HONOLULU (KHON2) — The hum of downtown Honolulu will soon get a taste of Seoul.

CU, one of South Korea’s largest convenience store chains, is opening its first United States location in Hawaiʻi to mark a new era for local shoppers and food lovers alike.

The store at 1088 Bishop Street, inside the Executive Centre, will open next week, with its grand opening and blessing ceremony scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 12 at noon.

“Downtown Honolulu is the perfect place for us to open our first CU Hawaii,” said Robert
Kurisu, CEO of CU Hawaii LLC. “The store will offer fresh grab-and-go food, customizable
beverages, a wide range of popular instant ramen, and many other unique Korean and
local products for people working, living and visiting downtown.”

A new kind of convenience

Gina Haverly, president of CU Hawaiʻi, called the Nov. 6 soft launch “a special day for some of our special vendors and friends and family.”

For Haverly, this opening marks a moment of pride and progress. It’s not only about a new store but about making history in the islands.

“We’re gearing up to open our first CU store, not just in Hawaiʻi, but in the United States,” Haverly said.

CU’s reach in Asia is staggering, with more than 18,000 stores in South Korea and 680 more in Mongolia, Malaysia and Kazakhstan. The Honolulu store will be the first step in expanding across Oʻahu and beyond.

After years of planning, CU Hawaiʻi’s debut in downtown Honolulu is only the beginning. Haverly said the company’s vision reaches far beyond Bishop Street.

“We are looking to open so many stores starting on the island of Oʻahu, potentially throughout the while,” she said.

Authentic flavors meet local taste

Haverly explained that CU’s food program aims to stay true to its Korean roots while still honoring Hawaiʻi’s diverse tastes. She said the store’s mission is to deliver real Korean flavors to the islands without compromise.

“We haven’t adjusted the recipes to the local palate,” she said. “What we’ve done instead for our local palate is we created a line called Ho‘ina.”

The Ho‘ina line, developed with local celebrity chef Sheldon Simeon, will feature dishes tailored for Hawaiʻi.

“He’s helped us create our local recipes,” Haverly said. “So, CU Korea authentic recipes for you to line up, me for the local palate.”

Alongside that menu will be CU’s signature Korean foods like gimbap, musubi, and bento, along with ramen and udon cooking stations where customers can heat and eat on site.

“We also have cookers in our store so you can cook your ramen and your tapioca and all of that here,” she said.

Community and opportunity

Haverly said the new Honolulu store is already creating local jobs, with about 20 employees hired and more positions to fill as CU expands across Oʻahu.

“We’re interviewing and hiring for store managers, assistant store managers, leads and sales,” she said. “So come see us. We have awesome benefits, too.”

To mark the grand opening, CU plans to thank its first customers with a little extra excitement and appreciation.

“On our grand opening day, we have these awesome swag bags that we’re giving out to the first 100 purchasers,” Haverly said.

As Hawaiʻi becomes CU’s fourth overseas market, the convenience store giant is bringing with it a modern design, Korean national brands and private-label items, along with local partnerships that celebrate the islands’ mix of flavors and people.

Haverly described the launch as a moment shaped by collaboration and gratitude as she reflected on the many hands that helped make CU Hawaiʻi a reality.

“We have our special vendors, partners who really helped us bring this together,” she said. “And we have obviously really great friends in the media coming to visit us today.”

The CU Hawaiʻi story begins in Honolulu next week, but for Haverly, the work of blending Korean innovation with Hawaiʻi spirit has only just begun.

Kurisu said CU Hawaiʻi’s menu reflects both the global appeal of Korean cuisine and the company’s commitment to authenticity.

“We know that Korean culture, trends and food are very popular,” he said. “We worked diligently to ensure we are offering the same great CU Korean fresh food and snacks with authentic Korean flavors.”

He added that the company also aims to celebrate Hawaiʻi’s local identity while introducing new flavors from across Asia.

“We also wanted to honor what is unique about our local culture and palates, which can be found in our own Ho‘ina brand foods,” Kurisu said. “And as we expand, we want to ensure that we are delighting our customers with unique local and Asia-inspired treats, foods and snacks, along with new items and recipes that will be added frequently.”

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Former Miss China turned stand-up comedian Jiaoying Summers is on her way to Hawaii to perform two shows at the Blue Note Hawaii.

The shows are part of her international tour ‘Jiaoying: What Specie Are You?,’ which took her across Asia and Australia.

Tickets to her Blue Note shows are available for purchase here.

Summers is best known for her dark humor and deprecating jokes about herself and her family.

The comedian said performing is therapeutic, reflecting on her upbringing in China during the one-child policy era.

She also lives with bipolar disorder.

According to Summers, it took years to build the confidence to switch from acting to comedy.

“I struggled with trying to be likable, but I realized I’m not likable,” said Summers. “I just have to be honest, raw and specific about what affects me, and that made me find my voice, not to try to please anyone.

“The ‘stage high’ helps me feel better about myself,” she added. “I let all of the things I’m ashamed of out.”

Summers said one of her motivations for performing is providing a voice for others.

“I want my voice to be so big that I would be able to speak for people who have no voice,” she said. “Empowerment is a big thing for me.”

In 2023, Summers became the first Chinese comedian to headline and sell out the iconic Apollo Theatre in New York.

Her performances regularly go viral, garnering more than 1 billion views and over 4 million followers.

Summers credits her success to blending her finance background with her artistic endeavors.

“Whenever someone books me in a club, I exhaust every resource to make sure it’s a sold-out show for a good performance,” Summers said. “I just want to make whoever books me money.”

Summers said she also wants to help other comedians become successful.

“I have so many tips I could give to comedians who want to see how to get their numbers up on social media, promote a show, and have good relationships at a club because those are business skills as artists,” she said.

Summers is also set to debut her one-hour comedy special on Hulu on Saturday, Nov. 8.

Her performances at the Blue Note are scheduled for Friday, Dec. 5, at 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Summers’ second special may be on its way after filming began last month in Seattle.

“That’s my origin story. I’ll talk about my life, all the funny, all the battles I won, and all the times I failed and got back up,” she said.

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For generations, West Hawaii’s picturesque coastlines have been a gathering place for fishing, swimming and ceremony. But those sacred waters are also gathering something else. 

Using airborne mapping, field sampling and advanced statistical analysis, researchers at Arizona State University’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science in Hawaii revealed that nearly half of West Hawaii’s coastline is being quietly contaminated with raw sewage.

As a result, coral reefs in bays like Hōnaunau are struggling to flourish, weakening ecosystems that people rely on for food, and harming their ability to protect coastline communities from erosion and rising sea levels. The sewage-contaminated ocean water not only threatens the environment but also exposes swimmers to E. coli, salmonella and other pathogens or parasites that sicken people.

The researchers collected water samples from 47 shoreline sites in the South Kohala, North Kona and South Kona regions. Of those sites, 42 percent had elevated levels of a bacteria that indicates sewage contamination, and the levels were high enough in nearly a quarter of the sites to threaten both the environment and human health, their study found. 

“The most alarming thing was how consistently we found contamination at popular swimming sites, places where families take their kids,” said Kelly Hondula, associate research scientist at the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science and lead author of the study. “Some of these sites regularly test above public-health thresholds, meaning swimming there poses a higher risk of disease.” 

Cesspools and leaky septic tanks are a key reason for the water contamination, the researchers say.

Hawaii banned the creation of new cesspools in 2016, the last U.S. state to do so. But 

more than 88,000 cesspools, which Hawaii’s Department of Health describes as “little more than holes in the ground,” still operate in the state. Each day, homes and businesses using this inexpensive but ineffective form of waste management discharge more than 53 million gallons of untreated sewage. 

Andrea Kealoha, an assistant professor of marine biology and geochemistry at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, who wasn’t involved with the new study, notes that the use of injection wells in the state also contributes to sewage contamination in water.

“They take the wastewater, all of the wastewater, to facilities in a community, they treat that water, but they don’t really remove the nutrients or the other pollutants,” she said. 

What makes the West Hawaii region so vulnerable to coastline contamination is a phenomenon known as submarine groundwater discharge. West Hawaii is built upon the young lava flows of the Hualālai and Mauna Loa volcanoes. The hardened lava, once fluid, has dried up and is filled with cracks, tubes and voids. When homes, businesses and wastewater management plants discharge wastewater into the ground from cesspools, septic tanks or injection wells, it quickly travels through the lava tubes and fractures, emerging under the coast’s tideline. 

That process disperses the substances carried along with the waste. Among them is nitrogen, a nutrient that helps plants grow but in higher concentrations can harm marine ecosystems. In such conditions, it’s harder for coral reefs to reproduce and recover after incidents like bleaching. 

“The nitrogen that leaks out into the ocean from groundwater contamination and into the reef system stimulates the growth of algae, the kind of algae that grows on the sea floor, like a weed. And that algae overtakes the coral,” said Greg Asner, director of Arizona State University’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science and senior author of the study.

When that algae dies and decomposes on the coastline floor, it consumes oxygen in the water. Too much of that leaves fish and invertebrates unable to survive. 

“If we continue on the pathway of not taking action, not improving water quality, we’re going to see more ecosystem loss,” said Jasmine Fournier, executive director of the Ocean Sewage Alliance, which aims to reduce the waste contamination problem. “The things we expect when we go into the water, we might not be seeing as much anymore. We’ll see more algal blooms, more fish kills, fishermen who can no longer maintain their livelihoods because the fish stocks are gone.” 

A 2017 law requires all cesspools to be converted to more effective waste management by 2050, but Kealoha said ASU’s findings should prompt more action. 

“We have such a hard time as local communities to combat the whole greater climate issue—which comes with ocean warming and ocean acidification—but we do have power to combat these local stressors,” she said.