[2] Construction work for the initial segment, valued at $8.4 million ($69.7 million in 2023 dollars),[2] began that summer on June 17, 1957,[3] with major grade separation and rerouting work for the interchange, requiring the temporary rerouting of the Harbor Freeway and the diversion of Venice Boulevard, taking place the following year.

[4] In common with the East Los Angeles Interchange, which was built in the middle of majority-Hispanic Boyle Heights, the interchange's construction displaced an entire neighborhood — described by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation as being "thoroughly blighted" — primarily inhabited by African Americans, along with smaller numbers of Mexicans, Japanese and Italians.

[10] On September 11, 2002, the California State Senate passed a resolution, authored by Senator Kevin Murray, officially naming the interchange after Korean independence activist and local community leader Ahn Chang Ho, in celebration of 100 years of Korean immigration to the United States.

[14] The interchange's structure was retrofitted in the early 1990s in response to the Loma Prieta earthquake that struck northern California four years earlier.

In an opinion piece written for the JoongAng Ilbo, Park Dong-woo, an assistant to California State Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, called on Korean community groups to help clean up and maintain the signage naming the interchange for Ahn Chang Ho after being seen stained with graffiti, criticizing the indifference of Korean Americans to their condition.

[23] Eleven years later on March 15, 1987, another tanker truck tipped over on the same transition road, spilling 2,000 US gallons (7,600 L) of heavy crude oil onto the freeway.