Friday fiction: The tailor of Itaewon

The Itaewon tailor who made suits for North Korea's Kim family

Monk, Theophilus Monk, received a mail saying he had a job interview. We were in Itaewon, Seoul’s seedy expatriate red-light district with its knock-offs and knickknacks, and after much drink, it made sense to buy a suit.

There was ‘Kim’s Suits’, ‘Park Ready-Clothing’, and ‘Chung Fashions and Quick Quick Alterations’. Monk, whose head stood well above mine, saw a hastily-pasted poster on a traffic pole with directions to ‘Finn Fuks Fashions’.

“Finn Fuks…” Monk repeated the name. He turned it over in his head and spoke again.

“Like, thin fucks? Ha! That’s classic.”

Within ten minutes, Monk was measured. The two of us sat outside the shop at a sticky table and talked to the ruddy-faced, red-haired patron. His wife, who is irrelevant to the story and spoke very little, sewed and did little else. On that day, I learnt a lot about the Itaewon tailor.

Finn Fuks was an alcoholic, a tailor, and an associate of the North Korean leader.

He was an alcoholic because he drank every day, all day, at that small, sticky table placed just outside his tailor shop, although he blamed genetics. He was a tailor because he’d trained for it in Dublin, although sometimes he also blamed genetics, as his father was also a tailor. He was an associate of the North Korean leader because while living in Paris in the 1990s, he’d pretended to have IRA connections to secure North Korean manufactured coal-fabricated nylon micro-spandex sporting apparel that he believed would make him rich, and genetics had nothing to do with it.

Few know that North Korea was in the seventies and eighties, a leader in synthetic fiber clothing materials. With a lack of resources and a desire to be self-reliant, they led the world in nylons, polyesters, spandex and most notably, anthracite-formaldehyde produced vinylon — their own creation. According to the tailor, they were also responsible for some very promising, breathable, sweat-resistant sporty underwear that he’d seen in Japan, after a late-night meeting in a Roppongi back-alley saké bar. This ultimately led him to North Korea.

“You know him, that Kim fella? I designed yer man a stab-proof suit to fit his frame and platform shoes,” he claimed.

That the owner of a 2-hour tailor-made suit store in Seoul had made suits for North Korean leaders may astound you, but then you’ve missed what obsessed me that night. How the hell does one get a name like Finn Fuks?

Well, apparently some time ago an overweight German tailor came to County Kerry, Ireland, in search of reasonably priced tweed. Now the name Fuks, most often spelt Fuchs, translates from the German as Fox. The German tailor knew the family’s spelling was unfortunate when he arrived in Ireland, but still knew it was more fortunate than his extended family, the Fucks who’d left for America a half-century earlier. There should probably be a comma somewhere there to imply that Fucks was their name, not their designation, but this is, in the end, beside the point.

The German tailor fell in love and decided to stay forever, but suffered a heart attack within a week — not before impregnating one Dolores Finn, maidservant, chambermaid, and oft-time drinker at The Ogle Inn. Eight months later, a baby boy entered the world and took on his mother’s surname as first name, and his father’s surname.

The name was not so much of an issue in the Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking world, nor in the small Bavarian mountain town where he spent his summers with his deceased father’s family. It only became an issue when later in life, he opened a 2-hour tailor-made suit store in Seoul’s Itaewon.

Monk put on the suit and we went back on the tear accompanied by an Irish tailor who’d dressed the North Korean leader. The suit fell apart by the end of the night but the tailor’s claim to be an associate of the North Korean leader stayed fast.

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Sometimes fiction can be more speculative, but more often just reflects reality from a different perspective. Either way, sorting fact with fiction can help build the creativity needed in strategic analysis.