Korean Merchants Research Articles

Правовое регулирование деятельности трудовых иммигрантов-корейцев российским императорским правительством в годы Первой мировой войны (на английском)

The article analyzes the conditions of labor migration of ethnic Koreans from Manchuria and China to the Urals of the Russian Empire in 1915—1916, and their experience of interaction with the local Russian authorities. The research is based on the archival materials of the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk region (GASO). This article focuses on the legal and social status of the Korean laborers, their living conditions, habitat, and local conflicts. The study draws on theoretical insights from a range of works on immigration, and the political and economic integration of immigrants. With the onset of World War I, conscription into the Russian Imperial Army drained the manpower reserves, especially in the industries in the Urals. Some industries were under threat of permanent closure. The local tsarist administration petitioned the Foreign Ministry to employ Chinese and Korean laborers in these regions. The results of the research show that the Imperial government did not have a coherent structural plan for the accommodation of Eastern immigrant workers. The government largely improvised, regulating the migration process by issuing various decrees aimed at creating a legal basis for the immigrants. The findings also contradict the earlier Soviet historiography hypothesis about the widespread oppression of ethnic minorities in the Russian Empire. Unlike the Chinese workers who eventually left Russia for Manchuria, the Korean workers chose to stay in Russia after their contractual obligations expired and enjoyed the same rights and privileges as local Russian workers. The research reveals evidence of mistreatment of Korean workers; however, the wrongdoers were local Russian Korean merchants who acted as intermediaries between the local administration and the hired Korean immigrant workers.

Review of “Koreatown, Los Angeles: Immigration, Race, and the American Dream”

Koreatown in Los Angeles now attracts locals and tourists to experience unique ethnic cultural experiences from food to nightlife in a section of the global L.A., where diverse cultures are celebrated and appreciated. Yet, for Koreans both in the United States and in South Korea, Koreatown in LA is a symbol of Korean America far from their homeland, reflecting their successes and struggles as a racialized minority group in urban United States. In fact, the past memories of urban unrest and Black-Korean conflicts of the 1990s are still alive and have lingered in their minds, resonating collective memories of painful loss and ruins, where their American Dream was destroyed overnight. In Koreatown, Los Angeles, Lee introduces how Koreatown in LA has evolved by engaging with both local and global contexts across the Pacific Rim from the 1960s to the current era, including the urban riots in the 1960s and ‘70s, the 1965 Immigration Act, white flight, disinvestment in inner-cities, spatial segregation of Black urbanites, globalization, and more recent foreign investments since the late 1990s. Past research on Koreatown and Korean American communities in the United States can be broken down into two main categories: (1) ethnic enclave economy debates from the 1970s to 1990s and (2) Black-Korean conflicts of the 1980s and ‘90s, such as the LA riots and Black boycotts against Korean merchants, and its consequent political awakening of Korean Americans. Lee uniquely and interestingly marinates the two major research agendas in Korean American studies and reminds and reconnects readers of the recent past of the pain and loss that have often been overshadowed by more recent redevelopment of the space, characterized by the construction of luxurious high-rise buildings. Impressively, the author not only emphasizes local contexts in the United States but also shows the deep understanding of transnational influences in overseas Korean communities, particularly economic structural changes in South Korea and foreign investment after the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China

Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China

1910~20년대 대구상업회의소 구성원의 연대와 갈등 - 지역철도부설운동과 전기부영화운동을 중심으로 -

Upon opening the port, Japanese merchants and industrialists who moved to Daegu has pillaged traditionally Koreans’ business district and placed themselves at the top of regional economy. During this process, both Japanese and Korean merchants established chambers of commerce. Such separate chamber of commerce was integrated in 1915.BR The integrated Daegu Chamber of Commerce was discriminatory both in terms of its members and operation. The regional Chamber of Commerce represented the local community and conducted petition movements to pressure municipal governments and the Japanese colonial government to implement certain policies.BR The chamber of commerce was the pivot of active petition movement to construct railways to support local development and growth, and to do so, they worked together regardless of nationality and industries to pressurize the Japanese colonial government. Also, when public opinion surged regarding electric service municipalization, they showed division and conflicts due to the clash of interests between industries. As such, the chamber of commerce, which showed solidarity at times and conflict at other times based on the nature of issues, reflects the complex and multi-layered local community at the time.

A Plain History of the Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms

Abstract Through six centuries of commercial activity, cultural identification, wartime pillage, and scholarly scrutiny, the Sanguo zhi pinghua 三國志平話 (Plain Tale on The Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms), a work of popular historical fiction, survived to be reprinted for scholarly study around 1930. But this title and others from an original 1320s series continue to exist only because of a shared dedication to the study of books and through the collaboration of generations of Chinese, Japanese, and probably Korean merchants, teachers, editors, scholars, and bibliographers. This essay traces the tortuous path followed by this thin book through time, wars, and personal passions to reveal the generosity of scholars in making this title and its historical significance known today. As with cultural matters at other times and places, this path was regularly overshadowed by political and commercial interests.

A Study on Changes of Characters of Korean Merchants’ Association in Argentina

A Study on Changes of Characters of Korean Merchants’ Association in Argentina

A study on separability and validity of arbitration agreement in international business contracts-with advices and suggestions for Korean merchants

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide Korean merchants and practitioners who are not English native speakers with the practical advices and suggestions in drafting arbitration agreements.Design/methodology/approach– The doctrine of separability of arbitration and the competence-competence principle are studied based on the rules of international conventions and internationally recognized arbitral institutes. In addition, the laws of two common law jurisdictions, which are the USA and the UK are discussed with the Korean arbitration law, which follows the civil law system. This study also includes analysis of cases in order to show application of these two principles to practice and to give practical advices and implications to practitioners.Findings– Most national legislatures and jurisdictions approve the doctrine of separability of arbitration agreement and the competence-competence principle under international commercial arbitration. When there is a dispute regarding the existence or the validity of arbitration agreement, it is determined based on the prima facie test without being affected by the main contract in which the arbitration agreement is inserted. In practice, however, there are many occasions where the arbitration agreements are void or inoperable because of its contents. Many practical advices and suggestions are provided.Originality/value– This paper analyzes arbitration agreements which are used in practice so that it provides many practical advices to practitioners in terms of legal effects of languages and linguistic use.

Europeans and Americans in Korea, 1882–1910: A Bourgeois and Translocal Community

This article deals with the European and American community in Korea between the conclusion of Korea’s first international treaties in the early 1880s and the country’s annexation by the Japanese Empire in 1910. It begins by presenting an overview of the community. Concentrated in Seoul and Chemulp’o, the Anglo-Saxon element dominated a community made up of diplomats, foreign experts in the service of the Korean government, merchants and missionaries. Next, the article describes two key characteristics of the European and American residents in Korea. First, they were individuals who defined themselves as bourgeois, or middle-class; second, the term “translocality” serves to bring together the multiple layers of border-crossing these individuals were involved in—as long-distance migrants between Europe or North America and East Asia, as migrants within East Asia, and as representatives of different European and American nationalities living together in Korea.

Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010 (review)

Reviewed by: Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010 Matthew P. Romaniello Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010. By Carol Benedict. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 352 pp. $49.95 (cloth and e-book). In recent years there has been an undeniable turn toward the history of commodities. As an approach, it offers the opportunity to examine cross-cultural contacts, technology transfers, and the transmission of medical knowledge, among other attributes. At the same time, commodities history can uncomfortably straddle the intersections of economic and cultural history, as well as domestic and international history. It is a challenge at which few have excelled, but Carol Benedict is undoubtedly among those who have. Her study of the long history of China's experience with tobacco considers both national and international implications, the introduction and dissemination of foreign knowledge, and the remarkable progress by which tobacco became a "Chinese" product with its own cultural connotations. The book relates its history through the various tobacco products China consumed. Beginning with a long section on the arrival and spread of pipe tobacco, the narrative then discusses the differentiation of tobacco consumption with the rising popularity of snuff and water-pipe tobacco, and ends with the mass consumption of the machine-rolled cigarette. Though unquestionably a history of tobacco, the shifts in consumption reveal the underlying stages of commoditization. Borrowing Sidney Mintz's terminology, the early era is one of "extensification," when a new product is accepted and its consumption spreads throughout the social ranks. Snuff and water-pipe tobacco became popular with Chinese elites in the eighteenth century, and this class differentiation was "intensification" in which the commodity became a marker of elite social status. The cigarette, by comparison, was first consumed as a hand-rolled tobacco product among the urban poor, but, with the rise of machine-rolled cigarettes in the late nineteenth [End Page 426] century, modern marketing targeted all social groups, inventing new ways of appealing to elite consumers. Its overall popularity marks the cigarette as a prime example of an extensified commodity, but the connection between marketing and status meant it remained intensified as well. While the overarching narrative of tobacco's consumption resembles numerous other commodities, the depth of Benedict's research still offers new insights into the peculiarities of tobacco and Chinese society. China adopted a number of new crops from the New World, via the Spanish trade through Manila. First to be domesticated were maize and the sweet potato in the late sixteenth century, and tobacco arrived soon thereafter. Reflecting the diversity of the early modern global economy, tobacco appears to have arrived from Spanish and Portuguese traders along the coasts, from Korean merchants over land, and along Central Asian caravan routes. The Chinese reaction to tobacco has its similarities to and differences from that of the West. Unlike in Europe, there was little concern with the foreign nature of tobacco or of any particular association with "barbaric" peoples. Also unlike most Western societies, there was no particular fear of women smoking. Rather, overindulgence was condemned "as a wasteful extravagance." Furthermore, the criticism "was directed at all tobacco producers and consumers, not at female smokers in particular. To smoke was to indulge one's own pleasure at the expense of one's extended family and, by extension, the imperial order" (p. 85). Unquestionably, this is quite different from in the West, where a woman smoking was widely seen as a moral danger, even if female smokers were hardly unknown. The evaluation of the Chinese medical community, however, would have been familiar to Western doctors. Overindulgence placed patient's "health at risk by crossing moral boundaries of frugality and abstinence into the hedonism of overindulgence" (p. 97). While this verdict was the product of Chinese knowledge of "systematic correspondences," learning to moderate tobacco use was also the verdict of seventeenth-century English and Dutch medical authorities, whose knowledge came from Galenic principles. The mixture of Eastern and Western agreement and marked differences makes tobacco a template for comparing cross-cultural exchanges. Furthermore, one of the great strengths of Benedict's work is that the era of global exchange...

Meaningful Dialogue? The Los Angeles Sentinel’s Depiction of Black and Asian American Relations, 1993-2000

Out of what some call America’s first truly multiracial riot in Los Angeles in 1992 was spawned a clarion call from Black newspapers to build an interminority alliance to avert a repeat performance. This article examines whether and how the Los Angeles Sentinel changed its coverage of Black–Asian American relations in the years after 1992. Using Ethnic NewsWatch, the author analyzed 102 articles published from 1993 to 2000 that included some discussion about that connection. Several things stand out: (a) The Sentinel’s reporting for that period almost tripled output from all Black newspapers for 1980-1992; (b) the focus and breadth of coverage changed, from highlighting enmity between Korean (American) merchants and Blacks to emphasizing interminority collaboration and inclusion in a wide range of settings; and (c) rarely noted were intimate relationships and personal ties. The Sentinel provides proof that news organizations can significantly improve their coverage of race relations very quickly.

The Making of a Promised Land Religious Responses to Gentrification and Neighborhood Ethnic Diversity

The Making of a Promised Land: Religious Responses to Gentrification and Neighborhood Ethnic Diversity Weishan Huang Since the 1980s, Flushing, Queens, has been the site of a new and revived commercial zone. Its prosperity reflects not only the successful investment of Taiwanese and Korean merchants, but also the formation of a new Asian community with a unique kind of religious pluralism. This article, consisting primarily of case studies, seeks to understand how immigrant congregations/temples are responding to the increasing racial/ethnic diversity in Flushing, Queens, which results from the global processes of migration/immigration. Throughout its history, New York has always been a city of immigrants and one of the gateway cities in the United States. The flow of immigrants has changed not only the demographics of New York, but has also revitalized the practices of faith groups. My research has found that Flushing is not a “satellite city” of the traditional Chinatown (Manhattan) as described by sociologist Jan Lin. By studying the faith groups in Flushing, this essay argues that the rise of Flushing has created a promised land for Taiwanese enterprisers in the 1980s and 1990s and has more recently became a new center for ethnic Chinese immigrants after September 11, 2001. The 2000 United States Census Bureau ranked Queens County as the ninth most populous county in the United States with over 2.2 million residents. According to the Census Bureau, Queens County experienced over a 14 percent increase in population since the 1990 census. The 2000 Census also reflected the growth of the Asian population in Queens County with over 391,500 people identifying themselves as Asian Americans. More than half of Flushing’s population is Asian American, and many of the neighborhoods around Flushing also have a large number of Asian American residents. It is also claimed that Flushing has the largest ethnic Chinese community in the New York metropolitan area, surpassing the number in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Today, Flushing is the second‐largest town with Chinese ethnic residents in the United States.1 With these dramatic changes in Flushing, I intend to examine how immigrant faith groups interact with the increasing racial/ethnic diversity in this dynamic section of the city. Vision and the evolution of research method As Lowell Livezey stressed in his previous study, since World War II, changes in American cities has been so fundamental as to be termed “urban restructuring.”“Both structural changes are further linked to the social transformation of the 1960s and 1970s, which extended the presumption of individual autonomy and the moral legitimacy of personal choice at the expense of traditional collective authorities, including religion” (Livezey 2000). Despite its differences from other cities, Flushing exemplifies the processes of urban restructuring identified by Livezey and his team in Chicago: religious restructuring and social transformation with which religious organizations must interact if they are to participate effectively in urban life. In this study, congregations throughout the city are made up of people who are financially successful but always on the move. Recent immigrants in Chicago are highly mobile and widely distributed as well. Thus the local ties of the more prosperous congregation of all faiths are weakened by the centrifugal forces of people on constant reassignment and the speed of capital allocation (Livezey 2000). As Livezey pointed out, in the last decades of the twentieth century, a new metropolitan structure was emerging, one that was highly decentralized and multipolar, with edge cities and other concentrations of employment and commerce distributed throughout the metropolitan area (Livezey 2000). Just as the Chicago School methods were adapted to study churches by Graham Taylor arriving in Chicago in 1892 to teach at Chicago Theological Seminary, the Religion in Urban American Program, directed by Livezey, continued this history of religious and community research in Chicago, paying particular attention to the responses of religious organizations to the processes of post‐war urban and religious restructuring and social transformation (Livezey 2000). In 2006, Livezey launched the Ecologies of Learning Project as another attempt to study faith groups and communities. We made ethnographic case studies of congregations the core of our investigations in order to see urban religion as much as possible “from the native’s...

KOREAN-LATINO RELATIONS IN LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK

This paper examines Korean-Latino relations based on the results of my own research in New York City and review of other empirical studies conducted in New York and Los Angeles. Korean-Latino relations have been established mainly through the employment of Latino immigrants in Korean-owned stores. Since Korean immigrants' heavy dependence on very disadvantaged Latino workers involves labor exploitation, it has been a source of Korean-Latino conflicts. There have been many cases of picketing against Korean stores by Latino employees in both New York City and Los Angeles. But Korean-Latino business-related conflicts have been much less serious than Korean-Black business-related conflicts. Moreover, the relationships between Koreans and Latinos have some positive aspects. First, due to cultural similarities and mutual benefits derived from the employer-employee relationship, many Korean merchants maintain strong personal ties with Latino employees, informally helping them and often sponsoring their applications for green cards. Second, Korean ethnic organizations staffed by 1.5- and second-generation Koreans in Korean enclaves in Los Angeles and New York City have recently expanded their services to Latino immigrant workers and Latino children. In particular, the efforts of the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates in Los Angeles to protect Latino workers from exploitation by Korean merchants have greatly contributed to establishing cultural, social, and organizational linkages between the two communities.

Mercantile Practice and Conditions in the Mokpo Open Pore Market

Mokpo Port opened on October 1, 1897 and many merchants, who worked at the open ports in Busan and Incheon, etc, moved into Mokpo Port. We divided these merchants as Korean merchants and foreign merchants who put down roots in Mokpo. As Korean merchants, the commission agency had the initiative at the early of opening ports. They formed the ‘commission agency association’ for the first time and Muan Sasang Company. Through these organizations, they expanded their commercial power in opening port. But Japan pushed their colonial policies more than more, Korean commercial power contracted. Some Korean wealthy merchants pursued their profits through cooperation with Japanese colonial organization.<BR> The other side, Japanese merchants, Incheon Gaerim Jangupdan, formed their places as the Mokpo merchants. But the inland commerce right was not recognized in the early of opening port and they could not succeed because of their poor communication. But they expanded their commercial power because many Japanese moved into Mokpo and social infra was expanded through Japan pushed their colonial policies. As the result, Japanese merchants became wealthy merchants in Mokpo. The number of Chinese merchants was less than Korean and Japanese merchants. Thought they bought the land near opening port and ran the store, they did not influence to the commerce.<BR> According to the above facts. Mokpo merchants of opening port competed and developed between Korean merchants and Japanese merchants in the early of opening port. Their characteristics showed modernity and colonialness at the same time through under the rule of Japanese imperialism.<BR> Through this study, we found out the outline of existence aspects and characteristics of Mokpo opening port merchants. However, we could not investigate the detailed aspects because of the lack of personal data and study for them. This is the limit of this study. In future, it will study in detail if we find the more data to make clear.

A Study on the Establishment of Companies and the Economic-Social Movements of Inland Brokers(Gaek-ju, 客主) on Gunsan in the Period of Korean Empire

This study aims to examine the establishment of companies and the economic-social movements of brokers(Gaek-ju, 客主) on Gunsan in the period of Korean Empire.BR Gunsan and Okgu which had the representative inlets in the Geum River Estuary, became the important market in the late period of Chosun Dynasty. And the inland brokers(Gaek-ju, 客主) on these regions expanded the commercial boundary and seized the center of commerce. They also collected the commercial tax.BR The opening of Gunsan in 1899 was the result of the measures that the Korean Empire government took in order to promote the commerce and expand the Imperial estate. The government also protected and encouraged the commerce so that the commercial activity of inland brokers expanded greatly. In this background the organization of inland brokers such as the commercial companies(Yeongheungsa, 永興社 and Changseongsa. 昌盛社) displayed many activities positively. There is no doubt that a few inland brokers and small brokers took a defiant attitude toward these commercial companies. But these companies seized the commercial power on Gunsan and Okgu as the the Imperial House hold supported them.BR After the Russo-Japanese war. the commercial pursuits of inland brokers on these regions was going to shrink. Japanese Imperialism captured the right of finance, then under the mask of financial arrangement deprived Korean merchants of a great amount of capital, abolished Korean bill system. As Japanese Imperialism precedeed, the Japanese merchants on Gunsan firmly grasped but Korean brokers on Gunsan was excluded from commercial structure.BR The plunder of Japanese merchants on Gunsan strengthenning their commercial, Korean brokers on these regions endeavored to unify the divided companies and modernize the organization. And they inaugurated the economic-social movements. Especially, they participateded in the Movement to redeem the national debs (Gukchaebosangundong, 國債報償運動). Also many inland brokers of them established the modern trading company(Hosangkwansanghoe, 湖商館商會) in order to protect the commercial power.BR After the compulsory occupation in 1910, Japanese Imperialism enforced the Company Law, the Market Regulation, the Chamber of Commerce Law. Therefore Korean brokers on Gunsan as many Korean brokers on the other regions could not realize the modern company system. But their efforts influenced the national movements on Gusan under the rule of Japanese Imperialism.

Constructing Race and Civility in Urban America

Images of violence and conflict often go hand-in-hand with life in Black, urban communities, an association buttressed by the sensational media accounts that highlight crime, firebombings and riots. Past scholarly research also depicts interethnic relations in Black neighbourhoods as conflict-ridden, with immigrant merchants pitted against Black customers. However, this paper argues that previous research has been biased toward conflict and controversy and does not reflect the full range of commercial life in Black communities. Based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic research, it investigates both interethnic conflict and co-operation between African American, Jewish and Korean merchants on the one hand and their Black customers on the other, in five predominantly Black neighbourhoods in New York City and Philadelphia. The paper dispels the myth of the ubiquity of urban conflict and argues that civility, routine and 'business as usual' are the norm.

A View from Below: An Analysis of Korean Americans' Racial Attitudes

The primary aim of this study is to examine the various factors that may shape Korean's prejudicial attitudes. Moreover, given that Black-Korean tensions (or Korean-Latino ones) have in some way shaped or been shaped by broader public opinion, examining solely the prejudicial views of Los Angeles' Korean merchants - as many past studies have done - does not tell us the ways these attitudes may emerge or operate in broader contexts. Thus, in a move beyond research on particular groups of Korean Americans, this study examines racial attitudes among the general Korean American population. Finally, in light of an increasing evidence of tensions between Koreans and Latinos, the present study avoids focusing merely on Black-Korean dynamics but further examines systematically Korean's racial attitudes toward Latinos.

Civility in the city: blacks, Jews, and Koreans in urban America

Hollywood and the news media have repeatedly depicted the inner-city retail stores as a scene of racial conflict and acrimony. in the City uncovers a quite different story. Jennifer Lee examines the relationships between African American, Jewish, and Korean merchants and their black customers in New York and Philadelphia, and shows that, in fact, social order, routine and civility are the norm. Lee illustrates how everyday civility is negotiated and maintained in countless daily interactions between merchants and customers. While merchant-customer relations are in no way uniform, most are civil because merchants actively work to manage tensions and smooth out incidents before they escalate into racially charged anger. Civility prevails because merchants make investments to maintain the day-to-day routine, recognizing that the failure to do so can have dramatic consequences. How then do minor clashes between merchants and customers occasionally erupt into the large-scale conflicts we see on television? Lee shows how inner-city poverty and extreme inequality, coupled with the visible presence of socially mobile newcomers, can provide fertile ground for such conflicts. The wonder is that they occur so rarely, a fact that the media ignore.

From Civil Relations to Racial Conflict: Merchant-Customer Interactions in Urban America

The 1992 Los Angeles riot, the boycotts of Korean-owned businesses, and the 1995 firebombing of a Jewish-owned store in New York's Harlem brought concerns about race and ethnic relations in black neighborhoods to the fore. Images of conflict seared into the public consciousness that black communities are fraught with racial animosity, with immigrant merchants pitted against black customers. The merchant-customer relationship has been cited as a catalyst to such conflicts. This image of conflict, however, is inconsistent with most merchant-customer interactions and does not reflect the full range of commercial life in black communities. Most merchant-customer interactions are civil and ordinary. Civil relations prevail because merchants foster civility, abate tensions, and thwart conflict. However, under conditions of extreme inequality, small events can trigger racial anger, and the symbolic significance of nonblack-owned businesses can become a stimulus of motivations for protest that leads to boycotts and firebombings. This study is based on 75 in-depth interviews of African American, Jewish, and Korean merchants and on 75 in-depth interviews with black customers and both participant and nonparticipant observation at five research sites in New York City and Philadelphia.

From Civil Relations to Racial Conflict: Merchant-Customer Interactions in Urban America

The 1992 Los Angeles riot, the boycotts of Korean-owned businesses, and the 1995 firebombing of a Jewish-owned store in New York's Harlem brought concerns about race and ethnic relations in black neighborhoods to the fore. Images of conflict seared into the public consciousness that black communities are fraught with racial animosity, with immigrant merchants pitted against black customers. The merchant-customer relationship has been cited as a catalyst to such conflicts. This image of conflict, however, is inconsistent with most merchant-customer interactions and does not reflect the full range of commercial life in black communities. Most merchant-customer interactions are civil and ordinary. Civil relations prevail because merchants foster civility, abate tensions, and thwart conflict. However, under conditions of extreme inequality, small events can trigger racial anger, and the symbolic significance of nonblack-owned businesses can become a stimulus of motivations for protest that leads to boycotts and firebombings. This study is based on 75 in-depth interviews of African American, Jewish, and Korean merchants and on 75 in-depth interviews with black customers and both participant and nonparticipant observation at five research sites in New York City and Philadelphia

Koreans in the Hood: Conflict with African Americans

Conflict between Korean Americans and African Americans attracted national attention in the aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King trial in Los Angeles. The news media seized upon the violent riots and depicted Korean shop owners as gun-wielding exploiters of the African American poor. Absent from the barrage of media coverage was the Korean American point of view and experience of the inner city economy and racial relations. This new volume of essays written largely by Korean American scholars adds substantially to our understanding of interracial, multiethnic conflict by examining relations between the Korean American and African American communities in three major American cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Edited by sociologist Kwang Chung Kim, the book brings together similar yet contrasting studies of Korean American and African American conflict. Korean Americans find themselves economically powerful, but weak politically. African Americans, however, wield considerable political clout even though they may have little economic power. Koreans in the 'Hood offers the Korean American perspective on coexisting with African Americans in some of the poorest areas of American cities. Each chapter focuses on a particular city and experience, offering a unique opportunity for inter-city comparison as the contributors explore three overt forms of Korean American and African American confrontation: interpersonal dispute, boycott, and mass violence. The first part of the book examines Korean American experience of the conflict in Los Angeles. It then details the social, political, and economic tensions arising from the African American boycott of Korean fruit and vegetable merchants in New York. The final chapters concern the Korean American experience of conflict in Chicago. Throughout, the authors rely on empirical data and seek to trace the roots of conflict, the consequences, and future directions of relations between the two groups. What emerges is an unique account of Korean Americans caught between the poor African American population and the larger, more affluent white population.