Around the Nation: 6/15/2011 | The International Examiner

The New York Times recently featured the plight of a New York staple business – Korean groceries. The Times profiled Joo Han, the son of Korean immigrants, who runs a Manhattan produce store that looks much as it did when his parents opened it a generation ago. The Times writes, “Korean grocers have not only populated New York’s neighborhoods over the last several decades; they have also popped up in its culture, lore and literature.” But the shop that paved Han’s parents’ path to the middle class can barely cover the rent today. Han is thinking of closing or selling the business — a step that two nearby Korean grocers are also considering, and that hundreds others have already taken.

For decades, Korean greengrocers have embodied a classic New York type — the immigrant entrepreneur — and become as much a staple of city life as the yellow cab and the pretzel vendor. Spike Lee and Jerry Seinfeld found early inspiration in them. The Rev. Al Sharpton led boycotts against them; Rudolph W. Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign used them as a key symbol. Now, they are on the wane, reports The Times.

Koreans still dominate the small-grocery business in New York; the Korean Produce Association estimates that they own 70 percent of the city’s stores. But their ranks are thinning as they face the same forces that threaten all sorts of mom-and-pop businesses: rising rents, increased competition from online and corporate rivals, and more scrutiny from city agencies that impose fines.

The stores are also succumbing to the same impulse that prompted Mom and Pop to open them in the first place: the desire to see their children do much, much better, continues The Times.

“In 10 years, there will be no more Korean mom-and-pop stores,” said Chong Sik Lee, president of the Korean-American Grocers Association of New York.

The tradition began in the 1970s, when good produce could be hard to find, even in some affluent neighborhoods. Korean immigrants began opening fresh-fruit-and-vegetable shops — and quickly established a quintessential ethnic employment niche, as Filipinos did in nursing, reported the Times.

Most people could not spell “cymotrichous” with a dictionary, but a 14 year-old girl from Pennsylvania, Sukanya Roy, spelled the word on June 2 to win a marathon-length 2011 Scripps National Spelling Bee, reported Yahoo! News. Roy, participating in the competition for the third time this year, won after 20 rounds in the final competition that went on until the late evening.

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