From memes to gun rights: Rooftop Koreans return as LA erupts

David Joo fires a gun in Los Angeles, April 30, 1992. Captured from A&E's YouTube channel

On April 30, 1992 — the second day of rioting in Los Angeles — David Joo, the manager of Western Gun Shop, received a frantic call from Richard Park, a jewelry store owner down the street.

“David, we’re having a gunfight here. So can you just come over and help us?” Park said.

In an interview with the YouTube channel A&E, Joo recalled that they had already called the police. When he arrived, he spotted a Los Angeles Police Department vehicle nearby with three or four officers and assumed they were safe.

That mistake nearly got him killed.

As soon as the shooting began, the officers fled. Moments later, heavily armed looters crossed the street and opened fire. A bullet flew past Joo’s face — and he didn’t hesitate to shoot back.

“In retrospect, it was a dangerous moment, and I was scared. But, you know, even though you’re scared, you don’t have much option. You have to fight,” Joo recalled. “Korean people were very frustrated. Koreatown was damaged and destroyed.”

Thirty-three years later, the Korean immigrants who armed themselves during the 1992 Los Angeles riots — including Joo — have become symbols of self-reliance on the right wing of American politics. Dubbed the “Rooftop Koreans” after images of them standing armed on rooftops during the unrest, they have become a symbol of the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense among some conservative communities.

A Korean man carries a weapon to prevent looters from entering a grocery store in Los Angeles, April 30, 1992. AP-Yonhap

As law enforcement failed to respond swiftly to the chaos then, Korean store owners — many of whom ran laundromats and grocery stores — formed armed patrols.

Images of Korean Americans guarding rooftops resurfaced Sunday after Donald Trump Jr. shared a photo of them on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption, “Make Rooftop Koreans great again.” The post came amid unrest in LA, sparked by a sweeping immigration raid conducted by the U.S. government on Friday.

This isn’t the first time Rooftop Koreans have drawn public attention. Once a niche topic in far-right reaches of the internet, their image has leaped into mainstream visibility. A YouTube search brings up videos and shorts with millions of views and thousands of comments.

One video, with 6.2 million views, is filled with remarks like, “This world needs more Rooftop Koreans,” and “This is when Koreans appear most American,” many from political conservatives.

A meme compares Rooftop Koreans to BTS. Captured from Reddit

The image of the Rooftop Koreans has resurfaced repeatedly — particularly during periods of tension between citizens and authorities. In 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd, they reentered the public conversation, propelled in part by conservative elements seeking to portray them as civilians stepping in to protect themselves in the face of a perceived vacuum in law enforcement.

Between May 31 and June 6 of that year — at the height of the protests — Rooftop Koreans' Google Trends data in the U.S. surged to 100, the platform’s peak search interest level.

American conservatives often embrace Rooftop Koreans as a modern symbol of the Second Amendment. The Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, has called them “the most widely recognized example of a community defending itself during civil unrest.”

But how do the men who actually stood on those rooftops with guns in 1992 remember that moment? And how do they process the strange afterlife of their image — hailed as conservative icons, cast as symbols of armed self-defense, and, in some corners of the internet, reduced to memes comparing them to BTS, far removed from the fear they once felt?

A Korean man carries a weapon to prevent looters from entering a grocery store in Los Angeles, May 2, 1992. AP-Yonhap

Reactions vary. In a 2021 interview with the Koreatown Storytelling Program, an oral history and digital media project, an anonymous community member who was in Koreatown then said the internet memes about them “are not done necessarily to be disrespectful, as much as just some people just trying to be funny.”

“We read so much into it. I don't think that the guys who make the memes mean to be mocking Koreatown as much as they think it’s a funny way to present this information. It's a vehicle to deliver the information and it happens to be that,” the anonymous community member said.

For him, the memories weren’t a source of shame, but neither were they something he cared to revisit.

“It’s not something you’re ashamed about, but why do I need to bring up these traumatic experiences?” he said, adding that he doesn’t really give it much thought.

“I don’t go around saying, ‘Hey, I identify as a Rooftop Korean.’ … It was an experience, a life thing that I went through, but it doesn’t define me... I would identify myself as Korean American and other things first, before I say Rooftop Korean. I identify as Korean American.”