Koreatown Los Angeles

Hansel and Gretel architecture may be a public menace in some quarters, but in this town it's a cultural treasure. We speak here of the Petersen Studio Court, a.k.a. Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 552. This sweetly wacky 1921 enclave of storybook cottages wedged between a thrift shop and a Korean restaurant on Beverly Boulevard is no mere representative sample. It's an early forerunner of the 1920s fairy tale buildings scattered throughout L.A.

Los Angeles Police officers shot and killed a man in Koreatown early Saturday morning after he reached into his waistband for what officers believed was a weapon, authorities said. Steven Eugene Washington, 27, died from a single gunshot wound to the head shortly after midnight. Although no weapon was found, officers said they feared for their lives because Washington did not respond to their commands and appeared to be reaching for his waistband. Hours after the shooting, Washington's relatives criticized police and said the dead man had suffered from learning disabilities and was generally afraid of strangers.

In the shadow of a flaming mini-mall near the corner of 5th and Western, behind a barricade of luxury sedans and battered grocery trucks, they built Firebase Koreatown. Richard Rhee, owner of the supermarket on the corner, had watched as roving bands of looters ransacked and burned Korean-owned businesses on virtually every block. But here, it would be different. "Burn this down after 33 years?"

In the early hours of New Year's Eve 2006, 9-year-old Henry Cruz lay still under the covers in his family's one-bedroom Koreatown apartment. In the next room, he heard sounds of a struggle, screams and then gunshots. Peering out from under the edge of the blanket, the boy saw a man dressed in black walk into the bedroom, open a drawer and grab his father's wallet before taking off. On Wednesday, that man, Matthew Ian Koontz, and an accomplice, Jonathan Blackwell, were found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Henry's father and sister, and the attempted murder of his mother, who was shot in the stomach but survived.

SAMGYETANG, a soup made with a whole small chicken stuffed with sticky rice, jujubes, slices of ginseng, whole cloves of garlic and pine nuts -- this is my breakfast at Mountain Cafe, an always-open restaurant in my Koreatown neighborhood. It's a little after 6 a.m. on a Saturday, and the soup is delicious -- the chicken so tender it's falling off the bone and the broth subtly herbal.

In Koreatown's financial district, the ethnic niche isn't so ethnic anymore. The banks clustered along a mile-long stretch of Wilshire Boulevard still post signs in both Korean and English, and the tellers are bilingual. But the most competitive lenders have names like Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Credit Suisse and Lehman Bros.

Police are hunting the leader of a ring that allegedly lured young women from South Korea to Los Angeles, where they were forced to work as prostitutes. Investigators say Joo Jong-Chang, 39, of Rowland Heights operated a Koreatown gang that brought women illegally through Mexico and Canada and then forced them to have sex with about a dozen customers a day.

It has been a little more than a year since three family members were found gagged, bound and stabbed to death in their Koreatown apartment. Los Angeles police still do not have any clues to who committed the crime. Standing in front of the victims' apartment building at 530 S. Catalina St. on Tuesday, detectives asked "anybody who knows anything" about the Feb. 2, 1997, slayings of Marcelina Barrera, 46, her son, Kenny, 22, and her brother, Cesar Nova, 30, to contact police. In what Det.

In a two-county raid, drug enforcement agents seized nearly $3 million worth of marijuana at homes in Fullerton and Koreatown in Los Angeles, where they also arrested four men, authorities said. Investigators discovered more than 3 tons of marijuana, valued at $2.68 million, and a sawed-off shotgun at the Fullerton home on Vista Grande, said Capt.

Los Angeles Police officers shot and killed a man in Koreatown early Saturday morning after he reached into his waistband for what officers believed was a weapon, authorities said. Steven Eugene Washington, 27, died from a single gunshot wound to the head shortly after midnight. Although no weapon was found, officers said they feared for their lives because Washington did not respond to their commands and appeared to be reaching for his waistband. Hours after the shooting, Washington's relatives criticized police and said the dead man had suffered from learning disabilities and was generally afraid of strangers.

Hyun Soo Kim moved to Koreatown from Seattle eight years ago, hoping to witness the expansion of the Korean community. He did, but hardly the way he envisioned. "Every day," the 30-year-old lamented, "there seems to be something going out of business." As Koreatown becomes more of a destination and glitzy developments take root, longtime residents and shopkeepers say they are being priced out by luxury apartments and retail chains. There are so many bars, restaurants and karaoke joints that some merchants are slashing prices in a frantic effort to get their share of customers.

Ask Genara Paxtor about her corn stalks, and her sun-baked face breaks into a wide grin as she tosses up her chin and gestures to indicate just how large they've grown. Six months ago, Paxtor began cultivating a patch of earth in the Francis Avenue Community Garden, a small, lush space in the otherwise densely populated Koreatown neighborhood. The 43-year-old is also growing tomatoes, peppers, onions and radishes.

The owner of an apartment building that collapsed Sunday in Los Angeles' Koreatown, injuring four people, was convicted last fall of numerous fire and health code violations and agreed to sell all of his roughly 150 rental properties as part of a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid jail time, records show. Frank McHugh, 82, of Marina del Rey was given three years to sell his apartment buildings in an agreement approved by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Spurgeon Smith.

Amid musical performances, speeches and cheers, Koreatown residents welcomed their newest neighbor: the Los Angeles Police Department's Olympic Station A large crowd of residents sat or stood outside the front entrance at 11th Street and Vermont Avenue for the festivities. The station will be staffed with at least 293 officers, who will patrol 6.2 square miles and service about 200,000 residents, mostly Koreans and Latinos. "You have a brand-new neighbor and it's Olympic Station.

For years, the boxy office building housing the Chinese Consulate on Shatto Place in Koreatown maintained a low profile. Its only major brush with the news came nearly two decades ago after the Tiananmen crackdown prompted Chinese Americans to hold protests there. But after this month's deadly Sichuan earthquake, the consulate has emerged as an unlikely galvanizing force for Southern California's thriving ethnic Chinese community.

A Los Angeles city councilman has proposed the creation of a new billboard district in Koreatown, one that would run 17 blocks from east to west and take in major corridors such as Wilshire and Olympic boulevards. With a separate downtown billboard district scheduled for a vote next week, the proposal by Councilman Herb Wesson has alarmed anti-billboard activists. They said the city should not allow any more outdoor signs until it can show that it is cracking down on the illegal ones.

The annoying back pains that businessman Mitchel Bang endures are constant reminders of the 14-hour days that he spent selling, repairing and delivering furniture when he opened his furniture store in Los Angeles about 20 years ago. Last July, all that backbreaking labor prompted him to put his business on the back burner for a while and do something to help his fellow Korean-Americans.

It is Sunday morning at Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles' Koreatown, and its diverse congregation is singing "From All Four of Earth's Faraway Corners." With gusto, they sing -- the first stanza in Spanish, the second verse in English. And, back and forth until they complete the entire song in two languages.

The way Jack Shin sees it, he's selling the city's cheapest vacation. Spend $4.95 for a cup of drip coffee and drink it in his 100-foot-long model of the Titanic, which he built on a busy stretch of Western Avenue, and Shin guarantees you'll come away refreshed. "Everyone is working and making money to pay bills and they're very tight. One coffee here and they feel like they've been on a cruise and they're relaxed," Shin said.

Sun Ok Ma looked at a photo of the charred exterior of the sport utility vehicle in which her ex-husband allegedly burned her two children to death, hid her face behind her hair, and wept. The breakdown came as Ma took the witness stand in Los Angeles Superior Court to testify against Dae Kwon Yun, 56. After a two-day preliminary hearing, Yun was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on two counts of murder for the April 2006 deaths of Ashley, 11, and Alexander, 10.