https://youtu.be/p75DnVTTP0Y Prof. Angie Y. Chung’s presentation will examine how ethnic succession and competition with Persian Jewish garment industry owners symbolized by the construction of California Mart and San Pedro Mart has set the political and economic backdrop for facilitating rapid financial transaction flows that have spurred Koreatown’s growth. Within a decade after rioters in 1992 destroyed thousands of Korean-owned businesses throughout Koreatown, the ethnic enclave has witnessed a remarkable economic rebirth marked by the rise of luxury condominiums, trendy nightclubs, large-scale restaurants, and other upscale amenities along this key transportation corridor to downtown Los Angeles. The question is whether or not this immigrant-driven growth and redevelopment is the result of coordinated political efforts and solidarity among Korean elites. Prof. Chung argues that the economic rebirth, development, and financialization of Koreatown suggests some elements of bounded ethnic political solidarity and coordinated efforts of Korean apparel factory owners within the Korean community but also highlights increasing political fragmentation and competition among these actors who see Koreatown as both a symbolic and economic strategy for securing their personal investments in the face of non-Korean competitors in the downtown district. Prof. Chung shows how the dynamics of ethnic political solidarity and conflict are shaped by three major factors: namely, ethnic competition with Jewish garment industry owners, the changing political economy of Los Angeles, and generational transitions in leadership.
Koreatown Redevelopment and the LA Garment Industry
Author Bio
Presented By: Angie Y. Chung
Angie Y. Chung is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY, and the 2015-2016 Dr. Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI). She is author of Saving Face: The Emotional Costs of the Asian Immigrant Family Myth (Rutgers University Press, 2016) and Legacies of Struggle: Conflict and Cooperation in Korean American Politics (Stanford University Press, 2007). She is currently conducting research with co-PIs Sookhee Oh and Jan Lin for a National Science Foundation-funded project on immigrant redevelopment politics in Koreatown and Monterey Park. Chung has published on the topics of ethnic politics, interethnic coalitions, immigrant families, ethnic enclaves and second generation in various journals such as Ethnicities, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Qualitative Sociology.