New Delhi’s fast-growing Korean community has its own churches, temples, shops, even exclusive beauty parlours
It’s 6 pm on a Friday evening and the Gurgaon office of Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction (DHIC) is mostly empty, but for the conference room where a Hindi class is in progress. Five senior South Korean managers of this Seoul-based MNC, sit around the table as the teacher takes them through the basics of spoken Hindi — Aapka naam kya hai?, Aap kahan se aaye hain? and so on.
Why did the DHIC bosses feel their senior employees needed to learn Hindi, when, after all, most Indians speak English? “English is not good enough,” says one of the students, Kyong Shik Park, representative director, Delhi NCR-3, “To understand India and Indians, we have to know Hindi.”
Cultural strategies
This desire to engage with India — not just as a market, but as a people — is not particular to Doosan, or even a recent phenomenon. LG India organises Indian cultural sessions for Korean employees. Jitendra Uttam, assistant professor of Korean Studies at JNU, remembers how Samsung had a programme under which it sent Korean ‘regional specialists’ to India with the brief to get to know the country. No wonder, South Korean brands such as LG, Samsung and Hyundai — unknown even 15 years ago — are household names in India today.
“The Koreans have always been serious about India,” says Santosh Desai, CEO, Future Brands. “India met their strategic interests. Korea had considerable backend technical expertise, but they lacked brand image. A virgin, potentially huge market like India presented an opportunity to build new brands, says Desai, who had a “ringside view” of Samsung’s approach to India as president of McCann Erickson. “The Japanese, on the other hand, have never been convinced about the potential of the Indian market. No wonder then that brands such as National and Panasonic, which had amazing brand equity, could not build on it.”
India-Korea bhai bhai
The India-Korea cultural connection goes back to the second century. The Koreans believe that a prince called Kim Suro married the princess of Ayodhya. “In a way we are cousins,” laughs Bryan Kang, spokesperson for the Delhi chapter of The Korean Association in India. Rabindranath Tagore is the other historical link. A short poem by Tagore in which he called Korea ‘The Lamp of the East”’became the rallying point for Korean nationalists fighting Japanese colonisation, so much so that it is quoted even today in most diplomatic exchanges.
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India ho!
India is today Korea’s 14th largest overseas investment destination. There are as many as 381 Korean companies, and 8,518 Korean nationals living and working here, up dramatically from 218 Korean companies and 6,030 Koreans in 2006. “We get around 5-10 inquiries every day regarding every aspect of how each company can enter the Indian market,” says Moon Seok Choi, director general of the New Delhi office of KOTRA, the Korean trade promotion and investment agency.
The Korean expats here are not just senior employees of the chaebols (conglomerates), but also workers at vendor companies who have followed the former into India. There are about 180 Korean companies around the Hyundai factory in Chennai, and 20-30 companies have sprung up around the Samsung and LG Electronics plants in Noida. Then there are trading companies, logistics providers and consultants. Not to forget a large, and growing, community of Korean students.
The numbers are significant enough for a thriving Korean community to have come up, along with a number of Koreans-only businesses, especially in the National Capital Region (NCR) which has 3,020 Koreans — the most in any Indian city.
For Koreans only
“They have created their own community within India,” says Professor Uttam. “They have their own real estate companies, guest houses , barber shops and restaurants. So when a Korean comes to India he simply enters this Korean world.”
The fulcrum of this community is The Korean Association in India, which publishes a monthly magazine Namaste India. In Delhi, the Emmanuel Church on Lodhi Road, has a Korean service every Sunday morning attended by 200-300 parishioners. There is even a temple for the Won Buddhists, a sect that grew in Korea in the last century.
Delhi also has three Korean restaurants, but there are also sundry caterers who will home-deliver everything from Bulgogi to Bibimbap and ttuck, the rice cake traditionally eaten on Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving festival.
As for foodstuffs, there’s BG Food Mart, newly opened in Safdarjung, and A Mart in Mahipalpur, which has been around for three years now. Here you can get every conceivable Korean foodstuff and condiment, from fish sauce to cooking wine and even Alseawoo shrimp- and meat-flavoured chips.
A short walk away is L&C Hair Salon run by Seoul-based ‘designer’ Lim Chang Hyun. Better known is Hera Beauty Centre in Green Park market, started by Yong Lee around two years ago, who came to India with her husband, fell in love with the place and didn’t want to leave. “ I decided to start Hera, since I had some expertise in this business,” says Lee. Business is good, and she has recently opened a branch in Gurgaon’s DLF Galleria.
Land of opportunity
Lee is representative of a new generation of young Koreans who have chosen to stay on and make the most of the opportunities India’s fast growing economy throws up.
Kang, whose business card proudly declares “I love India”, is one of these. He spent eight years at Swami Rama’s ashram in Rishikesh and now runs an ‘export-import business’ in Delhi, besides traveling all over India — he was in Jaipur recently where a Korean film is being shot. Finding Kim Jong Wook, starring popular lead pair Gung Yoo and Im Soo-Jeong, is a love story about two Korean tourists who meet in India.
Jin Bum Kim, who started Gung, the Korean restaurant in Green Park, came to India when his father was posted here. He attended Delhi University, and later decided to turn entrepreneur. He now even runs Gung Gallery, which specialises in Korean art, in Hauz Khas.
Satellite haven
Gurgaon is home to a large number of Koreans, possibly because the gated communities in the satellite township offer a haven of orderliness. There are two Korean churches; two restaurants — a branch of Gung and K2, which does Chinese as well as Korean, but most importantly, has karaoke which is a huge hit with young Koreans. For the older lot, there’s screen golf — a rage in Korea — at Hana Garden, a newly opened restaurant-cum-entertainment destination.
The Gurgaon branch of GD Goenka school, which a number of Korean children attend, has recently started offering Korean literature as an optional subject for class XI and XII. The American embassy school has long had special classes on Saturday, where children of expats are tutored in the Korean language and maths. “Both Indians and Koreans are passionate for their kids education,” says Moon B Shin, managing director, LG Electronics India.
In this respect, the competitive Koreans prefer India — especially because they want their children to learn English here. So once posted here, many stay back. Eun Sook Lee* remained in India along with her two children after her husband was posted back to Korea last year. “Learning English is so much cheaper here,” she says.
| THE CHENNAI CONNECTION There are more Koreans eating their favourite fermented cabbage relish in Chennai than any other expat community. Some areas have been re-named Koreapet and Little Korea. The first wave of Koreans arrived in 1996 when Hyundai India Motors Limited (HMIL) was started on the Chennai-Bengaluru highway near Sriperumbudur, followed by Samsung India There are now 171 Korean companies in Chennai, small medium and large, such as the candy manufacturer Lotte on the outskirts of the city. There are 1,900 Korean citizens in Chennai now, two Korean churches, a ballet school for Korean children, shops selling fermented chilli paste, fried octopus and the fragrant barley tea that is served in the three Korean restaurants in town. |
The InKo Centre is a non-profit cultural organisation in Chennai started to foster a inter-cultural dialogue through cinema, music, theatre and dance. Korean women learn yoga at the centre and taekwondo classes are held there for young Indians. Interestingly, it is supported by the T V S Motor Company, HMIL as well as the Korean Association in India.
However there is very little contact between the Koreans and the local population — call it the kimchi barrier. Though the cabbage is now grown in Ooty, Tamil is taught as a special course at the University of Korea and Chennai is being touted as the global hub for the export of Hyundai cars, the two cultures are still reluctant to meet except on the factory floor.
— Geeta Doctor
(with inputs from Jayashankar Menon)