30 years ago, the city of Los Angeles was on fire.

Thousands of people flooded the streets, their anger and anguish over the acquittal of four

APD officers in the beating of Rodney King, unfurling in smashed windows and burning buildings.

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the 1992 LA riots, also known as the LA Uprising.

When years of unchecked police brutality and racial tensions came to a head.

For six days, LA burned and America watched and wondered how and why.

But the kindling had long been there.

Some of the most bitter battles in America these days are between minorities, between blacks and Korean specifically.

In the decade before the uprising, the Asian population in Los Angeles County had nearly doubled.

And a mostly Korean immigrant business community began pushing into poor, predominantly black neighborhoods in South Los Angeles.

Where years of disinvestment and city neglect left real estate prices low and community needs?

Hi. This dynamic of Korean immigrant entrepreneurs taking advantage of LA's baked-in disparities and a native black population without an economic foothold of their own created a strange dynamic between Korean shop owners and the black community.

But then a year before the uprising, a Korean shopkeeper named Sun Ja-Doo shot a 15-year-old black girl, Latasha Harlands, in the back of the head, over a bottle of orange juice.

She had accused Harlands of stealing the juice worth $1.79.

Already there was anger boiling here where many of the stores patronized by blacks are owned by Koreans and the resulting cultural and racial tensions have started something deadly more than once.

But this was the flashpoint.

The Harlands case also coincided with the King beating, one of the country's most famous incidents of police brutality.

On March 3, 1991, Rodney King was savagely beaten by four LAPD officers after a high-speed car chase.

A black man whose car had been stopped by Los Angeles police officers was in the street.

An apartment dweller across the street took the videotape after hearing the fricus going on.

The amateur cameraman said it appeared to him the suspect was attempting to cooperate when the beating with nightsticks began.

Police say the man 25-year-old Rodney King was involved in a high-speed chase and wanted as a parole violator.

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