INTRAMETROPOLITAN LOCATIONS OF KOREAN BUSINESSES: THE CASE OF CHICAGO

Abstract

Intrametropolitan locations of Korean businesses in the Chicago area are examined in terms of the ethnicity of their major customers: ethnic customers, inner-city minority customers, and White middle-class customers. The study reveals that Korean-owned stores providing important ethnic goods or services are spatially concentrated in Koreatown along Lawrence and Lincoln Avenues and in the northwestern suburbs. Korean businesses that serve inner-city minority customers are located mainly in southside Chicago, providing important necessities such as clothing, shoes, beauty supplies, and general merchandise. Uniquely, Korean entrepreneurs overwhelmingly dominate the dry cleaning business, which serves the White middle-class population and is thus scattered around the entire metropolitan area. Korean entrepreneurs' unusual market diversity comes from their effective utilization of ethnic resources and their unique linkage with the export-oriented home-country economy in the 1970s and 1980s. As a whole, their entrepreneurship has demonstrated the dynamic and complex nature of immigrant businesses in major American cities.