Drive south on Beach Boulevard, past the roller coasters of Knott’s Berry Farm, and somewhere around Malvern Avenue the signage begins to change. English gives way to Hangul on the storefronts. The Koreans in Buena Park have built, over two quiet decades, the newest official Koreatown in Orange County, a corridor of grocery halls, late-night tofu houses and a Korean-flavoured mall that draws teenagers from across the Southland.
The Place
Buena Park sits in the far north of Orange County, hard against the Los Angeles County line, a city of roughly 82,000 people best known for a century as the home of Knott’s Berry Farm. For most of its history it was a tidy, suburban entertainment town, neither rich nor poor, defined by its theme parks and its position on the freeway grid.
What sets it apart now is geography. Buena Park sits where the 5 and the 91 nearly meet, the connecting point between Orange County and Los Angeles. That position, midway between two of the largest Korean populations in America, is the reason a Koreatown grew here rather than anywhere else.
How It Became Korean
The Korean presence in north Orange County did not begin in Buena Park. It began a few miles south and west, in the older, denser Korean settlements that anchored the county long before Beach Boulevard sprouted its first Korean signage.
The pull south from Los Angeles
Los Angeles built the first great Korean enclave in the United States. By the 1980s the Korean community of Koreatown in Los Angeles was the cultural and commercial capital of Korean America, a square mile of churches, restaurants and small businesses packed around Olympic Boulevard. But Koreatown was a place to arrive, not always a place to stay.
As families prospered they did what immigrant families have always done in California: they looked for space, better schools and quieter streets. Many moved south into Orange County, where Garden Grove and Fullerton had already begun gathering Korean grocers and churches in the 1980s and 1990s.
Garden Grove formalised its own Koreatown along Garden Grove Boulevard, and Orange County steadily became home to the second-largest Korean American population in the nation, trailing only Los Angeles. Affluent families pushed further south too, building the wealthy Korean community in Irvine with its master-planned schools. Buena Park, sitting at the county’s northern gateway, caught the overflow from both directions.
A grocer changes a boulevard
Beach Boulevard, State Route 39, runs straight through Buena Park and was for decades a workaday strip of motels, car lots and family diners. The change came not from a master plan but from grocers. Korean supermarkets, hungry for cheaper land than they could find in Los Angeles, began anchoring strip plazas along the boulevard.
Zion Market opened at 5400 Beach Boulevard, and the Hannam Chain supermarket settled near the intersection of Beach Boulevard and Malvern Avenue. An H Mart followed close enough that shoppers price-match between the two across the same stretch of road. Where Korean groceries go, bakeries, pharmacies, hair salons and tofu restaurants follow, because they share the same customers on the same errands.
The Source arrives
The transformation accelerated in 2016, when a $325 million open-air development called The Source OC opened at 6940 Beach Boulevard. Built by M+D Properties on what had been an empty field, it was conceived as a Korean-flavoured lifestyle centre, and it filled with Korean and Korean-American tenants. The development’s history is documented on Wikipedia.
In 2017 the South Korean cinema chain CGV opened its second American multiplex there. K-pop merchandise shops, dance studios, a four-cut photo booth, Korean donut and hot dog franchises and bubble tea counters followed, turning the mall into a magnet for young people of every background drawn by the Korean wave.
By the early 2020s the city counted more than 1,000 Korean businesses, most of the growth packed into the previous ten years. The pandemic, which sent K-dramas and K-pop surging across American screens, only sharpened the appetite for the real thing, and Buena Park had it for sale on Beach Boulevard.
Official recognition
The community had existed for more than twenty years before the city put its name on it. On 26 September 2023 the Buena Park City Council voted unanimously to designate Beach Boulevard, from Rosecrans Avenue to Orangethorpe Avenue, as Koreatown, complete with street signage.
The designation was championed by Councilwoman Joyce Ahn, who had lived in the city for more than seventeen years, building on an earlier request from Councilman Connor Traut. It made Buena Park one of Orange County’s official Korean cultural enclaves, following Garden Grove’s 2019 designation and joining the county’s older ethnic districts such as the Vietnamese community of Little Saigon in Westminster. The boundaries were reported by Voice of OC when the council made its decision.
The Landmarks
The Source OC, 6940 Beach Boulevard. The 12.5-acre open-air mall is the gravitational centre of Korean Buena Park. With CGV Cinemas, K-pop merchandise stores, a dance studio, Yozm Donuts and Myungrang hot dogs, it draws crowds that are now mostly not Korean, a sign of how far the culture has travelled beyond the community that planted it.
Zion Market, 5400 Beach Boulevard. One of a small Southern California chain of Korean supermarkets, Zion is a full-sensory introduction to the cuisine: tanks of live fish, banchan counters, a food court of homemade noodles and stews. It was among the grocers whose arrival pulled the rest of the Korean economy onto the boulevard.
Hannam Chain, Beach Boulevard at Malvern Avenue. The Super 1 Mart Hannam Chain anchors another of the boulevard’s Korean plazas, a reliable stop for produce, marinated meats and the everyday staples of a Korean kitchen. Its presence near a major intersection helped fix the centre of gravity for the surrounding shops.
Ocean Plaza, 5450 Beach Boulevard. One of the multi-tenant buildings that knit the corridor together, housing Korean professional offices, eateries and services. These plazas, more than any single landmark, are what give the boulevard its density.
E-PLEX Education Complex, The Source OC. A Korean-American education centre offering preschool, afterschool and tutoring programmes, run with the seriousness that Korean families bring to schooling. Its director, Sunny Lee, has helped make the mall a place families use on weekdays, not just teenagers on weekends.
WOW Pharmacy. Run by pharmacist Jay Chang, this is the kind of bilingual neighbourhood institution that lets older Korean immigrants navigate American healthcare in their own language. It sits among the cluster of Korean medical and professional offices that fill the upper floors of the boulevard’s plazas.
Calvary Korean Presbyterian Church. Founded in 1985, it is one of several Korean Presbyterian congregations rooted in Buena Park, including the Korean Central Presbyterian Church of Orange County, founded in 1992. The church, here as in every Korean American community, has been the social as well as spiritual backbone of immigrant life.
Where They Came From
The Koreans of Buena Park are, overwhelmingly, a second-stage migration. Most did not arrive in Buena Park directly from Seoul or Busan. They arrived from Los Angeles and from the older Korean settlements of Garden Grove and Fullerton, moving the way prospering immigrant families move, toward space and schools.
Their roots trace to the great wave of Korean immigration that followed the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which opened American doors to Asia after four decades of near-total exclusion. South Koreans came in large numbers through the 1970s and 1980s, drawn by education, business opportunity and, for many, the dense church networks already taking shape in California, from the Korean enclave of La Crescenta in the foothills to the boulevards of the south county.
What pulled them specifically to Buena Park was practical: land cheaper than Los Angeles, a freeway position between two Korean population centres, and the simple fact that a grocer and then a mall had made it a place where Korean life could be lived in full.
Buena Park Today
Roughly 11,000 Korean Americans now live in Buena Park, about 13 percent of the city, part of an Asian population that makes up nearly a third of residents in a city that is also heavily Latino. It is not a Korean town in the way that parts of Los Angeles can feel; it is a diverse working suburb with a Korean spine running down its main boulevard.
That spine is busy. On weekends the parking structure at The Source fills with teenagers chasing K-pop, photo booths and Korean fried chicken, four in five of them, by some local estimates, not Korean at all. The community that built the corridor now finds itself hosting Orange County, which is rather the point.
Not everything has gone smoothly. The Source’s on-site hotel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021 and the development has had its financial troubles. But the everyday Korean economy, the markets, the churches, the tofu houses and pharmacies, has proved sturdier than any single project, and Buena Park’s Koreatown looks set to keep growing along the boulevard that named it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the Korean community in Buena Park?
The Koreans in Buena Park are concentrated along Beach Boulevard, State Route 39, particularly the stretch between Rosecrans Avenue and Orangethorpe Avenue that the city officially designated as Koreatown in September 2023. The Source OC mall at 6940 Beach Boulevard is its commercial heart.
How many Korean Americans live in Buena Park?
Roughly 11,000 Korean Americans live in Buena Park, about 13 percent of the city’s population of around 82,000. Orange County as a whole has the second-largest Korean American population in the United States after Los Angeles.
When did Buena Park get its official Koreatown?
The Buena Park City Council voted unanimously on 26 September 2023 to designate Beach Boulevard between Rosecrans and Orangethorpe avenues as Koreatown, with street signage. The Korean business community had existed there for more than twenty years before the formal recognition.
What is The Source OC?
The Source OC is a 12.5-acre open-air shopping and lifestyle centre that opened at 6940 Beach Boulevard in 2016. Filled with Korean-owned businesses, a CGV cinema, K-pop shops and Korean food, it has become a culture-defining hub for the Koreans in Buena Park and a draw for young people across the Southland.
Why did Koreans settle in Buena Park?
Most Korean families came to Buena Park as a second move, relocating from Los Angeles or from the older Korean settlements of Garden Grove and Fullerton in search of more affordable land and good schools. The city’s position where the 5 and 91 freeways meet, midway between two major Korean populations, made it a natural gathering point.
What Korean grocery stores are in Buena Park?
Beach Boulevard hosts several Korean supermarkets, including Zion Market at 5400 Beach Boulevard, the Hannam Chain near Malvern Avenue, and an H Mart close enough that shoppers price-match between them. These grocers were among the first businesses to draw the rest of the Korean economy onto the boulevard.
If your family’s story passed through Buena Park, or any of the places Koreans have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the post-1965 wave out of South Korea, to a grocery hall on Beach Boulevard, to wherever you are now.