By Jane Han
NEW YORK — Walk down Northern Boulevard in Flushing and you’ll see everything from Korean saunas to rice cake shops are easy to spot.
Colorful signs cluttering the entire strip of road alert passersby to a wide variety of Korean offerings, but there’s one catch: Korean is a prerequisite to understand what’s available.
As a majority of stores advertise their businesses only in Korean, strangers to the language wouldn’t know what’s what, a baffling situation a local politician wants to reverse.
Queens city council member Peter Koo argues that signs in the United States should be in English.
He introduced two laws requiring businesses to have at least 60 percent of their signage in English, underscoring that it’s a “safety issue.”
“These bills protect our immigrant-owned businesses by making sure the city, especially public safety officials and emergency responders, can find them in an emergency. And they protect consumers, who have the right to know where they are buying goods,” Koo told reporters.
The proposal backed by Koo, a Chinese-American from Hong Kong, has divided Queens, home to one of the nation’s largest Asian communities, where nearly 120 languages are spoken.
Native English speakers welcome the change, saying they can finally understand what’s for sale in their neighborhood shops.
“I walk into a restaurant for a quick bite only to find out they only sell oxtail soup,” said Frank Neely, a longtime Flushing resident. “I didn’t even know there was such thing as oxtail soup.”
Another resident, Liz Fitzpatrick, says, “It’s great to be surrounded by so many different cultures, but knowing what’s around will help me appreciate them even more.”
The bills, if passed, would give merchants up to four years to make changes to their signs and shop awnings.
But opponents are going right up against the move, arguing the proposal would threaten their businesses and hurt the area’s diversity.
“More than 90 percent of my customers are Chinese,” says Lisa Chuang, who runs an herbal remedy shop in Flushing. “Why should I pay money for a new sign when my customers can’t understand English?”
Kim Young-soo, owner of a computer repair shop, thinks English signs will take away from Queens’ uniqueness.
“Queens is known for its diversity. The colorful and ethnic signs play a big part in that, so we’re giving Queens a new identity if we take them down,” he said, adding that there is more meaning to signs in Queens than plain advertising.