Scribbled over and across every block in the neighbourhood is Hangul, the Korean alphabet, announcing restaurants and coffee shops, dry cleaners and florists, grocery stores and test-prep schools and karaoke bars. Today, Los Angeles has the largest ethnic Korean population outside of Korea itself, and our Koreatown is the diaspora’s flagship neighbourhood. It’s where Pulitzer Prize–winning food critic Jonathan Gold-who made the fortunes of many Korean restaurateurs before his death in 2018- got his introduction to our heat-packed cuisine. The restaurant became a neighbourhood staple, a buffet my parents used to frequent before my siblings and I came along. He had it built in a traditional architectural style, with imported blue tiles. Lee opened a cluster of businesses around Olympic Boulevard and Normandie Avenue in the 1970s-including VIP Palace, one of the first Korean restaurants in town. Lee was an entrepreneur and community leader who established the neighbourhood as a “ Second Seoul” for the wave of Koreans who moved to LA after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which lifted the restrictive quota system based on national origin. Koreatown received official recognition from Los Angeles County in 1980, thanks in large part to the efforts of Hi Duk Lee. Gamjatang, a spicy pork stew, at Ham Ji Park. Here to stay: Korean tacos, the exuberance of youth, and the wonder of discovery in Koreatown, where change is rapid, exciting, heartbreaking, and constant. Gone now: Le Cercle, my 20s, sharing food with strangers, the Sizzler. He was taking his new Kogi BBQ truck on its first weekend tour of Los Angeles. There we met the truck’s owner-a man we later learned was named Roy Choi. It turned out one bite was not enough, so I dragged my girlfriends to the taco truck parked in the Sizzler lot across the street. I was 22 and imperiously drunk, and when I asked for a bite, he was too startled to say no. Next to me was a man I’d never met before, eating a burrito that smelled like heaven. Outside of Korea, this is the greatest KoreatownĪt one night in November 2008, I stood outside Le Cercle, a club on Western Avenue in LA’s Koreatown. By Steph Cha, Photographs by Dylan + Jeni. Koreatown is the beating heart of Los Angeles-a neighbourhood alive with authentic food, contemporary culture, and a diverse, fiercely devoted community.
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