A free digital archive of oral histories from Koreatown went live Sept. 13, with firsthand accounts recorded in English, Korean, Spanish and Bangla.

The K-Town Archive is the first community-specific sister site of UCLA's Archive of Healing, a collection of knowledge about healing practices from cultures around the world. The two databases are connected, so material from Koreatown can also surface through searches of the larger UCLA collection.

The project grew out of the Koreatown Youth and Community Center's (KYCC) Koreatown Storytelling Program, which started in 2020 with a plan to have young people interview elders. Then COVID-19 arrived. Participants shifted to delivering masks and disinfectant to older residents. They also began recording what people were going through.

Katherine Yungmee Kim, director of the Koreatown Storytelling Program, said people assume the archive is only for Korean Americans. "But we are multiethnic. We want to represent the entire community that lives here," she told LAist.

Over the years, teen interviewers expanded their focus to the garment industry, LGBTQIA life and food culture. A current offshoot involves interviewing people who live or work along Third Street in Little Bangladesh.

The path to a permanent digital home started in 2024. A high school participant researching Zapotec plant medicine came across UCLA's Archive of Healing. Kim then asked David Shorter, a UCLA professor of World Arts and Cultures who has overseen the Archive of Healing since 2012, to advise the project.

The first batch of interviews online focuses on COVID-19. More will be added in stages, along with photographs and other archival materials.

One early contributor is Lauren Kim, who works alongside her father, Hanjik Kim, at his traditional medicine clinic, Hajo Holistic, on the border of Koreatown and MacArthur Park. Hanjik Kim was filmed speaking in Korean about how he came to traditional medicine. Lauren Kim then sat for her own oral history, and the process sent the family digging through old photographs, including images of her as a child posing in front of her father's wooden apothecary cabinets. She told LAist the experience of having her father's story preserved felt precious.

The archive is free and open to anyone at ktownarchive.com.

What's ahead: KYCC's art and wellness center at Pico Boulevard and Western Avenue, housed in a former Dollar Tree building, is expected to begin public programming in January with storytelling events and healing workshops.