Attending the “Kim’s Convenience” launch event and a week later, attending opening night, I heard some comments that seemed both ill-informed and awkward. If you haven’t seen the CBC/Netflix TV series, “Kim’s Convenience,” the play came first and is about a Moss Park convenience store run by a family of four.
The play premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2011, winning the Patron’s Pick award. The next year, the play was at the Soulpepper Theatre, directed by Weyni Mengesha, and won two Toronto Theatre Critics awards (Best Actor for Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Best Canadian Play). Now a production featuring the playwright, Ins Choi, has come to Los Angeles and is currently playing at the Ahmanson.
Choi plays Appa, the father, who is facing a decision: Should he sell his store and retire? His English isn’t good, but he’s proudly Korean and idiosyncratically anti-Japanese. His daughter Janet (Kelly Sea) has not reached “desperation time,” unmarried and still living with her parents above the store. He depends upon her when he needs to call the police about illegally parked Japanese cars. On this occasion, the call summons an old friend of the family (Brandon McKnight), who had been a friend of Appa’s son, Jung (Ryan Jinn). Years ago, Jung ran away after a physical altercation with his father. While Appa doesn’t have any contact information, his wife, Umma (Esther Chung), has been keeping in touch, meeting her son at church.
In this 90-minute intermission-less stage production, racism and even a bright moment in the Los Angeles Riots are touched upon, but this play is mainly about faith and familial reconciliation in a Korean Canadian family. The anti-Japanese sentiment and possible racist assumptions of Appa are minimized by the “cancel out combo” of witty dialogue that. skewers Appa’s questionable logic. Director Weyni Mengesha has a history with this play and deftly times the flow for optimal laughs and easy transitions between emotional shifts. This ensemble work well together and while having McKnight play all the Black roles means they literally all look alike, McKnight insures that they are distinctive personas.
To truly enjoy this play, however, Los Angelenos must be cognizant of some things.
With the accolades Netflix’s “Kpop Demon Hunters” accrued during the recently ended award season, it’s hard to deny the influence of Korean culture on the US and particularly, influential presence of the Korean community in Los Angeles. There was a time when I ignited an ugly conversations in the Korean American community. Fellow journalists were being threatened and while some Jewish people covertly agreed, and I had been in contact with a Korean American journalist to help do some healing articles, that was all overshadowed by the LA Riots of 1992.
The riots began at Parker Center on 29 April 1992, just down the street from where I was working. But I went home early that evening, before an unruly crowd swept down the street into Little Tokyo. From what I remember at the time, I felt the tensions between Black people and Korean Americans wasn’t just the fault of Korean Americans. I cringed when I heard a journalist referring to Korean Americans as “Orientals” because this was long after UCLA had changed the Department of Oriental Languages (founded in 1947) to East Asian Languages and Cultures (1984). Places like Oxford University would take longer, changing its Faculty of Oriental Studies to the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in 2022.
The US is not the UK and in Los Angeles in the 1990s, the term was considered offensive. While Los Angeles isn’t Oxford, it also isn’t Toronto, Canada. Los Angeles is a 36-hour drive from Toronto, where “Kim’s Convenience” takes place. Moss Park, the neighborhood where the play is set, is about 35% immigrant (compared to Toronto’s 51%). Of that, 42% are considered a “visible minority” population (South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean and Japanese). The neighborhood is 88% Canadian citizens. There was on 4 May 1992 the Yonge Street riot. While the protest was partially related to the acquittal of the officers accused in the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, a young Black man, Raymond Lawrence, was killed by two Peel Regional Police officers on 2 May 1992.
Yonge Street to the west of the Moss Park neighborhood.
The play does mention the LA Riots with a positive (and personally connected incident), but Toronto and Los Angeles are different places. I could not find an incident in Canada similar to the case of Latasha Harlins (1 January 1976 – 16 March 1991). It seems unfair to ask panelists from Canada about the shooting of a 15-year-old Westchester High School student by the Korean American convenience store owner Soon Ja Du during the launch event. Moss Park isn’t South Central. The shooting of Harlins took place in the Vista Park area of South Central which is 69% Latino and 27% Black/African American and 1% Asian according to Niche.com. The race dynamics of Moss Park are different and the Yonge Street Riot doesn’t seem to have inspired the presence of rooftop Koreans.
Canada is different from the US and “Kim’s Convenience” is about the Korean Canadians.
Of this production’s cast, only Ryan Jinn was born in the US. He was born in Los Angeles, but, according to the program, raised in Vancouver, BC. Ins Choic was born in Korea and grew up in Toronto where he currently lives. Esther Chung was born in South Korea and raised in Ontario, Canada. Kelly Seo was born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in North York, ON (Canada). Brandon McKnight was born and raised in Toronto, ON (Canada). None of these people have a strong connection to Los Angeles and should not be expected to understand or know about the LA Riots of 1992.
As I was leaving the theater on opening night, I heard a couple commenting about the anti-Japanese sentiment among the Koreans. They thought it was because of the Korean Comfort women. However, the play makes it clear that there’s a history. The scripted Korean history lessons go by quickly, but includes the invasion and annexation of Korea by Japan. Moreover, in 2011, the topic of Korean Comfort Women was limited to Japan as the villain. In 2016, the Comfort Woman Statue was unveiled in front of the Korean Canadian Cultural Association Centre in Toronto.
Los Angeles also has a statue, the Peace Monument of Glendale, in the Central Park of Glendale, California, near the Glendale Public Library, funded by the Korean American Forum of California and unveiled in 2013. There was a legal protest against it.
However, in 2026, the Comfort Women issue has taken a decidedly American point of view. As the New York Times reported in September: “Dozens of women who worked in the sex trade in South Korea are seeking an apology and compensation for the rights abuses they suffered while catering to US. GIs.” There should be other women from other countries taking European countries to court.
- In a First, Korean Women Target US Military in Suit Over Prostitution (8 September 2025)
- South Korean Women File Landmark Forced Prostitution Lawsuit Against US Military (9 September 2025)
- South Korea’s “Comfort Women” Take on the US Military (15 February 2026)
Things have changed since 2011, when the play first premiered and since the TV series’ run. The CBC Television series based on the play ran from 2016 to 2021, with five seasons, introducing Simu Liu to US audiences when the show became available on Netflix. The series became available outside of Canada in 2018 on Netflix. In the TV series Janet (Andrea Bang) is 20 and Jung 24 at the start.
The play is worth seeing to appreciate the struggles of immigrants and parents and seeing the transition of Choi from his original role as Jung to Appa.
This current Soulpepper Theatre Company and Adam Blanshay Productions production in association with American Conservatory Theater has already been to San Francisco (American Conservatory Theatre, September – October 2025), Boston (Huntington Theatre, November 2025), Princeton (McCarter Theatre Center (January – February 2026) and West Palm Beach (Kavis Center).
“Kim’s Convenience” continues until 19 April 2026 at the Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center in Downtown Los Angeles. For tickets or more information, visit visit CenterTheatreGroup.org. If you’re not in the OC/LA area, the touring show goes to San Diego (15 May – 14 June) at the Old Globe Theatre. It will be a San Diego premiere.
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