Thirty-years ago this week, the Rodney King riots took place in L.A. and what was more American than Korean-American business owners, many of them immigrants, exercising their 2nd amendment rights to protect their livelihood.
More than 50 people lost their lives, and the city sustained $1 billion in damage, 40 percent of which was suffered by the Korean American community in the city’s Koreatown.
Most Americans won’t forget footage of gun-toting Koreans on rooftops transposed defending their businesses from Molotov cocktail attacks.
“Sonny Kang, then a college student who joined the LA Korean Youth Task Force, an organization that went out to help business owners who didn’t have the means to defend their stores, said the media also failed to report that the task force protected stores that didn’t have a father, a husband or an adult son to do so.
Kang added that the police were nowhere to be found in Koreatown, leaving the Korean merchants to fend for themselves.
“A lot of Korean-owned businesses didn’t have able-bodied males to protect the little old ladies, widowed or divorced or whatever it is, who might own her own business,” Kang said. “These types of businesses were terrified because they had nobody to protect their stores, and they couldn’t rely on the police anymore.””
More on the rooftop Korean-Americans defending their neighborhoods.