Voices of Dissent: Little Seoul in El Paso

 

Editor's note: David Dorado Romo, author of “Ringside Seat to a Revolution,” a book about the history of the Segundo Barrio and its relationship to the Mexican Revolution, is a founding member of the Paso del Sur Group, formed in opposition to the Downtown Plan. He continues a series of interviews with plan opponents, this time talking to Richard Kim and Yaki Casas.

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“There needs to be a voice”: Richard Kim, medical school student whose father's business is inside the Demolition Zone

MY FATHER, WALTER KIM, was born right about the time of the Korean War. His family escaped from North Korea. I remember my grandmother telling me about the hunger they faced during the war and that they had to make soup out of blades of grass. Later, my dad enlisted in the U.S. military so that he could obtain his citizenship. He came to Los Angeles about 25 years ago where he had a business. One of his friends told him that business in El Paso was picking up so he moved to El Paso along with a friend of his and started a business together. He has a wholesale retail store on Sixth and El Paso Street that sells blankets, comforters, curtains and clothing.

Initially he didn't understand what was going on with the downtown plan. There was a lot of disinformation going on in the Korean community. Some said they were going to move us to another location; others that nothing was going to happen. Others said that we are going to lose our businesses. He joined up with the Land Grab Opponents and became informed about the plan. My father also helped found another group called the Business Defenders of Downtown El Paso. Some of the merchants in this group come from other countries besides Korea. One family came from Paraguay and they are on work visas. So if they lose their business, they lose their work visas and they will be deported to Paraguay. There are about 130 members total in the Business Defenders of Downtown El Paso. About 30 are Hispanic, 70 or 80 are Korean and about 30 are Chinese. We have separate meetings, in English and in Korean.

My dad knows that there needs to be a voice speaking out for the people that have been misrepresented. Most of the supporters of the Paso Del Norte plan have no conception of who the Koreans are. They have no interaction with us. Most of them just drive through on weekends to Juárez, or drive by on I-10. They have no conception of what the Koreans have contributed to downtown and South El Paso. The Korean merchants have remained here despite the peso devaluation. A lot of Korean people stuck out the peso devaluation because they saw that there was still a future here and they recovered from it. What would have happened to those streets, who would be there if it wasn't for the Asian people? What stores would be empty and closed?

MY DAD DOESN'T have the time or luxury to fight these kinds of battles. He works 364 days out of the entire year. One day a year he gets to go up to the mountains. He works from 8:30 in the mornings to about 7 or 8 p.m. every day. Asian people don't like to make a lot of noise. We usually keep to ourselves and tend to our businesses. But he is fighting this battle because he knows that what the Paso Del Norte Group is doing is wrong. He has urged the Korean community to speak out.

About 40 or 50 Korean merchants picketed during the Abraham Chávez meeting (on July 10). This was the first time they've ever picketed. We were asked by the police to move away from the front of the Abraham Chávez and to the sidewalk. Since it is a public area, they had no right to tell us to move. As more and more people showed up the cops didn't insist on us moving. But when the picket was almost over and many of the Korean merchants went inside the theater, my mother Sookhee Kim stayed outside, along with my brother Daniel, to take care of the picket signs. She was sitting on the concrete steps right by the waterless fountain. The cops came up to her and asked her to move and leave the area. They said they had orders from above. My mother asked who had ordered the move. “Mayor Cook,” the cops said. “Show me documentation, the Mayor's orders,” she told the cops. My mother is not one to engage in civil disobedience. She just wanted the actual documentation. So since there was no documentation to provide, she decided not to move. She told me the cops had gotten a little upset by that. They huffed and puffed. But she just said no. My brother also told the cops, “We are just waiting for my father. We have a right to wait for my father.” All they were doing was just waiting. They weren't picketing any more. They weren't saying anything. They were just talking among themselves. But the cops told him that they had no right to be there. They were very upset and threatened arrest until Senator Eliot Shapleigh went up to them and persuaded the cops not to arrest anyone.

IT HURTS ME to see what the City is doing with this plan because everything that my dad built from the ground up can be taken away from him in an instant. I talk a lot with my younger brother Daniel, who is 19 years old and currently at Texas Tech, about this. He is upset about the underhanded dealings between Paso Del Norte and the City Council. There are deals going on between the Korean Chamber of Commerce and City Council behind the scenes. It seems that the so-called president of the Korean Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Suk Suh, is striking some deals with Joyce Wilson and Mayor Cook on acquiring 12 acres of the Segundo Barrio for themselves. They will somehow squeeze some land out of this deal. Mr. Suk Suh was never elected as president of the Korean Chamber of Commerce. About 10 to 12 years ago the Korean Chamber of Commerce was active in the community. But slowly after the years it faded away to the background and became inactive. But now Mr. Suk Suh comes up and says that he's the president. He keeps telling the Korean merchants to back off and stay quiet about the plan because they are going to be taken care of. Just like Sal Balcorta of La Fe Clinic is trying to sell out the Segundo Barrio residents, Mr. Suk Suh is trying to sell out the Korean merchants.

Mr. Suk Suh sent a letter to Mayor Cook, Bill Sanders, Myrna Deckert and Joyce Wilson asking that he be put in charge of a Border Wholesale Mart and that it be added to the Paso del Norte plan. He sent his letter to them on July 7, 2006. (The letter requests that that 12 acres of the Segundo Barrio be “built in Asian architectural style and to include a Korean War Veteran Memorial Park that can be truly nicknamed as ‘Little Seoul in El Paso.') The Mayor wrote back and said "the concept is very exciting. I would suggest you consider a Real Estate Investment Trust to attract $10 million in local investment and an equal amount in outside capital." Mr. Suh has already been guaranteed that he has that land. That's what he is telling the Korean business. He's promised that he will raise ten million himself to create this 20 million dollar REIT. He'll kick out the people out of the Segundo Barrio to create this “Little Seoul” there.

But this was part of the original strategy of the Paso Del Norte group from the beginning. Divide the groups and offer incentives and kickbacks to “the losers.” This is pretty much part of the strategy that was outlined in an email Joyce Wilson sent Myrna Deckert in April telling her how to “pacify” the Koreans.

But the majority of the Korean businesses are not for Mr. Suk Suh's idea. They are against this downtown plan.

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“So Now They Want to Move Us Out”: Yaki Casas, Segundo Barrio resident inside the Demolition Zone

I WAS BORN in the apartments on top of Ben's Grocery (corner of Mesa and Fourth Street). The Segundo Barrio midwives helped my mother give birth to me there fifty years ago. My mother used to pay $3 rent per month. There was a restaurant and a cantina where Ben's Grocery is today. There was an elevator behind the store as well as stairs that would go up to the apartments. People say the building is haunted with the ghosts of a cowboy and a woman dressed as a bride. My sister-in-law says she saw them once. But I've never seen them. I guess the ghosts were afraid of me (laughs).

I feel very comfortable here in the Segundo Barrio. My children were born here and so were most of my grandchildren. They received their education in the schools in this neighborhood. Almost my entire family lives in the Segundo Barrio…Jerry, Carlos, Shorty, Bertha, Manuela, Tonia…I'd say there are about fifteen of us and their families that live in the Segundo Barrio. My mother died in the apartments where I was born. Everything I need is in this neighborhood. I don't drive. I've been ill lately and all I have to do is call up Ben's Grocery and they'll deliver my groceries. They don't do it for everyone, but they do it for me. They used to deliver groceries to my mother too for most of her life. The owner of the apartments I live in (Oregon and Father Rahm Street), Raymond Alva, is a good man, very considerate. He's always fixed anything that needs to be fixed. When my son passed away recently he offered that I could pay the rent in installments but I told him, “No, that's not necessary.” Es muy buena gente .

So now they want to kick us out. Where are we going to go? We came her to be together, now we're going to be spread out. People here know me. I just have to knock on their door when I'm ill and they come help me. Nobody (from the City) has come to talk to me about this plan. I heard it on the news. That was the first time I heard that they want to tear all of this down. Most of us in my apartments are against this thing they want to do, tear the apartments down. But they're afraid to speak out. Most of the people here are elderly and, like me, need to have everything near by. Even if they buy me a brand new house, I'm against this. I want to stay here.

But there's a lot of money behind this. A lot of money. Why don't they build their Wal-Mart where the old Electric Company used to be on Santa Fe , where they don't have to displace people.

I pray to God every day that this can be stopped. I'm praying to God that our homes won't get torn down. My doctors are nearby. Where am I going to go? I don't know if my health can take this (forced relocation.) No, I don't want to move.

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Photographs by Mikey Velarde (Kim) and Bruce Berman (Casas).