from another and, hopefully more successful, angle. When our group walked into the Assi Market, the manager, who was outside smoking, ran in ahead of the group and asked why we were there. Chong was able to explain to him, in Korean, that we were just students who only wanted to take a look around the market. As we watched people go about theirSunday shopping, it was difficult to watch because of all of the issues that have been covered in class. Then the sale signs caught my eye. How could someone resist purchasing six packs of noodles for four dollars? Who could resist buying vegetables at 79 cents for a pound? Personally, I was momentarily torn between my desire to buy cheap food and my desire to help others. Then I snapped out of it and remembered that the low prices come at the expense of the livelihoods of others. We noticed that many of the workers stopped what they were doing momentarily to watch us walk through. They smiled at me, so I smiled back. It was an interesting feeling because they knew that we are students and why we were there. While we walked around the perimeter of the store, the store manager followed closely next to us and even told us which exit we had to use. Waiting for us at that exit were two security guards and a few market workers. Lastly, the gentrification of Koreatown has ignored the needs of the majority of this community’s population. Increasing rent to improve the appearance of this ethnic community have made it difficult for the people of Koreatown. Minimum wage jobs already make life complicated with rent and bills to pay and families to feed and clothe, but with the increased rent, people in the Korean community will be forced to move to other communities where it will be even harder to survive. This reminded