Jin was the first Asian-American to play varsity high school basketball in the state of Delaware when he was a student at A.I. DuPont High School in Wilmington. (Photo by David Whitney)

By David Whitney

Chung Jin Oh, 35, did not speak a word of English when he came to the U.S. in 1995, but one thing he did not have to learn to do is smile. “Jin always has a smile on his face. He is one of the friendliest people you will ever meet,” said a reader who called the Local and urged us to do an article about him.

Although his first name is Chung, he uses his middle name, Jin, as a first name to avoid confusion with his brother, a computer expert in Delaware whose first name is also Chung. (He also has a sister in Seattle.) It is not unusual in Korea for siblings to have the same first name. (Also unusual is the fact that there are only about 30 or so last names in Korea, compared to countless thousands in the U.S.)

Jin, who was the first Asian-American to play varsity high school basketball in the state of Delaware when he was a student at A.I. DuPont High School in Wilmington, is currently a very popular server at Hokka Hokka, a restaurant at 7830 Germantown Ave. which serves Japanese food, even though the owners and all of the employees (except for one chef) are American or Korean.

Jin was a point guard who played one year of junior varsity basketball and one year of varsity basketball. “Our school was known more for its band than for basketball,” said Jin. “In my senior year we only won about 10 games and lost 21. I am not tall (5-foot-9), but I had great speed and good hang time, although I was a backup and did not score a whole lot.”

Although he was not a star, Jin would have won an award (if there was one) for the most time put in trying to perfect his game. “In the summertime I would go to the YMCA (in Wilmington) and play ball from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. with breaks and time to eat. Actually, about nine hours of playing time. Then I would go to play at an outdoor court with lights from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. That was not every day but most of the time.” (Obviously this schedule required almost superhuman endurance, which Jin gained as a member of the school’s cross-country team for three years.)

Jin’s parents came to the U.S. in 1982 and owned a dry cleaning business and later a grocery store in Wilmington, His father moved back to Korea after being here for 20 years because of homesickness, and Jin now lives with his mother in Wyncote. They spend a lot of time watching a TV channel that plays movies from all over the world, but every one has Korean subtitles. “My mom still does not know English really well,” Jin said.

After high school, Jin attended George Mason for three-and-a-half years, majoring in hotel management, but he did not graduate, largely for financial reasons. He did work briefly as a bellhop at the DuPont Hotel in Wilmington. “We had quite a few celebrities,” he said, “because we were the only five-star hotel in the state of Delaware. I carried the bags of Bruce Willis, who was my favorite actor. He gave me a $100 tip. I loved the uniforms and the hat we wore. It looked like a Marine uniform.”

After leaving college, Jin moved back home for a few months and then took a job as a server in a Japanese steakhouse in a mall in Maryland for almost four years. “The tips were good,” he said, “but the days were long, 10 to 11 hours each day, and I finally burned out.”

Jin then worked for a dry cleaning business for a year and a half and then moved to the northwest Philly area to take a job at Hokka Hokka in 2010. After one and a half years, he left (because of an “issue” with a co-worker who is no longer there) to work at a Korean restaurant at 5th and Cheltenham but came back to Hokka Hokka in March of this year, where he works 50 or more hours per week.

“I don’t complain about the hours,” he said, “because I love the owners. They treat me well, and the customers are really nice compared to the other places where I have worked. Every once in a while you are going to get a nasty customer in any restaurant, but there are very few here. It is very hard to find a restaurant with the right boss and the right co-workers and customers, and we do have that here, so I might be here for a long time.”

For more information, call 215-242-4489. David Whitney is a freelance writer from Erdenheim who has written for several community newspapers in the Philadelphia area.