Rooftop Korean

As the city burned in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, Korean-American neighborhoods came under siege. While many fled, a group of residents climbed onto rooftops with rifles in hand — ready to defend their homes and businesses when the police could not, or would not.

Tony Moon was one of them.

A young Korean-American with a complicated past, Tony walked the streets of South Central and Koreatown during the riots, doing everything he could to head off trouble before it reached his community. What he experienced on those rooftops — and in the years that followed — changed him forever.

In this raw, unflinching memoir, Moon tells the true story of the “Rooftop Koreans”: ordinary people who refused to be victims. From the gang life of his youth to the front lines of the 1992 riots and the hard lessons learned since, this is a powerful account of identity, survival, self-reliance, and what it really means to protect your own.

When the system fails, you become your own defense.

Tony Moon was born in the former West Germany to South Korean parents who met there as young laborers under the 1963 labor-for-loan agreement between the South Korean and West German governments — his father in the coal mines, his mother in nursing. In 1977, the family immigrated to the United States, settling in Los Angeles, where Tony came of age on the city's streets through some of its most turbulent decades, including the 1992 L.A. Riots.

He went on to earn a bachelor's degree in logistics from the University of Southern California and an MBA in finance from California State University, Los Angeles. Today he is a licensed mortgage broker, a mixed martial arts gym owner, and a security consultant who teaches everyday people how to protect themselves and their communities.

Tony lives in Los Angeles with his teenage son and daughter; his dog Hannah; Luna, a pug-terrier mix; and Pipsqueak, a tortoise who is partial to having her shell scratched on a hot, sunny day.