3 generations, 78 years, all female _ the story of Hanilkwan
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Shin Woo-gyoung, founder of Hanilkwan, poses in front of her restaurant in Jongno in 1957. / Courtesy of Hanilkwan
Sister restaurateurs continue grandmother's legacy
By Yun Suh-young
This is the first in a series of interviews with third-generation restaurateurs in Korea._ ED.
It was in 1939 during the Japanese occupation of Korea when female restaurateur Shin Woo-gyoung opened her very first restaurant.
Koreans were not allowed to use anything related to "Korea" in the name at the time, so her restaurant was called "Hwaseonok," after a name of a flower.
At a time when beef was a rarity, Shin's restaurant served "sogogi gukbap" or beef rice soup brewed with beef bones and intestines coupled with a few other items such as loach soup and grilled cow intestines. They also served grilled beef, which became the modern-day "bulgogi." In fact, it can be said that the bulgogi we know of today began in Hanilkwan.
It wasn't until Korea's liberation from Japan in 1945 that Shin was able to finally put up a sign for the name that she had been longing to call her restaurant _ "Hanilkwan" meaning "the best restaurant in Korea." It certainly lived up to its reputation, as it grew to become a favorite of Korean presidents such as Park Chung-hee, Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak.
Shin was a rarity as it was a time when women were considered inferior to men and were discouraged from participating in social activities, let alone entrepreneurship.
"Our grandmother was a courageous woman," said Kim Eun-sook, the granddaughter of Shin and co-president of Hanilkwan, during an interview with The Korea Times last week.
"She was first among three daughters. She grew up in a rural village in a poor family. She wasn't educated. She wanted to escape from poverty so she moved to Seoul all by herself. It was an act of rebellion from poverty, a rebellion from the status of women portrayed in society.
"Who would have listened to a girl during a period when girls were forced to serve as sex slaves to Japanese soldiers? It wasn't surprising our grandmother had to be aggressive to survive the times."
Shin's first restaurant opened officially in 1939 but it was even before then that Shin entered the food business, first selling from stalls.
"In a 1998 Korea Times article, the journalist described our grandmother with the word feisty. It was true _ our grandmother was a competitive person. She did not want to lose," said Kim Ie-sook, the younger granddaughter of Shin and the other co-president of Hanilkwan.
A Korea Times article published in 1998 about Hanilkwan. Courtesy of Hanilkwan
Eun-sook and Ie-sook are third-generation owners of Hanilkwan _ a history that begins with their grandmother, handed over to their mother, and now to them.
"Our mother Gil Soon-jeong wasn't the entrepreneurial type. She was in med school when she got married. She dropped out of school and followed our father to the United States when he went there to study. She was pregnant with me when our grandmother wanted her back in Korea to help her out with the restaurant," Eun-sook said.
"It was when the Korean War broke out. Everyone in Seoul evacuated to Busan. At the time, my grandmother's restaurant was in Jongno 1-ga, the center of Seoul, and was flourishing. It was popular with the palace-style bulgogi menu. But when she closed and moved to Busan, it surprisingly continued to flourish there because everyone from Seoul was in Busan.
"It wasn't even a proper restaurant and there was no menu. Any ingredient available that day would turn into a dish, like the today's special in modern day terms. But they said it was delicious whatever she cooked. She had a knack for making anything delicious."
When the war was over in 1953, Hanilkwan returned to its place in Jongno 1-ga. Shin soon built a three-story building there in 1957. The following two decades were the golden days of Hanilkwan. Shin expanded the business to four branches _ the second in Myeongdong in 1967, third in Euljiro and fourth in Shinshin Department Store in Jongno 1-ga in 1969.
Rise and fall of bulgogi
From 1945 to 1950, Shin cooked in the kitchen herself, but as the restaurant grew she handed over the work to professionals.
The signature bulgogi dish served at Hanilkwan / Courtesy of Hanilkwan
"She scouted a cook called Mr. Kim who studied in Japan by paying him a great sum of money. I think it was then that today’s bulgogi was developed. It's my assumption, but since he studied in Japan, I think he merged the Japanese sukiyaki with the grilled beef we had at the time. I assume this became the Seoul-style bulgogi," the younger Kim said. Seoul-style refers to pre-seasoned beef as opposed to other styles where the beef is seasoned right before cooking.
"Bulgogi has been our signature dish since then. I'm quite sure we were the number one with the bulgogi. The word bulgogi was listed in the dictionary in 1973. It was then that the definition that we know today _ sliced and seasoned, barbecued beef _ was written. Before that, bulgogi literally meant grilling beef in heat as the combined words mean in Korean."
Although it's a national staple these days, there was a time when bulgogi wasn't too popular.
"From the end of 1970s to the 1990s, bulgogi died and was replaced by grilled beef galbi, or ribs. The trend at the time was to grill your own meat on the spot. We were losing our place in the competition. It had to do with the restaurant's poor management at the time as well. But after we revived the restaurant in 1997, bulgogi resurfaced."
The second generation
The restaurant's business faltered during the second generation ownership under the Kim sisters’ mother.
"Our grandmother died in 1979, a month before President Park Chung-hee died on Oct. 26. She left the restaurant to her eldest daughter, our mother, to run the business. She was 30 years old at the time," Eun-sook said.
"Things started to falter. Our mother was physically weak and lacked the entrepreneurial spirit. It really wasn't in her personality to run a business. So she just retained what was there. The restaurant didn't evolve, it didn't improve. It was just there."
The lack of interest led to a lack of motivation. The two Hanilkwan locations in Euljiro and Jongno closed down.
"We were losing from competition while competitors were emerging and flourishing in the restaurant business," Eun-sook said.
"The peak for this industry was between 1979 and 1988 when foreign franchises such as McDonald's and Pizza Hut hit the nation. Between 1987 and 1988, family restaurants such as TGI Friday's entered the market. While the industry was leaping in growth, we felt stagnated."
In the late 1970s several Korean restaurants serving galbi have emerged such as Samwon Garden and Neulbom Park. Hanilkwan was losing its business to late movers.
"Our mother died in 1997 when we were 36 and 33. The situation became terrible by that time. We could have closed the restaurant then. There was no reason to continue because the business hit bottom," she said.
The economic situation didn't help. The Asian financial crisis which broke out in 1997 was tormenting the local economy.
The only remaining Hanilkwan in Jongno was temporary closed at the time, while the two Kim sisters wondered what to do with the restaurant. They had already closed the Myeongdong branch when their mother died.
"But I refused to give in. Obstinacy kicked in. I didn't want people to think we closed because we went bankrupt. I didn't want people to think we closed because the two young daughters couldn't handle it without their mother. I didn't want people looking at us with prejudice," Ie-sook said.
"So I persuaded my sister to join me on this quest. We both knew we wanted to revive Hanilkwan's reputation and our grandmother's legacy."
The third generation
The third generation owners of Hanilkwan, Kim Eun-sook, left, and Kim Ie-sook, pose in front of Hanilkwan in Apgujeong, Seoul. /Korea Times photo by Yun Suh-young
The two had gotten along easily since they were young, and together they soon refurbished the whole brand.
The Kim sisters, now ages 56 and 53, are elite restaurateurs. Both studied French literature at the prestigious Ewha Womans University and both went to the Sorbonne in Paris to get master's degrees. The older Kim went on to get a PhD.
But it didn't take long for Eun-sook to quit her job teaching French at local universities to join the entrepreneurial journey. Ie-sook had already jumped into the business.
"What made our decision easy was the existing staff who told us they'd come back to work for us if we decided to keep the restaurant going," Ie-sook said.
"People say the difference between ordinary people and entrepreneurs is that the latter are blessed with people. We were. We really couldn't have done it without our staff."
Half of the staff from their mother's time returned.
"We started with 67 staff. Of them, half were from our mother's time and eight to nine were from our grandmother's time. They were over 70 years old," Eun-sook said.
But it wasn't easy retaining the old staff and striving for change and innovation.
"They had their ways of doing things. Because most of our staff had many years of experience and were older than us, it took us a long time to persuade them to embrace new technology. For instance, they were skeptical of ovens. They didn't believe it could create the same taste," Eun-sook said.
"But we needed new equipment to produce more dishes more efficiently. We had to prove to them that it could create the same taste. We also created a recipe for everyone to follow because there weren't even recipes at the time."
The two changed the concept of the restaurant entirely.
"We wanted to become a trendy Korean restaurant. We wondered why Korean food had to be always served in traditional ways. So we got rid of hanbok and changed to modern uniforms. We let female employees wear pants. We renovated the interior to be clean and modern," she said. "We created set menus. It doesn't sound new now, but at the time it was."
"We also got rid of tips," Ie-sook said. "But one thing remained _ our grandmother's taste. We wanted the taste to be traditional. It doesn't mean the food isn't evolving. If you think it tastes the same, it means it's evolving."
They focused on reviving the one remaining restaurant at Jongno 1-ga. After 10 years, in 2008, they relocated the main branch to Apgujeong when the area was being redeveloped for a new high-rise office building. Now they have expanded to seven branches across Seoul, including the headquarters.
"I think it's important that the staff and the entrepreneurs are looking in the same direction,” she said. “We want to make our employees happy because that influences the customers’ experience."