True Left

The Black-Korean conflict was an enduring storyline during the violence that erupted in 1992 after four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. It was a palatable narrative of racial conflict in which white racism was not directly implicated.
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The Black-Korean conflict described a very real nationwide dynamic between Korean shopkeepers and their largely Black customer base that was marked by violence, boycotts and protest.

Korean shopkeepers, terrified by violence and crime, did not treat their Black customers with the respect they deserved. Black communities — frustrated by not just their treatment but by economic racism and disinvestment — organized boycotts of Korean-owned stores that would not hire Black people.
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"Why does mainstream media make a frame like that? What is the agenda?" Park asked me.

It was a genuine question, and one that I had trouble answering.

Were the news media dominated by white perspectives and readers eager for stories about racial conflict in which white racism was not the villain? Were Korean Americans used as a convenient political tool for those who wanted to reject Black demands for racial justice?
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History always reflects the worldview and aspirations of those who are writing it. Over the years, I have collected the stories of the buildings that remained standing after the riots ended because Asians, Blacks and Latinos were able to find common cause: a Chinese eatery on Virgil, a Cambodian jewelry shop in Long Beach, a Thai restaurant in Koreatown.
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Today, Korean Americans still own swap meets and beauty supply stores that primarily serve impoverished Black and Latino communities.
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The problem, though, is that stories of harmony receive far less coverage than tales of conflict — today and in 1992.

John H. Lee's most memorable interview from the riots' aftermath was with a Korean shopkeeper who decided to stop keeping guns at his shop and cease selling hard liquor in an attempt to bond with his Black customer base.

Lee had left the L.A. Times and was stringing for the New York Times. The anecdote ended up somewhere in the back end of the story.

Edward Taehan Chang, a UC Riverside professor and member of the Black Korean Alliance that began in 1986, said he remembers getting media coverage twice: when the group began and when it broke up the year after the riots.
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"They weren’t interested in covering our efforts, except when we were dissolving."
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"My goal has been to somehow dispel that notion that there is an intrinsic conflict between Black and Korean people."