LOS ANGELES—On Eighth Street in Koreatown, the red sign of Dong Il Jong has fallen off the wall. The Korean-style paper window has been smashed, leaving a broken hole. A rental ad on the wall next to it that reads "Restaurant Space for Lease."

With its wooden exterior that evokes memories of mid-20th century Seoul, Dong Il Jong was for 43 years a gourmet hall where Korean emigres and their descendants could experience the sights and tastes of their homeland.

The sense of loss is palpable. If you search for the restaurant on YELP, the page that displays notes that it is "closed" and includes comments from loyal diners mourning their loss. The COVID-19 pandemic was too much for Dong Il Jong. And with its passing, Koreatown may have become a little bit less Korean.

That's happening in other ways, too. Yes, the commercial area of Koreatown centered on Wilshire Boulevard, Normandie and Vermont avenues still looks, sounds and smells like a vibrant Korean cultural mecca. From the neon lights and architecture to the 24-hour restaurants, nightclubs and K-pop stores, it is easy to find products, styles and even some faces reminiscent of Seoul and Busan.

Visitors to Koreatown can see change happening before their eyes. The area is the site of numerous real estate developments, including some very large ones, and in many cases they don’t have much to do with the area’s cultural identity.

There is no doubt that while the most densely populated neighborhood in Los Angeles County is de-Koreanizing, as is the county as a whole. The Korean population of Los Angeles County has decreased for the first time ever, according to U.S. census data, dropping 8 percent between 2010 and 2019. This is partly due to a decline in immigration from the community’s ancestral homeland and an increase in the number of Korean Americans moving away.

Harry Ryu, a furniture store owner who has left South Korea for 32 years to move to Koreatown, moved out of Koreatown 10 years ago because the densely-packed area became too hectic for him.

It isn’t his only complaint. "I rarely eat Korean food in Koreatown's restaurants anymore. It's no longer the genuine taste of my hometown," Ryu said. He complained that dishes have been re-imagined to target non-Korean customers.

The Korean Town in
Los Angeles

The first Korean emigres began settling in Los Angeles in 1903. Early immigrants discovered an affordable area in Bunker Hill where they could settle and get work as farm laborers and railroad workers. In the 1930s, hundreds of new-arriving Koreans settled in the area that became "Koreatown," where they established a linguistic and cultural home nearly 6,000 miles from the peninsula they left.

The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 established a new immigration policy based on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labor to the United States, which enabled a new cluster of thousands of the first-generation Korean immigrants to establish businesses, churches, and homes in an increasingly Korean area.

For decades, people have been able to eat traditional meals, read Korean-language newspapers, play games involving spinning tops and folded paper cranes, sip soju (a clear, 20-24 percent alcohol), visit Korean churches and enjoy other trappings of life in the old world.

But 120 years after the first arrivals from the peninsula, Koreatown is an important hub for descendants of immigrants from many corners of the world. It is also home to a patchwork of ethnicities, races, countries and faiths.

"Koreatown used to be more immigrant-dominated," Korean-American lawyer Anglea Oh said of the neighborhood’s demographics. Oh, who gained prominence as a prominent Korean American voice in the aftermath of what became known as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, added: "But now it’s Korean businesses."

Eun Young Kim, a principal investigator at the Korean Youth Center, notes that one-third of the business property and one-fifth of residential property in Koreatown is owned by Koreans. Though Koreatown, LA has a higher concentration of Koreans than any other community in the U.S., the "concentration is not high in comparison with some other ethnic communities," Kim said.

Today, even though Los Angeles County has the world’s largest population of Koreans outside of the peninsula, according to the Korean American Coalition in Los Angeles, within the 3-square-mile neighborhood, Korean-speaking residents have never been the majority.

The cultural melting pot there has long included immigrants from Bangladesh, Guatemala, Mexico and the Philippines, among others. The billboard in front of the Wilshire United Methodist Church highlights different religious services in Spanish, English and Korean.

A four-block area of Koreatown between Vermont and Normandie avenues is home to thousands of Bangladeshi residents and is that community’s cultural hub in Los Angeles.

"Little Bangladesh" received its official designation from the city in 2010 during a period of tensions between the two communities, Oh recalls that a whole segment of the Koreatown community tried "to refuse splitting part of Koreatown."

"My wife's friend posted this flyer she found."

In June 2018, a flier shared on Reddit encouraged community members to vote "TO KEEP KOREATOWN!" and hinted that the community's borders could be divided by Little Bangladesh. It was followed by nearly 250 confused and angry comments in the Reddit discussion thread.

Chris Garcia, a city project manager in charge of L.A.'s neighborhood council elections, explained that proponents of Little Bangladesh wanted to create their own neighborhood council within the existing council’s boundaries.

The Little Bangladesh community proposal met with strong resistance, with the Korean American Coalition of Los Angeles accusing proponents of trying to sidestep "any effort to honor and build community together." Opponents of the Little Bangladesh Neighborhood feared its creation would strip their community of clout.

Source:Department of Neighborhood Empowerment

In the end, more than 19,000 people participated in the vote on whether to establish a second community council in Koreatown. According to the results published by LA's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, 98.5% of voters were against subdividing the Neighborhood Council. Even if Little Bangladesh remains an official designation.

Four years later, tensions have eased.

"It's wonderful to have different kinds of communities coming together because the world is moving in that direction," explains Oh. "The reality is, in the world, we all have to find a way to harmonize."

At the dawn of 2022, the question of who remains in Koreatown is gaining steam as the neighborhood continues to gentrify.

Real estate values are soaring, boutique hotels have moved in and towering buildings have gone up. There are signs that gentrification may be driving the next generation of Korean Americans out, along with members of other longtime communities.

The Rising Cost of Living

Kenny An, a second-generation Korean American who grew up in the area, was surprised to learn that residents are less likely to be Korean these days.

But rents are soaring. Old apartment buildings have been demolished and replaced with luxury housing with rents starting between $1,600 and $3,500 for a single bedroom, according to Apartmentguide.

An recently moved out of a nice apartment building in Koreatown where most of the tenants were Koreans or international students from various parts of the world. "Rent was over $3,000 per month and it's the most my family has ever paid for rent," he said.

Ben Pak, who migrated to Los Angeles from South Korea in 1983, notes that starting salaries have hardly grown since he began working in the early 1990s. "Nonetheless, the housing and living expenses have doubled or tripled," Pak says.

While some people are moving out of Koreatown to escape the cost of living, others are simply following opportunities. "Many recent Korean immigrants use this part of Los Angeles as their gateway to the United States," said Kim, the investigator at the Korean Youth Center.

Family and friends, employment, social services and social activities have long attracted new-arriving Korean immigrants, she said, but once they or their children are more established, they tend to move to suburbs or to other areas in the United States as they americanize.

Dowell Myers, a professor of Public Policy and Sociology at USC, suggested that such ethnic or immigrant enclaves naturally evolve in this way.

Pak noted that his daughter moved out of Los Angeles and now works as a mental health therapist in San Jose, while children of various loved ones have moved to Colorado, San Francisco and other areas for better work options.

"They are doing careers what my generation was not allowed to," Pak said.