Participants who purchase tickets on ktownismytown.com are able to engage with facets of the neighborhood which would have otherwise been inaccessible to “outsiders”— visiting a Korean movie theater, conversing with shop owners whose primary language is not English, sampling non-Western food at a grocery store. This reversal of gaze, from my childhood as a Korean girl learning American customs to Americans in a “foreign” place (Koreatown), allows me to share my immigration/assimilation experience as well as blur the narrative of “the other.” While on the tour, participants are encouraged to post their observations on social medial with the hashtag #ktownismytown.

Official history, personal memory, and family lore intermingle without judgement as I, the tour guide (and therefore perceived expert), observe the ways my childhood neighborhood has changed over the years, how “outsiders” relate to it then and now, and the cast-off people and things visible on its streets as a result of gentrification and socioeconomic shifts.