Korean Pride: Gangs and the Korean Community 05/12/07 3:50 AM

Korean Pride. Korean Power. Especially at a place like Stanford, these phrases tend to be greeted with
questioning glances. Even for those more familiar with the gang affiliations which these phrases represent,
the images invoked tend to be of a rather harmless nature; baggy clothes, ghetto talk, and lowered Hondas
with skyscraper spoilers and oversized mufflers. At its most extreme, Korean gangs are seen by some as
being involved in the occasional fight involving fists, knives, or the more infrequently imagined gun. These
stereotypes alone seem hard to swallow for a vast number of Koreans, especially when confronted with
gang-affiliated children or friends. Unfortunately, they are also stereotypes that, in many respects, prove in
many ways to be grossly tame and naive.

Ask Mu Yung Shin,* presently a prostitute at a Korean massage parlor in Dallas. Abducted at the age of 14
from her village home in South Korea by a group of Korean criminals, she was repeatedly raped, then sent
to one of the infamous "sex farms" used by the South Korean army, where she was made a sex slave for two
years. In the early nineties she was moved to the US legally through a sham marriage with an American GI
and has served ever since as a Korean massage parlor prostitute in various locales stretching from Chicago
and Houston to New York City.1

Mu Yung Shin is just one of several thousand Korean women abducted, raped, and virtually enslaved by the
multimillion-dollar international prostitution network run by the Korean Killers, or KK. Korean Killers, and
other major Korean gangs is the US such as Korean Power, based in New York, deal not only in
prostitution, but in drug trafficking, extortion, and firebombings, mostly directed against the Korean
community.

Take Tae Sook Lee,* a longtime member of the Korean Killers based in Los Angeles' Koreatown. With two
accomplices, called his "enforcers," Tae would visit Korean businesses in the area, mostly car dealerships,
and demand payments of money ranging from $30,000 to $50,000. If threats and intimidation failed to net
him the money, arson would result. According to Ray Futami, a detective with the LAPD, "If they [Korean
business owners] didn't pay, Tae would send in his boys, his enforcers, and they would burn cars and
dealerships." Tae was finally apprehended in 1989 through information gained in the shooting death of Ha-
Seung Lee, a sort of Koreatown "Godfather." In an ironic, and ultimately saddening twist, it was discovered
Tae's parents themselves are the owners of several businesses in the Koreatown area.2

In 1993, five members of New York's Korean Power gang were arrested on charges of extortion from at
least 100 Korean small businesses, using threats of physical pain or firebombings to keep their victims silent
and obedient. These were not the actions of hardened criminals, but of Korean youths ranging in age from
16 to 23.3 Neither were these crimes rare aberrations. From Los Angeles to New York, prostitution and
extortion are practiced on a daily basis by Koreans against Koreans.

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Korean Pride: Gangs and the Korean Community 05/12/07 3:50 AM

Asking the question of "why" is in many ways a fruitless exercise; every community has its share of gang
problems, and none have managed to fully understand, much less contain such actions. But a much more
pressing question is reflected in the ignorance, skepticism, and silence that seem to be the stock response of
the Korean community to the actions of Korean gangs. Why do so few Koreans hear or know of the
problems, and why do fewer still choose to speak out about them?

The seeming inability of the Korean community to properly face up to its gang problems has had many
damaging repercussions. Not only has it left multiple police investigations languishing due to lack of
support and cooperation from the victims of these crimes, but it has created a culture of ignorance and
denial within the community as a whole. When Korean-language media fails to report such stories, it only
bolsters the individual Korean's vehement denials that the problems exist. When parents see children with
cigarette burn scars on their arms and "Korean Pride" (another moniker used by multiple localized Korean
gangs) caps atop their heads and fail to realize the full extent of the implications, it bespeaks of a
breakdown in the idea of community. It has sacrificed the idea of honest, sometimes painful communication
for the false salve of unqualified support. These attempts to provide support for the community's individual
members, especially its children, have gone too far when, in doing so, they chose to ignore, and by turn
exacerbate, gang problems which cannot simply be wished away.

Jump now to Washington D.C., where in a span of 18 months from 1985 to 1986 eleven Korean businesses
were mysteriously firebombed. Though the investigation, handled by both local and federal authorities, first
focused on tensions between Washington's Black and Korean communities, patterns and circumstances
similar to Korean against Korean firebombings in Los Angeles and New York led investigators to suspect
the work of a local Korean gang styling itself in the image of the better known KK and Korean Power
gangs. Though the police had no firm evidence pointing to any specific Korean gang activity, several signs
existed. All the businesses were Korean. The firebombings were all of a more threatening rather than
destructive intent, unlike the heavy damage that would be more likely in racially motivated bombings.
Except for the Korea Times building, the other businesses had no tell-tale outward signs of being Korean-
owned. At the least, such evidence pointed to broadening the investigation to include the possibility of
Korean gang activity. What investigators did not quite count on was the utter lack of cooperation given by
the Korean community. One Korean business owner whose store was firebombed insisted that Koreans were
"absolutely not" responsible for the firebombings and that any theories to the contrary were "without
substance." The treasurer of the local Korean Businessman's Association was even more strident in his
denial, saying that "there is no possibility, not even one percent" that Korean gangs might have anything to
do with the string of firebombings. He insisted that the bombing resulted from "hostility against
Koreans...Whenever I join some Black community meeting, I can feel some hostility exists there." 4

The Washington firebombings were not a case of casting guilt upon Korean gangs without firm evidence, as
the forceful tone of the Korean response might suggest. The defensive nature of the Washington Korean
community's reaction in not allowing even the slightest possibility of Korean gang involvement, indeed
insisting that no Korean gangs existed at all in the Washington area, amply illustrates the dysfunctionality
with which the Korean community has dealt with these issues. When the community cannot even ponder the
idea that the firebombings were Korean in origin, even in the face of multiple similar incidents in Los
Angeles and New York, there is more than a lack of communication or knowledge involved.

The Korean community has often been proven guilty of reverting to attitudes of programmed ignorance and
instantaneous denial in the face of issues and events which have the power to reflect negatively on Koreans.
An extreme form of the community's own extreme and unjustified sense of "Korean Pride," this knee-jerk

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Korean Pride: Gangs and the Korean Community 05/12/07 3:50 AM

tendency to react with unrationalized and vociferous denial in the face of issues which could lead to some
sense of "communal shame" has unwittingly caused heavy damage to the community as a whole. The desire
for Koreans to want to focus only on the academic and social achievements of their children while turning a
blind eye to a thriving criminal counterculture has served as a major factor in the growth of Korean gang
activity in the recent years. Without acknowledgment, the Korean gang problem can only get worse, and the
Korean community will continue to be victim to its own suspension of reality.
* Names have been changed.

Sources:
1. Gallagher, Mike. "Prostitution Ring Traps South Koreans." USA Today - International Edition. April 7, 1995 : News, p. 5A.
2. Crane, Alice. "Reputed Leader of Koreatown Gang Arrested." U.P.I. Sept. 15, 1989 : Regional News.
3. "Korean Gangsters Held in Extortion." The New York Times. May 9, 1993 : Section 1, p. 26.
4. Anderson, John Ward. "Extortion Eyed in Firebombings of Korean-Owned Businesses; Police Probe 7 Incidents in 10 months
in NW Area." The Washington Post. Oct. 19, 1985 : D1.

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