As part of a growing network of support for refugees from North Korea, a country that’s been in the news this month as their nuclear ambitions threaten to instigate war, Alpha Korean United Church at Bloor and Huron Streets acts as ground zero for Toronto’s South Koreans and their northern countrymen trying to escape a brutal regime run by a sociopath in a track suit.
“They’ll do anything for a nuclear weapon,including make their country one of the poorest in the world,”says Reverend Hae-Bin Jung,42,the church’s minister of worship and pastoral care.“It’s our mission to help our brothers, and, for the South Korean community,our duty to do all that we can.”
The 100,000 members of Toronto’s Korean community are 99 per cent South Korean, and, though their numbers are rising on Yonge Street from Sheppard to Steeles,the majority of them still shop,eat and sing karaoke on Bloor Street between Spadina and Christie.
I’m at a service being conducted by Rev. Jung on a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon, sitting in my blue jeans and snow boots next to 50 Korean Christians in business suits,ankle length dresses and sensible shoes.
I’m not a native speaker of Korean, so most of what the reverend’s preaching is lost on me.Like decades ago at my temple, I skip out and try to find someone to flirt with. There’s a way of speaking English to someone who doesn’t speak English very well that comes very close to sounding racist, but what option do I have.
“I write story.North Korea. South Korea. Friend?”
I ask the women at Goa Hair Salon, figuring that women having their hair blown out might be inclined to gab. The basement-level beauty salon between Christie and Clinton is big and bustling, and both the hairdressers and their patrons look at me like I’m a Communist freak.
“I.Write.Story.English?”I begin again, this time to a gorgeous young woman with an enormous pair of scissors whose smile looks slightly insane. Back out into the ice storm I tread.
The P.A.T. Supermarket on Bloor is like a Korean Costco except, instead of offering samples of frozen fig pastries, they’re giving out shots of ginseng.
“Improves sexual desire and energy,” reads a promotional sign written in English, and, no fool (my wife wants children THIS YEAR),I quickly take two and purchase the bottle, taste be damned.
The grocery’s a window into Korean culture and they sell Cuckoo Electronics — a brand of rice cookers and space heaters — as well as aisles of congee, as a bandana-clad butcher slices mounds of pork.The owner is a South Korean named Edward Lee who has agreed to talk with me, but he is out sick, and when I head upstairs to the cosmetics counter I begin to wonder if maybe the hairdressers do understand English and that I just have bad breath.
“I’m looking for North Koreans,” I tell the girl behind the counter.
“I don’t speak English,”she responds. “How old are you?”I ask.
“Why you ask me personal questions?” She sneers.
“I writer,” I tell her,and she smartly says, “Bye-bye.”
I’m back out in the rain before ducking into Six Penny Variety, which has been owned by Sam Kook for 27 years.
“My father’s family is from North Korea,and we know North Koreans in the community, but I don’t have any relatives in North Korea any more,”says Kook, 60.
Kook breaks down the history of the two Koreas — the Japanese occupation, the Communist ideology that tore the country in half — and says that Koreans in Toronto are sympathetic to the plight of their northern brethren.
“We have a stupid,crazy leader in North Korea, and I hope he gets destroyed,”says Kook, adding that he cheered wildly for North Korea when they played in last year’s World Cup.
“North Koreans come to Toronto as refugees, but we’re one people.When they make it to this country, I support the church, which helps them survive.”
Obviously, if I’m going to peer down the North Korean pipeline, I’m going to have to return through the snow to Alpha Korean United,but there’s no reason I can’t go after a steaming hot bowl of pork bone soup first.
Dining options in Little Korea are legion.In addition to Han Kuk Kwan and Ichiban, there’s also Tofu Village, which serves a hot tofu broth that has people lining up out the door, even with a broken heater.However, the Korea House, at the axis of evil address of 666 Bloor St., advertises itself as the first Korean restaurant in Canada.Peeking through the window, I see the Steelers on television and Sapporo on draught. It’s as if a centripetal force leads me in.
“In school,we learn that North Korea is bad and South Korea is good, but they’re hungry in the north, very poor,”says Sung Lee, owner of the Korea House who, like Kook, has a North Korean father.
Lee wears platform shoes and a beehive haircut and seems like the ideal company for singing Bon Jovi at one of the karaoke bars across the street.
My soup is served still boiling, with pickled seaweed, cabbage, cucumber and all sorts of other stuff I won’t touch,and its got to be as spicy as the fare at Metro Cinema across the street where I watch the old pervs huddle under the porno theatre’s awning to smoke in the pouring ice storm.
“North Koreans and South Koreans are the same,” says Ms. Lee. “When North Korea played in the World Cup, all of Korea cheered.”
With a rudimentary understanding of the relationship between the Koreas, I approach the church again.
“Any North Korean in Toronto is probably a refugee, and if a soldier back home had seen them, they’d probably be dead,” says Rev. Jung, who works with Canadian missionaries to bring North Koreans safely through China into Canada.
I ask the reverend if there will ever be a day when Bloor Street gets its own Little North Korea, where North Koreans can openly sing “Living on a Prayer” after a bowl of pork bone soup. He shrugs.
“South Koreans in Toronto want to liberate North Korea.
We’ve been divided for 60 years, but for 1,000 years we were one,” he says. “Today, there aren’t many North Koreans on Bloor Street.
Someday, maybe,that might change.”
— Ben Kaplan is a features writer for the National Post