Drive north out of Koreatown on the 5, watch the billboards switch from Hangul to Armenian, and somewhere around the Verdugo foothills you arrive at a quieter truth: there are Koreans in Glendale too, more than seven thousand of them, a community that settled in the shadow of the city’s famous Armenian one and built a life of churches, tofu houses and dual-language classrooms. They came for the schools, the foothill calm, and a fifteen-minute drive back to the old neighbourhood. They stayed for everything else.
The Place
Glendale sits about ten miles north of downtown Los Angeles, tucked against the Verdugo Mountains where the San Fernando Valley folds into the foothills. It was platted in 1887 and incorporated on 15 February 1906, an early rival to Pasadena that grew into the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County, home to roughly 188,000 people.
For most of the country, Glendale means one of two things: the Americana at Brand outdoor mall, or the largest Armenian community in the United States, a population so dominant that by the late 1990s a quarter of the city spoke Armenian at home. What gets missed in that story is the third community living quietly alongside it.
By the 2020 census Glendale counted about 7,079 Korean residents, just under 3.7 percent of the city. It is the third largest Korean population of any city in Los Angeles County, behind only Los Angeles itself and Torrance.
How It Became Korean
To understand the Koreans of Glendale you have to start ten miles south, in the grid of low-rise plazas around Olympic Boulevard that became Koreatown.
The 1965 door
Koreans had been arriving in Los Angeles since 1904, when the first settlers came as farm and railroad labourers. But the community stayed small for sixty years, held down by immigration quotas that all but barred Asian arrivals.
That changed with the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965, which abolished the national-origins quota system. The effect was immediate and enormous. Between 1968 and 1970 alone the Korean population of the United States doubled from 25,000 to 50,000. The new arrivals concentrated around Olympic Boulevard, and through the 1970s and 1980s they turned it into a full-fledged Koreatown of markets, churches, restaurants and signage.
Out of the centre
Koreatown was a port of entry, not a final address. As the first generation built businesses and the second generation came of age, families began looking north for bigger houses, safer streets and, above all, better schools. Glendale, close enough for a Sunday drive back to a Koreatown market yet a world apart in calm, was an obvious target.
The 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest accelerated everything. Korean-owned businesses absorbed a disproportionate share of the damage in and around Koreatown, and in the aftermath many Korean families who could afford to leave did, scattering into the suburbs of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys. Some went east to Cerritos and Diamond Bar. Some went west to Torrance. And some went north, up the 2 and the 5 into Glendale and its foothill neighbours.
The foothill cluster
What formed in Glendale was less a Koreatown than a comfortable diffusion. Korean families settled across the city and its northern edges, and the community thickened in the foothills above it, in the Korean enclave of La Crescenta and the Korean families of La Canada Flintridge just to the north, where the schools were the explicit draw.
Glendale became the commercial and institutional hinge of that foothill cluster: close enough to the residential streets of La Crescenta and Montrose to serve them, large enough to support its own Korean churches and restaurants, and tied by freeway to the larger world of Koreatown below. The same logic drew Korean families across the valley to Northridge and Porter Ranch on the western side.
The Korean presence here has always shared the city with two other immigrant stories. Glendale is home to the country’s largest Armenian community, and a substantial Persian one, the same Iranian families documented in the Persian community of Glendale. Korean Glendale grew up between them, distinct and self-contained, organised less around a single street than around its institutions.
The Landmarks
Peace Monument, Central Park, near 222 East Harvard Street. Unveiled on 30 July 2013 beside the Glendale Public Library, this bronze statue of a seated girl beside an empty chair memorialises the so-called comfort women of the Second World War. Funded by the Korean American Forum of California, it made Glendale the first city on the West Coast to install such a memorial, surviving years of legal challenge all the way to a dismissal at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Peace Monument of Glendale remains in the park today.
Cho Dang Tofu and BBQ, 2043 Verdugo Boulevard. Up where Glendale meets Montrose, this soft-tofu house is the kind of neighbourhood Korean restaurant a foothill community runs on: bubbling stone bowls of soondubu, banchan, grilled meats. Its location on Verdugo Boulevard, rather than downtown, traces the residential spread of Korean families into the northern foothills.
Gen Korean BBQ House, 126 North Artsakh Avenue. Sitting on the street still known to many as Maryland Avenue, in the heart of downtown Glendale, Gen brings all-you-can-eat tableside grilling to the city centre. That a Korean barbecue chain anchors a prime downtown address says something about how mainstream Korean food has become in a city better known for its Armenian kitchens.
Beulah Kitchen, 1229 East Colorado Street. A small, well-loved Korean restaurant on the eastern side of town, the sort of place that fills with regulars at lunch. It is part of the everyday infrastructure of Korean Glendale: not a destination so much as a constant.
Grace Church of Glendale, on East Broadway. A Korean Presbyterian congregation in the Reformed tradition, Grace is one of several Korean churches that serve as the community’s true centre of gravity. For Korean immigrants in Los Angeles, the Protestant church has long been the primary social institution, a place for worship but also for employment leads, housing help and English classes.
Mark Keppel and Monte Vista Elementary Schools. These two Glendale Unified campuses host the district’s Korean Dual Language Immersion programme, where children learn half their day in Korean and half in English. The programme continues into middle school as an elective at Rosemont and Toll. In a district that also teaches in Armenian and Spanish, the existence of a Korean track is the clearest institutional proof that the community is here to stay.
The Korean markets of Glendale. For years the community shopped at the city’s Korean and Asian groceries, including the long-running HK Market on North Pacific Avenue with its banchan bar, where you bought side dishes by weight. Several have come and gone as the bigger chains in Koreatown and the foothills draw shoppers, but the pattern of a neighbourhood market stocked with Korean staples has been a fixture of Korean Glendale for decades.
Where They Came From
The Koreans of Glendale are, overwhelmingly, a post-1965 South Korean migration, the same wave that built Koreatown. The first generation came from the cities of South Korea, Seoul above all, in the decades after the Korean War, drawn by family reunification and the professional and entrepreneurial openings the 1965 law created.
Few of them came straight to Glendale. The typical path ran through Koreatown first, where new arrivals found their footing in Korean-speaking churches and Korean-owned businesses before moving outward. Glendale’s Korean families are, in that sense, a second-stage settlement: people who had already made it in Los Angeles and chose the foothills for the next chapter.
What pulled them specifically to Glendale was less heritage than aspiration. The schools, the safety, the proximity to Koreatown without its congestion, the foothill quiet shared with La Crescenta and La Canada. These were professional and small-business families trading the density of the centre for room to raise children.
Glendale Today
Korean Glendale today is woven into the fabric of a city defined by its diversity rather than dominating any one corner of it. There is no Korean main street here the way there is on Olympic Boulevard. Instead there are churches, restaurants, the immersion classrooms, and several thousand families spread across neighbourhoods from the downtown core to the foothill edges.
Some of the old anchors have closed. HK Market shut its doors, and the Bibigo in the Glendale Galleria is gone, casualties of the same churn that hits any immigrant retail scene as larger chains in Koreatown and the foothills consolidate the trade. But the institutions that matter most have proved durable: the churches keep their congregations, the immersion programme keeps enrolling, and Verdugo Boulevard still has its tofu house.
The Peace Monument may be the truest symbol of the community’s place here. It is not a restaurant or a market that comes and goes with the economy, but a permanent civic statement, planted in the city’s central park and defended in federal court. For a community often overshadowed by its Armenian and Persian neighbours, it is a quiet insistence: we are part of this city’s story, and we intend to stay in it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Koreans live in Glendale, California?
The 2020 census counted roughly 7,079 Korean residents in Glendale, just under 3.7 percent of the city’s population. That makes Glendale the third largest Korean community of any city in Los Angeles County, behind Los Angeles and Torrance.
Why did Koreans settle in Glendale rather than Koreatown?
Most Koreans in Glendale came north from Koreatown looking for better schools, larger homes and quieter streets, while staying within a short freeway drive of the markets and churches there. The 1992 Los Angeles unrest accelerated this suburban move for many Korean families.
Are there Korean churches and restaurants in Glendale?
Yes. Korean Presbyterian and other Korean congregations such as Grace Church of Glendale anchor the community, and restaurants like Cho Dang Tofu and BBQ on Verdugo Boulevard, Gen Korean BBQ House downtown, and Beulah Kitchen serve it. Korean grocery markets have operated in the city for decades.
What is the Peace Monument in Glendale?
The Peace Monument is a bronze statue in Central Park, unveiled in 2013 to memorialise the comfort women of the Second World War. Funded by the Korean American Forum of California, it made Glendale the first West Coast city to install such a memorial.
Does Glendale offer Korean language education in its schools?
Yes. The Glendale Unified School District runs a Korean Dual Language Immersion programme at Mark Keppel and Monte Vista Elementary Schools, continuing as an elective at Rosemont and Toll Middle Schools, where students learn part of their day in Korean.
How do the Koreans in Glendale relate to the city’s Armenian and Persian communities?
The Korean community in Glendale lives alongside the largest Armenian community in the United States and a substantial Persian one, but remains distinct, organised around its own churches, restaurants and schools rather than a shared neighbourhood.
If your family’s story passed through Glendale, or any of the places Koreans have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the cities of post-war South Korea, through the markets of Koreatown, up into the Verdugo foothills, to wherever you are now.