'Adapting to new is key to survival'

Lee Kyung-joo, third-generation owner of the century-old Chong Ro Tailor, shows fabric in his shop in central Seoul, Tuesday. / Korea Times photo by Kim Bo-eun

This is the third in a series of articles featuring Seoul City-designated Future Heritages, modern-time assets that have not been designated as state cultural properties but have enough value to be handed down to future generations. — ED.

By Kim Bo-eun

Continuing tradition is not only about preserving the old, but also about adapting to the new, according to the third-generation owner of a century-old tailor shop in central Seoul.

When this reporter pushed open the door of Chong Ro Tailor, a tidy, cozy shop, its sharply dressed owner Lee Kyung-joo, 72, came into view.

He had been flipping through Leon, a trendy men’s fashion magazine, with a young man who had come in for a suit for his wedding.

After the customer left, Lee, clad in a pressed shirt, tie and pants, sat at a table with his iPad in front of him.

After a comment on the unexpected modernity of the shop and its owner, Lee said the only old element of the tailor shop is its name.

“This is fashion we’re talking about,” he said. “If we continued things the old style just because the shop is old, then we would have closed long ago.”

He inherited the shop from his late father Lee Hye-joo, the second owner.

“He always wore a suit and tie. He did not let me wear slippers in the shop,” Lee recalled. “His belief was that it was important to look presentable when greeting customers.”

The late Lee was very serious about his tailor business. The promise that he showed made his father, the current owner’s grandfather Lee Doo-yong, select him among his nine sons as the successor of the shop.

“My father had a strong work ethic and always put his customers first,” Lee said.

Lee remembers going out for lunch and ordering jajangmyeon (Chinese black bean sauce noodles) and then being told by his father to come back to the store because a customer had arrived.

“By the time we were done, I would go back to see the noodles have gone mushy from having soaked up all the sauce,” Lee said, laughing.

This mindset is what kept the tailor shop open to this day, he said.

Lee shows a 50-year-old pair of scissors at his tailor shop.

Lee’s grandfather opened the shop in Jongno, central Seoul, in 1916, after learning tailoring skills as a trainee at a Japanese-owned shop and also later in Japan.

Lee’s father took over the store in 1945, when Korea was liberated from Japanese occupation. The tailor remembered going through the 1950-1953 Korean War.

“I remember our family getting on the train to Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province, with a sewing machine and fabric,” Lee said.

The family set up shop there in the middle of the war, mending soldiers’ uniforms. They returned to Seoul when the war was over and reopened the shop in Jongno.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, the shop struggled as Cheil Industries introduced ready-made suits. Tailors promoted a boycott of off-the-rack suits, but they inevitably lost customers.

Even now, old tailor shops in Myeong-dong continue to struggle, although the situation is better for the renowned Chong Ro Tailor, Lee said.

However, he is concerned about the shop’s future: he hasn’t found the right person to succeed him in the store.

“I have two children, but my son is a painter,” he said pointing to a landscape painting on the wall of the shop.

Lee’s daughter once said she would continue the tailor business, but at that time he said no.

“It was because I thought she as a woman would have trouble dealing with male customers,” Lee said. But women today are everything, from fighter pilots to President. I regret declining her offer.”

For now, though, he will continue to run the shop.

“I will do my best until I am unable,” he said. “I have pride in the shop and its 100-year history and will do what I can in order not to disappoint customers.”