In a recent Los Angeles Times article, Korean Americans hosted a culture night at Plaza Mexico, a huge Mexican themed mall in Lynwood, California, to introduce Mexicans and Mexicans of Korean decent to Korean food and culture. Coupled with relatively low numbers, a low rate of immigration and a somewhat more intolerant society, Koreans in Mexico have more fully assimilated into the mainstream compared to their diaspora cousins in other parts of the world.
Blurb from the article:
Los Angeles is a city where the large Mexican and Korean communities co-exist in ways that both bring them together and separate them. They share the immigrant experience and communication barriers that come with it. But the different languages — Spanish and Korean — can also be an obstacle….
…As people streamed out of the hall, Rafael Kim said he was moved most of all by the Korean girls who danced so gracefully and full of purpose, as if they knew full well who they were.
“You feel a sensation of pride, because you’re a Korean descendant, just like them,” he said in Spanish. “I see them dance so beautifully, and that I didn’t know of things like this as a child, it makes me a little sad. It’s a feeling of discovered feelings.”
Although not discussed fully in the article, Plaza Mexico is another interesting part of the story. The largest Mexican themed mall in the United States with over 600,000 square feet of retail space on 36 acres, it houses full replicas of the Angel of Independence monument and the Governor’s Palace facade in Jalisco. The Plaza is, ironically, owned by Korean American Donald Chae, who Latin Trade Magazine wrote:
“In Los Angeles, Chinese have Chinatown. Japanese have Little Tokyo. Koreans have Koreatown. Vietnamese have Little Saigon. But there’s 5 [million] or 6 million Mexicans in Los Angeles and they don’t have a place,” says Plaza Mexico’s developer, Donald Chae, a Korean immigrant. Chae ran the mall when it was an indoor swap meet. Seeing that most of his customers were Mexican, he began three years ago to transform it into Plaza Mexico.
11 Comments
Haven’t been to LA since 1999, but don’t Mexicans kind of have almost EVERY place in greater LA?
What do you get when you cross a Mexican with a Korean ?
You DON’T want to know.
“I see them dance so beautifully, and that I didn’t know of things like this as a child, it makes me a little sad.
Boo hoo. And to think I never got to enjoy the fruits of the culture from whence I sprang by being denied access to Morris Dancing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_dancing
no one asked you aaronm and no one cares. no need to mock the boy.
‘Donald Chae, a Korean immigrant. Chae ran the mall when it was an indoor swap meet. Seeing that most of his customers were Mexican, he began three years ago to transform it into Plaza Mexico.’ So simple, yet so brilliant.
aaronm, no one asked you and no one cares. No need to mock the boy.
And all those times I went around L.A., I thought I was in Little Mexico half the time… I’m confused now.
@2,
A Kimchicano!
I wonder if Mexican-Koreans ask everyone if they think the food is too spicy.
It’d be interesting to do a comparison between Korean-Mexicans and Japanese-Brazilians. How do Koreans in Korea treat Korean-Mexicans, versus the Japanese with Dekasegi?
# 5,
The story of Plaza Mexico is a lot more complex than that. Chae did own the indoor swap meet that was adjacent to a Montgomery Wards. When MW went out of business and vacated, Chae wanted to expand into it. However, the city of Lynwood said no and put up what appeared to be an impossible ordinance to stop Chae. They said that any new development in the old MW space had to “reflect the community.” That’s basically city government code for “we don’t want someone of a particular ethnicity to own that big a chunck of our city. Any ways, Lynwood (is addition to being the birth city of “Weird Al” Yankovic) is 86% latino and latino mix.
Well, the wily Chae then spent a lot of time in Mexico, getting familiar with the culture and architecture. He also tried to find a business partner. Despite the fact that there are a gazillion Mexicans in Los Angeles, oddly enough, no mainstream Mexican department store wanted to sponsor Chae’s idea of building a Mexican-centric shopping mall in the U.S. IMHO, a mainstream Mexican store from Mexico would of made a killing… it would be like shooting fish in a barrel… they would of made money hand over fist… etc.
So Chae goes back to Lynwood city council with the Plaza Mexico idea, complete with presentations with Mexican American voice overs, Mexican inspired models, drawings, etc. AND THEY STILL fought him! They were looking for a Latino developer… but none came forward!.. None had the expertise, capital or guts to put that much money back into their own community…. so I think their city council just fought him out of spite. But later, after hearing how much sales tax revenue could be generated by such a place, and seeing NO OTHER alternatives to productively use the lot vacated by MW, they relented.
Los Angeles is full of these interesting little “ethnic” stories. Another one is the city of Hawaiian Gardens (majority Latino) and Irving Moskowitz, a jew who owns 70% of the city… uses revenues from his bingo clubs and casino in Hawaiian Gardens to fund Jewish settlement development in the Gaza Strip… but that’s another story for another time…