THE NEW TRIBALISM: Defending Human Rights in an Age of Ethnic Conflict : The Marketplace : Anger Flares on Both Sides of Counter : Friction between Los Angeles’ Korean-American merchants and their African-American customers points to a global phenomenon.

Now gathering dust in a box in a Los Angeles office are thousands of posters embossed with a manifesto designed to end hostility between some local merchants of Korean descent and their African-American customers.

Developed in April, 1992, by the Black-Korean Alliance, a coalition seeking to bridge this chasm, these “Customer-Merchant Code of Ethics” posters urge the two groups to be respectful toward each other--to be fair and courteous.

Many Korean-American merchants agreed to display the posters in their South Los Angeles stores. However, before the alliance could distribute them, charcoal-hard resentments were heated by the fires of the May, 1992, Los Angeles riot.

When the smoke cleared, thousands of businesses had been destroyed, looted or damaged--and Korean-American merchants were among those suffering the heaviest losses.

The violence also ended the ethics code crusade. Chagrined alliance members concluded that they could not overcome divisions such as those spotlighted in the riot by circulating a poster on polite behavior; that the problem, in fact, is one with major socioeconomic dimensions and global scope.

Indeed, as international human rights proponents and sociologists examine a surge in sectarian violence, they are discovering that these conflicts have economic dimensions that make the marketplace a frequent flash point for ethnic conflict around the globe.

“The international press tried to present this conflict as a ‘new American problem,’ ” said Bong Hwang Kim, former co-chairman of the Black-Korean Alliance and director of the Los Angeles-based Korean Youth and Community Center. “African-Americans in South-Central Los Angeles face discrimination, and they see the economic abandonment of their neighborhoods. And those factors are local causes of resentment. But this kind of conflict happens all over the world. It usually involves people at the bottom economic rung and merchants from another ethnic group.”

Joe Hicks, the other former chairman of the alliance, said it is especially difficult to eliminate suspicions and animosity on both sides of the retail counter under the “desperate” economic conditions in South Los Angeles.

“The merchant class around the world occupies the middleman or middle-person role in many poor communities, and those merchants sometimes bear the brunt of poverty-rooted hostility if they are not part of the community they serve,” said Hicks, director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “There is no simple silver-bullet solution to this problem. People around the world are looking for answers.”

In polyglot Los Angeles--a center of racial and cultural diversity--there is periodic inter-ethnic conflict among a number of groups. But South Los Angeles stores owned by Korean-Americans have been a recurring flash point, and there have been fatalities among both the merchants and their African-American customers.

While the marketplace tragedies in Los Angeles involve members of two minority groups, in other parts of the world, ethnic majorities are pitted against merchants of another creed or national origin. And the entrepreneurial minorities usually bear the brunt of the violence.

In most of these situations, economic frustrations usher in displays of xenophobia and intolerance, said Christopher Husbands, a sociologist at the London School of Economics.

“If one group of people believes it’s at an institutional disadvantage on the economic front, there will be resentment toward ethnic groups that are in the commercial mainstream,” Husbands said. “Resentment and ethnic conflict tend to rise when there are widespread economic problems. And, considering the sluggishness of the world economy, I’m not sanguine about the near-term prospect of settling these problems.”

In Russia, economic displacement stemming from that nation’s painful shift from communism to private enterprise has generated tensions between ethnic Russians and merchants from neighboring regions such as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Easily identifiable by their dark complexion and black hair, which prompts many fair-skinned Slavs to contemptuously call them “blacks” and “beasts,” the vendors from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan can earn 10 times or more the average Russian salary by importing and selling fruits and vegetables.

The resentment escalated into ethnic violence in the Russian city of Bryansk last year as residents squared off against the produce sellers. Furious that foreigners--some of whom barely speak Russian--are flourishing on their home turf, residents in half a dozen Russian cities have recently mounted campaigns to kick them out of the markets.

Among those favoring the ouster of Azerbaijani merchants is Klavdia P. Remezova, an ethnic Russian who sells produce at a Moscow market. She claims that Azerbaijanis try to monopolize selling stalls in order to deny Russians a chance to compete.

“They say they are buying places for their ‘brothers’ from Azerbaijan who are yet to come,” Remezova said. “But do not hold your breath, these brothers will never turn up. It’s nothing but lies. The ‘black beasts’ have occupied all the places here. They are all one, and a very powerful mafia that have long ago bribed . . . all the (market) officials here.

“All is being done to ruin the economy and agriculture,” she continued. “If I could do something, I would kick all this scum out of Russia in 24 hours. There is no place for them here.”

In Egypt, shopping centers have witnessed confrontations between fundamentalist Muslims and Coptic Christians, a community that has been the frequent target of Islamic extremist violence during the past year and a half.

Islamic organizations such as the outlawed Gamaa al Islamiya (Islamic Group) have organized raids against Christian shops thought to be violating Islamic principles. Other Christian-owned businesses have been attacked by mobs after Islamic militants incited crowds with rumors about Coptic proprietors.

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, which has investigated many of these clashes, recently concluded, “This recurrent practice of discrimination and violence against citizens for no reason other than their adherence to a different faith is among the worst and most hateful of human rights violations.”

However, some observers of marketplace tension contend that the entrepreneurial status of minorities--not their religion or national origin--is most crucial in triggering ethnic hatreds or open hostility.

“While former slaves and conquered indigenes, for example, may be held in contempt and treated with cavalier disregard, those who have provoked the most bitterly intense animosities have often been middleman minorities,” wrote Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, in the American Enterprise magazine.

Sowell cites Jews and the 26 million overseas Chinese in Southeast Asian countries as the most common target of such animosity.

Indeed, some minorities have been forced to accept institutional discrimination because of their clout in local commerce. For example, after deadly clashes in 1969 between indigenous Malays and ethnic Chinese merchants, Malaysian authorities implemented a “New Economic Policy”--a directive that gives Malay business owners preferential treatment when they bid for public sector contracts. The policy is designed to give Malays a greater share of the nation’s business wealth.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed has also urged Chinese and Malay business owners to form more joint ventures to ease strife.

Other approaches designed to relax such tensions give ethnic majorities a different kind of preferential treatment. In Fiji, for example, a new constitution promulgated by an army-backed regime in July, 1990, guaranteed that the Parliament and government will be dominated by ethnic Fijians.

Some critics contend that the constitution is racist. However, Fiji’s president--Ratu Penaia Ganilau--has said that the constitution is a response to growing insecurity among native Fijians over an economy dominated by ethnic Indians. Ganilau has said that “the Fijian position should be strengthened in some areas to compensate for its weaknesses in others.”

While ethnic tensions tend to rise in poor economic environments, sociologists note that some of the conflict stems from cultural differences spawning estrangements that prompt minority merchants to be clannish, combative or misunderstood.

In Los Angeles, for example, many Korean immigrant-merchants place currency--the balance due from a sale--on the counter, and not in the hands of the customers. That practice is considered polite and respectful in Korea, but many native-born Americans such as blacks in Southland communities perceive the behavior as rude, said Marcia Choo, program director of the Los Angeles-based Asian Pacific America Dispute Resolution Center, a nonprofit provider of mediation services.

Choo, who was also a member of the Black-Korean Alliance, said marketplace conflicts found in different parts of the world will also continue in Los Angeles until underlying economic disparities are also addressed.

“The alliance wanted to make a difference, but we now realize that the problem is larger in scope than a lack of communication between Korean-American merchants and African-Americans in Los Angeles,” Choo said. “Poverty and unemployment contribute to these problems. This division in Los Angeles is especially sad because it involves two minority groups, and racism is a problem for both Korean-Americans and African-Americans.”

Choo, who keeps the unused code of conduct posters stored in a box in her office, said she will continue to try to improve race relations in South Los Angeles and other communities. But she and other members of the defunct alliance are calling for help. “I’m almost embarrassed that we planned the poster distribution,” Choo said. “Given the complexities, the magnitude and the history of this kind of problem--you can’t expect results just by asking people to get along. This society needs to develop strategies on many fronts. Grass-roots organizations, the private sector and government must work together if we are to solve these problems.”

Times correspondents Richard Boudreaux in Moscow, Kim Murphy in Cairo, Bob Drogin in Manila, Charles Wallace in Bangkok and Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.