By Kelly Burke
RISK taking is not usually associated with the accountancy profession, but when the accountant Myongho Pak arrived in Australia more than three decades ago, he took a punt on a country that at that time considered spaghetti bolognese to be exotic. He opened Korea House, Australia's first Korean restaurant, in William Street in 1975.
Today there are hundreds of Korean-run restaurants across Sydney, and a population of South Korean immigrants thought to number more than 150,000. But a report to be released on Monday has found that despite boasting the highest rate of entrepreneurship among any ethnic group, their culture and their food lack a commensurate profile in the broader Sydney community.
Broad appeal ... Peter Park, head chef at Doo Ri Korean barbecue restaurant in Strathfield. Its clientele is largely non-Korean.Credit: Edwina Pickles
This city has Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Portugal, the Spanish Quarter and the Vietnamese culinary enclave of Cabramatta. Now it is time to create Little Korea, says the report's authors, Jock Collins and Joon Shin, from the cosmopolitan civil societies research centre at the University of Technology, Sydney.
''In China and Japan, Korean popular culture and food is on the crest of a new cultural wave, but this hasn't been felt as much in Australia,'' Professor Collins said.
The report has identified Strathfield as having the highest concentration of Korean-run food outlets in the country. With 49 food businesses in the heart of Strathfield, the inner west suburb already is Little Korea, according to Young Park, owner of Doo Ri Korean barbecue restaurant, a local favourite of the now-retired Mr Pak.
The family-run business, with Ms Park's son Peter now the head chef, has been operating for six years. Over this time, Ms Park has seen her clientele change from almost exclusively Korean to about 80 per cent non-Korean.
With the restaurant operating 14 hours a day, Ms Park says the hardest aspect of running the business is finding enough employees skilled in Korean cuisine to fill the two daily shifts.
The UTS report found that more than 80 per cent of Korean immigrant restaurant owners cited immigration restrictions, tightened after the global financial crisis, as the main impediment to their business's viability.
The Korean-born Strathfield councillor Keith Kwon will present the report to the council on Tuesday. Mr Kwon said there were many examples in Sydney where food had been used as the foundation for the establishment of a thriving cultural enclave.
''Food is a common bond,'' he said. ''It doesn't matter if it's Korean, Indian or Chinese, when you eat the food you feel part of that community. But food should not be the end of it either.''