Seoul Patrol!
Angeleno
By Kai Ma
...Forget, for a moment, the bustling bulgogi bastions and high-dollar hostess clubs. Through ambitious investing, Koreatown is moving beyond its 24/7 entertainment economy to become a major real estate powerhouse. Once merely a circumscribed handful of blocks, its geographic reach-now stretching from the Miracle Mile to downtown, with no signs of slowing-has been expanded by developers from near and far. With an estimated 200,000 or so Koreans living in L.A. County, It's become the largest such enclave outside of Korea itself. And, more to the point, it's emerged as an area bent on self-determination, what with a recently released survey noting that nearly 1,300 commercial properties in the diffuse district are ethnically owned.
"Private investors have come in to launch massive development projects that have reshaped [its] image," says Delores Conway, the director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast, a USC think tank...