Southland’s small, wary North Korean population tries to fit in
In the shadows of Koreatown, dozens of North Korean defectors work to blend in with the larger South Korean culture, fearful of what would happen to relatives they left behind if they are discovered.
Myung-nam Park, center, fled North Korea 20 years ago. He now runs a restaurant in Orange County, serving food of his homeland. (Barbara Davidson, Los Angeles Times / December 23, 2011)
Once a month, in an office building with a grimy glass facade on the outskirts of Koreatown, about a dozen Koreans gather over takeout dinners to talk about life and a homeland to which they cannot return.
Their skin is a little darker and they are maybe a little shorter than the average Korean, from having known hunger and hardship more intimately than most. They are wary of strangers and sparing with personal details. As they chat, the accent they suppress in daily life comes out little by little — indistinguishable to foreign ears but a dead giveaway to any Korean speaker.
They are North Koreans who have fled one of the world’s last communist strongholds. They make up a small but budding community forming in the shadows of L.A.’s vast Koreatown.
Although recent South Korean immigrants to the U.S. are increasingly wealthy well-educated professionals who come in search of economic opportunities, the few North Koreans are mostly refugees who illegally crossed the border into China with little other than the clothes on their backs. And in L.A., where their southern counterparts have marked their territory with garish neon signs, high-rises and billboards, the North Koreans choose to remain inconspicuous and speak little of where they come from, out of concern for the families they’ve left behind and the discrimination they can face from fellow Koreans.
“The difficulties in settling down, the culture shock all immigrants go through, North Koreans experience about two, three times as much of it,” said Dong Jin Kim, a South Korean-born pastor who serves as director of the Assn. of North Koreans in America, the group that organizes the monthly gatherings. “The Korean community here doesn’t really understand them.”