Choi Mi Soo [alias. 57] was once an
elementary school teacher in North Korea, where she struggled to make ends meet
due to endless financial difficulties and food shortages. Moreover, she found
herself increasingly jaded from having to indoctrinate children into worshiping
an authoritarian regime that let its people endure such suffering.
Choi had been a widow for quite some time,
living with her only daughter until her abrupt disappearance in 2003. Sick with
worry over her daughter’s whereabouts and safety, Choi waited years to finally
discover that her daughter had fled to China to earn money. Upon this knowledge, Choi crossed the Tumen River to join her daughter in China, after which they made the journey to South Korea.
After her time at Hanawon, the government resettlement center for North Korean defectors, Choi was eager
to find work but unsure as to what sort of occupation to pursue in such
an unfamiliar environment. While she had a few friends from Hanawon assigned
homes near her area, they all had husbands to turn to. Choi felt she had no one
to rely on, but she mustered as much courage as she could for the sake of her
daughter.
She flitted from part-time job to part-time
job, working at a kimbap [a popular Korean dish made of rice, seaweed, and
various ingredients] eatery, jokbal [pig trotters with sauce]restaurant, and
saunas. Seeing as her only previous job experience was teaching, Choi found
these jobs particularly grueling. Realizing there was no way out of this plight
without developing competitive skills, she started taking classes at a culinary
institute; her daughter began training to become a nurse. Choi worked
tirelessly–day and night–drawing on her determination and dreams of success
to get her through.
This effort paid off when a big opportunity
came her way–the owner of the sundaeguk [a broth made of blood sausage] where
she worked decided to put his business up for sale. Choi, having just completed
her culinary certification, invested all her money and took out loans
specified for small-business ventures in order to take over the restaurant.
Her worries were trumped by the pride she felt owning her own restaurant, which despite its small and humble appearance, she planned to transform through hard,
persistent work.
Diligence and perseverance: the pillars of
success
Choi focused on her eatery from the day she took it over–in fact, she never took a day off.
Despite her best efforts, obstacles kept springing up. Sundaeguk spots are
frequented by customers looking to eat and drink late into the night; for
Choi, this meant long nights surrounded by belligerent customers who had drunk too much alcohol. Modifying her overt North Korean accent to a style more typical of the South for
the customers also proved difficult.
An unexpected crisis compounded these circumstances: the former proprietor of the sundaeguk restaurant, from whom she
purchased the business, had opened a new sundaeguk establishment in the vicinity and his experience in the business drew many of his former customers back to his new venture. Choi saw many of her frequent customers take their business to his restaurant, dealing a significant blow to her operation. However, she took it all in stride, and rather than casting blame cited it as evidence of South Korea’s fast-paced, competitive society.
So Choi rose to the challenge, believing the best way to overcome this crisis was through sincerity, devotion, and
good food. Sure enough, some of the customers who had moved to the new eatery run by her former boss began trickling back into her restaurant. Down the road, while his business gradually declined until ultimately going out of business, Choi’s
thrived–her skills and devotion helping her outdo the competition.
“It was then that I felt always being
genuine to the people you deal with paves the road to success,” she said of
the experience. This success was so notable that Choi was able to pay back her business loans within five
years of the borrowing date.
Choi’s influence is not only felt at the restaurant–her work ethnic is reflected in her daughter, who after gaining two years of experience as a nurse’s aid, is currently a
nursing student surrounded by good friends and a devoted mother to support her in her new life.
Seeking a new type of freedom after five years running the restaurant, Choi moved
her business to another region—one with mostly a lunch crowd rather than
customers looking to stay out late into the night. She refers to herself as a “civil
servant CEO” because now she takes days off during the weekends and public
holidays, just as civil servants do—something unfathomable to her just a few
years ago. Though her sales are down from in the past, she uses her newfound
time to attend defector gatherings, offering sage advice to others looking to successfully settle into life in South Korea.
She shared a bit of this advice, saying, “I would like to teach other North Korean defectors the know-how on
running sundaeguk establishments. I want to tell them not to cling to
government subsidies, but rather challenge themselves to become financially
independent. Market
competition is cutthroat, of course, but its all relative depending on how hard
you work.”
*This article was made possible by support
from the Korea Hana Foundation [the North Korean Refugees Foundation].
