SA-I-GU A HAUNTING PRELUDE TO THE FIRE NEXT TIME "Korean Americans face a twilight struggle to wake up from their self-imposed amnesia and build bridges with Latino and Black neighbors in the seething inner city of L.A." By K. W. Lee In the ongoing post-911 anti-immigrant and anti- Arab/Muslim backlash, America has all but forgotten - or doesn't want to know or care - a horrible chapter in its enduring problem of colorlines. In the cold light of history, the 1992 Los Angeles riots looms as a manufactured race war in which Korean American newcomers were singled out for destruction as a convenient scapegoat for structural and racial injustices that had long afflicted the inner city of L.A. Today, the nation's first media-inspired urban program - inflicted on a minority's minority without voice or clout - remains a blank space in the collective memory. With the passage of time, forgetting has helped finish its cover-up job, as a stricken nation grieves for thousands of victims of the Arab terrorist attacks, with an outpouring of billions in compensation and relief measures for the devastated relatives and districts. In stark contrast, out of sight and sound of the mainstream society, the invisible Korean American victims of the nation's biggest race riots bleed in stoic and wretched silence. Burned out, maimed, robbed and uprooted, and, to add insult to the wounds, blamed, harassed and punished for the media-fanned racial firestorm that reduced their American Dream to rubble overnight. L.A. Koreatown inhabitants are in a collective amnesia and behave as if nothing had happened 10 years ago. Oblivious to the seismic shift in the demographics and tensions swirling among their Latino and black neighbors, they are utterely unprepared for the fire next time. Their seoul remains deeply scarred; inside the weight of pain, impotence and self-loathing is too much for them to bear. Korean Americans call it Sa-I-Gu (literally 4-2-9 in native pronunciation) for April 29, to commemorate the darkest hours in their century-old American passage. Sa-I-Gu also represents America's first multiethnic urban unrest, signaling a radical departure from the historical white-black paradigm. It exposed the widening ethnic, class and cultural chasms - between the inner-city poor and the suburban middle class, immigrants and natives, English-speaking and non- English speaking. On that date, South Central LA and the adjoining Koreatown burned and choked three days and four nights, wrecking more than 2,300 Korean businesses, and uprooting 10,000 immigrant lives, to the tune of nearly half of the city's $1-billion loss in property damage alone. The City of Angels, sitting on a smoldering volcano of social and economic devastation and the changing demographics in South Central since the 1965 Watts uprising, had to erupt. It was a matter of time. The Rodney King beating and the subsequent acquittal of four white cops were the trigger. But the System (City Hall, LAPD, DA, Court and the Media) was more concerned with deflecting another massive Watts uprising than defending the hapless folks of color in the South Central, Pico-Union and Koreatown districts. At work was a cynical symbiosis between the white power structure and marauding gangs, acquiescing politicians and so-called civil rights leaders. The law enforcement agencies and the media -- assuming the role of neutral arbitrators -- successfully diverted a rebellion against police brutality and accumulated inequity into a Black-Korean race war in the most violent police districts in the country. The year-old Soon Ja Du/Latashia Harlins slaying was the match that set the racial fire. In all too common homicides in the desperate inner-city streets, a 15- year-old teenager was shot in panic by a female storekeeper in a violent scuffle over an alleged shoplifting. The tragic death of the black girl, a year before the four cops' acquittal, was the first time a Korean merchant was accused of wrongfully killing a black customer although hundreds of her fellow Korean merchants had been robbed, shot or murdered in the crime-ridden districts. No matter. The local media's predatory bird-eye view saw in the 1991 Harlins homicide a May rating sweep bonanza to exploit along with the explosive King beating video that flashed to millions of TV sets. While bands of rioters and arsonists torched and plundered the City's have-not sections, LA's ratings- driven media honchos fiddled on their way to bank during their record-breaking May rating contests. Even before Korean and African Americans had a chance to get to know each other with their common past sorrows and struggles, they found themselves tearing apart at each other as enemies in the shouting sound- bites and screaming headlines. Instead of fighting together their twin foes called Poverty and Crime, both groups were dragged onto the Roman arena as unwitting, unpaid players at the whims of the media profiteers in pursuit of ever higher Nielsen ratings. Thus, the "Black-Korean race war" - firmly framed in the public image --became the win-win-win formula of race, crime and violence for the crucial May sweep. I know this nightmare scenario by heart. As editor of the lone English-voice weekly for a quarter million Southland Koreans, I went through a three-year rollercoaster ride in the running race-baiting by the local media, the commercial TV stations in particular. In LA's huge cutthroat media market, a racial incident was tailor-made for TV ratings, especially when it involved Koreans. Every time the "Black-Korean conflict" barked in headlines and soundbites, the Korean merchants caught the deadly gunfire and firebombs. As the chilling TV video - the shortened version of the year-old surveillance tape only showing Latashia Harlins shot from behind by the falling Du - rolled on in tandem with the King beating video, pickets, firebombing and killings haunted the frightened storekeepers. At the height of the riots, nearly all 13 TV stations including the ABC network and affiliate KABC showed the sickening sequence ad nauseam, as often as the brutal King beating on TV right up to and during the riots. Not surprisingly, as the media's open season on Koreans escalated, reported cases of anti-Korean hate crimes soared. A University of Southern California study identified up to 30 reported hate crimes by blacks against Koreans in 1991 associated with news coverage of black- Korean tensions. "The episodal nature of the reported hate crimes are media-driven and media-hyped," the study noted. From March 1990 to March 1991, there was almost no report, but in April 1991 alone, six cases popped up. The increase resulted from the Harlins slaying on March 16, which became top news in the L. A. Times and other media as the case of "Korean grocer Soon Ja Du who shot a teen-age black girl to death over a $1.79 bottle of orange juice." November 1991 recorded seven new hate crime cases. That outburst grew out of two new incidents when the media headlined Du's getting probation instead of a prison term and the scare over rap singer Ice Cube's popular incendiary albums, including song "Black Korea" that contained the lines such as "Or we'll burn your store, right down to a crisp." Hate crimes are grossly underreported, the study's co- author Dr. E. Eric Schockman cautioned. "Immigrants don't report hate crimes and cops on the street don't take reports if they are not trained to understand hate crimes." On this 10th anniversary, Sa-I-Gu mocks the unacceptable fate (Pal'ja) of first-generation Korean Americans as prisoners of their own Hahn (the everlasting woe) in this land of freedom. Out of their Sa-I-Gu ashes rose the "Greedy, Mean and Racist Korean" image etched in the American public consciousness. Throughout the riots, the Korean American perspective was shut out of the local and national media. The TV screens kept bombarding the viewers with the picture of gun-toting Koreans firing from the rooftops of their shops. But these defenders-- abandoned by police, fire and other law enforcement authorities - were returning fire from marauding bands of armed thugs. The vaunted LAPD weren't there during the critical early phase of the riots. Most officers stayed aloof while watching Korean victims lying wounded. Their commander went AWOL, attending a social event. Neither did the National Guard arrive in time --until they were positioned to protect the affluent Beverly Hill and West L.A. Every political luminary --- from President Bush to candidate Clinton -came and belatedly made promises. Little or nothing followed. Ineffectual and token aid from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) were a bitter taste to the wretched victims, most of them were swindled by off-shore insurance firms and saddled with double (mortgage and SBA) loans they couldn't pay. Both County Sheriff Sherman Block and the local FBI chief publicly vowed to prosecute alleged massive civil rights violations against the Korean victims. Nothing was ever heard from them since. Local and state politicians hurriedly held post-4-29 hearings, their findings merely half-lies and white- lies, ignoring why and how the Korean mom-and-pop stores were targeted for arson and looting. The Korean immigrants -- divisive, insular and powerless as ever - don't matter to them. Nearly half of the victims couldn't make it and simply have vanished. Only a third of them have reopened their businesses. Bankruptcies, domestic violence, divorces and suicides are all too common. Only a fraction of the sacked grocery and liquor stores were able to regain their licenses largely because City Hall politicians, who had long milked Koreatown for political donations, turned their deaf ears. Once the relief network of victims drew thousands. Most of them simply have given up. Its membership roster now lists fewer than 100. Did the Asian American communities come to the aid of Koreans under siege? Hardly. Sa-I-Gu shattered the notion of Asian American unity. The Asian American mosaic is a disparate lot - insular and isolated from each other. Sa-I-Gu reminded me of how 120,000 Japanese Americans in the post-Pearl Harbor hysteria were rounded up and herded into desolate camps. But their American-born children, all citizens, were too young to do anything. A similar fate fell on the children of Sa-I-gu. Mostly in high school and college age, they too were too young to come to the defense of their parent generation under mob assault. On the other hand, U.S.-educated professionals --- numbering tens of thousands - pretty much stayed aloof from the community under fiery siege. Except for a "Splendid Few" volunteers, conspicuous was their absence. But all is not gloom. On May 2, the day after three days of burning and madness, the torch was passed from the first generation of silent sacrifice to the 1.5 and second- generations of English-speaking children. Columns of 30,000, young and old alike, marched along the still smoldering buildings, chanting, "We shall overcome hatred and fear." On the forefront of reaching out to Latino and Black neighbors are the Korean American Coalition (KAC), the Korean American Youth Community Center (KYCC), the Korean Immigrants Workers Advocate (KIWA), the Korean American Museum plus a few church-based English- speaking urban ministries. KAC was launched in 1983 by a handful of the vanguard of the 1.5 and second generation. The coalition has steadily expanded into a national organization with an office in the nation's capital and a string of local branches across the nation. Its first national convention is scheduled in Hawaii in 2003, on the 100th anniversary of Korean immigration. Since 1997 KAC has been running the 4.29 Dispute Resolution Center in South Central, where nearly 90 percent of the Korean businesses were sacked a decade ago. Now 250 grocery and liquor stores serve both Latino and Black customers with visibly improved relations, the center's seasoned director John Yoo reports. "But South Central has been at the bottom, and it couldn't get worse. No hopes for jobs or businesses." The plight of the Korean survivors is worsening, he says. "It's a matter of time they will go broke or get out with huge losses. Even those who were lucky enough to return to their broken business are now saddled with two loan payments (one existing and a new SBA loan) to make despite the declining sales." As the traditionally black South Central has shifted to predominantly Latino, Yoo predicts, ethnic tension will mount and the Latinos will become major players in future civil unrests. In the post 4-29 era, coping with the first-generation Hahn has been the running mantra among the emerging American-born second generation in pockets of campuses, English-speaking congregations and coalition activists. The first call for action came from senior Eugene J. Kim at a UC-San Diego student rally in 1996. He spoke of "our parent influencing and persuading us to adopt their value system of survival at any cost. "But we are born here, live here and die here," Kim reminded his peers. "We have responsibilities to our community. That's why we have to examine the authenticity of our ambition for success. Most of all we need a new value system that will prevent another Sa-I-gu." A similar call for overcoming the Hahn for larger community causes echoed throughout the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th annual Korean American Student Conference at Stanford, Rutgers, UCLA and Colorado University, respectively - the largest ethnic student gathering in the nation with 1,000 in participation. For the first time, this past winter break, more than 500 Korean and other Asian American students flocked to UC-Irvine under a pan-Asian banner. This year's break-through theme read, "The Landscape of Asian America: Remembering Sa-I-Gu 10 years later. Where are we today?" The bitter lesson of Sa-I-Gu, however, is that collectively we Korean Americans have learned little or nothing. Little wonder most of today's Korean American youth growing up in the shadow of their parents' Hahn don't even know what Sa-I-Gu is or what it means. But in recent years I came to bear witness to a rising tide of awakening among what I fondly call the Children of Sa-I-Gu who haven't forgotten their childhood glimpse of the fiery siege. Because of their baptism of fire in their adolescent years, they are still haunted by the memories of their parents' silent suffering. Still in late teens and twentysomething, they are determined to take up the role of seeing-eye dog and English voice on behalf of their half-blind and half- mute non-English-speaking parent generation. I see a steady stream of Children of Sa-I-Gu returning home to fight on social and political fronts in coalition with other urban minorities for peace and harmony in the volatile inner city. It's their turn to break the silence and speak up for the parent generation who stood alone against the world. The Children of Sa-I-Gu may be the loneliest tribe on earth who must serve as the first and last line of defense for the silent generation of sacrifice, come the fire next time. It may take a generation, nay, generations, but following in the footsteps of children of the internment camps and the children of Holocaust survivors, Sa-I-Gu's children must tell the world what really happened in that fiery siege of Koreatown. Never again shall another Sa-I-Gu visit upon the future generations of all colors and shades. On a personal note, since I gained a new lease on life with a donor's liver in the aftermath of Sa-I-Gu, I gained a new calling following in the footsteps of 18- year-old Eddie Lee who gave his life to save the lives of Sa-I-Gu victims. In death the child of Sa-I-Gu gave life to a thing called community conscience, an idea so alien to the ruling elites of Korean America. Sa-I-Gu was our defining moment as pilgrims in America, the latest chapter in the unending suffering of the Korean people, at home and abroad, since time immemorial. I hear Eddie Lee beckon, "If you don't speak up, who else will?" On a twilight journey at age 74, I have no wisdom to share with the children of Sa-I-Gu except this parting shot: "The sun rises on each passing generation, and yours may be the first generation in Korean history to be freed of the ancient chain of Hahn in this vast continent. "Across the river, you will carry our dreams and hopes for a better world, leaving behind our Hahn on this side of the river."