Koreatown, U.S.A.
Koream Journal, Chong-suk Han Posted: Aug 15, 2002
TACOMA, WASH. - At first blush, most people would describe the stretch of South Tacoma Way between 84th and 96th that straddles the border of Tacoma and Lakewood as pretty unremarkable. The wide, four-lane street, more characteristic of Southern California than the Pacific Northwest, extends uninspiringly along a north-south corridor and points directly towards two of the largest military bases in the country.
Neglected buildings, in various stages of disrepair, also hint at a questionable past.
Characterized more by insipid block buildings and rapidly moving traffic than cultural attractions, it would be easily missed under any other circumstance. It is, perhaps, unremarkable in every way, except one: Since the late 1980s, this area has quickly evolved into the economic, cultural and social home to the largest Korean American community in the Pacific Northwest.
"The whole street used to be one of the most rundown areas of town," said James Kim, president of the Korean American Association (KAA) of Tacoma. "It was filled with prostitutes, massage parlors and drug dealers."
Yet from this seemingly inauspicious beginning, a vibrant economic district with nearly 200 Korean-owned businesses, offering a full-range of retail and professional services to the ever-growing Korean American community, managed to firmly anchor itself on to the landscape. There have even been talks of building a community center that would serve as a cultural and social gathering place.
It's unclear when Korean Americans first started coming to the Pacific Northwest. Yet historians - who often study groups other than Korean Americans - note with some measure of certainty that early Korean immigrants took part in the building of the transcontinental railroads and labored in the Alaskan canning industries, often using Seattle or Tacoma as their point of departure. Yet these numbers were, at best, negligible.
"It wasn't until the 1960s that any noticeable number of Korean immigrants began settling in this area," said Young Sil Jaqua, former president of the Korean Women's Association, a nonprofit social service agency in Tacoma. Jaqua credits McChord Air Force Base and Fort Lewis Army Base with bringing Korean immigrants to the Northwest in any real numbers.
"Korean immigration relied on chain migration that was started by wives of U.S. service men who were once stationed in Korea," she said.
It was through these chains that a large Korean American population immigrated to Tacoma and the rest of Pierce County. In the past decade alone, the Korean American population in Washington grew by nearly 60 percent, making Koreans the fastest growing ethnic group in the state.
Depending on whom you ask, the number of Korean Americans in Pierce County alone is estimated to be somewhere between 15,000 and 50,000. A wide discrepancy, but the Census is a contentious game, especially when one of the players is an immigrant group.
Looking at all of it now, it's difficult to imagine a different reality. But if it were not for Boo Nam Han, there may never have been a Koreatown. In the early 1970s, Han was working two jobs, washing dishes at night and packing meat during the day.
When he was unexpectedly laid off from these jobs, he and his wife began making tofu and rice cakes in his small kitchen and hocking them at various markets and stores around the Tacoma area. Soon, the couple began making soy sauce and bean paste and growing produce in their yard.
When customers started showing up at their door, they built a small addition to their house where the first Boo Han market made its home. As one small expansion led to another, Han decided that it was time to make a larger investment. By then, a small cluster of Korean-owned stores was beginning to congregate near downtown Tacoma. Yet, Han never believed that this small cluster would amount to a community.
"In order to develop an ethnic enclave, you need to have cheap, available land, preferably in small plots," said Seung Han, Boo Nam Han's son and executive director of Han Foods.
Seung Han notes that the area where Korean stores were clustering at the time had limited real estate available for the types of stores that Korean Americans would be able to open. "We're talking largely about an immigrant group with limited capital to start their businesses," he said, "and building an enclave requires that many people have access to potential business sites."
So in 1990, Han built a small strip mall anchored by an expanded Boo Han Market along South Tacoma Way in what was then an unincorporated part of Pierce County. "From there, it happened rather rapidly," said Seung.
Several other strip malls were built on available land directly across the street and adjacent to Boo Han Plaza, bringing a critical mass of Korean-owned stores to one area. When Lakewood became an incorporated city in 1995, the area was quickly dubbed the "International Business District."
For all intents and purposes, "it's Koreatown," said Kim, KAA president. "If you read the Korean [characters] under the English ones, it even says 'Koreatown?'" he added, referring to a sign that phonetically reads, "Han-guk Taw-oon."
For the most part, the growing neighborhood has been very well received by the new city and surrounding neighbors. "The Korean business community has been very enthusiastic, have made a lot of investments, and have been very active in cleaning up that area," said Candice Bock, community relations manager for the City of Lakewood.
Yet efforts last year to officially have the neighborhood designated "Koreatown" were met with some resistance, signaling that not all is rosy.
But whatever it is called, Kim sees the area continuing to grow as the Korean American population steadily increases. More importantly, he sees the neighborhood as a cultural home for the growing second generation. "My kids go there to get Korean music," he says. "They can't get that anywhere else."
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