Intrametropolitan locations of Korean businesses: The case of Chicago

Intrametropolitan locations of Korean businesses in the Chicago area are ex amined in terms of the ethnicity of their major customers: ethnic customers , inner-city minority customers, and White middle-class customers. The stud y reveals that Korean-owned stores providing important ethnic goods or serv ices are spatially concentrated in Koreatown along Lawrence and Lincoln Ave nues and in the northwestern suburbs. Korean businesses that serve inner-ci ty minority customers are located mainly in southside Chicago, providing im portant necessities such as clothing, shoes, beauty supplies, and general m erchandise. Uniquely, Korean entrepreneurs overwhelmingly dominate the dry cleaning business, which serves the White middle-class population and is th us scattered around the entire metropolitan area. Korean entrepreneurs' unu sual market diversity comes from their effective utilization of ethnic reso urces and their unique linkage with the export-oriented home-country econom y in the 1970s and 1980s. As a whole, their entrepreneurship has demonstrat ed the dynamic and complex nature of immigrant businesses in major American cities.