Immigrants Who Perpetuate Inter-Asian Animosities
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

A Korean man in his 60s confessed Friday to shooting at the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles Thursday afternoon to protest the killing of a Korean coast guard officer by a Chinese fisherman. He’s one of the more extreme examples of a small, insular and stubborn segment of the Asian American population — immigrants who want to perpetuate inter-Asian animosities in the US.

Most Asian Americans understand that here in the US we face issues that are different and far more immediate for us than historical animosities among Asian nations. In fact, we recognize that we Asian Americans have more in common than separate us when it comes to the issues that impact our ability to live here. The last thing we want to do is to aggravate old animosities with hostile acts toward other Asian Americans.

But we all know of people who seem to embrace the animosities as though they’re honor bound to keep the hate alive. Immigrants from Korea have been among the most persistent in expressing animosities toward Japanese and Chinese, perhaps because Korea has traditionally suffered at the hands of its larger neighbors.

What I have found disheartening is that many of these stubborn haters grew up in the US. But instead of integrating into mainstream life where they can come into contact with other Asian Americans from other nations of origin, they tend to stay in their insular communities. They live and think as though they were back in their ancestral homelands. But because their thinking isn’t tempered by the modern realities of intensive commerce and cultural exhchanges among even traditional enemy nations like Korea and Japan or Japan and China, they manage to keep the hatred unalloyed, biding

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a statement on Friday that China is concerned about the shooting incident, calling on the US to resolve the case as soon as possible.

A gunman fired a number of shots at a downtown office building where the Chinese Consulate-General is located Thursday afternoon then fled, no one was hurt in the incident.

Police launched a manhunt for the suspect, described as an Asian man either in his late 50s or early 60s with white hair after the early afternoon incident, said a LA Police Department (LAPD) spokesman.

“Around 5:30 or 6:00 pm the possible suspect walked into the Wilshire station and turned himself in,” AFP quoted LAPD spokesman Gregory Baek as saying, giving no further details about the man.

The Hong Kong-based Singtao newspaper reported on Friday the suspect is a Korean-American protesting the alleged killing of a South Korean coast guard by a Chinese fisherman.

However, an official at the Chinese Consulate in LA told the Global Times the incident is still under investigation and the nationality of the suspect and the motive behind his shooting remain unclear.

There was only one protester outside the embassy that day and it hasn’t been confirmed if the protester and the gunman were the same person, according to the official.

A consulate security officer, Cipriano Gutierrez, 53, said he was in his guard kiosk outside the building when he heard shots ring out, at first mistaking them for firecrackers.

“Then the reality kicked in. There was a gunshot at me, directed towards me, so I hit the ground,” Gutierrez told reporters at the scene, according to Reuters

“I was dodging bullets. I saw a hollow-point bullet land right next to my knee cap,” he said, adding that some of the rounds pierced metal fencing in front of the consulate.

He described the gunman as a protester whom he had seen outside the consulate hours earlier. The man apparently left and then returned.

The shots were fired at the consulate itself as well as at the kiosk, Gutierrez said.

The LA Times reported that a protester fired shots at security guards outside the consulate, missing his target and hitting a building in the compound instead.

It cited reports indicating that a group of protesters had gathered outside the building, and one of them got into a dispute with a security guard, who allegedly had taken a sign from the man and tossed it into the trash.

The protester got into a vehicle and fired several shots in the direction of the security guard, all of which missed, the newspaper reported.

The consulate building is still under tight security.