The “rooftop Koreans” became a viral punchline and meme for anyone who worried LA was descending into violence, and thought Mayor Karen Bass wasn’t doing enough to crack down.

Donald Trump Jr. posted an image to X of an armed man on a roof during the latest rioting in LA along with the caption: “Everybody rioting until the roof starts speaking Korean.”

Lee says the memes sling-shotting around the internet don’t do justice for how scary the times were — and how different the recent round of LA protests and riots are from 1992.

Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again! pic.twitter.com/UFRhMPCYLb

“All of the Korean people, we were just focused on protecting our property. And we were also trying to protect the pride and spirit of our Korean community,” said Lee, who immigrated in 1981 and served in both the Korean and American armed forces.“We didn’t want to [fight.] We wanted peace,” he said.

Now-historic photos at the time captured Korean men with rifles perched atop buildings as rioters moved through the city in May 1992.

The mobs looted businesses and set storefronts ablaze after four white police officers were acquitted of the savage beating of Rodney King, a black man. Sixty-three people died, and property damage neared $1 billion in the chaos.

Amid the riots, the police more or less abandoned Koreatown, instead focusing on wealthy, white neighborhoods, Lee said.

“The police were not responsive. They were using Koreatown as a bumper,” Lee said. “I was watching the TV, and I saw things burning down in the south side, and [rioters] were coming up here.”

Lee said that’s when he decided to take matters into his own hands: He picked up his two kids from school, went by Home Depot to buy as many fire extinguishers as he could fit in his car, grabbed a shotgun he had for hunting and joined two neighbors on his roof.

From there, Lee could see other shop owners with guns on nearly every building on his block.

All of them had done mandatory military service back in Korea.

None of them wanted violence, he insisted.

All of them had done mandatory military service back in Korea.

“We didn’t want anybody to get hurt. It was peaceful. We were protecting our property, but we wanted to do it as peacefully as possible,” Lee recalled.

“It wasn’t a matter of protecting my money or my property. It was about my foundation. If I lost those things, I’d lose everything. My whole life in America.”

By the end of the riots, more than 1,800 Korean-owned businesses were still looted or destroyed, according to the Washington Post.

The media would later cast the “Roof Koreans” as allies of law enforcement.

Kyung Hee Lee, who immigrated in the ’80s and saw her tire shop ransacked during the riots, said that narrative is insulting.

“We did what we did because we had no choice,” she said, speaking in Korean.

“We were desperate to survive because the police were not helping the Korean community. The police abandoned the Korean community so the protesters would have something to destroy,” she said.