In Los Angeles, the Rise of Troubled K-Town
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 11.21.07 | 10:52 AM ET
I’ve always enjoyed spending time in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. It’s one of those places you can go in the city to immediately feel far, far away from the waspy Westside. But as the L.A. Weekly reported recently, there’s trouble in K-town.
“K-town, as locals call it, is emerging as one of Los Angeles’ hottest nightspots,” writes David Ferrel. “Wealth from Seoul, flowing in at record levels, has given flower to residential towers, karaoke bars and pulsating clubs. Awash in neon, jam-packed with trilevel mini-malls and traffic, the district is L.A.‘s closest thing to the noir, futuristic vision of Blade Runner.”
But gangs are an increasingly urgent problem: “[P]redatory hoodlums—including both Asian and Latino gang members—seem to be waging a high-stakes game of one-upmanship with the monied forces of new development.”
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Photo by paisley’s such a nice girl via Flickr, (Creative Commons).