Koreans call it sa-ee-gu--a native term for April 29, commemorating the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which turned their American dream into a fiery nightmare.

But it's not just an L.A. fixation. Thousands of Korean American mom-and-pop storekeepers in other cities live in the shadow of sa-ee-gu as well. And it's troubling to think how many of the stubborn, mute, bedraggled newcomers from South Korea have been mugged, robbed or murdered in America's violent inner cities.

These are anxious hours for those who run retail stores for nickel-and-dime profits in the bleak urban spaces of Los Angeles. Some fear another racial firestorm, this time from their Latino neighbors, in the aftermath of the Nov. 11 slaying of a 17 year-old Latina who was sitting in the back seat of a car and shot to death by a Korean American grocer from Highland Park. The shopkeeper, who apparently believed her companions had stolen merchandise from him, reportedly "snapped" under the strains of mounting store thefts and a mentally troubled wife.

Cool heads have prevailed thus far, and the 51-year-old immigrant remains in jail, charged with murder. Yet this latest incident can't help but evoke memories of the 1991 fatal shooting of a 15-year-old African American girl by a Korean American female grocer during a scuffle in South-Central. The grocer was convicted of manslaughter but given probation by a white judge. That decision outraged many African Americans and, along with the subsequent Rodney King verdict, helped set off the three-day looting and burning of more than 2,300 Korean American-owned stores in South-Central L.A. and the adjoining Koreatown.

Five years later, the Korean American community remains exhausted in body and spirit--and largely unknown to outsiders. Who are these "trigger-happy" and "greedy" strangers, these monolingual "vigilantes" enshrined in TV news stereotypes?

In "Caught in the Middle: Korean Merchants in America's Multiethnic Cities," Pyong Gap Min, a sociology professor at New York's Queens College, presents an authoritative look at one of America's most misunderstood ethnic groups. He has compiled an in-depth account of Korean America's shopkeeper class, based on extensive surveys, interviews with trade-group leaders and analyses of little-noticed ethnic newspapers in New York and Los Angeles over the last two decades.