Tiny restaurant in Seoul caters to thousands of refugees who, in spite of brutal dictatorship, miss " the taste of where they came from"
INCHEON, South Korea — The little restaurant isn’t much to look at. It’s across the street from an empty lot in a city where bland high-rise apartment buildings sprawl in every direction. Boxes of dried fish are stacked by the front window. A dirty mop stands in the corner. The walls are painted a vomitous green.
But people come from across South Korea to eat here. They come for the potato pancakes, the blood sausage and, very often, for a fried street food that many dreamed of back when nearly everyone they knew was hungry. More than anything, though, they come for memories the food brings back of an outcast homeland they may never see again.
„This is the taste of where they came from, “ says the restaurant’s owner, a refugee who asks to be identified only by her surname, Choi. „The food here tastes the way it does in North Korea .“
More than 30,000 North Koreans now live in South Korea, having fled poverty, hunger and the relentless pressures of life in an oppressive, authoritarian state. But for most, life in the South is far from ideal. Raised amid dictatorial dysfunction, and normally poorly educated, the exiles stumble into a brutally competitive nation where they are regularly disdained by their neighbors.
„Chon-nom“ they are often called – „bumpkin.“
That derision, combined with their own disillusionment, can churn into a stew of suspicion, resentment and ambivalence. And though they may hate the nation they left behind, many also miss it deeply. Because how can you not miss home?
„Our lives here can be so difficult, “ said a North Korean now living in the South. „But finding that restaurant made me so happy.“ She spoke on condition her name not be used; even North Koreans who fled years ago remain concerned about reprisals against them or relatives still in the North.
Choi has built them a tiny island of North Korean life that starts to feel crowded if it has more than a half-dozen customers. In a burst of optimism she named it Howol-ilga, „People from Different Homelands Come to Gather in One Place.“
„My place is a comfort for them, “ says Choi, 39, in a Northern accent so thick it can be barely comprehensible at first to Southerners. „When they come here and find a menu so similar to what they ate back home, they know they can relax.
