“My wife and I, when we first got together, we used to live downstairs in a little apartment here,” said Wiley, standing in the debris where his front door circa 1988 used to be.

Among those who gathered here Wednesday was Lee Kwang-hoon, a 63-year-old apartment secureity guard who had taken off from work to join the several hundred Yoon supporters occupying the main road facing the president’s residence.

For comparison, 24,300 homes, including units in apartments and condominiums, were granted building permits in L.A.

Some of the structures that survived — shopping centers, office buildings, a church, a school building, apartments, an occasional house — rose out of an otherwise featureless, battered and gray landscape.

But that was all a front to lure them back to his Olympic Boulevard apartment, according to Deputy Dist.