How Korean restaurants in Sydney are transforming city’s late-night dining scene
- Korean places in Australia’s biggest city that sell food and alcohol well into the morning are increasingly popular alternatives to Chinese or Thai restaurants
- Korean culture has made waves in Australia over the past few decades thanks to K-pop and Korean drama, one restaurateur says
It’s 11pm on a Thursday evening and almost all of Sydney’s businesses, restaurants and stores have closed for the day. Yet down a small unmarked alley off Pitt Street, in the city’s central business district, two restaurants are serving food while a karaoke bar on a floor above is blasting hits from the 1980s through to the early 2000s.
Sydney’s Koreatown, a small selection of cafes, salons, grocers, travel agents, restaurants and bars on a block between Liverpool Street and Central Street, is a small window into a Korean community mostly based 12km (seven miles) away in the city’s inner western suburb of Strathfield. At a similar hour in the suburb, dubbed Little Korea, friends sit around tables outside clinking small glasses, while songs are sung and drinkers savour soju, the Korean distilled grain alcohol.
Korean culture has made waves in Australia over the past few decades. From the far northeastern city of Cairns to the nation’s capital of Canberra and beyond, Koreans have opened restaurants, forged strong communities, and captured a market of their own.
One of their biggest impacts has been on the so-called late-night trade. Ten years ago, hungry Australians in search of an after-hours meal might typically find themselves in Chinese restaurants that serve dim sum, soups, and rice or noodle dishes well into the night. These days, the nation’s late-night dining options are far broader, with Korean restaurants, and bars known as suljibs, operating into the small hours.
A suljib, which means alcohol house in Korean, always has plenty of booze to accompany the bibimbap and kimchi. In Korean culture, food and alcohol go hand in hand, says Korean-Australian business owner Andrew Dong Kim. “For Korean people, food is the chaser,” he says.
Kim, 25, who operates a small business delivering market produce to local cafes and restaurants, says there are three phases of a night out for Korean people.
“Initially, they’ll start at a restaurant. [This stop is] called an ilcha, or ‘the first’,” he says, where popular dishes such as Korean fried chicken – a twice-fried staple – are enjoyed with alcohol. In South Korea, there are more fried chicken restaurants than there are McDonald’s and Subway restaurants worldwide, according to Statistics Korea.
After this, it is usually around midnight, Kim says, adding that “from here you either go home or visit another suljib, or karaoke [stage three – known as samcha]”.
There is cultural osmosis at work in Australia. In 2016, more than 10,000 students in Australia studied Korean as a foreign language, and Australia is the second most popular English-speaking country after the US for South Koreans studying abroad. In 2016, 30,000 South Korean nationals enrolled as students in Australia, making the Asian nation the third largest source of international students in the country. It’s no wonder then that late-night Korean bars and restaurants have become increasingly popular.
“We used to have Thai, Chinese and Japanese cuisine, and Korean had not been that popular, but slowly people are finding out,” says Jackie Park, 39, a Korean restaurateur and cafe owner who helped set up the late-night cafe chain Oliver Brown in 2010.
Park moved to Australia in 2008 while working as a ground operations supervisor for South Korean airline Asiana. He has played a key role in a number of successful hospitality businesses, including MasterChef Indonesia judge Arnold Poernomo’s famous Koi Dessert Bar, a popular night spot in Kensington Street Precinct in Sydney’s inner-city suburb of Chippendale.
Koreans are attracted to good weather and the ability to live a good lifestyle
South Korean-born construction worker Jaeung Lee, 24, says a hectic nightlife is an integral part of his home country’s culture. “Everyone works late in Korea, so if you don’t run 24 hours, you won’t make it,” he says.
Lee, a permanent resident who migrated to Australia at the age of 15, says Strathfield is merely where the night begins.
Most young Koreans in Sydney venture into the city to Asian-dominated clubs such as 80 Proof, on George Street, or the third-floor of 88Pocha, a suljib in Koreatown that regularly holds parties and stays open as late as 3am.
Like many minority communities, however, Koreans in Australia have their problems. A study by Unions NSW found four in five Chinese, Korean and Spanish job advertisements offered pay rates below the legal hourly minimum wage of A$19.49 (US$13.40). A South Korean national told a media network that she was paid A$11 an hour, and when she asked for a contract she was told by the employer: “In Korean society, we don’t do that.”
Koreans began settling in Australia as early as the 1950s, but are considered a relatively new migrant group. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s the Korean-born population grew from about 1,500 to over 9,000, and by 2016 had reached about 99,000. More than 50 per cent of Koreans in Australia live in New South Wales, about 20 per cent in Queensland, and 15 per cent in the southern state of Victoria.
“Koreans are attracted to good weather and the ability to live a good lifestyle,” says Johnny Shin, 31, a managing partner at financial services firm Solomons Group. He is also an honorary member of The Korean Society of Queensland and a co-founder of Young Asian Professionals, a network whose members gather for monthly events to promote business.
Shin, who migrated to Australia when he was 11, says the nation’s attraction for many Koreans is the skilled visa programmes and path to permanent residency. Most Koreans have tried to migrate to Australia via the restaurant industry, he says, but “a lot of those ways have been blocked off because it was too easy”.
In Queensland’s capital, Brisbane, where Shin lives, there is a small, unofficial Koreatown on Mary Street, in the central business district. The front of a nearby liquor-store-turned-suljib called Charmy has been converted into a restaurant. Here, customers drink alcohol bought off the shelf while enjoying typical Korean dishes, including the ever-popular fried chicken.
By charging slightly more than other liquor stores, Charmy earns a little profit from dine-in customers’ food and alcohol consumption, and more from those buying takeaway food.
“It’s just part of our culture – it’s about taking the risk at a time when no one else can,” Shin says of the initiative to offer food as a side business.
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Sydney restaurant manager Park, who now runs Moon in inner-city Darlinghurst and Moss Bros cafe in Rouse Hill, says “it depends on the person, but once you have experience you can see so much opportunity”.
“Before I came to Australia, I used to hang out until after midnight. It’s easy… this is ‘so’ Korean culture,” he says.
Shin often invites people to eat in Korean restaurants because of the convenience of their long opening hours.
“Chinese and Japanese have been around in Australia for a long time, whereas Koreans have been a bit of an underdog,” he says. “But nobody can say no to fried chicken.”
