Abstract
Koreatown is a critical space that has come to be a defining part of the contemporary Los Angeles landscape. It is a place that not only holds much meaning and purpose for the Korean American and global Korean communities, but it is a site that was formed by global and regional migration of people and capital, race relations, and class dynamics. Shelley Sang-Hee Lee’s Koreatown, Los Angeles: Immigration, Race, and the “American Dream” examines the history of Korean American community-building in Los Angeles and how that led to the Koreatown that we know today. Through interview and archival research, Lee provides a rich empirical and historical analysis of how Korean Americans have contributed to the contemporary development of Los Angeles and explores the contradictions, successes, and tensions of Korean Americans asserting a sense of belonging through the place-making of Koreatown.
Koreatown, Los Angeles focuses on the Korean American community in Los Angeles from the 1970s to the 1990s, a time of increasing globalization and embracing of multiculturalism. The book starts with a historical overview of how Korean immigration contributed to the demographic, cultural, and economic shifts in the city. During this time, political and economic elites positioned Los Angeles as a key site in the global economy, and both multicultural and neoliberal policies created a specific global identity of Los Angeles. While the city embraced its racially diverse, multiethnic identity, socioeconomic inequities persisted along racial lines across the city. This historical backdrop sets up an overarching question for subsequent chapters as to how Korean Americans were not just situated within this tension, but were also actors actively contributing to and resisting these urban dynamics. The book constantly grapples with the implications of their actions in creating a local Korean American community and reconstructing the Los Angeles landscape.
Chapters Two and Three center Korean Americans and their relationship to Koreatown. Chapter Two provides the origins of development of Koreatown as what Lee argues has become the “vehicle for ethnic representation, shrine to property ownership, and emotional beacon for Korean Americans” (p. 39). This chapter highlights how Korean Americans were able to assert a sense of belonging by showcasing their economic contributions to the city through their revitalization efforts in the area where Koreatown is now located. In Chapter Three, Lee focuses on the symbolism that Koreatown has for identity formation and belonging among 1.5+ generation Korean Americans. Koreatown was and remains a site for Korean Americans who are in search of their history and for becoming politically engaged. The chapter details the intra-community and intergenerational tensions in developing a Korean American community identity and politics.
Chapters Four and Five examine how Korean Americans in Los Angeles were situated within global and local race relations. Chapter Four analyzes how Korean American representation, and specifically their image as important economic contributors, was also instrumental to the development of the city’s emerging identity as a global city. Mayor Tom Bradley, the first Black mayor in Los Angeles, prioritized global investment with a specific focus on investment from other countries along the Pacific, including South Korea. The local Korean American community was an important group facilitating these global flows of capital.
Chapter Five focuses on Black and Korean American relations prior to the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising. Lee describes the changes that led to tenuous and conflicted everyday encounters between the two communities. These everyday tensions have often been the primary focus of public discourses about Black-Korean American race relations. However, the chapter also demonstrates that many of the city’s attempts to alleviate racial tensions failed to directly address the root causes of the economic injustices facing both communities, which contributed to the conditions that led to the 1992 uprising.
Last, Chapter Six explores post-1992 Koreatown and the narratives of the “comeback” story of the community and neighborhood. This chapter sets up the current socioeconomic tensions in Koreatown in which it is both a “profitable ethnic playground” and a “multiethnic, working-poor community” (p. 136). In this chapter, Lee pulls together the past chapter themes of neoliberal governance that simultaneously uplifted and limited the Korean American community, the ongoing intergenerational tensions and conflicts to address the economic disparities in the neighborhood, and the ongoing contrasting public narratives of Korean Americans rebuilding Koreatown and Black communities rebuilding South Los Angeles.
The book covers many of the well-known sociological themes of Asian American and immigrant communities, such as migration, race, class, citizenship, and belonging. Lee’s contribution to these conversations lies in the interrogation of how neoliberal and multicultural urban policy and politics shape community formation and place-making. Throughout the book, Lee demonstrates how these urban policies positioned Korean Americans as model minorities and good immigrants because of their economic contributions to the city through the establishment of Koreatown.
However, Lee balances this image of Korean Americans by showing the social and economic barriers Korean Americans faced through these same policies that led them to specifically invest in the Koreatown area and to do so from within the community. Furthermore, Lee also effectively weaves in personal biography and narratives of local Korean American community leaders to ground the analysis of place-making and community formation. Thus, while providing important critiques about the city and community, the narrative structure of the book does not diminish the agency and voices of the Korean American community leaders of that time.
One tension that lingers after reading the book is how Koreatown has always been a multiracial residential space. Korean Americans are not the majority of residents, but they have a strong business presence. Lee acknowledges this important demographic characteristic of the neighborhood, but it is not a major thematic thread throughout the book. It is only in the final chapters of the book that Lee focuses on cross-racial relations, specifically Black-Korean American relations prior to and after the 1992 uprising. Given that the book is about the physical site of Koreatown as much as the Korean American community in Los Angeles, one is still left wondering about the place-based race relations that shaped the neighborhood, as well as Korean American community-building, throughout time. Given the influx of Latinx immigration since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and the fact that Koreatown is currently a predominantly Latinx residential community, a discussion of that history of migration and race relations could have provided a more nuanced understanding of the multiracial and class dynamics that have come to define Koreatown today.
Koreatown, Los Angeles thoroughly demonstrates how Korean Americans have become powerful place-makers in Los Angeles. Lee provides a rich historical account of the community and neighborhood that centers Korean American experiences and perspectives, while also providing important critiques about how urban policies have shaped the livelihood and sense of belonging among Asian American and immigrant communities.