(soft music)
- My name's Linus.
I'm probably of all the things I do or whatever.
I'm probably more commonly known as this guy
who does barbecue in,
Itaewon
in the middle of Seoul.
I was born in Los Angeles.
But very soon after I would say before my first birthday,
my folks decided to move to Birmingham.
Actually they moved to Bessemer,
which is a little bit outside of Birmingham.
And, but everything I've ever known about my childhood
and whatever,
it's all Alabama.
My identity or at least my upbringing
has always been a kid from Birmingham,
this Asian kid from Birmingham, you know, so.
My dad, he lived in Los Angeles with his brothers
and his cousins and whatever they just kind
of immigrated them from Korea.
And then my father was like the middle of three brothers.
They had a whole bunch of sisters and a big family,
but of the three brothers.
The eldest decided he wanted to start a business.
'Cause at that time,
in the seventies or late sixties, early seventies,
a whole bunch of Korean people were doing,
were in the wig business.
The natural human and hair, wig businesses.
It was just a very common thing to do.
And he just kind of got a car and he moved.
He just drove out east from LA.
And he was looking for a city he could settle down,
and build a business where there were like,
no other people doing Korean people doing a wig businesses.
But it was really weird.
There was always somebody who was already set up
in the late 60s and 70s.
So, he was just getting kind of discouraged.
He kept going,
he made his way all the way to Birmingham, Alabama.
And guess what?
There was already somebody already doing it,
in the middle of Birmingham, Alabama.
He goes like 20, 30 minutes outside
of Birmingham to a place called Bessemer.
Little town,
he decided to open up shop there.
And oddly enough, it's thriving.
It's more than thriving, nothing fancy
but it's just making money.
But he decides I don't wanna be here anymore.
This is my uncle.
He calls up my dad and says.
Hey, why don't you come over and take over this business?
It's pretty much all set up,
and it's just turnkey want to come out.
I think my mom just jumped on it.
She was just like, let's go, right.
Also as like American as I was,
I so badly wanted to experience Korea
and I just felt like it was so far away from that.
I just wanted a taste that the taste became 10 years,
but I don't know.
It just kind of snowballed in this, you know,
the irony is that the further I wake,
the further I got away from Alabama, my hometown,
and now I've just make a living from that,
I've brought Alabama with me anyway.
I remember when I was younger
I was just so ready to kind of like,
let it go.
You know, I wanted to experience bigger cities
and cool people and interesting minds and whatever.
And you know, but it seems like what I have offer
is just and things I gravitate,
what I know is just what I know.
You know, I missed the food,
no matter how far away I went,
I was like, still looking for barbecue.
And that familiarity is what like although I thought
it was like meeting other people like me or looked
like me,
familiarity still the south,
it became the food.
And at that moment,
a friend of mine had just moved to Korea.
She'd been here for like maybe eight months.
And she said, Linus,
why don't you come over here and help me?
She knew she wanted to work in food.
And I was like yeah I like this.
And you know, like, see if we can make a series
or a show or something like that.
And she was like, yeah, I'm down, three months.
And I brought my spices with me,
just my, you know,
just my rubs and whatever.
And surely enough
I found a way to make an excuse to make barbecue.
And we were shooting it.
And it was like an event.
We invited a bunch of foreigners and Koreans,
and the foreigners had my pulled pork.
And you know, the Americans are just, this is great.
And Koreans, this was really weird.
The Koreans were like,
what kind of meat is this?
They didn't know it was pork or beef,
'cause, you know, and I explained like, well, it's pork,
but I've been cooking it for like 16 hours.
Like why?
(laughs)
You know, everything's like fast, fast, fast, you know,
(laughs)
why would you do that?
So, well you have to do that.
So, you break down the tissue, blah, blah.
You know, it just makes it soft.
And so I felt like I was onto something.
I was like, and I was looking for a reason to stay.
Yeah, I think I'm gonna stick around a little longer
to see if I can pull this off. I just have to survive.
I don't know,
just all these little odd end jobs to I stick around.
And then I hear about popups, what's that?
And I might be able to do that
but I don't think I could like do it every day.
Like it's such a labor intensive thing to do barbecue.
You're just staying up all night.
I didn't sleep for days,
for before an event.
And so I go to every single bar in my neighborhood
asked, you know, trying to tell them,
hey, can I just set up shop here for a day?
And then I'll sell my stuff and whatever.
And they're like,
why don't you just rent the place?
I was like, I can't,
how about I just sell my food and they'll buy your drinks.
And so to go back,
I had a little experience in like, you know,
promoting parties and things
like that when I was in University and whatever.
So, I was kind of thinking that way like,
I'll just bring everybody and you'll make money too.
And I had this one guy after just hounding
them for a little while,
they agreed to do it.
And I go there and I remember on Facebook,
the day before there was like 800 people
that replied and said they were coming.
I was like, get outta here, right.
And I showed up and like a line starts forming
and then it just starts to go up the block.
I'm like, an hour and a half late to start.
And we sell out instantly.
Like that was exhausting,
but it was really, really fun.
And it's a lot more fun than selling in the restaurant.
So I was like, how about I just start doing this?
So, that started this whole series of popups that I did
for almost almost three years,
like two and a half years.
And every single time I was like, I was thinking,
you know a lot of people came to the last one,
and we sold out,
but they're gonna be,
they're tired of me.
They're no one's gonna come to the next one.
I did that every single time.
I felt that I was just like,
no one's gonna come this time.
I'm old news.
It's not new anymore.
It just kept growing.
It was just bizarre.
And then I got tired of doing this pulled pork sandwich.
That's all I ever did.
And it's time I gotta learn more.
Well, I decided to, I had to borrow money,
still wasn't making very much money.
I had to borrow money to buy a plane ticket
to go back to the states.
And I still had an apartment in LA,
and what did I do?
I planned this big tour.
I was gonna go to LA check up on things,
go to Alabama,
and then borrow one of my parents' cars
and then go seek out other barbecue restaurants,
and try to find mentors
and get certified as a barbecue judge and, you know,
big plans and everything with no money.
(chuckles)
And so, it was just really wild.
I would do a popup in LA,
and it would be sold out too.
Like at that time,
something new called The Eater came up
and I got written up in that and they just stormed
this like liquor store I opened up at.
And then it's like, really, I ended
up doing like three of those,
and like making enough money to buy my plane ticket back.
Like that's how, like what hand to mouth it was, you know,
really touch and go.
I would fly to Birmingham
and I didn't have enough money
to stay in a hotel every night.
So, I knew I would stay sleep in the car.
I would pack,
(laughs)
and I would set blankets
and I would go it from town to town.
And, you know, I would sleep in the car someplace.
I would get in a motel, some places.
But I would go to these like famous park restaurants
and I would talk to people
and they were just so kind,
they were just so open to show me things,
and teach me things.
And they would always in introduced me,
to the next place I should go
because I was moving from town to town.
It was like, they'll call him up, or send a message and say,
hey, this guy's coming by.
He's from Korea.
I ended up in a town called Batesville in Arkansas,
to learn how to be a barbecue judge.
That was like my big thing.
If I can do this, then it will make my barbecue better.
But these guys were really deep
into the competitive barbecue scene.
They said, Linus,
you should come to Memphis in May with us,
it's like next month.
And I gotta go back to Korea.
I was like, I don't think you want to do that.
I think you wanna,
this is like a once in a lifetime kind of chance.
And I didn't really know much about
the competitive barbecue industry.
So, it turns out Memphis in May
is also known as the super bowl of swine.
And, you know, we do pretty good.
We do pretty well.
I was just doing that for a couple years.
The popups competitions, popups competitions
whenever I could.
And we finally opened.
And then,
from the time it opened is like another thing.
'Cause doing business in Korea, boy, is it like
there's some things that are really quite easy compared
to the states and some things that are really quite hard.
Language is a big part of it.
Culture is a big part of it.
People, no matter what culture they're from,
that's a big part of it too.
It's a shame.
My Korean is not very good.
I've lived here for 10 years.
It's it's just shameful how bad it is.
I try now I make a little bit more of an effort
and I intend to make a more of an effort,
'cause it leaves me like somewhat lonely again,
very poor in my part being rather dismissive
of that or just saying,
that I've been too busy and I should make that effort.
And I am, and the little effort that I've made
what a difference it makes.
'Cause that's what I've been missing
is like connecting with people and not
not just other, just English speakers,
you just,
your pool just went down to something really small again.
And that's just so sad, you know,
So yeah.
I don't know that that's definitely a bucket list
or whatever you call it.
A resolution,
I have made and will make.
My name is Linus Kim
and this is my Korean American story.
(soft music)