Abstract
In this article, I argue that Korean immigrant merchants were active agents who
opened small businesses in South Central Los Angeles in order to overcome a range of
disadvantages faced in American society. From a structural point of view, Korean immigrant
merchants constituted a middleman minority group that played the dual role of “oppressed
and oppressor” in the suburban ghetto. Although these merchants made efforts to
maintain civil relations with their African American customers, they were often treated with
hostile attitudes largely because of the exploitative relationship that existed between the
two groups. However, I maintain that Korean American journalists and scholars have not
only misunderstood the identity of the middleman minority as an innocent buffer but have
also erroneously estimated that race relations with African Americans in Los Angeles were
better than those in other areas of the United States.