Fast-forwarding of Korean TV programs pushes stores' buttons.

The 100 Korean-American protesters picketing outside 5757 Wilshire Blvd. Jan. 22 were carrying signs indicating that a "video riot" had hit their community. They were evoking memories of the Korean community's victimization in last April's riots, but this time the damage was not being inflicted by other minority groups but by Korean media barons.

Korean video store owners say they are being squeezed out of business by a local media baron, Jae Ming Chang, owner of The Korea Times newspaper, and Korea's powerful independently owned network, Munhwa Broadcasting Company. Chang has cut a deal with MBC to show its television programs on his new KTAN Channel 62. This eliminates video retailers' chance to rent cassettes of these shows two to six weeks before they appear on local TV as in the past.

Video retailers estimate without their exclusive "window," business will drop at least 50 percent and drive many stores out of business. They estimate annual video rental business in all 60 Southern California stores at $12 million. Since Channel 62 hit the airwaves Jan. 15, video rentals have dropped 15 percent, according to retailers, because Korean-Americans are watching the same shows for free on Channel 62.

MBC is headquartered at 5757 Wilshire and the protesters were irate over the sudden change in the Korean television/video relationships. In the past, KTE Channel 18, the first Korean language station here, has shown Korean made shows at least two weeks after the video retailers began renting cassettes of the shows, according to video retailers. However, Channel 62 is aggressively broadcasting MBC's shows simultaneously with their delivery to the retailers.

As Korean emigres streamed into Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s, video store businesses burgeoned. Asian media executives estimate 500,000 Korean-born people live in L.A. county.

There are now 22 Korean language video stores operating in Koreatown, and each store averages $200,000 in revenues annually, according to Sunny Yi, owner of a Koreatown video shop and a spokesman for the protesters. Television programs, not movies, dominates sales as Korean movies only account for 1 percent of rental income, Yi said.

Each video store pays a distributor, HanJin Production Co., $1,750 monthly to get the cassettes of MBC's soap opera episodes, talk shows and sporting events. HanJin has a contract with MBC, but on Jan. 15, without prior notification, MBC's programming began airing on Channel 62 the same day the videos appeared in the rental stores at $1.50 a cassette.

The store owners said MBC violated HanJin's contract. However, HanJin executives declined to attack MBC, saying they are working through the Korean embassy to try and salvage their contract.

There are only two sources for Korean programming. MBC is privately owned and more popular here than the Korean Broadcast System owned by the government in Seoul. Channel 18 airs the government's shows and respects store owners' window.

However, Korean-Americans want to escape the influence of the Seoul government and MBC shows comprise now 50 percent of the stores' sales, retailers say.

MBC's rise created a niche in Los Angeles' fledgling Korean television market and Chang, who has published the Times since 1969 and also broadcasts over radio station KAZN (1300) AM, seized it. After a year of negotiating with MBC, Chang contracted late in 1992 to broadcast its shows here on Channel 62.

The video store owners reacted by picketing MBC America's headquarters, saying HanJin's contract and their "implied contract" was violated. The protesters were invited in to meet with Sooyol Yoo, MBC America president. According to Yi, the protesters were told nothing could be resolved until a decision comes from MBC's Seoul headquarters.

Yoo told the Business Journal, "I have a difficult mission here. We want to build broadcast but we don't want to kill the video business. We are negotiating with KTAN to establish a two-week minimum release window. KTE has established this and from this we hope to make another rule."

Richard Kiam, vice president of KTAN and a spokesman for Chang, is less sympathetic to the video store owners. He said his company has invested nearly $1 million to get the MBC contract and to get on the air.

"This demonstration is outrageous," Kiam said. "This is the United States and there is business competition. We are in the business of broadcasting and we are doing the Korean community a service."

Kiam said he doesn't feel he is competing with the video stores and doesn't plan to delay his broadcasts to accommodate the video retailers. He predicted his viewership would double to 200,000 shortly.

Meanwhile, the video store owners are not planning to go away peacefully. Yi said, "We will protest weekly or daily in front of the Korean consulate if necessary. As immigrants, we worked hard here building our businesses and have come far but we still feel that Korean politics are haunting us.

"Part of our protest is the lack of diversity of opinion here," Yi added. "You have The Korea Times which owns a radio station and now a television station. Our story is not being told in the community and it is frustrating."

Times Editor Tom Byun said the retailers' protest has been discussed at editorial meetings but no decision has been made on publishing a story about the controversy.