Seoul music: two stations dominate airwaves for L.A.'s Korean community.

FORGET Marvin Gaye and the Temptations, two Los Angeles radio stations are carving out their niche on the dial with a different sort of Seoul sound.

The world's largest concentration of Koreans outside of South Korea--an estimated 700,000 in greater Los Angeles--is the target audience of Radio Korea KYPA-AM (1230) and Radio Seoul KFOX-AM (1650).

The stations provide an important cultural and informational touchstone for the region's Korean community.

"The Korean population here is, by and large, what we call a hermit population--they generally prefer to live and do business within Koreatown, and even some people who have been in the country for 20 years speak only Korean," said David Choi, legal affairs manager for Radio Korea. "Even with tighter immigration laws now, everyone wants to come here, so the population is growing."

Both feature essentially the same format--Korean news reports, interspersed with a variety of music, infomercials and talk shows--but they are taking divergent strategic tacks. Radio Korea aspires to be a national radio powerhouse, while Radio Seoul is a tile in the mosaic of holdings of its parent, HK Media Inc., whose flagship is the L.A. newspaper Korea Times.

Radio Korea

Established in 1989, Radio Korea was the first station to target the L.A.-area Korean population, and the station is now trying to establish itself as local and national voice of the Korean community.

The station, which leases its signal from privately held radio group MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting Inc., partnered with Sirius satellite radio to launch Radio Korea USA--the only Korean satellite radio channel--on Aug. 15, to coincide with the anniversary of Korean independence.

MultiCultural, the nation's 18th-largest radio broadcaster, transmits in Spanish, Chinese, Korean and 19 other languages and has an exclusive, multi-year deal to create and launch the first Asian-language satellite channels on Sirius.

The deal took about two years to complete.

"We had to do quite a bit of acrobatics to get that going," Choi said. "Some of the people we dealt with when approaching satellite providers were very high-nosed about it, because they viewed the entire United States as their target audience, not smaller segments. I often found myself saying there are 2.5 million Korean Americans in the U.S.--this is not an insignificant number of people."

Going national, Choi said, is key to cementing Radio Korea as the premiere Korean radio outlet.

Choi said that more than two-thirds of his station's advertisers were Korean businesses, including large corporations such as Samsung, Kia, Korean Air and Asiana. More recently, major U.S. advertisers including McDonalds, Bank of America and auto giants General Motors and Toyota have come aboard.

"The strong Korean firms and the local morn-and-pop businesses are our backbone, but I think other people are really starting to pay attention," Choi said.

Despite the current momentum, it hasn't been all smooth for the station. In 2004, Radio Korea abruptly dropped off the air for two weeks when the previous station operators allowed the signal lease agreement to expire.

"It was actually quite embarrassing for the station because nobody knew what happened," Choi said. "One of the only voices for Koreans in the area was just gone."

That's when current management came in, and took over the station.

"We started making phone calls and found there was no contract for the station signal," Choi said. "We were able to gather up most of the employees and get going again after a few weeks."

Radio Seoul

Radio Seoul, Radio Korea's local competitor, has been broadcasting on its current radio channel since 1998.

The station originated in the early 1990s as Radio Hankook at 1300 on the AM dial. In 1993, private partnership Chagal Communications took over the station, changed the name to Radio Seoul and started broadcasting on 93.5 FM. In 1998, Chagal sold 93.5 FM and moved Radio Seoul to 1650 AM, where it remains today.

The Chang family owns the Korea Times, local Korean television station KTAN, as well as other radio stations in Maryland and Hawaii.

The Chang family owned only 30 percent of the Chagal partnership. Just last month, Jae Min Chang, the current president, along with his son, Nicholas, and his nephew, Grant Chang, paid $22.6 million to buy out the remaining interest.

The family renamed the radio ownership group HK Media. Radio Seoul now is a wholly owned subsidiary of the newspaper.

"Once the Korea Times acquired a station, we had means to enter the radio broadcast market," said Chief Financial Officer Gary Kim, adding that the Chang family continues to amass properties for a large and diversified Asian media company.

The Korea Times is the Chang family's flagship property.

"That's our bread and butter, the big business, since it's been around for 37 years," said Grant Chang, general manager of Radio Seoul. "We use that strength to push our other media holdings."

The Radio Seoul news team works within the Korea Times newsroom, but functions independently, said Radio Seoul reporter Seung Chung Lin.

Chang said that over the last several years, HK's radio holdings have seen an increase in revenue, contrary to the overall media sector downturn.

The vast majority of the station's advertising comes from retailers, many of them small local businesses; the rest from Korean banks including Hanmi Bank and Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia.

"We are focused on a variety of media holdings so we have the marketing tools to do cross-platform things," said Grant Chang. "We want to offer our advertisers a one-stop shop, where they can access TV, radio and newspaper mediums with one contact."

To build local strength for Radio Seoul and the other local media properties, the Chang family sponsors community events including concerts by Korean artists at the Hollywood Bowl, as well as the Bowl's Korean Music Festival, now in its fourth year.

The station hopes to capitalize on some Korean sports stars, in particular L.A. Dodgers first baseman Hee-Seop Choi and San Diego Padres pitcher Chan Ho Park (a former Dodger).

Radio Seoul is in talks with the Dodgers about broadcasting as many as 60 games in Korean, similar to the approximately 10 Padres games the station broadcast last season.

"The Dodgers have two Koreans on the team this year, which can really pull a lot of interest from the community, and there are eight Korean players in the National League West this year, so that creates a lot of opportunity for us," Chang said.