Crafty couple open Korean paper shop

[attach]5452[/attach]Catherine Choi met her husband Hyun Suk while teaching English in Korea.

“He was waiting for an elevator and I walked by and we saw each other and fell in love,” she says.

After travelling back and forth between Korea and Canada, the pair settled in Toronto and opened Hanji Handmade Paper and Gifts on Bloor Street W. near Bathurst Street at the end of November.

The store offers a selection of imported goods from Korea such as handmade mulberry paper, stationery, cards, giftware and do-it-yourself kits to make hanji-based crafts. They have also started running workshops and hope to continue offering the sessions every Thursday.

“ ‘Hanji’ is the Korean word for paper,” she says. “It’s normally mulberry bark paper so it’s very strong and it’s very durable and you can do a lot of crafting with it.”

Although Hyun Suk opened his first company when he was 20 and owned several restaurants including a fried chicken delivery service, Choi says this is her first time being her own boss.

“I was really nervous,” she says. “I never thought I’d be a business owner so I was a little scared but now that we have it I’m so happy and every time I come here I’m so pleased to be here.”

She says they chose their location in Koreatown because they thought it would be a good fit since the community had restaurants and hair salons but lacked places that sold artisan goods. Choi says she also liked hanging out in the area when she first returned from Korea and missed the culture there.

Although the idea for their business had been brewing for two years, Choi says it was during a trip back to Korea that they decided to finalize their plans.

“We went to a hanji factory where they make the paper and the guy who runs it also has a school, so there was a class going on with children making kites out of the paper,” Choi says. “He was talking a lot about how he thinks if the whole world used this kind of paper, the environment would be saved and all these nice things and I was thinking, ‘maybe we should open the store, maybe this is the way to go.’ ”

She says mulberry paper is sustainable since the trees aren’t cut down and only branches are used to cultivate the paper. Choi also liked the idea of showcasing Korean culture in her community.

So far owning her own business has been full of highlights for Choi, including taking the newspaper off the windows and seeing her store for the first time.

“Then our opening day was the Santa Claus Parade and it was just exciting for people to see it for the first time and getting great responses from everybody and people being happy in here.”

Choi says her goal is to make her own paper eventually and offer an art school component with the store. For now she says she hopes their goods help make their customers happy.

“I read an article a few weeks ago that the more beauty you have in your life, the happier you are and I think that what we offer is a nice, beautiful place to shop and beautiful things you can buy and beautiful things you can make while you are here,” she says. “So yeah, I just hope they’re happy.”