The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Richard Choi spent much of the past nearly 37 years waking up at 3 a.m. to make it to Radio Korea in time to give the morning broadcast.

For years, Choi’s commute to the station on Wilshire Boulevard took only a few minutes from his home near Hancock Park, but when the station moved its main operations to La Palma in Orange County last December, he would have needed to wake up an hour earlier to make the drive.

“That just wasn’t realistic,” Choi said. “So I decided it was time to retire. If the office had stayed in Koreatown, I probably would have continued broadcasting.”

The move hasn’t sat well with some longtime listeners and former employees who saw the station as inseparable from Koreatown.

Choi, 78, added that several longtime employees left the news outlet rather than make the commute to Orange County.

By the time he retired last year, Choi was one of the station’s most recognizable voices, particularly during the 1992 L.A. civil unrest, when Korean immigrants across the city turned to Korean-language radio for updates and information.

When management first floated the idea of leaving Koreatown, Choi told them to reconsider. 

The station’s headquarters became such a fixture in the neighborhood that many in the Korean-speaking community referred to 3700 Wilshire Blvd as the “Radio Korea building,” and the area in front of it, the “Radio Korea lawn.”

Now, the large Radio Korea sign in big, white block letters are gone, with just a shadow of an imprint.

The company spent years searching for another space in Koreatown after landlord Jamison Properties notified tenants in the Wilshire building that they would eventually need to vacate, Radio Korea CEO Michael Kim said.

The developers plan to redevelop the commercial space into affordable housing.

Radio Korea looked at multiple sites, including one near Hancock Park, but repeatedly ran into issues involving parking and cost. 

“We wanted to stay in L.A. We really tried hard to stay, because of 1992 and all that,” Kim said. “If Jamison was going to renew our lease, we would’ve stayed.” 

He admitted, though, that he also believes the center of Southern California’s Korean community has been gradually shifting beyond L.A.

“I understand how people in L.A. might feel about this stuff,” Kim said. “But I noticed Koreatown was starting to become less and less Korean, and I started thinking, ‘Is Koreatown going to die?’ I certainly hope not, but what if it ends up like Chinatown, where all the Chinese people moved to the San Gabriel Valley?”

“We had to move. There is a good Korean community here,” he added.

Orange County now has two officially designated Koreatowns, one in Garden Grove that received city recognition in 2019, and another in Buena Park that was designated in 2023.

Radio Korea still operates a small satellite office in Koreatown, and Kim insists its reporting in L.A. remains the same.

“We’re not trying to abandon L.A.,” he said. “The only difference is that we are broadcasting from Orange County and not Los Angeles.”

The station’s role in 1992

For many Korean Americans, it is almost impossible to talk about Radio Korea without also talking about the 1992 unrest. The station became a critical source of information as chaos spread through Koreatown after the acquittal of the Los Angeles Police Department officers filmed beating Rodney King.

More than 2,000 Korean-owned businesses were damaged or destroyed during the unrest, according to some community estimates cited in the years since. 

Radio Korea executive director Richard Choi gestures at his Los Angeles studios in 1992.

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Nick Ut

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AP Photo

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“Radio Korea played a major role in helping the Korean community rebuild,” Choi said, “and the riots became the turning point that transformed the Korean community into true Korean Americans. Before that, people came here chasing the vague idea of the ‘American Dream.’ People suffered and worked endlessly, but after the riots, they realized that the lives they had been living in America were not truly immigrant lives in the full sense.”

At the time, many Korean immigrants spoke limited English and relied heavily on Korean-language media for information. The radio station became an emergency information network as Koreatown residents felt left without police protection during the unrest.

Choi and other broadcasters remained on air through the night taking calls from neighbors reporting everything unfolding across the city.

Younger staff members leaned on Choi, who had already spent nearly two decades living in L.A. by then. According to station accounts, Choi sometimes stayed on air for more than 20 hours a day during the height of the unrest.

Yong-ho Kim started working in Radio Korea’s advertising department a month after immigrating to the United States in February 1990, two years before the unrest. That time still remains vivid in his memory. 

“My oldest child was only two years old,” Kim said. “I heard helicopters overhead, saw fires everywhere, heard looting and gunshots through the night. I was terrified.” 

He remained hunkered down at the station for several days, which at the time operated out of a building near Alvarado Street and Olympic Boulevard. 

The advertising department was removed from the station’s editorial side, but he said everyone at Radio Korea pitched in during the unrest. He eventually left the station and went into the restaurant business, opening Arado Japanese Restaurant in 1995. 

“Radio Korea was my first real job in America. At the time, I didn’t speak English well, didn’t fully understand the culture, and they still gave me an opportunity,” he said. “That experience shaped my business career afterward. Even now, I feel like Radio Korea runs through my blood. I love that station deeply.” 

Kim admitted he misses the in-person interaction at the station.

“In the past, when I recorded radio ads for my restaurant, I would go directly into the studio,” he said. “Now everything gets sent by phone.”

He added L.A. remains the “emotional center” of Korean American life, even as more Korean families move to Orange County and other suburbs.

“That’s why there’s an attachment to keeping Korean-language media rooted in Koreatown,” he said.

Radio Korea leaves Koreatown

Jamison, the largest commercial office landlord in Koreatown and one of the neighborhood’s most prolific developers, declined to comment on several questions related to the future of the Wilshire building where Radio Korea called home. It’s unclear when the company notified tenants on when they would need to leave or the timeline for the planned residential conversion.

Radio Korea ultimately purchased a building in La Palma, where Kim said expenses were lower at a difficult moment for Korean-language media outlets already dealing with declining advertising revenue and lingering financial struggles following the pandemic. 

The move is a bittersweet moment for the Korean community.

Hyepin Im was a graduate student at the University of Southern California during the unrest in 1992. The destruction in Koreatown and the experience of watching Korean American business owners struggle in its aftermath helped shape her later work in community advocacy. 

Wilshire Park Place once played host to Radio Korea in Koreatown. The building’s owners plan to repurpose the site into housing.

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Brian Feinzimer

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The LA Local

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Ethnic media organizations depend heavily on physical relationships inside the communities they serve, Im said.

“The fact that they were here in 1992 made a difference,” Im said. “I think the lack of their presence here will be a loss to the community.” 

Im, whose nonprofit work with Faith and Community Empowerment has focused for decades on immigrant and underserved communities in LA, argued that L.A. still carries unique weight within Korean communities nationally, even as Korean populations continue growing in Orange County and elsewhere.

“I could recognize that perhaps in Orange County, some of the things that I could see why they may choose there is a lot more Korean leadership in politics,” she said. “And as such, just like the Chinese community moved to the San Gabriel Valley from Chinatown, perhaps there is going to be a shift that is happening.” 

“I think proximity is always important and I would say it’s still what happens in L.A. that impacts the rest of the country, especially the Korean community,” she added. 

For Choi, Koreatown is inseparable from Radio Korea and the station’s role during the unrest, which pushed many Korean immigrants to engage more deeply with American civic and political life.

“No matter how many Koreans move to Orange County,” Choi said, “the symbolic center of the Korean community is still Koreatown.” 

The 78th Emmy Awards air Monday night, hosted by Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay.

The Television Academy already kicked things off earlier this month: what was once the Creative Arts Emmys was expanded and rebranded into a two-night ceremony highlighting casting, guest actors, game shows, documentaries, behind-the-scenes craftspeople and more. Rob Reiner was posthumously awarded his third Emmy for a guest appearance on The Bear. Hargitay, Monday night's host, won two awards for her documentary My Mom Jayne. 

Monday's ceremony will include 19 awards, including those for top comedy series, top drama series and best actor and actress in each.

Here's what to know to watch the ceremony.

When are the Emmy Awards this year?

The show will be live Monday night on NBC and Peacock starting at 8 p.m. ET, 5 p.m. PT. A pre-show and live coverage will air on E! starting at 5 p.m. ET, 2 p.m. PT.

Who is nominated this year?

Familiar titles like Hacks, Abbott Elementary and The Bear are all nominated for top comedy series alongside newcomers Widow's Bay and Margo's Got Money Troubles. On the drama side, last year's winner The Pitt is facing off against Pluribus, Slow Horses, The Diplomat and more.

A whole swath of actors on The Pitt got their first nominations this year, as did Dale Dickey and Kate O'Flynn for Widow's Bay. You can find the nominees here, along with hopes from NPR critics here.

What else can I expect? 

The Television Academy has announced that Noah Kahan will perform "Bridge Over Troubled Water" as part of the In Memoriam segment. Presenters will include Alan Cumming, Sally Field, Jon Hamm, Marcello Hernández, Niecy Nash-Betts, Keke Palmer, Amy Poehler, Florence Pugh, Rachel Sennott and Zendaya.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The Department of Homeland Security says they have put some colleges and universities “on notice” that they could be in violation of federal rules that dictate work opportunities for international students.

The directive has left some of those students feeling worried, as their schools pause opportunities to work in the United States.

And experts warn that it could have adverse effects on U.S. industry and global growth.

What does DHS say?

In late August, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, part of the Department of Homeland Security, issued a statement stating that they have “observed a rise" in violations related to Curricular Practical Training.

CPT is paid or unpaid work that students do as part of their degree program, like an internship. The administration says regulatory requirements permit CPT only where the training is “an integral part of an established curriculum.”

In a written statement, an unnamed DHS spokesperson told LAist, “Nothing about these regulations has changed. However, schools and employers should consider themselves on notice: under President Trump, abuse of this generous system will no longer be tolerated.”

LAist reached out to DHS for the percentage increase in CPT violations and specifically asked for data related to Southern California schools. We have not received an answer.

How have local universities responded?

Following the memo from the department, several universities including the University of Southern California, UCLA and UC Berkeley have paused or required additional information to determine if work experience is a requirement for a particular degree program.

In a written statement to LAist, a spokesperson for the UCLA Dashew Center said, “UCLA has paused certain Curricular Practical Training authorizations while the university reviews recent federal guidance and determines next steps. UCLA is communicating directly with students who have affected CPT applications and remains committed to supporting our international students as we navigate these changes.”

Why it matters

For students, this is causing uncertainty.

“It came as a surprise to all the international students. We were not aware of it and there is a lot of tension among the international students,” said Nitesh, a student from India at USC. He asked that we only use his first name for fear of repercussions from speaking to the media.

Those who applied for CPT authorizations after Aug. 23 at USC now are in limbo waiting to see if their applications will be approved.

 ”It is a real industry exposure to us when it comes to learning,” Nithesh said about the CPT component. “We definitely get lots of learnings and value from classes and by doing projects, but CPT is a way for us to understand what happens in the industry and keep us up to date.”

Nitesh, who took out an $85,000 loan to come to the U.S. for his degree program, said he would have reconsidered coming here had he known about these regulations ahead of time.

 ”Because there is a lot happening and nobody has clarity, so there is a lot of ambiguity, and we are just waiting for the right information to come in,” he said.

International enrollment impact

The memo is the latest in a string of directives targeting international students. Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced new rules limiting how long international students can remain in the country, as opposed to remaining in the U.S. for as long as it takes to complete their degree program.

Santa Monica College has seen a drastic drop in international student enrollments: In fall 2016, the community college had more than 3,500 international students enrolled; that number has dropped to less than 1,600 this year.

Grace Smith, a spokesperson for Santa Monica College said, “In recent years, several interconnected federal restrictions continue to exert pressure on international enrollment and are likely to impact future enrollment cycles.”

Declining international student enrollment has a “significant impact on the college’s fiscal outlook,” Smith said as international student enrollment accounts for about 8% of the college’s unrestricted revenue.

Caltech’s president Ray Jayawardhana told LAist’s AirTalk program that he came to the U.S. as an international student from Sri Lanka.

“ Growing up in Sri Lanka, I thought of universities like Caltech in the United States as beacons on a hill,” he said. “They really were beckoning the best and the brightest from around the world, and I think it behooves us to preserve that attraction, preserve that draw, so that this country and the world at large benefits from students, from researchers, from scholars.”

While the uncertainties are “discouraging,” Jayawardhana said, Caltech is seeing “continued interest that's as strong as ever.”

Hits to the U.S. economy

Rachel Banks,  senior director for public policy and legislative strategy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said the current climate for international students is the “most difficult and most challenging” it has been since World War II.

“Having gone through the first [Trump administration], there were certain expectations of what we might see coming,” she said. “What I think was unexpected was the severity and degree to which we saw the Trump administration make moves specifically with respect to international students.”

Banks says her organization projects that the loss of around 111,000 international student enrollments could cost the U.S. economy $3.4 billion and nearly 4,000 jobs. California’s economy could see a hit of about $500 million because of declining enrollment.

The volume of visa revocations, particularly for students involved in campus protests for Palestinian rights, was “unprecedented,” she said. The State Department’s move to pause on interviews for visa applications and renewals was also something that hadn’t happened at this scale before, Banks said. And the new visa limits for international students, she said, is “incredibly disruptive” and takes the decision making away from students and universities.

The new memo about CPT authorizations adds to the uncertainty, she said.

Following World War II, the government put a lot of emphasis into fostering and developing our higher education system, Banks said, which allowed universities “to attract the best and brightest talent and that has led to the numerous innovations and achievements that we've been able to see come out of the United States.”

That talent, she said, will now look to go to other countries more favorable to international students.

In less than two years, the Olympics and Paralympics will take over Los Angeles for the summer of 2028, temporarily transforming the city and the region around it.

Hosting the world’s largest sporting event will mean commandeering a fleet of nearly 2,000 public buses, reserving stretches of freeway lanes just for Olympics traffic flow, deploying thousands of law enforcement officers across venues, taking over UCLA and USC to make way for athletes and journalists, and flooding Southern California with millions of fans.

What will everyday Angelenos get out of all this? That depends. And it’s the question LAist is dedicated to answering every Monday as we spotlight our ongoing reporting on the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Los Angeles residents have more at stake than just inconvenience, ticket prices and traffic. The city of L.A. is the financial backstop for the Olympics, meaning taxpayers will pick up the tab if LA28, the private organization planning the Games, runs a deficit.

That makes every plan for the execution of the 2028 Games hugely important for the city — from how L.A. pens agreements with LA28 on reimbursement for city services to whether or not the federal government will pay for the enormous cost of policing the mega-event.

L.A. has hosted the Olympics before — first in 1932 and again in 1984. Both times the Games turned a profit — a rarity for a global event that has gained a reputation over the decades for leaving cities with debt and empty stadiums.

Local officials say they’re confident L.A. can pull off a third Olympic Games (and its first-ever Paralympics), pointing out that hosting will not require building any new sports venues.

Still, there’s plenty to watch, including how temporary construction will turn existing venues into Olympic competition sites, where billions in contracts for things like cleaning and construction will go and whether that money will stay local, and how the expansion of the L.A. Convention Center could affect its role as an Olympic venue.

And there are the ways the Olympics and Paralympics could influence the lives of L.A.’s most vulnerable. Researchers estimate that close to 6,000 unhoused people live within a mile of Olympic venues in L.A. County, and could be removed due to security requirements tied to the Games. Others worry about the enhanced police presence that is guaranteed to accompany Olympic and Paralympic competitions, and what the Trump administration’s involvement in planning could mean for the city.

We’ll be following all this and more. Every Monday, you can listen to the latest on how Los Angeles is preparing for the 2028 Olympics on The L.A. Report and on our homepage.

Ballots are going out in less than a month, and California remains locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over the president’s push to rein in universal mail-in voting.

The back-and-forth has some California voters likely wondering whether they’ll be able to vote by mail in this upcoming election. And if so, should they?

In short — yes, mail-in voting will still be an option this year. And yes, it’s still safe and generally reliable, although county election officials are urging voters to send in their ballots as early as possible ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

In case you missed it, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to issue a ruling that will determine, at least for now, whether President Donald Trump can force the U.S. Postal Service to restrict vote-by-mail ballots in time for the midterm election. Trump wants to create a federal database of registered voters that the postal service would then cross-reference to ensure mail-in ballots are only delivered to eligible voters — in other words, U.S. citizens. His plan would have the postal service refuse to deliver ballots in states that withhold the data.

The dizzying, monthslong legal saga has baffled voters and even some election officials, which some voting rights advocates argue is probably the point.

But California election officials say the state is well-equipped to administer the election, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules. Although county registrars are monitoring the court rulings, they’re also preparing to mail ballots as usual by the state’s Oct. 5 deadline. Local and state officials are urging voters to make a plan to vote early and to use the state’s various non-mail voting options, such as drop-boxes and in-person voting sites, if they’re worried about the postal service.

“Like we do for all of our elections, we have contingency plans or disaster plans put into place,” said Tricia Webber, clerk and registrar of voters for Santa Cruz County and president of the California Association of County Election Officials.

Some counties, including Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, are exploring options for pop-up stations where voters could request and submit ballots. In Santa Cruz County, Webber said her team is strategizing how to deploy their votemobile around the county to add yet another option for voters.

“Until there’s an answer,” Webber said, speaking of the pending court ruling, “California counties are doing business as usual.”

What does Trump want USPS to do?

Trump issued an executive order in March that sought to give the federal government control over who receives mail-in ballots. Almost immediately, more than 20 Democratic attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta, sued the Trump administration on the grounds that the Constitution allows only Congress and state governments to administer elections.

Federal district and appellate courts sided with the Democratic states and upheld a temporary injunction preventing the postal service from implementing any part of its plan while litigation continues.

The central questions in the case remain unresolved. The Supreme Court last month allowed the Trump administration to continue planning for how it would implement the president’s order. Democratic states promptly sued again to contest the postal service’s plans.

The postal service’s proposal, the final version of which was published in August, would create a system to track each voter’s ballot with a unique barcode and cross-reference it with a database of eligible registered voters.

While some states fear they’ll need to reprint envelopes if the postal service’s rule is upheld, the vast majority of California counties already use compliant ballot envelopes, Webber said.

The federal government does not have a comprehensive list of every eligible registered voter and would need to rely on states to submit voter information to a “federal ballot mail portal” that does not yet exist.

It seems unlikely that the postal service’s portal would even be functional in time for the 2026 midterm elections. A postal service whistleblower asserted that the process to develop and deploy the portal was “rushed,” “risky and haphazard” due to the “impossible timeframe,” according to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s office, which received the whistleblower complaint.

“In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections,’” wrote Blumenthal, of Connecticut, in a late August letter to Postmaster General David Steiner.

The postmaster in June told a congressional committee that the postal service would withhold ballots in states that refuse to share basic voter information, including name, address and the unique ballot barcode.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber, California’s chief elections administrator, has not said whether California would comply with the proposed voter information requirement.

“California’s elections officials will continue to do everything within our power to ensure that every eligible California voter has the right to cast a mail ballot and have that vote count.”

Last year, the U.S. Justice Department sued Weber and five other Democratic secretaries of state for refusing to turn over their unredacted voter files, which contain far more sensitive personal information than the postal service rule would require. A federal judge in Southern California dismissed that case in January.

Uncertainty could fuel more early voting

Ironically, concerns about the postal service’s reliability could facilitate what election officials and voting advocates have struggled to do for years — get people to vote earlier.

Unlike the lead-up to the June primary, where nervous Democrats urged fellow voters to wait until the last minute to pick a candidate for governor, social media is now awash with posts urging people to vote early and use ballot drop-boxes rather than rely on the mail.

“This whole play may backfire,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “What you’re seeing now on social media in response to this court drama and this confusion are lots of people urging their friends to vote early — and that’s exactly what we’ve been saying.”

Voting earlier helps county election officials tabulate results more quickly on election night, which helps race callers like The Associated Press declare winners faster. And since ballots in envelopes take the longest to process, dropping them off several days before the deadline is the best way to help election officials count faster, since they can remove ballots from envelopes and prepare them for counting before Election Day.

“Fortunately, we give voters lots of options, and that’s really going to work to California’s benefit,” Alexander said. “Other states do not have the kind of robust process that creates lots of redundancies and avenues for voters to vote.”