The genesis of the project started in early 1992, before the riots. Around that time a few events took place which brought Black-Korean relations to the forefront. In Los Angeles, a Korean merchant shot and killed an African American teenager whom she accused of shoplifting. There was a fight that broke out between the two, and the Korean merchant killed this girl. The woman was convicted of murder, but sentenced only to parole. So that created a lot of outrage in the African American community. There was a lot being said about Black-Korean tensions. But I didn't understand what that meant. When I was growing up, my father had a business and still has a business in the African American community in Detroit. He has been in the African American community for over thirty years.

Before anything else, Korean immigrants got their foothold in the African American market by selling wigs. As far as I know, he was the first Korean immigrant to start a business in the African American community. So as I was growing up, I never saw anything of what the media called a "Black-Korean conflict." My parents got along fine with their customers, especially my mother who was extremely friendly. I felt that the media didn't know these communities and that they were in some ways creating a problem.

In January of 1992, I had an uncle who was murdered during a robbery at his store. His business was located in downtown Detroit, across from my father's store. I felt that his death pointed to the deterioration and abandonment of the inner city, more so than to any inter-ethnic tension. The boy that killed him is African American, but no one in the family thinks of my uncle's death as a racial issue since everyone that they come in contact with in their stores is African American.

In thinking about my project, I felt that something needed to be said about the conditions in the inner city that both merchants and residents face. On the other hand, the media focuses on specific, dramatic events without giving much background so you get the impression that Korean merchants are shooting everybody and that Blacks hate Koreans. From television, you have the feeling that there's a low scale race war going on in our inner cities.

When I started my project, I originally didn't want to do anything about my family in Detroit. I wanted to do a straight forward documentary in Los Angeles where I live. I would get different opinions from people here in L.A. about the relationship between these two communities and look at some of the larger issues. But in April 1992, the riots broke out here in Los Angeles, and I thought that it would be impossible to do my project.

When I started doing research in South Central in the summer after the riots, it was difficult approaching African Americans and Korean Americans. Tensions were still very high. Also, being a second generation Korean American from the Midwest, I don't speak Korean, so approaching first generation Korean immigrants was also difficult.

At Christmas time of that year, I went home to Detroit to visit my family. I started to ask my father about Korean businesses in the African American community just for research, so he explained all about how he was the first Korean immigrant to start a business in the African American community and how he began by selling wigs. At first I didn't believe him, but later I realized that my father's story was truly a bit of history. He also revealed to me how in the 1960's there was a feeling of brotherhood between Asians and Blacks because they both felt like they were being oppressed by the dominant White society. So things have definitely changed since the sixties. That brotherhood isn't there like it used to be.

In talking with my father, I realized that I was looking for the story outside and elsewhere so the key to the story was now from within. I decided to tell the story from what I knew, through my family. I felt that through my family, I could get to a deeper level of understanding. People understand families. Also in Detroit, things have changed dramatically with the flight of industries. The issues were more clear-cut than in L.A. where we still have many illusions about ourselves and our city. My uncle's murder was for me the culmination of many years of urban neglect. He was murdered by a seventeen-year-old kid who wanted some nice clothes to impress his friends—and he would kill for them. On the first anniversary of the death of my uncle, I talked to my cousin about doing something. She agreed to it.

By choosing to portray family stories and/or community stories in your work, you bring something private to the public. What do you hope to achieve?

To incorporate a family story in the project becomes very delicate. How do I avoid being sensational? How do I avoid being like any other camera person or any other TV person? I wanted to draw from my relationships with my family without exploiting them. After all, the documentary is just one project of a limited duration, but I have to live with my family for a lifetime. Looking at the issue of how much to reveal and how much not to reveal, there is a whole family history that isn't as interesting or doesn't pertain to the subject matter. It's another story. I also felt that I needed to go beyond the family and represent some perspectives from the African American community. Many of the people who appear on camera were connected in some way to my family. Friends of the family helped to find people to interview. In my documentary, I wanted to create a "web" feeling connecting community stories with my family stories. I wanted to show how people are interconnected.

I want to inform people of all ethnicities who are open and willing to learn something new and help them understand the issues that affect both the African American and Korean American communities. I want to get across the idea that we are interconnected in some way. I feel that the media creates fear within people, making them afraid of each other and creating barriers. Hopefully, this work will open people up, although I don't have any illusions that this is going to change the world. Personally, the work itself fulfills my desire to address these issues.

Michael Cho is an independent documentary producer, living and working in Los Angeles. He received his B.A. as a College Scholar from Cornell University and his MFA in film/video production from the California Institute of the Arts. His works have appeared on public television and in numerous festivals across the United States. In addition to Another America, he has recently completed "Tonight's Top Story," a short documentary that looks at local television news coverage, for the public television series, Signal to Noise.