Week 4: Koreatown

 On Saturday, I took a trip with some friends to Koreatown, a place I had never visited before. I was the “co-pilot,” helping my friend from out of town navigate through the streets of Los Angeles. We drove down Wilshire Boulevard, passing the luxurious skyscraper hotels and multi-million dollar company buildings. It was night time and the streets of Beverly Hills were lit up, looking pricey as expected. We drove less than half an hour until we hit the edge of Koreatown. Driving along the streets in the residential area, not far from million-dollar residential areas, were small homes and much older looking apartments. We passed many liquor stores, contrary to what we saw in Beverly Hills. Koreatown had many different shops,restaurants and one thing my friend pointed out was the huge signs on their churches There were several Korean barbecue places and shops that had Korean lettering on them. The buildings in Koreatown looked very narrow and tightly spaced. The shops were cramped together in an l-shape and had very little parking for the massive amount of vehicles there were. The roads were in-tact, but definitely did not have as many lanes as they did on Wilshire. The vehicles were also different because most of them were compact and middle-class vehicles such as the ones shown on the picture below.  There was a mix of Honda's and mid-class SUV’s. The borough did not have any sky-rise buildings, but only one-story shops that looked outdated. There was not much vegetation, which was not surprising in this urban setting.  It was a very different ethnic place, but once we got to the all-you-can-eat Korean Barbecue restaurant, it looked a little more familiar to what I am used to.

                On the side of the restaurant there was a familiar ethnic scene, a 711 with men of differences races standing around outside. I saw a billboard (picture below) that was in Spanish, advising mothers to be precautious about what they feed their children. I found this particularly interesting because there was a Spanish billboard nestled in the middle of Koreatown. There was also a ‘Los Amigos’ market close by and a Guatemalan restaurant. I found this peculiar because as we were waiting outside the restaurant, it was mostly an Asian demographic.I think I was the only Latina in that shopping center as we were waiting outside to be seated. The only time I saw other Hispanic people was inside the restaurant, where they worked as cooks. Although I saw many Asian people in Koreatown, it had a mix of people and their roles seemed specific, but not confined. The Korean people were the business owners, and the Hispanic people were the workers and cooks of the restaurant. From what I saw, the people outside were mostly Asian families, groups of teenagers,and groups of college students. What I learned from observing all of these aspects of Koreatown and the people there was that race was not a major division in this metropolitan neighborhood. Latino & Korean businesses were conglomerated into this substandard neighborhood.  That reinstated the idea that ethnic divisions are not as great as class divisions. People could relate more to people off their own class than people of their same race and different class.  The stark differences between Beverly Hills and Koreatown were more outstanding than the fact that there are many Latinos living and working in Koreatown.

                This idea relates to this week’s reading, “The Truly Disadvantaged.” The reading acknowledged the term of ‘underclass’ that incorporates people living in disadvantaged neighborhoods, such as Koreatown. It also clumps together those individuals in this area as being the unfairly charged ‘ghetto underclass’ as they have similar minimal resources at hand. Therefore I suggest that the socially constructed “underclass” is very prominent among those living in poor neighborhoods and has more to do with economic difference than race.