Tag Archives: Roof Koreans

Is the rooftop speaking Korean yet?

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2020 is really turning out to be something, isn’t it? Who knew?

I’m still trying to keep my focus and work my way down the list of things I want to make sure I have plenty of on-hand. Interestingly, one of the things I keep on hand is a pretty decent supply of rubber buckshot and rubber slugs.

Watching the various riots is proving interesting. No one seems to be wanting to go full Rodney King Riots… I see lotsa crowds waving celphones but very few molotov cocktails, and I see lotsa cops with pepperball guns and very few people actually shooting real bullets. It’s like neither side wants to really commit.

Oh sure, there are exceptions…but broadly speaking it looks like the looters are doing just enough to avoid getting shot and the cops are throwing around just enough weight to avoid using real ammo.

For me, this is all pointless. I live in a place that is rather…mmmm….homogenous. And that tends to trend toward less crime and violence. There’ll be some college kids who think they’re “allies” or somesuch and may wave some banners or something….but a half dozen guys in black bandanas breaking windows? Someone asked me if it was time to tuck a carbine behind the drivers seat ‘just in case’. My opinion was ‘no’. Just do like you normally do and carry a pistol and, for here, you’re probably just fine.

However, if I lived somewhere else where this sorta stuff was happening….totally different story.

Range time with PC Charger and an upgrade for the Roof Koreans

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Took the little Ruger PC Charger out for a spin yesterday. Holy Drokk, it is fun!

But, we ain’t here for fun, son….we’re here to gear up against the unknown future. So..how’d it shoot in regard to that? Let’s review….

I only put fifty rounds of S&B 115 FMJ though it, using ETS happysticks, but of that fifty I had 0 malfs. Everything fed, fired, and flew just fine. I had  low hopes for the red dot Bushnell because, honestly, I’ve never really thought of myself as a red dot kinda guy and have no experience with them. As it turns out, it performed quite well. Got it sighted in and was ringing the 6″ plate at 50 yards with regularity.

The SB ‘brace’ (aluminum model) worked fine. One of the gun review sites had problems with theirs on the Ruger saying that the direct blowback caused a rear-and-downward recoil impulse that would unlock the folding mechanism on the brace. Not a problem for me since I prefer my stocks to fold to the right, so I had mounted the brace bracket upsidedown and reattached the arm. As a result, any rear-and-downward motion actually locks the thing up more. No problem.

Whats the purpose of this thing? For me, its pretty simple. When I roll into the office and tuck my Bag O’ Tricks under the desk I want to have a compact little ‘carbine’ with mag commonality with my Glock pistol for those days when things have gone so far sideways that just a pistol might not be enough to keep things calm. LA Riot type stuff.

So, thus far, with a very limited amount of range time, I rather like this thing. I need to dump a few hundred more rounds through it but so far I like it and I like the possibilities it opens up for me in terms of a handy little PDW-style gun that can travel quite well. It’s an absolute shame that Ruger was hamstrung for so many years by Billy Ruger and his Fuddness. Ruger clearly has some talented engineers and idea guys over there and the results of them getting let off the leash once in a while have been rather cool.

Speaking of LA Riots, we all know, love, and respect the Roof Koreans, right? Well, in (S.) Korea they take it to a whole new level:

Roof Korea is best Korea

Roof Korea is best Korea

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Its the anniversary of the genesis of that unique subset of Americans – the Roof Korean. Someone sent me this link and it’s too good to not share:

Roof Korean Week is here again. After the savage beating of Rodney King at the hands of police officers and their subsequent acquittal, rioters took to the streets in what is known as the “LA Riots.”
Korean citizens and their businesses/homes were intentionally targeted by the rioters. Sure they had nothing to do with King or the police officers who beat him, but “their prices are too high, their attitude is wrong, they have no respect for the community.”

Koreans were savagely attacked, while their businesses and homes were looted and burned.

They did what good citizens do, they called the police and they waited for help. Unfortunately, police were stretched thin and were also being targeted for violence.

I swear, I never get tired of those guys. Interestingly, while articles like the one mentioned above pop up with frequency, I have never encountered any interviews with any actual roof Koreans. I get that many of them may not want to admit to things that may still get them in trouble, but there’s also gotta be a lot of them who just hung around the rooftops with their Mini-14s, never got a shot off, and could tell their story.

The origin of “Roof Korean”

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I was staggering through the internet a few weeks back and saw that the folks at Violent Little Machine Shop, maker of some of my favorite ‘morale’ patches, had this little number:

What, you may ask, is a ‘Roof Korean’? Well, it was 25 years ago so it’s entirely possible that a generation of survivalists may have not even been around when the Roof Koreans (and Ground Koreans) were workin’ their mojo.

You know how in survivalist fiction there’s always those gun battles on Main Street with the townies and local shopkeepers swapping bullets with the bad guys like all the rules have been called off? Well, that actually happened.

Roof Koreans operating operationally.

The year was 1992 and a handful of white cops had beat a black motorist so badly that his parents must have felt it. The difference between this episode and the LA police departments other beatdowns was that this one was caught on tape and widely distributed. The cops went to trial on charges of police brutality. When the jury returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’ against the cops, a disgruntled demographic decided to politely protest the verdict by setting fires, looting, and committing violence against people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where were the cops? Well…that’s a good question. The official story is that the cops were outnumbered, too busy, stretched thin, etc. The prevailing opinion, however, is that they decided to let the mobs ‘get it out of their system’ and things would cam down. The Koreans just happened to be the target of choice for the mobs to use to let off some steam.

The Korean connection is that there has always been some bad blood between the black community and the Korean shopkeepers. Korean grocery stores are often targeted in these sorts of events because the black community, rightly or wrongly, views the Koreans as people who are just making a buck off them and care nothing about, and contribute nothing to, the black community. Against this backdrop of the 1992 LA Riots, some Korean businesses were targetted for violence.

Koreans are an interesting bunch. The ones I’ve met tend to be quite industrious and hard working. The Korean grocer in my neighborhood in Brooklyn was, as we’d say, a real mensch. He was the kinda grocer who, if money was tight, would let you get groceries and pay later.  His wife and little girl worked in that shop and you can bet that he took care of that store because it took care of his family. Solid guy.

And….guys like that don’t take kindly to someone threatening to burn down the business that they’ve worked so hard to build. And a surprising number of Koreans have had military training in the old country. South Korea, being technically at war for the last 60 years, does not fool around with it’s military preparedness and training.

So…take a demographic that is highly-motivated to protect their livelihoods, have a strong sense of community, have some military training (or leadership that does), a surprising amount of weapons, put them in an urban cage match where the referees (the police) have decided to stay home and you get… Roof Koreans.

Rook Koreans were the symbol of the Korean shopkeeper protecting his store and his neighborhood. Even the unorganized mobs that were bent on an orgy of ‘payback’ and ‘justice’ decided to give these guys a wide berth. And when they didn’t…it became a bullet party.

The LA Riots of ’92 were interesting to watch and had some wide ranging impact. Police policy changed and, more importantly, the notion of the recording of police activities by bystanders entered the mainstream. This new level of accountability, which was beyond police control, still causes headlines…it seems like every recent high-profile shooting is caught on video these days.

I don’t know anyone who was there with the Koreans, Ground Or Roof version, but I would imagine that the whole incident left a strong impression and that if it happens again there will be significant upgrade to the firepower. Standing guard all night behind barricades of bundled recycled cardboard definitely makes one think that perhaps a Mini-14 might be a better choice than a Ruger Red Label.

Given the nature of politics and media these days, it isn’t hard to think that there’s going to be more events like these in the future. Best we can do is avoid it if possible and be prepared for the times we can’t.