Korean NTU Student Revives Hawker Dad's Struggling Biz During Circuit Breaker

When he moved to Singapore from Korea in 2009, Suh Chin Won, 52, was looking for a job that could accommodate his language barrier. Formerly a logistics manager at a printing company in Seoul, he had relocated to reunite with his family. Three years earlier, his wife Kim Seung Ja, 55, had brought over their daughter Chela Suh, 22, and son Lino Suh, 25, so the kids could pursue a trilingual education here. “Singapore is quite close to Korea, hence we made the huge investment to move here. But we couldn’t bear being apart, so my dad came over too,” Chela tells 8days.sg.

Chin Won eventually settled on being a hawker, which became his first and only job here. He started out at a food court in Tiong Bahru before moving to another stall at Yew Tee, then finally Marsiling, where he had been based for the past four years. “We chose Marsiling because there wasn’t really any Korean food here,” Chela explains.

Her dad wakes up at 5am for work, and only leaves his stall at 8.30pm every day. “I think he found that [being a hawker] was the best thing he could do at that time. We came up with the recipes together,” says Chela. The family offers wallet-friendly homely fare like the kind you often see K-drama characters eating — budaejjigae ($5.50), kimchi fried rice ($4), beef, pork and chicken bulgogi ($5 to $6), seafood ramen ($4.80), tteokbokki ($4.50) and BBQ saba fish ($5.50). They also sell homemade kimchi (from $5 to $10).

Chela proudly shares that her dad does not use store-bought sauces. “Everything is marinated by him,” she says. While she admits that he was at first “not much of a cook”, she praises him for having “come a very long way”. She recounts, “When I first tasted his saba fish 10 years ago, I didn’t like it. I found it too salty.” But the Suhs diligently tweaked their recipes to cater to Singaporeans’ taste buds. Chela observes that “Koreans prefer saltier food with a spicy kick, and Singaporeans like sweeter flavours with less spice.”

Like most kopitiam stalls, her dad’s shop doesn’t have a name (on its menu is a generic ‘Korean Cuisine’ logo). While her mum helps out at the eatery occasionally, she could not do it full-time. According to Chela, “My mum is healthy but not very strong — she can’t stand for too long.” Instead, omma is working at a Korean minimart. Meanwhile, Chela is a Year 2 business undergraduate at NTU, while her brother Lino is “working a corporate job in construction technology”.

Brother-and-sister lend a hand to their dad’s one-man-show whenever they have time. As Chela’s university classes and exams are cancelled due to Covid-19, she has been helping her dad daily at the stall. While Chin Won had initially hired stall assistants, he has since stopped doing so. “There were miscommunications ’cos of the language barrier,” recalls Chela. “And some of the stall assistants weren’t very [customer-oriented]. He was afraid it would affect the image of the business, so he would rather take on the burden of everything himself.”

She says her dad’s “number one problem” is still language, though he can now speak a smattering of Mandarin and converse in English. “But he’s not very fluent still. My brother and I were doing all the translation for him,” she shares.

Despite the circuit breaker, the stall is strictly takeaway-only with no delivery service. There's no pre-ordering too, except for bulk orders. “My dad’s English is not very good, so we’re afraid there will be miscommunication [with phone orders]. It’s very hard for him to juggle both [cooking and taking delivery orders] when there’s only one chef,” Chela frets, though she’s currently looking into engaging “easy-to-use” delivery services for customers who don’t have “the luxury of time to come down”.

When Covid-19 hit, Chin Won’s business wasn't spared. While his daughter says they aren’t in a position of “suffering”, their “revenue decreased by a lot”. She tells us, “I always see him sighing and looking very sad, so I thought about how I could help him.”

Then her friend’s aunt told her about a popular non-profit Facebook group called Hawkers United - Dabao 2020, where hawkers could post and spread the word about their stalls for free. The volunteer-led initiative now has over 267,000 members comprising both F&B owners and customers. After Chela posted about her dad’s stall, his business immediately spiked. “Our daily sales went from 60 to 70 orders a day to about 240 orders now,” she shares.

As for her dad, she says: “At first he was very shocked, and he couldn’t handle [the demand]. But he’s getting on track now. Ever since I posted on Facebook, he lost 6kg [from working overtime]!” Netizens have been so supportive, the Suhs even have customers from Tampines journeying to their Marsiling stall to tapow food.

And what keeps Chin Won going for the past 10 years, despite leaving behind a cushy air-conditioned office job for a hot stove in sweltering Singapore? “He says it’s his children,” laughs Chela. “He’s a positive and outgoing person. He’s the kind of dad who’d do anything for his family.”

#01-2188, Blk 136 Marsiling Rd, S730136. Open daily 10am-7.30pm (last order around 6.30pm-7pm). For large orders, call or text Suh Chin Won in advance at 9689-4007.

PHOTOS: CHELA SUH