Su Jung Pae doesn’t like her weight these days. After a few of her mother’s choice comments, the 23-year-old decided to cut out just about every carbohydrate from her diet, including her favorite dish, jajangmyun. 

“My mum is so Korean,” she says. “She tells me every time she sees me that I’m getting fatter.”

So today at her favorite Chinese-Korean restaurant in New Malden, while others in her party happily slurp their noodles heavily saturated in black bean sauce, she apathetically scoops a bland spoonful of sundubu into her mouth, sans the rice.

Just outside, as the sun unabashedly shines its rays onto the world below, a 30-something woman sits on a bench, delicately eating her kimbap while reading The Korea Times. A group of girls scurry out of a PC bang while speaking loudly in Korean about what they saw on the hit MBC TV show “Moo Han Do Jeon.” Housewives carrying heavy bags hurriedly walk home from shopping at Seoul Plaza to begin preparing lunch as the Friday afternoon hustle begins.

It’s just another spring day in a neighborhood where the street is bustling with an eclectic mix of hair salons, noraebangs and restaurants.

This is London.

The Korean Embassy estimates that there are now more than 24,000 Koreans residing in the U.K., about 21,000 who live in London. Of the latter number, 8,000 live in the town New Malden. Known as London’s Koreatown, it is home to the largest Korean community in all of Europe. While it’s nowhere as massive as the Koreatowns of Los Angeles or Flushing — not even Chicago or Atlanta — it’s a place where Korean culture is alive and flourishing.

Pae’s parents moved to London in 1983, two years before she was born, and settled in New Malden. Back then, New Malden was hardly a Korean community. When Pae was younger, she only knew of one or two Korean stores. It was not until the mid-90s that New Malden became the Korean hub that it is today.

James Grayson, a professor specializing in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield, says most of the Korean population arrived in New Malden during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and that immigrants are continuing to settle in droves. “It’s almost like Korean immigration in the United States during the 1960s,” Grayson says. “It’s something to look out for.”

No one quite knows for sure why Koreans settled in New Malden, which many view as a unique, if not random city to build an immigrant community around. One theory is that New Malden housing was cheaper than neighboring Wimbledon, where highly-esteemed Korean ambassadors once lived. Another theory is that the community used to be home to many Japanese immigrants, which made the area more comforting to first-time Korean immigrants who knew nothing about London. Yet a third theory is that the area was first settled by two prominent Koreans who set up a business, and the word quickly spread around London that the area was a hotspot for immigration.