In Koreatown, Radio Korea’s move to Orange County feels bigger than a change of address

Richard Choi has spent most of the past nearly 37 years waking up at 3 a.m. to arrive at Radio Korea early for the morning broadcast.

For years, Choi’s commute to the station on Wilshire Boulevard took only a few minutes from his home near Hancock Park, but when the station moved its main operations to La Palma in Orange County last December, he would have to wake up an hour earlier to make the drive.

“That was not true,” Choi said. So I decided it was time to retire. If the office had stayed in Koreatown, I would have continued broadcasting.”

This action did not go down well with some long-time listeners and former employees who saw the station as inseparable from Koreatown.

Choi, 78, added that many longtime employees left the newsroom rather than make the trip to Orange County.

When he retired last year, Choi was one of the station’s most prominent voices, especially during the LA riots of 1992, when Korean immigrants throughout the city turned to Korean-language radio for updates and information.

When executives began to entertain the idea of ​​leaving Koreatown, Choi told them to reconsider.

The station’s headquarters became a place in the area that many in the Korean-speaking community call 3700 Wilshire Blvd. “like the building of Radio Korea,” and the area in front of it, “Radio Korea lawn.”

Now, Radio Korea’s big logo of big, white letters is gone, just a shadow of text.

The company spent years looking for another location in Koreatown after landlord Jamison Properties notified tenants in the Wilshire building that they would eventually need to move out, said Radio Korea CEO Michael Kim.

Developers plan to redevelop the commercial property into affordable housing.

Radio Korea looked at multiple sites, including one near Hancock Park, but repeatedly faced issues including parking and cost.

“We wanted to stay in L.A. We tried so hard to stay, because of 1992 and all that,” Kim said. “If Jamison would have renewed our lease, we would have stayed.”

He admitted, however, that he also believes that the center of Southern California’s Korean community has been slowly shifting beyond LA.

“I understand how people in LA can feel about these things,” Kim said. “But I saw that Koreatown is starting to shrink in Korea, and I started thinking, ‘Is Koreatown going to die?’ I can’t hope, but what if it ends up being like Chinatown, where all the Chinese people move to the San Gabriel Valley? “

“We had to move. There is a good Korean community here,” he added.

Orange County now has two officially designated Koreatowns, one in Garden Grove that received city recognition in 2019, and one in Buena Park that was designated in 2023.

Radio Korea still operates a small satellite office in Koreatown, and Kim insists that its reporting from LA remains the same.

“We’re not trying to leave LA,” he said. “The only difference is that we’re broadcasting from Orange County and not Los Angeles.”

For many Korean Americans, it is almost impossible to talk about Radio Korea without talking about the 1992 riots. The station has been an important source of information as chaos has spread in Koreatown after the conviction of Los Angeles Police Department officers who filmed beating motorist Rodney King.

More than 2,000 Korean businesses were damaged or destroyed during the unrest, according to some public estimates cited in the years since.

Choi said: “Radio Korea played a big role in helping Korean society to rebuild, and the riots were a turning point that turned Korean society into real Americans. Before that, people came here chasing the vague idea of ​​the ‘American Dream.’ People suffered and worked endlessly, but after these riots, they realized that the life they lived in America was not for immigrants in the full sense.”

At the time, many Korean immigrants spoke limited English and relied heavily on Korean-language media for information. The radio station became an emergency information network as residents of Koreatown felt left without police protection during the chaos.

Choi and other broadcasters stayed on the air all night taking calls from neighbors reporting what was happening around town.

Young workers leaned on Choi, who had spent nearly two decades living in LA by then. According to the station’s accounts, Choi was sometimes on the air for more than 20 hours a day during the height of the unrest.

Yong-ho Kim started working in the marketing department of Radio Korea a month after moving to the United States in February 1990, two years before the unrest. That moment is still vivid in his memory.

“My oldest child was only 2 years old,” said Kim. “I heard helicopters overhead, I saw fires everywhere, I heard looting and gunfire all night.

He spent several days hunting at the station, which at the time was operating in a building near Alvarado Street and Olympic Boulevard.

The marketing department was separated from the station’s editorial side, but he said everyone at Radio Korea stepped in during the chaos. He eventually left the station and entered the restaurant business, opening Arado Japanese Restaurant in 1995.

“Radio Korea was my first real job in America, at that time I didn’t know English well, I didn’t understand the culture well, and they gave me a chance,” he said. “That event changed my business career after that. Even now, I feel that Radio Korea runs in my blood. I love that station deeply.”

Kim said she misses meeting in person at the station.

“Before, when I was recording radio commercials at my restaurant, I would go straight to the studio,” he said. “Now everything is sent over the phone.”

He added that LA remains the “emotional center” of Korean American life, even as many Korean families move to Orange County and other areas.

“That’s why there’s an attachment to keeping Korean-language media focused on Koreatown,” he said.

Jamison, a major commercial office landlord in Koreatown and one of the area’s most prolific developers, declined to comment on several questions related to the future of the Wilshire building where Radio Korea calls home. It is not clear when the company notified tenants when they would need to leave or the timeline for the planned residential conversion.

Radio Korea eventually bought a building in La Palma, where Kim said the cost came down at a difficult time for Korean-language media outlets already facing declining advertising revenue and ongoing financial struggles following the pandemic.

This move is a painful moment for Korean society.

Hyepin Im was a graduate student at USC during the 1992 riots. The destruction of Koreatown and the experience of watching Korean American business owners struggle with its effects helped shape his later work in public advocacy.

Ethnic media organizations rely heavily on physical relationships within the communities they serve, Im said.

“Being here in 1992 made a difference,” said Im. “I think their absence here will be a loss to the community.”

Im, whose nonprofit work with Faith and Community Empowerment has focused on immigrant and underserved communities in LA for decades, argued that the city still carries a unique weight in Korean communities nationally, even as the Korean population continues to grow in Orange County and elsewhere.

“I realized that maybe in Orange County, some of the things I could see why they would choose to have more Korean leadership in politics,” he said. “So, just as the Chinese community has moved into the San Gabriel Valley from Chinatown, maybe there will be a change happening.”

“I think that closeness is always important and I would say that it is still what happens in LA that affects the whole country, especially the Korean community,” he added.

For Choi, Koreatown is inseparable from Radio Korea and the station’s role during the upheavals, which pushed many Korean immigrants to become deeply involved in American public and political life.

“No matter how many Koreans move to Orange County,” Choi said, “the symbolic center of the Korean community is still Koreatown.”

Hanna Kang writes LA area, a non-profit media organization that brings together the communities of Los Angeles.