By Philip W. Chung

It wasn’t too long ago when a first generation Korean American woman approached the Rev. Kum Ji Hwang to discuss what she saw as an unfair situation. The woman felt the landlord of her 20-unit apartment building was taking advantage of her limited English-language skills.

"The manager was (fumigating) the building for termites," says Rev. Hwang, who is the director of the 4.29 Center, "so all the tenants had to evacuate for three days. He went to his Hispanic (and non-Korean) tenants and told them he would pay for hotel rooms they could stay in during that time. Then, he went to his Korean tenants and told them they had to find their own place to stay."

To Hwang, this was clearly an instance of a landlord benefiting at the expense of his Korean tenants. After contacting the errant landlord and the Housing Department, the situation was resolved with each of the Korean tenants being compensated for their hotel stay as well. The irony was that the landlord was not White, Black or Hispanic. He was also a first generation Korean American.

Hwang uses this example to illustrate a number of points, the most important being that, despite what the media or the public at large might perceive, the bulk of the conflicts she deals with these days has very little to do with Blacks and Koreans.

"Of course, there are still problems between the Black and Korean communities and between liquor store owners and their customers," she says, "but most of the conflicts we’re called on to mediate involve landlords and tenants, or Koreans and Latinos. Yet the media still focuses on the so-called Black-Korean conflict (as in a recent LA Times Magazine article which once again pulled up the Soon Ja Du-Latasha Harlins as an example of strained relationships between these two communities). There needs to be more media responsibility."

Responsibility was what brought Rev. Hwang to Los Angeles and the 4.29 Center. In 1990, she started serving in the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church. Although she felt support from the other 800 ministers in the conference, she also felt a keen sense of isolation. There were very few ethnic minorities who were her peers and the agenda was too conservative for Hwang’s views. So she decided to move out to California, unsure of her specific plans, but positive that her calling was to help other Koreans who were struggling to find a voice and community in America.

"I think the problems of first generation Koreans are different from those of the second generation," she explains. "It’s a difficult struggle for them to learn English and to try to learn about this new culture. The pain I see inside these Koreans is very deep, and to see them mistreated or misunderstood by English-speakers, including second generation Korean Americans, fills me with pain."

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Hwang started attending both Black and Korean churches (a practice she still continues today) in an effort to understand both communities and their problems. Then in early 2000, she happened upon an article in the Korea Times about the different forms of discrimination faced by Korean Americans which included comments from Charles Kim of the Korean American Coalition (KAC). She was impressed by Kim’s interview and decided to call him.

"My timing was perfect," Hwang recalls. "At that moment, Charles was looking for someone to hire to coordinate an educational program on ‘anti-discrimination in the workplace’ which KAC had received a grant from the Department of Justice to (undertake). Then, three months later, the position of director for the 4.29 Center became available and I moved over there."

The 4.29 Center, which is a project of the KAC and housed in its offices, was established in 1997, in collaboration with the Martin Luther King Legacy Association, to provide alternative means for resolving disputes between inner-city merchants and local residents, and to strengthen interethnic relationships through mediation, education and outreach programs. Funding came from the Los Angeles County Dispute Resolution Program and the Korea Society.

Examples of the programs the 4.29 Center has initiated include a mediation training programs where 70 leaders of various ethnicities and communities are taught the skills to peacefully resolve conflicts to an educational workshop for landlords in economically lower class Korean and Hispanic neighborhoods to help improve building conditions and relationships with their tenants. But the center’s most ambitious project was a merchant survey of grocery and liquor stores in South Central Los Angeles.

For a six month period last year, Rev. Hwang and her part-time staff of three surveyed 112 grocery and liquor store owners and visited almost 350 of these businesses to assess current attitudes regarding Black-Korean and Korean-Hispanic relationships. Most of the merchants were Korean Americans and the majority of their customers were either Black (40%) or Hispanic (50%). The results were made public last October. Among the conclusions, Hwang reached from the survey:

Over 50 percent of the respondents had an understanding of Black and Hispanic culture or history. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said they had a good relationship with their local communities. Thirty percent of these merchants who stated they had good relationships said the reason for this was because they owned their businesses for a long span of time. Fifty-eight percent said it was because they were making more of an effort to be "kind" toward their customers. Overall, Korean American merchants who had owned their businesses longer had better relationships with their customers, while more recently arrived immigrant business owners had more difficulties.

Based on the survey and her experiences speaking with the merchants as well as the residents of these communities, Hwang concluded that racial conflicts between Black and Koreans are actually rare. However, there are still examples of problems between individual merchants and customers which are not necessarily rooted in racial conflicts. Most of the merchants felt the bigger problem came from L.A. County officials and what they felt were efforts by politicians to squeeze out their businesses by creating restrictive policies for their liquor stores.

"But the media is still responsible for focusing primarily on Black-Korean conflicts," Hwang says. With more Hispanics and Koreans living and working in close proximity, she feels this is an area where more work needs to be done. Hwang is currently working to educate Korean business owners, many of whom employ low-wage Hispanic workers, to better relationships between the two.

Still, with the tenth anniversary of the L.A. Riots looming just around the corner, Hwang is striving to make sure her center will be actively involved in programs to commemorate the anniversary. She has been speaking with different community agencies and hopes to help put several programs in place for next year including a voter registration drive, educational programs, a mural painting project and a photo/video exhibition looking back on the events of April 29, 1992.

Hwang is involved in on-going dialogues with Black ministers, and her center shares resources with the Martin Luther King Dispute Resolution Center and the two groups are planning a joint mediator training program for next year. She is also trying to develop better relationships with Hispanic organizations and has even recommended Hispnic applicants for the Korean Heritage Scholarship.

But being a non-profit organization, the 4.29 Center’s resources are limited. The center operates on a $100,000 budget which is funded by the county and KAC with each contributing half of the center’s yearly budget. The budget pays for Hwang’s salary as well as that of three part-time staff, office rental/expenses and all the center’s programs.

But despite the obstacles, Hwang doesn’t see an end to her struggle to serve and help the Korean American community. And she sees hope for a better future.

"A Korean reporter asked me once-’how can we prevent another riot?’" Hwang remembers. "And I answered ‘through love.’ We have to try to love one another more. I really don’t have a better answer. But that’s where we need to start if we really want to solve these problems."