Harvest festival gives Korean Angelenos a taste of home

In a shaded tent winding up Irolo Street in Koreatown, vendors from all over South Korea sold their regional specialties, including dried seaweed, sliced plum pickles, dried mussels, pickled octopus and marsh snail oil.

Throngs of mostly elderly Koreatown residents went from booth to booth, looking for items from their homeland, while the younger generation guided parents and grandparents and waited for the music to start pumping.

Sunday was the last day of the 41st annual Los Angeles Korean Festival, billed as the largest event of its kind outside South Korea. The event celebrated Choosuk, the Korean Thanksgiving, which falls in late September.

Tae Jun Chang was selling seafood from Jeollanam-do. He said he attended a similar festival in New York, but it was not nearly as successful as this one regularly is.

“The elderly people from Koreatown come here to get things from home,” he said. “And the teenagers like to check out the main stage and see what new music is coming out of Korea.”

Across the way, In Won Kang hawked his herbal remedies from the “healing city of Jecheon” — roots, herbs and wood, raw and processed into pills.

“This is good for the liver and the eyes,” he said of one of the pills. “It helps with the whole circulation.”

At the Lucky Ball Korean barbecue stand, Korean and Guatemalan chefs — a true reflection of the polyglot neighborhood — worked feverishly to keep up with orders. Esther Kang, 29, helped her family at the cash register, and spoke English to customers who didn’t understand Korean.

She said the event helps keep their culture strong across an ocean: “Here people are getting more Americanized, and people in Korea are Koreanized. It’s a mash-up here.”

In the concert area, vendors sold electronics, jewelry, artwork, cars and other high-end items from Korea. The Third Korea Tourist Souvenir Expo Outside took up a tent by the music.

All sorts of outside groups, seeking inroads into the Korean community also set up booths: FBI, LAPD and CHP officials looking for new recruits. The Hustler Casino looked for customers. Two outreach workers with the Department of Mental Health tried to increase awareness about mental illness.

“We’re trying to reach out because it’s one of the communities with a high stigma level about mental health issues,” Young Ahn said.

By late afternoon, the first round of K-Pop gave way to Christian gospel and a Korean version of Western line dancing.

Many gathered in the shade of some pine trees to listen.

Grace Park, 61, said seeing so many Koreans together gave her a comforting feeling. She moved to Los Angeles in 1983 and missed South Korea, especially this time of year, as summer turns to fall. She chewed on a chestnut that they harvest this time of year back home and sell at the festival.

She comes to the festival every year to smell the dried fish, kelp, squid and anchovy that remind her of home.

“I just feel like I’m in Korea when I walk around here,” she said.

joe.mozingo@latimes.com
Twitter: @joemozingo