Hermosa Beach About Town
Return to Wee’s Kitchen Jin Nok Wi, his son Soora, and a documentary crew at Martha’s last week. Photo In August of 1972, Jin Nok Wi took over the Surfburger, a beachside hamburger stand a few feet from The Strand, on 22nd Street in Hermosa Beach. But as summer turned into fall, Wi, a Korean immigrant, saw that the tourists and beachgoers who sustained the business began to disappear. To drum up additional customers, he started selling Asian-themed food for dinner. And so began Wee’s Kitchen, a restaurant that ran for almost a decade in the building that today houses Martha’s 22nd Grill. Approaching his 90th birthday, Wi returned to his former business location for the first time in more than 35 years last week for lunch at Martha’s. The reunion was filmed by a Korean film crew that is producing a documentary about Wi that is expected to open there later this summer. Wi, who used an altered spelling for the name of the restaurant to make it easier for Americans to pronounce, worked as a radio broadcaster before immigrating to the United States. He gained fame as the first person to announce that North Korean troops had crossed the 38th parallel in 1950, setting off the Korean War…
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