A home away from home

A grocery store provides all kinds of Korean goods.

"At the time, there were already a dozen fried chicken restaurants there, but none of them tasted good. I wanted to bring authentic Korean fried chicken to China," he says.

However, Sim's relatives who own a popular fried chicken restaurant in Korea, didn't support his idea and refused to share the recipe of their secret sauce with him.

Undeterred, Sim developed his own recipe and opened a fried chicken takeaway in Wudaokou in 2006. The business was initially slow to get off the ground, but improved when he opened a store in Wangjing in 2011.

Having run the business for eight years, Sim says he has seen an increase in the number of Chinese customers recently.

"Thanks to the Korean TV series, there is now a fad in China for eating fried chicken. We have experienced a significant increase in Chinese customers and daily revenue. Previously, about 80 percent of our customers were Koreans, but this figure was reversed when the TV show My Love from the Star was aired then 80 percent of customers were Chinese. Now things are cooling down, but still the balance of our customers is half Chinese and half Korean," he says.

Sim's cuisine has become increasingly popular and he's planning to open two more restaurants, in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, and in Chengdu, Sichuan province. With his good business prospects, Sim believes he'll soon have proved himself to his relatives in South Korea.