The Brief

Jane Lee’s earliest memory of Buena Park was traveling to Super 1 Mart Hannam Chain at the intersection of Beach Boulevard and Malvern Avenue for Korean food and groceries.

Now the area has ballooned into a hub for hallyu or “Korean wave.” Two more Korean grocery chains have since opened in the vicinity. Naturally, when Lee and her husband Sean Ha were scouting for a location for their donut shop, Yozm Donuts, they chose The Source O.C. on Beach Boulevard — the same shopping center where South Korea's CGV Cinemas is located.

Yozm Donut , a special selection of baked goods offered at The Bakery at The Source mall in Buena Park.

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Strawberry Milk Cream donut, one of the popular offerings at The Bakery.

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“We figured there was going to be quite a bit of the Korean community coming to The Source,” Lee said.

The opening of CGV cinemas in 2017 was no small matter. It attracted other businesses, from homegrown ones like Lee's Donuts, to South Korean franchises like Myungrang Hotdogs looking to establish a foothold in Orange County. It also brought an influx of visitors to the area — both Koreans and non-Koreans alike to watch movies from that country on the big screen.

Last month, that section of Beach Boulevard in Buena Park, between Orangethorpe Avenue and Rosecrans Avenue, was designated as the second “Koreatown” in Orange County. Leading the charge was Buena Park Councilmember Joyce Ahn, who has lived in the city for over 17 years.

Korean Language anti vaping electronic billboard in Buena Park.

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Exterior of The Source mall in Buena Park , a center for Korean culture in Orange County.

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Buena Park, she says, is home to more than 1,000 Korean businesses.

“I would say probably in the past 10 years is when we saw a big boom in the number of Korean businesses, so that's also brought the city a lot of tax revenue,” she said.

The patrons of these Korean businesses, she says, tend to visit other Buena Park attractions like Medieval Times and Knott’s Berry Farm.

While Garden Grove in Orange County and Los Angeles have officially designated Koreatowns, Ahn says more and more businesses are choosing to set up shop in Buena Park.

“Buena Park is located at really, truly the center of the Southland. You know, we're close to 91 and 5 freeways,” Ahn said. “And we are like the connecting point between Orange County and L.A.”

Interior of LIfe Four Cuts, a photo booth business at The Source mall in Buena Park.

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Attracting non-Korean visitors

Lee and Ha of Yozm Donuts said the official designation will attract more non-Koreans and Asian Americans to the city.

“There's going to be a lot more non-Koreans coming to the area just to see what it's like to ride the K-wave,” Lee said.

Currently, the clientele at Yozm Donuts is 80% non-Korean. Lee says some have visited as far away as Rancho Cucamonga and San Diego.

“It really speaks to how much, one, they love donuts, or two, they want to see what this Korean wave is about,” Lee said. “And you know, as a Korean, I appreciate that a lot.”

The Bakery, an establishement at one of the food courts in The Source mall in Buena Park.

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The Bakery co-owner Jane Lee arranging baked goods at one of the food courts in The Source mall in Buena Park.

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Yozm Donuts is joined by a variety of Korean restaurants in Source Mall's food court. There are ones selling Korean fried chicken; Sundubu-jjigae, a soft tofu stew; gimbap, a seaweed rice roll with a protein, pickled veggies and sometimes egg; or tteokbokki, pillowy rice cakes cooked in a spicy, tangy sauce.

On a typical Friday night, it’s not uncommon to see families enjoying Korean food, while teens crowd the mall's trendy shops and boutiques.

Life Four Cuts photo booth business window display details.

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Skin care products for sale at Let's Fly 9, a fashion store in The Source mall in Buena Park.

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The new “stomping grounds”

In the mall's open courtyard, a troupe wearing coordinated outfits of black pants and red blazers is practicing a K-pop routine.

23-year-old Evie Becerra, a dance instructor at the mall’s K-Pop Center, is filming the rehearsal with her phone. Becerra lives in the Inland Empire and makes the 45 minute to an hour drive to Buena Park at least four times a week for her work.

Becerra became interested in K-pop after BTS — the global K-pop sensation — performed at the 2020 Video Music Awards.

Coachella Valley resident Jasmine Grace in Buena Park for the K-Pop band ENHYPEN concert and shopping at K-Pop Music Town.

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She signed up for a program at the K-Pop Center that trains students to audition for music and entertainment companies in South Korea. During this time, she also began learning the language so she could understand the lyrics.

K-Pop, she said, resonates with her — unlike a lot of the mainstream American fare her peers are listening to.

Merchandise and producst for sale at K-Pop Music Town at The Source mall.

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Becerra calls The Source her “stomping grounds."

“We'll just eat here, go to the K-pop stores. I do spend a lot of money on K-pop stuff, but, you know, happiness,” she said, her face beaming.

The K-wave goes international

Esther Jang works at Let’s Fly 9, a K-fashion store at the mall. She thinks the COVID-19 pandemic helped tip the Korean wave into the American mainstream.

Architecture of The Source mall in Buena Park , a center for Korean culture in Orange County.

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The South Korean film Parasite won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 2020, a month before pandemic stay-at-home orders went into effect. K-drama viewing tripled during the lockdown, according to Netflix. Squid Game, which debuted in 2021, is the most-watched show in the streamer's history.

But it wasn't just entertainment. Another pastime that gained popularity during that period was Dalgona coffee, a beverage that originated in Busan. In case you forgot, add two tablespoons of instant coffee, two tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of water — then whip the whole thing to a froth and serve it over milk.

In the O.C., Jang says new and old fans of Korean culture inevitably make their way to Source Mall — to shop the fashions, eat the food, and buy the CDs.

Buena Park, she says, connects Korean culture with the rest of the world.

Hundreds of organizations are rallying at MacArthur Park on Friday in one of many events recognizing May Day, which is expected to draw thousands of people. 

The rally began at 10 a.m. with speakers, and then the event will march to City Hall around noon. Westlake is no stranger to International Workers’ Day, said Victor Narro, project director with the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, which sits across the street from MacArthur Park.

“We’re dealing with so much this year, and I think May Day is going to be a chance for us to come together,” Narro told The LA Local ahead of the rally. 

Advocacy groups from different backgrounds, like immigrants’ rights, housing, LGBTQ rights, and economic justice, will unite for the cause of workers’ rights, Narro said.

“It’s really an inclusive march,” he said. “This really is unlike any other march.”

Organizers also hope to make the event safe for undocumented immigrants and emphasize that they are taking security seriously.

“You just don’t know with this administration,” he added. 

Organizers are calling for a boycott and will rally under the banner, “Solo El Pueblo Shuts it Down – No Work, No School, No Shopping” with the march ending at Gloria Molina Grand Park at the foot of City Hall. 

This year’s May Day also marks the 20th anniversary of La Gran Marcha, when millions of people took to the streets around the country to protest proposed legislation that would have included making it a felony offense to be an undocumented immigrant.

The event is still fresh in a lot of people’s minds, including Juan Aguilar, a supermarket worker who came to the United States in 1989 and participated in the 2006 march in downtown L.A.

“I was really impressed by the number of people there. And I didn’t feel afraid. People weren’t afraid,” he said at a sign-making event for this year’s May Day rally at the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates in Koreatown. 

He feels it’s so much different now. Back then, Aguilar said, people were only afraid near the border.

“Once you were inside the country, you could move freely. Now it’s everywhere,” he said. “People are afraid because raids can happen at any moment. At work, on the street, leaving court, anywhere.”

The fear in the community has prompted Aguilar to participate in this year’s rally.

Friday will also be Jay Lee’s first time participating in the May Day rally and march. He pointed to the role labor movements have played in shaping migration and identity within Korean communities.

“Korea’s got this huge history of labor,” Lee said. “The existence of the Korean diaspora here is inherently tied to the labor movement in Korea.”

For Lee, a Korean American, this year’s May Day is especially significant. It marks the first year South Korea has designated May 1 as a mandatory public holiday for all workers, including those in the public sector. Previously, only private-sector workers had the day off.

He said this year’s march is also about solidarity across communities.

“We’re going to be marching with Black workers, the Latino centers, the Filipino centers,” Lee said. “We’re going to be all marching together as one voice, and I think that’s really cool.”

The LA Local has reporters on the ground. Check back for updates, and see more photos and video on our Instagram.

The two chicks growing in Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest have been named.

The offspring of famous parents Jackie and Shadow will be called Sandy and Luna, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest and is working to preserve acres of land in the area.

The organization announced the results of this year’s chick naming contest Friday after inviting the eagles’ fanbase to submit suggestions with a donation last month.

Keeping with tradition, the final votes were left up to Big Bear Valley third-grade students. A list of names was selected randomly from the nearly 64,000 public fundraiser submissions and delivered on ballots to the students, who are studying bald eagles in school, earlier this week.

Sandy was the most popular name entered into the contest with more than 3,700 submissions, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The name is an homage to Sandy Steers, an environmental advocate who helped launch the eagle livestream and the nonprofit’s late executive director. She died in February, a few weeks before the pair of eggs were laid.

“Please know that although Sandy would not have wanted us to outright name one of the eaglets Sandy, she would have been honored that you and the students went through the process and named one of the 2026 eaglets after her,” the organization wrote on Facebook Friday to its more than 1.2 million followers.

Chick naming traditions

Sandy and Luna have been known as Chick 1 and Chick 2, respectively, since they hatched in early April.

Once the eaglets arrived, Friends of Big Bear Valley was swarmed with hundreds of requests to name one of the chicks “Sandy.”

But it’s a right of passage for the Big Bear third graders to name the chicks, and the tradition was “one of Sandy’s greatest joys,” according to Jenny Voisard, Friends of Big Bear Valley’s media manager.

Jackie and Shadow, the adult birds whose parenting saga each nesting season has captured human attention around the world, have had previous chicks named Stormy, BBB (for Big Bear Baby), Simba, Spirit and Cookie through a similar process.

“Last year, because Jackie and Shadow did not have chicks the previous two seasons, she opened it up to the other grades that didn’t get to participate when they were in the third grade,” Voisard said in a statement. “That was Sandy. Education was extremely important to her.”

Last season’s eaglets were dubbed Sunny and Gizmo by the Big Bear elementary students, who voted on 30 finalists pulled from about 54,000 name choices crowdsourced in a week-long fundraiser.

What’s next for Sandy and Luna

The nonprofit asked people to submit gender neutral names because the sex of each eaglet is not yet known.

Sandy and Luna are nearly 4 weeks old as of Friday, but once the eaglets reach around 9 to 10 weeks old, there should be signs that can help Friends of Big Bear Valley make an educated guess.

One of Jackie and Shadow's chicks peaks out from behind its parent on April 5.

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Big Bear's famous bald eaglets on April 7.

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The chicks in the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake on April 12.

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Sandy and Luna, formally known as Chick 1 and Chick 2, stretching in the nest on April 30.

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Some of the signs the nonprofit looks out for include the chick’s size, ankle thickness and vocal pitch.

Generally speaking, female bald eagles are larger than males. Female bald eagles also tend to have larger vocal organs — the syrinx — which leads to deeper, lower-pitched vocalizations, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The only definitive way to know the eaglets’ sex is through a blood test, which nonprofit officials have said is unlikely. There is no human intervention in the nest during nesting season, according to Voisard.

When the eaglets are around 10 to 14 weeks old, they could fledge, or take their first flight away from the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

But as the nonprofit often reminds fans, nature is in charge of the timeline — a previous eaglet named Simba took 16 weeks to fledge.

Fledglings from Southern California have been spotted as far north as British Columbia, as far east as Yellowstone and as far south as Baja California, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

Big picture progress

Friends of Big Bear Valley is continuing to lead a $10 million fundraiser to buy more than 62-acres near the nest to preserve it from a planned housing project called Moon Camp.

Instead, the organization and the San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust want the land to be placed under a permanent conservatorship.

Officials say “Save Moon Camp” is the most ambitious fundraising effort in the history of Friends of Big Bear Valley. It’s raised more than $2.3 million as of Friday.

California’s billionaires are not the only ones fighting back against the state’s largest health workers union this election season. Now the clinics are too.

The California Primary Care Association, which represents more than 2,300 community health clinics, and Open Door Community Health Centers filed a lawsuit Thursday to stop Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West from placing an initiative on the November ballot that would dictate how clinics spend money.

The clinic measure is less prominent than the billionaire-backed fight against a wealth tax, but recently came closer to appearing before voters.

The clinic’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that the union’s ballot measure would interfere with federal laws and regulations that place strict spending requirements on nonprofit health clinics that serve low-income patients.

Joey Cachuela, general counsel for the clinic association said in a statement the initiative threatens patient care. “We are filing this preelection challenge and need the courts to act to prevent this drastic measure from ever going to the ballot. Patient lives are at risk,” Cachuela said.

A spokesperson for the healthcare workers union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Elizabeth Sophy, far right, who is a part of Father Joe’s Villages Street Health Team, examines Devlin Chambers at an encampment in downtown San Diego on March 22, 2024. Chambers, 60, said he has a pinched nerve in his back.

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Earlier this month, union members turned in more than 1 million signatures to qualify the “Clinic Funding Accountability and Transparency Act” for the ballot. The union collected nearly double the number of signatures required to place the proposal before voters.

Under California’s election rules, proposals that gather enough signatures qualify for the ballot after the Secretary of State’s office verifies their validity.

The union proposal would require federally qualified health centers to spend 90% of revenue on services that fulfill the stated mission to “provide primary and preventive care to low-income and underserved populations.” It would also punish clinics that do not adhere to this spending formula and place the money in a state-operated account that could later be used for worker training and staffing programs.

“It is the intent of this initiative to create a reasonable minimum standard of mission-directed

spending … to ensure clinic patient service delivery and workforce stability is prioritized over management and overhead spending,” the initiative states.

Union leaders and members argue that clinics spend too much money on executive pay and administrative overhead and too little on patients. They also contend that some clinics spend only half of their revenue on direct patient care, an allegation that clinics call misleading.

“We have one message for our clinics: Put patients first. It’s time for an end to wasteful spending. It’s time to make sure clinics are putting their money in patient care and not CEO-pay,” said Brisa Barrera, a medical assistant from Santa Rosa Community Health during an April rally to celebrate delivering the signatures.

The clinic association, however, argues that the initiative would illegally force hundreds of community health centers to close by stripping nearly $2 billion from health systems.

Tory Starr, chief executive of Open Door Community Health Centers, which operates clinics in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, said the measure would be “devastating” to the organization’s rural patients and would result in layoffs, reduced services and closures.

A nearly identical version of the ballot initiative failed to pass in the state Legislature earlier this year.

The initiative is one of three measures the union has submitted to the ballot. Another aims to limit health care executive pay at $450,000, and SEIU-UHW is also backing the “billionaire’s tax” that has drawn ire from both Democrats and Republicans.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.