Koreans, Hispanics Work for Harmony
Cultures Can Clash In On-the-Job Mix

By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 7, 2007

At Korean-owned Super H Mart in Fairfax, where Hispanic workers bag groceries and Korean employees run the tills, a window into the increasingly diverse and complex business landscape of the Washington region can be seen through the store's 10 Rules For A Happy Workplace.

Among them: No rude language toward non-Korean staff. No touching or pointing -- a rule aimed at Hispanic workers. When at a communication standoff, call the company's hotline for a translation in Spanish or Korean.

The rules, posted on signs around the supermarket in Spanish and Korean, have helped ease sometimes tense relations between the 70 Hispanic and 35 Korean employees, brought together even as cultures and languages separate them.

In this region's booming economy, where Koreans own about 10,000 businesses, including dry cleaners, liquor stores and grocers, and Hispanics make up one of the region's largest labor pools, the two fast-growing groups have forged an unexpected although uneasy economic alliance.

In the Washington area, Koreans make up the largest category of Asian-owned firms. The number of Korean-owned businesses in the region grew by 21 percent between 1997 and 2002, according to the latest Census Bureau figures. In a tight labor market, with unemployment around 3 percent, these business owners have turned to Hispanic workers to bag the groceries and stock shelves, reserving the cashier and top manager jobs for Koreans.

With no common history and little interaction outside the workplace, the intersection of the two groups -- which is occurring more frequently as Korean business and the Hispanic population boom -- has been fraught with tension and cultural misunderstandings.

Ricardo Garcia, 34, complains he wasn't paid fully by a Korean contractor. Fermin Soto, a 42-year-old immigrant from Mexico, said he had similar problems with a different contractor, adding that the Korean builder spoke down to Hispanic workers.

The stories have made Ronald Tobar, who hasn't worked for a Korean employer, wary.

"I'm a little afraid of working for them," said Tobar, a native of Guatemala. "I hear they are aggressive and strict and give the worst jobs to Hispanics."

Such perceptions exacerbate tensions between the groups, said Daniel Choi, a lawyer for the Virginia Justice Center, a legal advocacy group for immigrants that mainly represents Hispanics. Many of the workplace problems Choi encounters while working on behalf of Hispanic immigrants against Korean employees are grievances like unpaid wages that have nothing to do with race or culture. Yet perceptions of ethnic and racial biases often complicate matters.

When Thomas Yoon helped open the Super H Mart store in Fairfax in 2001, he noticed that some older Koreans, raised in the Confucian Korean culture where relationships are dictated by hierarchy and age, were offended that their Hispanic co-workers were tapping them on the shoulder to get their attention. To the Koreans, the gesture was disrespectful. To the Hispanic workers, the shoulder tap was simply a means of communication and signaled familiarity and comfort among the workers.

Yoon sought help from H Mart headquarters in Lyndhurst, N.J. Staffers gave him a manual with Spanish translations and sent him to a two-week course on cultural awareness. The 20-store grocery chain also started raising wages for Hispanic workers, promoted some to management positions in the meat and fish departments, and offered six days of vacation after one year on the job -- the same benefit offered to Korean employees.

Yoon also got help from mediators such as Carlos Yoon (no relation), a Korean immigrant fluent in Spanish and at the time, a human resources manager at headquarters. Carlos Yoon translated the grievances of the Fairfax store's Hispanic workers. Among other things, they disliked the way their Korean managers spoke to them, barking orders and rarely showing appreciation. The practice, though not uncommon in Korean workplaces, offended many Hispanic workers.

Some of the employees were surprised to hear their co-workers' complaints.

"Sometimes a dispute can be solved by one employee just saying 'please,' '' said Thomas Yoon, who recently moved to an H Mart store in Wheaton. "There is so much misunderstanding because you have two groups that have no way of communicating beyond very basic words."

Thomas Yoon said even a few basic words, like "gracias" (thank you) and "como esta, hoy?" (how are you today?) can help. Lorena Portillo, who is a bagger at H Mart, agrees and has been trying to immerse herself in Korean, learning the names of Korean rice and dried noodle brands. She knows the differences among long grain, short grain, sticky and sushi rice. She knows the Korean words for cabbage (baechu) and frozen dumplings (mandu). After four years at the store, she's able to greet customers and follow simple instructions in Korean.

"Gamsa habnida" (thank you), she says, loading plastic bags into a grocery cart one busy weekday afternoon.

"It's easier to learn Korean here and I need it more," Portillo said in Spanish.

Korean Corner grocery in Silver Spring holds Spanish lessons each Tuesday night for its Korean staff. The store's owner hopes the lessons will help Korean employees work more efficiently with their Spanish co-workers.

In order to communicate with his staff, James "Jaime" Han, whose cleaning business employs 62 Hispanic workers at $7 an hour, took two years of Spanish lessons from Young Kil Cho, a pastor and member of the Good Spoon. It is a religious group based in Northern Virginia whose mission has become to bridge the cultural divide between Korean employers and their Hispanic workers.

On a recent scorching Tuesday afternoon, day laborers gathered at an industrial intersection of south Arlington in paint-splattered jeans and work boots, listening to Cho teach expressions the laborers could use to get a job.

"Yo cualquier trabajo!" (I do anything!)" the men, immigrants from Central and South America, repeat after their teacher.

They repeat the phrase again, this time in Korean.

"Muo-dun-ji he-yo!" they say slowly in a chorus with near-perfect pronunciation.

Gerardo Avila, a native of Mexico, says learning a few phrases in Korean could give him a leg up among the day laborer crowd that gathers on the Shirlington corner each day. Numerous Korean subcontractors come to hire workers to put up drywall, lay down wood floors and fit roof shingles, Avila said.

"I need to do anything to get their attention," said 35-year-old Avila, grasping a handout of Korean and English phrases such as "I want $12 an hour" and "I have experience."

Korean businesses, which tend to be labor intensive and have low margins, will continue to need Hispanic immigrants to grow, said Dae Young Kim, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park. He added that Korean business owners often feel that Hispanics "also have a sort of immigrant drive that would make them hard workers."

Thomas Yoon said that H Mart came to similar realizations. "We woke up and realized we couldn't run our stores without them. We had to start treating them for what they were -- important employees," Yoon said.