The story of how one ethnic neighborhood came to signify a shared
Korean American identity.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, Los Angeles County's Korean
population stood at about 186,000-the largest concentration of Koreans
outside of Asia. Most of this growth took place following the passage of
the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which dramatically altered US immigration
policy and ushered in a new era of mass immigration, particularly from
Asia and Latin America. By the 1970s, Korean immigrants were seeking to
turn the area around Olympic Boulevard near downtown Los Angeles into a
full-fledged "Koreatown," and over the following decades, they continued
to build a community in LA.
As Korean immigrants seized the opportunity to purchase inexpensive
commercial and residential property and transformed the area to serve
their community's needs, other minority communities in nearby South
LA-notably Black and Latino working-class communities-faced increasing
segregation, urban poverty, and displacement. Beginning with the early
development of LA's Koreatown and culminating with the 1992 Los Angeles
riots and their aftermath, Shelley Sang-Hee Lee demonstrates how Korean
Americans' lives were shaped by patterns of racial segregation and urban
poverty, and legacies of anti-Asian racism and orientalism.
Koreatown, Los Angeles tells the story of an American ethnic community
often equated with socioeconomic achievement and assimilation, but whose
experiences as racial minorities and immigrant outsiders illuminate key
economic and cultural developments in the United States since 1965. Lee
argues that building Koreatown was an urgent objective for Korean
immigrants and US-born Koreans eager to carve out a spatial niche within
Los Angeles to serve as an economic and social anchor for their growing
community. More than a dot on a map, Koreatown holds profound emotional
significance for Korean immigrants across the nation as a symbol of
their shared bonds and place in American society.
