Karen Gunn gets lots of flak and funny looks. You could call her a Henry Kissinger of the inner city.
A black woman wearing a hot-pink wool overcoat and black suede high heels, she shows up and asks for the owner of the Korean-American store.
The usual response isn’t, “Just a minute.” It’s, “Who wants to know?”
And just who, blacks and Hispanics also wonder, is that woman handing over a business card imprinted with symbols of the Far Eastern Yin and Yang and Korean characters?
Gunn’s title is “community mediator,” and her employer is Korean-American Community Services.
“Some black people ask me what I’m doing working for the enemy, and some of the Korean-American merchants think I’m too young to offer worthwhile advice,” said Gunn, who is 37, but looks a decade younger.
What’s the deal?
As an urban shuttle diplomat, Gunn has spent the past year and a half trying to negotiate a detente between Korean-American business owners and the blacks and Hispanics in whose neighborhoods they operate.
At a minimum, she’s trying to get the Korean-Americans to treat customers better and to convince blacks and Hispanics that store owners aren’t out to rip them off.
A delicate mission at best. Her turf holds some of the same neighborhoods that erupted in rioting following the Chicago Bulls’ victory in the National Basketball Association championship, fueling a long-percolating mish-mash of cultural ill will.
Previously, African Americans had boycotted Korean-owned businesses in Roseland and Englewood, two of the 14 communities stretching from Austin to South Chicago where Gunn goes door to door.
Though other agencies and groups have used mediators to ease tensions since the NBA riots, officials say Gunn is the only such full-time, salaried worker they know of.
A single mother who lives in Englewood with her 3-year-old, she graduated from Gage Park High School and the University of Cincinnati. She worked as a corporate personnel specialist for about a dozen years, for U.S. Sprint, Sears and other companies.
InChul Choi, Gunn’s boss at Korean-American Community Services, said Gunn was chosen over 20 other candidates not only because of her experience dealing with people and their problems, but also because she had taken the time to research black and Korean-American relations in Chicago.
After 18 months, Gunn believes she’s at least made a dent.
“I think I’ve begun to make the merchants aware of the need for long-term solutions. Joint Korean-black concerts and food basket giveaways are nice, but songs leave the memory and food leaves the body.
“The merchants are just starting to accept the need for an ongoing job development program, focusing on partnerships and joint ventures between Koreans and African Americans.”
Choi said: “Black aldermen and community organizations call us all the time now; two years ago they didn’t know who we were. And even though there is a language barrier with the Korean merchants, she somehow communicates.”
That communication includes more than friendly schmoozing-Gunn also criticizes the business owners who help pay her salary.
Donning blue jeans, a sweat shirt and tennis shoes, she’ll go “undercover,” milling about among the clothing racks to see what shoppers are complaining about.
“A lot of times I don’t like what I see,” said Gunn, acknowledging that on more than one occasion she has had to reprimand store owners who were rude to customers.
Likewise, she’s quick to stand up for the merchants, as she did at a recent meeting in 9th Ward Ald. Robert Shaw’s Roseland office.
“The Koreans are tagged as people who want to come in and just sell garbage to us, but as you can see, that is just not the case here,” Gunn told the office full of Korean and black business operators.
In fact, the two groups had come together to fight the opening of a Korean-owned flea market, whose many small vendors were likely to undercut prices of store owners.
Two years ago during the black boycott, the Korean merchants scarcely would have looked to their alderman for help. Now Shaw is adjusting to Korean interpreters jumping up in mid-meeting to translate his comments.
It was the Roseland boycott and Shaw’s complaints about some Koreans’ attitudes toward blacks that prompted Korean-American Community Services, an Albany Park agency, to create a cultural tour guide.
Gunn certainly isn’t ready to declare victory, but she says she’s won a number of skirmishes-for one, helping resolve a boycott of Korean-American businesses in Englewood that began shortly after she was hired.
One protester, Sylvia Brooks, a member of the local school council at Wentworth School, said Gunn, working with Audrey Drew, president of the Englewood Businessmen’s Assocation, tipped her opinion:
“It’s not a Korean-black battle, although sometimes it may look like that. Why throw stones? There are many great stores here, like the 5th Avenue, a Korean-owned store that lets you buy your shoes on layaway,” she said.
“The Korean-Americans also have hired a lot of black people. Years ago when these stores were white-owned, I don’t think you could say the same thing.”
Gunn noted: “Although Roseland and Englewood became the flashpoints, the African-American community throughout the city was upset about the Koreans’ lack of involvement in the neighborhoods where they operated their businesses, everything from failure to bank in the local banks to the failure to hire African Americans.
“The refusal to allow returns or exchanges was a major problem.”
Now banking in the 14 neighborhoods is on the rise, a uniform return policy has been adopted and more African Americans and Hispanics have been hired.
In fact, African-American employees outnumber Korean-American employees 3 to 1 in Korean-owned businesses in five South Side neighborhoods, according to a recent survey by the Korean Merchants Association.
Perhaps the low point of Gunn’s job was the NBA riots, in which 45 Korean-owned stores were damaged throughout the city, eight shuttered in the area of Madison Street and Pulaski Avenue alone.
“We had started building relationships between the merchants and the community in that area, and the destruction put us back to square one,” Gunn said.
But the Korean store owners’ anger abated somewhat when they realized they weren’t necessarily targeted in the violence, Gunn said.
