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Los Angeles Riots: Sa-I-Gu – From a Korean Women’s Perspective
By Nancy Park
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots (“L.A. Riots”) are not likely to be considered a transnational
issue or event. In fact, many do not remember it as an “event” at all – at least not one that
requires any deep analysis. Most sources describe the L.A. Riots as a three-day uprising that
ensued after a majority-white jury acquitted four LAPD officers for the beating of black motorist
Rodney King, noting that the targeting of Korean shop owners could constitute it as a race riot.
Without regard for the structural, social, political, and economic factors that attributed to this
upheaval, the L.A. Riots are often considered an inevitable result of a growing “Black-Korean
conflict” in Los Angeles. In fact, popular culture eventually related it to other “natural” disasters
on the infamous “I Survived LA in the 90’s” t-shirts that listed riots, fires, floods, and
earthquakes together as the natural disasters of the decade. Today, the L.A. Riots are most
commonly related to the popular catch-phrase, “Can’t we all just get along?”
This paper will complicate traditional understandings of the LA Riots by analyzing
several aspects of the film, Sa-I-Gu: From a Korean Women’s Perspective. While presenting the
L.A. Riots through a transnational lens, Sa-I-Gu also works to shed some light on transnational
ideas of racial formations/relations, nation and the American Dream. This is achieved through
interviews, photo vignettes, live-action news footage and everyday images of Koreatown, Los
Angeles. The L.A. Riots are largely conceived of as being a local event, something that was
particular to Los Angeles and the race relations of this area. However, Sa-I-Gu introduces a
transnational perspective through which a public audience can come to understand the socioeconomic politics behind the riots, rather than the usual domestic perspective that was offered in
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a majority of other mainstream media outlets at that time. It also raises questions regarding the
politics of media representation and who has power over such representation. Where do these
alternative perspectives (regarding transnationalism and representation) have the opportunity to
be voiced or screened, and under what circumstances?
The film, Sa-I-Gu, further provides a glimpse into the otherwise hidden perspectives of
women in the Korean-American community three months after the riots. Produced by Christine
Choy, Elaine Kim, and Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, this live-action documentary was released in 1993, a
year after the riots, and broadcast nationally on PBS' "Point of View" series. The Korean
American women presented in the film owned and worked in some of the many businesses that
were destroyed during the violence of the riots (approximately half of the $850 million in losses
during the riots were suffered by Koreans). These women and their multi-dimensional interviews
reveal the inherent transnational nature of their lives and the L.A. Riots, producing a
documentary that can thus be considered transnational and intercultural cinema. In a similar vein
as other intercultural cinema, Sa-I-Gu performs a double movement of “tearing away old,
oppressive representations and making room for new ones to emerge.”
Before the film begins, Dai Sil Kim-Gibson states that the goal in producing Sa-I-Gu was
to “give voice to the voiceless,” clarifying that she is referring to the Korean American shop
owners and keepers who lost everything during the upheaval. One way in which the producers
gave voice to these women was through the use of their personal photographs. The use of these
photographs play a large part in conveying the transnational nature of these women’s lives and
their perspectives of life in America before and after the riots.
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Many of the individual interviews were supplemented with a slideshow of images of each
woman, before and after immigration to the States, thus representing them within their own
stories as subjects rather than mere objects of history. Audiences are subsequently able to see
these women beyond the label of “victim,” beyond the representations they have seen in
mainstream news media and recognize the transnational context in which these women have
come to understand their own experiences in light of the riots. The photographs include pictures
of the women and their husbands on their wedding days, set in Korea, with western-style
wedding dresses and suits; on vacations in the United States with famous landmarks such as the
Golden Gate Bridge, Grand Canyon or skiing in the mountains; and later pictures with their
children in America, celebrating holidays in both Western-style clothing and han-boks (Korean
traditional dress). They exemplify the complexity of these women’s lives and stories and
introduce viewers to representations of these women that move beyond the simplistic lens of a
“Black-Korean conflict” that culminated in the riots. Elaine Kim notes that the images in the
photographs (and more broadly, in Sa-I-Gu) are in direct contrast to the three most popular
images of Korean Americans that were circulating in mainstream news media immediately
before, during, and after the riots: a female Korean shopkeeper shooting a Black teenager,
Latasha Harlins, in the back of the head (this was actually the second most widely shown video
during the week after the riots); hysterical, begging, crying, and inarticulate female Korean
shopowners/victims with heavy accents that evidenced their foreigner status; and male Korean
merchants on rooftops brandishing large guns, apparently valuing money and property over
human life, and ready to shoot any looters or trespassers.
The use of family pictures from Korea and their early days of immigration to America
provide a more personal and identifiable representation of the women while supporting their
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stories about coming to America in order to discover the American Dream for themselves and
their families. Viewers are then invited to explore how this American Dream was shattered on
April 29, 1992 (literally translated Sa-I-Gu, 4-2-9, in Korean) through the use of live-action news
footage and newspaper photographs of scenes of smoke clouds, burning buildings, looters and
stationary police officers during the riots. While the juxtaposition of these stories and images
create a sense of inequality, injustice and unfulfilled hopes and dreams, it is completed in a way
that does not place blame on any of the usual suspects.
In both Korean and English, the women emotionally and eloquently articulate the way in
which their life work and savings were destroyed in a few days, during which time little
assistance was provided from the police and government. As stated above, these interviews offer
images of Korean American women that are in direct contrast to other representations that were
available in mainstream media at the time. The women are able to clearly and touchingly express
their thoughts and feelings in a way that any viewer would be able to relate to, regardless of race
or gender. They are not simply angry or sad; they are thoughtful in their analysis of the riots, the
cause, and their proposed solution. Many of the interviewees point to the misrepresentations in
media and their tendency to wrongfully frame a Black-Korean conflict as the cause of the riots,
rather than a symptom. As admitted by Young Soon Han (Mrs. Han), an owner of a liquor store
that was destroyed in the riots, she did not know “to whom to be angry” – the rioters, herself, the
police, or even the entire country. In the end, she simply states that she was “totally confused.”
Mrs. Han is one of the three women who were interviewed in-depth throughout the film.
While the film offers short interviews with over fifteen women, we only learn the names and
detailed life-stories of three women: Young Soon Han, a storeowner; Choon An Song, a family
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market owner; and Jung Hui Lee, a clothing store assistant. Mrs. Han speaks primarily in English
as she explains how she came to be the owner of a liquor store and how it was destroyed in the
riots. Beginning with the touching love story of how she met her husband during middle school
in Korea, she chronicles their immigration to America after their marriage in 1970. She first
worked as a registered nurse, while he later worked at the liquor store, which they purchased
with fifteen years of savings and additional bank loans. She emotionally shares that her husband
became gravely ill, and that after his death, she had to take over the liquor store, which was
extremely difficult for her because she was not a business woman and was not accustomed to
handling money.
Mrs. Han astutely recognizes the transnational ties of the riots and relays the sentiments
of many of her Black customers, who clearly also see transnational threads in their own
understandings of the riots. She quotes them as saying, “In general we feel sorry, but we couldn’t
help it because many Koreans don’t try to understand Black people… Koreans are brainwashed
by white people especially because they are already educated by them in Korea.” She
understands the logic behind this reasoning, but still argues that the riots were unfair because she
regards it as all of the anger that the Black community had towards White people, accumulated
and expressed to Koreans.
Choon An Song has a similar take on the riots in that she felt betrayed by the Black
community, but she follows this statement with a plea that Koreans should treat the children of
the Black community as their own, since “we are all God’s children.” As a devout Christian, she
states that she does not regret coming to America, even after the riots, because her children have
done well here and her husband came to accept Christ here. Even as she expresses her shattered
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dreams of America and the ideal it did not live up to for her, she has a smile on her face and tells
viewers that her customers nicknamed her “Smile” because she was always happy to serve them,
and even on holidays, she and her husband would throw parties for the neighborhood and prepare
wrapped gifts for them.
Mrs. Song’s two sons, who were also interviewed for the film, state that their parents
gave up everything in Korea to come here in hopes of providing a better educational future for
their children. They reason that in Korea their mother would never have had to work, but rather
had maids because their father was the boss of a large business. While they understand that their
parents would have led a more comfortable life in Korea, they also acknowledge that Korea was
not their home. In fact, they identify so much as Americans that one of the sons identifies
himself as an officer, meaning he is an officer in the United States military. We are
simultaneously shown pictures of him in uniform with other soldiers and officers of various
races. As an officer, he is mostly upset at the government, law enforcement and National Guard
troops that were sent into L.A. to “protect” the community. He retells the story of how he called
the police once the riots broke out, but that the snide response he received was, “I hope you have
good insurance, because we aren’t going out there.” Even with the deployment of the National
Guard, he saw that it was not enough the help the business owners, especially since he saw them
only stationing themselves in Japan Town to protect the higher income areas of Beverly Hills. In
fact, during the riots, Mayor Tom Bradley closed schools and businesses and implemented a citywide curfew. Nonetheless, the situation became so horrible that Governor Pete Wilson was
forced to dispatch 4,000 National Guard troops to patrol the streets and prevent rioting (in total,
there were more than 30,000 law officials stationed in the area, with most protecting the
surrounding middle-upper class residential areas). All across the country, people watched the
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events unfold: the city was plagued by fire, businesses were robbed and destroyed by looters, and
innocent bystanders were injured or killed. Actual footage is shown of LAPD officers standing
by their patrol car, drinking water watching looters are seen taking merchandise out of nearby
shops and starting fires to others.
Yet, of these three main women, much of the film revolves around the interviews of
Mrs. Jung Hui Lee and news media coverage, newspaper reports and scenes from the death and
funeral of her eighteen-year-old son, Edward Jae Song Lee – the only Korean fatality of the fiftyfour deaths during the riots. In fact, Sa-I-Gu is dedicated to “Edward Jae Song Lee and the fiftythree sons and daughters who died during Sa-I-Gu.” The film begins with a scene of Mrs. Lee
sitting in a chair, alone in a room in her home, with a large picture of her son, Edward, hanging
on the wall behind her. She later states that she often expects him to come home and feels as
though she is waiting for his return because she cannot believe that he is gone. He left without
saying goodbye, and she feels that “he was sacrificed” in the riots, because he was not willing to
stay home and watch as the Korean American community’s life savings were looted and burned
down. Viewers learn that Edward was actually shot by another Korean who mistook him for a
looter.
As Mrs. Lee recounts bits and pieces of the story of how her son became a victim of the
riots, scenes from his large funeral create a montage of images of the Korean American
community mourning, coming together and supporting each other during this difficult time. The
funeral service was held at a baseball park, with the pastor speaking from the head of the
diamond at home base. As the camera pans the attending crowd, viewers see how it stretches out
to the fences that enclose the park, with people sitting in chairs, on the grass, and even standing.
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It is easy to see that not everyone attending is an immediate family member or friend, but rather
members of the community who wished to support the Lee family at this time. Many hold up
signs with messages of sympathy and solace written in both Korean and English. The camera
zooms in on one in particular before moving on,
In Loving Memory
Edward Song Lee
We grieve together as
One family for the
Loss of our brave son
(emphasis theirs)
Mrs. Lee begins her interview by telling the viewers that she and her husband came to
America, “…to spread our young dreams and to raise our future children…we were young and
our dreams small, but we came here with dreams.” They arrived in the states in April 1972,
Edward was born a little over a year later in May 1973, and twenty years after their arrival,
Edward lost his life in the L.A. riots – tragically shattering their small dreams. Mrs. Lee
exclaims, “Something is drastically wrong,” when discussing the discrepancy between
transnational imaginations of America and the nation and the realities of life, work and
opportunity here. She remembers how long she had to work as a cleaning lady for office
buildings in the evenings and the way that a Jr. High aged Edward would come to help her
vacuum. With tears, she shares that her chest feels tight whenever she thinks of those times that
he should have been playing with friends, but instead had to help her with work. Mrs. Lee bears
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that it wasn’t an individual who shot her son, rather the LAPD did not act soon enough and the
National Guard was nowhere to be seen. She feels it necessary to think about it more broadly and
see that it was not an individual – not an individual matter – but a symptom of larger, drastic
injustices. This interview acts as a voice over narrative to a succession of Lee family pictures.
They include a picture of Edward as an infant dressed in a Korean traditional han-bok (most
likely for his dol, or first birthday celebration) with his father holding him, dressed in a suit.
They end with a picture of a teenaged Edward dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, hugging his
mother, who is dressed in a han-bok. These images lend to the intercultural nature of the stories
in particular and this film in general.
As noted by Laura Marks in, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment
and the Senses, the term intercultural “indicates a context that cannot be confined to a single
culture” but one that “suggests movement between one culture and another, thus implying… the
possibility of transformation.” Indeed the photos and interviews conducted in Sa-I-Gu reveal the
transformed notions that these women had of America and the American Dream. However, they
also reveal the transformation these women experienced in their own perceptions of their identity
in relation to the nation of America. Whereas once they were simply regarded as foreigners or
immigrants, after the riots, their stake in this country and demands for rights and reparations
clearly marked a turning point in Korean American identification.
Many of the additional women who were interviewed also exemplify these transformed
ideologies and identities. One interviewee states that to her Mi-Gook (“America” in Korean)
meant “beautiful country” but that she now sees it as Mi-Chin Na-Ra, or “Crazy Country” with
all of her original feelings about it having been turned upside down after experiencing the
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injustice of the riots and what led up to the riots. Several women agree, although interviewed
separately, that they can understand why the riots happened because they also feel the Rodney
King verdict was unjust and that the community must have been expressing their “accumulated
contempt for the wrongful judgment.” One woman in particular, a store owner who worked
seven days a week “with no life of (her) own” to find everything lost in one morning, expressed
that if the government had “watched over the Black people better” that they would not have
lashed out at the Koreans. Leaving her to be the “most angry at White people.” This short
interview is coupled with footage of scenes from Beverly Hills, Hancock Park and other affluent
areas of Los Angeles. The people in these scenes are all white, seen eating lunch in front of nice
restaurants, shopping in boutiques or simply walking down nicely manicured sidewalks with
children or shopping bags in tow. Obviously the juxtaposition of these images with those of the
Koreatown and interviews are meant to alert viewers to the deep inequalities that structure not
only the event of the riots, but everyday life in America. In fact, Mrs. Song pointed out that
before arriving in America, she had expected that Beverly Hills image of what she had seen in
Hollywood movies, clean streets with flowers in window sills, palm trees, and endless blue skies.
Instead, she was greeted with pollution, poverty, crime, and the complete absence of white
people. Her experience in America reveals the deep rift that exists in our nation, the division
among class and race. Mrs. Song notes that she felt she was in Mexico rather than America,
because she never even had the chance to come in contact with a white person. She didn’t know
where they lived or worked.
Other interviewees go further to reason that the riots broke out as a result of the widening
gap between the rich and poor communities in this area of Los Angeles. One woman, filmed in
her apartment, shares that she had to hide during the riots and aid never came. Even when
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helicopters flew by overhead, they did not notice her waving for help, so she lost all hope. It was
at this time that she realized that all of the looters were poor and that the riots were happening
because of a gap between the rich and the poor. While the media denies a Black/White conflict
and uses Koreans as “sacrificial lambs” she feels that they wrongfully stress a Black/Korean
conflict. This sense of being made to be a victim and scapegoat angered many Korean Americans
and sparked a feeling of American national identity in that they finally had a reason to fight for
their rights in this country. As taxpayers, hard working citizens and residents, they felt that if the
government could not protect them during the riots, they should at the very least grant reparation
for what they had lost. Thus, the Association of Korean American Victims was born.
Several interviewed women were members of this association. Along with men and
children in their community, they gathered daily to demonstrate through >marches and protests
demanding reparation from the government, whom they felt stood by to watch rather than protect
them during the riots. Their goal was to receive reparation but also to raise awareness regarding
the injustices that had occurred to all ethnic and racial communities in Los Angeles during the
riots. One of the most moving interviews is with an elderly grandmother who states that she
demonstrates for reparation because when she saw the riots happening, she was brought to tears
for her children and her children’s children. With a shaking voice and strong spirit she states that
she is the most upset at the police who stood by as their buildings were burned and now only
wishes that she could die demonstrating for the cause.
It is interesting that Sa-I-Gu: From Korean Women’s Perspective was broadcast on PBS,
but Wet Sand: Voices From L.A., the ten-year anniversary sequel, was not. With the Wet Sand
sequel, director Dai Sil Kim Gibson hoped to provide, “A powerful chorus of voices that not all
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is well in America, that there are deeply rooted flaws in American society, but there is hope to be
realized. We have to struggle for it. The unrealized hope, America. I hope this will challenge
them to think and act.” In a similar manner to Bush Mama, both films blur the lines between
documentary and narrative film. As intercultural cinema, they are examples of the uses of
alternative space to find alternative forms of expression. While Sa-I-Gu focused on providing a
space for the voices of Korean American Women perspectives, Wet Sand delved further into
several different perspectives from the various communities in South Los Angeles, which also
led to its criticism for trying to do too much. I would argue that this might have attributed to why
the sequel was not aired on PBS or Independent Lens, a series programmed by representatives of
the Independent Television Service and PBS people. Wet Sand filmmaker Kim-Gibson was told,
"We did not feel that your film is tightly focused around the kind of strong personal narrative
that we are currently seeking for the series." Kim-Gibson states that she did not understand what
this meant but was later informed that, "It means the film does not have a formula of beginning,
middle, and ending with happy resolution." In the film, Kim-Gibson revisits Los Angeles to learn
what changes have occurred since then, only to discover that living conditions have deteriorated
and that few remedies have been administered to the communities most stricken. Through
interviews with a multi-ethnic set of first-hand witnesses, this essential follow-up probes deeper
into the racial and economic issues that not only shaped the climate of 1992 Los Angeles, but
also continue to affect all Americans today. Ultimately, the film presents a controversial
understanding of our present, “unrealized hope, America.”
Unfortunately, Wet Sand exemplifies the difficulties intercultural cinema face in the areas
of representation and distribution. While it proves to be a great source of alternative perspectives,
representations and understanding, if it lacks the ability to reach an audience though a public
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medium, the same issues of agency and authorship remain. Theses stories and perspectives
become another addition to the many parts of America’s social fabric that have been buried in
history and lost in memory. The remnants of the L.A. Riots that do remain in our collective
imagination are often conflated with similarly vague memories of the Watts Rebellion of 1965
rather than being understood for the distinct elements that led to the 1992 Rebellion. In fact,
during the filming of Wet Sand Kim-Gibson was surprised to encounter a whole generation of
individuals who had no memory of the Riots and did not know how it had impacted their
communities or current notions of race relations in Los Angeles. This is why Kim-Gibson
decided to title the film, Wet Sand. She was inspired by a quote from Mrs. Lee (Edward’s
mother) when interviewing her a decade after her son’s death. While discussing the politics of
race relations in post-1992 riots Los Angeles, Mrs. Lee states, "Unity is like holding wet sand
tightly in your hand. If you hold a fistful of wet sand, it becomes one big lump. But if the sand
dries, it will slip out through your fingers until there is nothing left." The question then remains,
how do we keep the sand wet? What medium is needed to maintain the unity and keep it from
slipping? The film does not really provide an easy solution as to how unity might be achieved in
order to foster positive race relations and “nationhood.” When we understand race and its
function in our modern society, the question of whether unity is even achievable along racial
lines begs our attention.
Michael Omi and Howard Winant define race as a modern phenomenon and most
importantly, a social construct as opposed to a biological assignment. Especially with the onset
of imperialism and colonization, racial categories were used to create hierarchies to justify the
conquering of other nations and peoples, along the lines of racial reasoning, that one race
(namely the European American/ White race) was superior to others (colonized and enslaved
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races/countries). These racial hierarchies also worked to pit minority races against each other and
prevent them from organizing together against the “superior” races in power. In his book, A
Different Mirror, Ronald Takaki does a great job of describing “alternative” American histories
of marginalized perspectives and explaining how plantation owners eventually pit laborers of
color against Irish laborers by incorporating the latter into whiteness and offering them higher
pay rates, simply due to the color of their skin. This demonstrates the social constructed nature of
race, but also hints to our present notions of race relations and racial understandings.
The model minority myth has also been a symptom of the construction of racial identities
and worked to create a hierarchy and animosity between Asian and Black communities in
America. Coined in the mid-1960s by William Petersen, the term model minority has been used
to describe Asian Americans as a model ethnic minority group that has been able to achieve high
rates of assimilation and success (they apparently go hand in hand!), despite marginalization, due
to innate characteristics of hard work ethic, family values, and self-sufficiency. The ability of
Asian Americans to succeed in a capitalist economy, based on “merit” alone, was often
particularly referenced against the experiences of African Americans who were depicted as
relying on governmental services and “welfare-handouts.” Modelminority.com notes that:
While superficially complimentary to Asian Americans, the real purpose and
effect of this portrayal is to celebrate the status quo in race relations. First, by
over-emphasizing Asian American success, it de-emphasizes the problems Asian
Americans continue to face from racial discrimination in all areas of public and
private life. Second, by misrepresenting Asian American success as proof that the
US provides equal opportunities for those who conform and work hard, it excuses
US society from careful scrutiny on issues of race in general, and on the
persistence of racism against Asian Americans in particular.
The problematic nature of the model minority myth is obviously not mere theoretical
concern but lived reality that is recognized within the interviews of the Korean American women
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in Sa-I-Gu. Although they do not used the exact term “model minority,” they see the incongruity
between their lived reality and the stereotypical representations of America and their place in the
American Dream. They communicate a deep comprehension of the creation of race relations and
racial hierarchies and their role as a sacrificial lamb or scapegoat within that equation. Several
women explain that the riots are simply one illustration of how racial dynamics and institutions
in Los Angeles go beyond a black/yellow dichotomy – because their experience as immigrants
and transnational communities cannot be compared to that of Blacks in America, who were
brought here as slaves and suffered centuries of oppression in the States. These women
perceptively identify that Sa-I-Gu was more than a race riot concerning just the Black and
Korean communities, it is evidence of deeper structural issues and inequalities in the United
States: issues that have found a place to begin to be explored within intercultural cinema, such as
Sa-I-Gu and Wet Sand.
In closing, I would like to caution viewers to the dangers of essentializing when trying to
represent people as subjects when they are commonly depicted as “other.” If such alternative
images are only available in scarcity, many viewers see it as speaking for the whole. Thus, some
viewers may watch Sa-I-Gu and feel that these women interviewees are representing the voices
of all Korean American women in Los Angeles. Fortunately, the film begins with the significant
note that these women who are interviewed are “speaking only for themselves” and that is how
they wish to be heard. Still, my hope is that these few voices (while resisting notions of
essentialism) can help us to change the way in which we have been trained to see and understand
race, race relations and the American Dream in light of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.
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**Here is an example of another form of alternative space for alternative
perspectives/voices. Ishle Park is a well-renowned Korean American spoken word artist and this
is one her more well-known pieces. I don’t have the room to analyze it here, but wanted to share
it with you.**
SA-I-GU
By Ishle Yi Park
koreans mark disaster
with numbers.
April 29, 1992.
fire. if I touch
the screen my fingers
will singe or sing.
*
we watch grainy reels of a black
man flopping on concrete
arched, kicked, and nightsticked,
rodney king.
here I rub my own tender
wrists, ask my mother unanswerable questions why are the cops doing this?
my mother will answer simply, and
wisely, because those cops are bad.
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of the looters, because they are mad.
But why hurt us - she chokes
Because, Ishle, we live close enough.
While l.a.p.d. ring beverly hills like a moat,
They won't answer rings from south central
furious and consistent as rain.
where did they hide, our women under what oil-stained=
chevy did they breathe life?
who pulled them
by hair into riot
for a crime
they did not commit who watched and did nothing?
*
the mile high cameras hover,
they zoom in, dub it:
war of blacks & koreans
then watch us rip
each other to red tendons for scraps
in the city that they abandoned,
a silence white as white silence
and we have no jesse
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no martin no malcolm
no al, no eloquent, rapid tongue
just fathers, with thick-tongues
and children, too young to carry more
than straw broomstick and hefty bag.
all the women cry
and they hurl what is not already shattered.
*
but two mornings later,
they march over ashes
dust licking their proud ankles
30,000 koreans
sing in a language that
most will never master
a tribute song
to those who came before
and those who will march after
we shall overcome
someday.
copyright © 2008 culture critique
Cultural Studies Department: School of Arts & Humanities
Claremont Graduate University 121 East Tenth Street, Claremont CA 91711