The Brief

Jeff Kim, a world history teacher in Anaheim Union High School District, had long dreamed about how a Korean American studies course could help his students connect with their heritage. But it was the surge of hatred against Asian Americans during the pandemic that made him realize just how urgently the class was needed.

Shortly before the pandemic reached the U.S., a seventh grade student came up to him before class and expressed concern that she or her family might face anti-Asian violence because of this new virus in China. Although Kim had experienced discrimination in his own life, he wanted to reassure her and so told her that in California, a relatively liberal state, and Orange County — where 23% of students are Asian — she and her family would not face those problems.

“I just said, ‘We live here in California, I don’t see that type of violence happening to Asian Americans here,’” Kim said. “I gave her the wrong information.”

That Kim was wrong became apparent in the early days of the pandemic, during which time a surge of xenophobic rhetoric scapegoated Asian Americans as the cause of the pandemic. It was both a local and national issue. Anti-Asian hate crimes doubled in California in 2020, compared with the prior year. In Orange County, the number of hate incidents against Asian Americans jumped 1,800% in 2020, according to the annual Orange County Hate Crime Report. News of Asian American spa workers in Georgia who were killed in a shooting rampage was a turning point for Kim.

He asked himself, “What is a way I can respond with love and wisdom?”

Fast-forward to this year – the Anaheim Union High School District has launched a first-of-its-kind high school ethnic studies course focused on the experiences of Korean Americans.

For the past three years, Kim worked with district leaders in Anaheim Union High and scholars of Korean American history — many of whom are based in Southern California — to pioneer the first high school course dedicated to Korean American history. It’s a historic moment in the development of Korean American studies, which has been maturing as an academic field in recent decades.

“It’s huge,” said professor Edward Chang, the founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at University of California Riverside. “It’s a starting point, and I’m hoping it will spread to other school districts.”

Chang is the co-author of “Korean Americans: A Concise History,” a book that covers leading figures and highlights in Korean American history in a little over 100 pages, a book he said he conceived with future K-12 students in mind, and which now serves as a textbook for Anaheim Union High’s new course.

The course debuted earlier this month as a virtual course through Anaheim Union High’s Cambridge Virtual Academy and is open to all high school students in the district.

Building the curriculum

The Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles sponsored the development of the curriculum; Kim worked with Grace Cho, a professor in Cal State Fullerton’s department of secondary education, to come up with the components of the proposed course, which consists of seven lessons adapted to California state standards, and available online.

The lessons begin with the earliest wave of 19th-century Korean immigrants and end with K-pop’s global dominance. There are lessons on the struggles and triumphs of key figures, such as war hero and humanitarian Col. Young Oak Kim and Dosan Ahn Chang Ho, the founder of the first American Koreatown.

It’s a class for everyone, said Kim. Other ethnic groups can connect with Korean stories of resilience, such as how gold medal-winning Olympic diver Sammy Lee was barred from practicing in public pools because of his race or how most Koreans were barred from immigrating to the United States before 1965.

“This class is not just about Korean Americans. It’s U.S. history, but through the eyes of Korean Americans,” said Cho. “By learning other ethnic groups’ history, you get to expand your perspectives and views.”

The course will enable students to fulfill the ethnic studies requirement that will go into effect for all California high school students in two years. But many of the first 34 students who signed up for the course simply wanted to learn more about their own cultural background.

Celine Park, a freshman at Oxford Academy, said this class is a unique opportunity for second-generation Korean Americans like her who haven’t had a way to synthesize Korean and American history in their lives.

“I wanted to meld these two together, to make these connections between the two histories and bond my own identity, while helping other second-generation Korean Americans like me,” Park said.

It has also inspired pride in students’ families. Yuri Yamachika, a first-year student at Oxford Academy, said that her mom, a first-generation Korean American, didn’t have many opportunities to learn about her culture beyond what her own parents shared with her.

“She was excited and proud that we have a course to learn about our own heritage,” said Yamachika. “She’s glad I took it.”

Parents are a crucial firsthand source of information in the course. Understanding that every student has an ethnic heritage is a key part of the ethnic studies discipline. Kim encouraged his students, no matter their background, to learn and reflect on their families’ stories.

“Sometimes parents haven’t had a chance to tell these stories, because there’s a language barrier or a cultural barrier,” Kim said. “But if I make it a class assignment, they’re much more inclined to ask — and parents are much more inclined to tell their story.”

That makes the course a draw to students — including those who aren’t Korean American.

Other perspectives

When Karina Soliman interviewed her father for a class assignment, she learned about the discrimination he faced as an Egyptian in the post-9/11 era, when Arab Americans were widely stereotyped as terrorists. The senior at Savanna High School connected this to the stereotypes that other ethnic groups in the U.S. have faced. She hopes the course will help her model the importance of respecting others’ stories.

“I’ve grown more cognizant of other cultures and other people, and realizing how important that is,” Soliman said.

Students in Kim’s class will also participate in a civic project of students’ own choosing. This is a facet that has earned the notice of the California Asian American & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus. In a letter of support, Assemblymember Evan Low and state Sen. Dave Min praised the course for “allowing students to foster collaborations and partnership with Asian American organizations.”

This new course also represents a high-water mark for scholars who have promoted Korean American studies. It was only recently that there was a critical mass of scholars interested in Korean American history, Chang said. There’s a growing interest in the field in higher education, but promoting it at the K-12 level has been a major goal of scholars.

Korean American history didn’t make it into the early drafts of the state’s ethnic studies model curriculum, but scholars pushed back, said Cho. The state’s model curriculum now includes a lesson on the L.A. civil uprising of 1992, known as Saigu or 4/29 among Korean Americans, which marked a turning point in the community’s identity.

Chang said that he looks forward to students like Kim arriving at college. He has seen students’ eyes widen as they learn about their own history. He believes college is too late for that experience.

Kim said in the early days of deciding to push forward with the curriculum, he felt like he was taking a big risk. He worried about how the course might be misunderstood, but he feels like it has paid off. Now he reminds his students of their own role in blazing a trail for the next generation of students. His students are already eager to see that continue.

Soliman has advice for teachers or administrators considering a course like this: “Don’t be afraid to put it out there, or to start a conversation for that kind of course to be created because it can greatly impact and inform a lot of students on topics that they’re not traditionally going to learn about until college.”

Flies, rodents and other pests have been a persistent problem in Boyle Heights and nearby communities as millions of pounds of food rot in a nearby burned-out warehouse. It’s gotten bad enough that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is asking for action from the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

In a letter sent Tuesday to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, Bass said she’s “concerned with County DPH’s pace in addressing this disaster” and the risks it posed to health and quality of life.

“Possibly the worst manifestation of these risks is the severe infestation of flies in Boyle Heights and neighboring communities,” Bass wrote.

LAist has asked the Department of Public Health for comment and will update this article when they respond.

The back-and-forth between jurisdictions

Bass wrote that the city of L.A., which does not have its own health department, is largely dependent on L.A. County for control of potentially disease-carrying vectors. The city has said elsewhere that its Sanitation Department did set about 250 rat traps in surrounding areas.

Bass’ letter says the county took its first steps to hold warehouse operator Lineage accountable for a fly infestation on July 17, ordering the company to remove flies and mosquitoes from the property.

“Although I appreciate that County DPH has taken this first step, the County’s report only directs Lineage to eliminate flies from Lineage’s own property,” Bass’ letter to Ferrer states.

Bass urged the county to compel Lineage to address pests at neighboring properties “with aggressive measures to eliminate the flies and any other vectors.”

As for L.A. County’s Department of Public Health, a spokesperson told LAist on July 17 that it had itself directed the city and Lineage to address the pest situation.

“Los Angeles County Department of Public Health requested that both Lineage Logistics and the City of Los Angeles develop and implement a vector/insect control plan,” the statement reads.

Lineage’s part

According to Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights on the L.A. City Council and met with Lineage representatives on Monday, an inspector contracted by the company confirmed that the rotting food at the warehouse is serving as a breeding ground for flies. The infestation won’t go away without addressing the root cause, Jurado reported the contractor as saying.

“Removing waste, adding odor-control equipment, and conducting a pest inspection are important,” Jurado said in a statement. “But residents are asking a more fundamental question: Are conditions actually improving? They deserve evidence, timelines and accountability — not just a list of activities.”

Lineage has not yet presented its pest control plan to the public.

A ticking clock

The first day of instruction for L.A. Unified schools is Aug. 12, three days before the city’s current deadline to clear the warehouse — a deadline Lineage does not appear to be on track to meet.

That’s led many teachers and parents to raise the alarm about smells and pests that may very well still be around when school starts. An LAUSD spokesperson told Boyle Heights Beat that it is prepared to temporarily relocate nearby schools, as they did with summer programs during the warehouse fire.

Lineage meets deadline at last minute

Meanwhile, Lineage also faced a deadline of Tuesday to present a plan to air quality officials on how to address smells of spoiled food, which have been reported from miles away. A South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesperson said that the agency received a response from Lineage at 5 p.m. and is evaluating it.

L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.

The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.

Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.

“ We haven’t gotten anything,” said Erum Shahnawaz, LAHSA’s chief internal auditor, referring to the lack of response from LAHSA management at a meeting of the agency’s audit committee on Monday.

“That’s the only thing that's holding us from issuing the final report,” Shahnawaz said of the underspending audit.

That audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous, external audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.

Shahnawaz flagged management’s delays to the LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa, Szlasa said. He chairs the commission’s audit committee, and has repeatedly called out LAHSA executives’ delays in providing information about taxpayer spending over the past year.

“ I've been trying to intervene and use whatever I can to try to help provide support,” said Szlasa as he described his attempts to get the auditor the answers needed to complete the report.

Szlasa was appointed to the commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

 “It shouldn't take us two months to receive a…management response to an internal audit,” Szlasa said at Monday’s meeting. He said the industry standard for internal audits is eight or nine weeks from start to finish. That compares to the two years — and counting — for LAHSA’s federal underspend audit.

“We haven't had a single internal audit completed here in the last couple of years, which is nuts,” Szlasa added. He called for internal audits to happen much more frequently.

Long delays to LAHSA audits also are not new. In November 2024, the county issued a widely-seen audit that included findings that LAHSA was failing to complete internal audits.

Half of LAHSA’s governing commission is appointed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and half appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass is also the only elected official on the commission. She served on the audit committee for several months last fall. Records show she was absent for all of the meetings during that time.

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said management’s responses to the audit on underspending haven’t been provided yet because LAHSA leadership did not have clearly defined roles for who is supposed to coordinate responses to internal audits.

“ We need to work on clarifying that role internally,” Lim said.

 “The last two months have been probably some of the most stress-filled two months that we've had at LAHSA,” said Paul Rubenstein, chief of staff to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neil, pointing to mass layoffs.

Szlasa said there’s not that much in the audit for management to respond to.

“It's like, six pages or less,” he said.

Szlasa said  another option is to “just say we've asked management for responses and we're awaiting management response. We can publish the results.”

In response, Shahnawaz said that if management doesn't have an updated timeline for a response, then she’ll go ahead and issue the report without the response.

Once they floated that idea, Lim committed to providing the responses by next Tuesday.

LAHSA’s leadership has downsized the internal audit team — dropping from a staff of three to just one in the agency’s proposed budget up for approval Friday.

Delays in getting access to financial records

The delayed responses from management are not the only thing that’s been slowing down audits, Szlasa said at the meeting.

LAHSA policy, approved by its governing commission, says internal auditors are “ authorized to access all organizational records, personnel, and systems necessary for conducting audits,” he said.

But the auditor has faced challenges in actually getting that access, Szlasa said — including delays in being allowed to view LAHSA’s databases that show contracts and financial payments.

 ”We finally were granted access, but it wasn't, it wasn't easy, it wasn't immediate. It was slow,” Szlasa said.

Many failed outside audits

The delays on the internal audit come even after LAHSA failed multiple external audits in recent years, which have found the agency — overseen by city and county elected officials — has neglected to properly track billions of dollars in spending.

Largely in response to earlier audits, L.A. County supervisors pulled funding from LAHSA and are having the county instead oversee it directly. L.A.’s mayor and City Council have continued to have LAHSA manage the city’s homeless spending while the council delays plans to start studying a possible plan to transition away city tax dollars.

Signatures under scrutiny

LAHSA is also in the midst of a different internal audit — expected to finish in late August or early September — examining whether top officials followed requirements when signing contracts and letting others sign. It was launched in the wake of LAist reporting that found LAHSA’s then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s signature finalized a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer.

LAist also discovered Adams Kellum’s signature, as LAHSA’s CEO at the time, finalized a quarter-million-dollar contract between LAHSA and a longtime service provider she led up until two months earlier.

That contract was signed so soon after she left the service provider — St. Joseph Center — that the contract paperwork still listed her as one of St. Joseph Center’s points of contact and authorized signers.

She is currently under a state ethics investigation into whether her actions were an illegal conflict of interest.

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Wono Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.

Topline:

Why it matters: Museum officials said you will “likely experience high demand and long wait times in the queue" and thanked people for their patience.

LAist saw estimated wait times up to 6 hours, and it took a little more than 4.5 hours for this reporter to get through. On the bright side, there were still plenty of tickets left, including for the first day. Do not refresh the page or you may lose your spot.

The details: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children, members, active-duty military, personal aides or attendants and EBT cardholders have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program will also be free, with that pass opening in August.

But how do I buy: Each person is limited to nine tickets, and you’ll have 20 minutes to check out once they’re added to your cart, according to the museum. You can find the link here.

What's next: The grand opening is Sept. 22.

Go deeper: How to secure Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets ahead of the fall opening