Korean Americans in U.S. Race Relations after the 1992 Los Angeles Riots

Abstract

The 1992 Los Angeles riots may arguably be the turn-ofthe-twentieth-century incident in US history that garnered the biggest public attention in South Korea. Headed by major newspapers and broadcasts, the Korean reportage on the LA riots brought to light the intimate connection between the two countries as Koreans in South Korea worried about the safety and welfare of their family and relatives in the U.S. Min Hyoung Songs Strange Future: Pessimism and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots and Nadia Y. Kims Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA, two recent books born out of enduring critical engagement with the 1992 LA riots and their repercussions, provide an apt occasion for revisiting the social and cultural significance of the LA riots and for examining the transnational circulation of ideas of race mediated by such events Describing the LA riots as a cultural-literary event,in excess of just a historical event,Song reads an array of literary texts and films-ranging from texts that immediately relate to the LA riots, such as Anna Deavere Smiths Twilight: Log Angeles, 1992, to texts whose connection has to be more subtly drawn out, such as Ray Bradburys The Martian Chronicles-to draw out the social forces that converged into the riots and to show the cultural imaginary that sprung from the same events.