by MICHELLE WOO
You know when you’re waiting forever for your meal to arrive, and you say with hunger and exasperation, “What are they doing? Picking the vegetables?” That may actually be the case at a popular Korean restaurant in Manhattan. In an in-depth piece for Gothamist, writer Sukjong Hong details the alleged brutal demands on employees at Kum Gang San, a Koreatown landmark that proclaims to be the “No. 1 Korean Restaurant in New York City.”
According to a federal lawsuit filed against the restaurant’s management by 11 former employees (nine Korean and two Latino), waiters, bussers and kitchen workers have been forced to:
– work from 7 a.m. until 2 a.m. without overtime
– spend their days off picking cabbages and chili peppers at a farm (to make kimchi)
– launder tablecloths
– mow the lawn
– shovel snow at the owner’s house
– help the owner’s son move to a new residence
– attend Sunday church services
– drop on their knees and beg for forgiveness if they refused to work on the farm
One former employee claims that more waiters had been interested in participating in the lawsuit, but restaurant owner Ji Sung Yoo found out about the complaint and threatened to report them to immigration authorities and blacklist them from ever working in New York’s Korean community again. Read the full, horrifying story here. The employees hope that coming forward will result in improved working conditions at Kum Gang San and beyond.
Photo via Kum Gang San
