Meet Mona Yoo and Mr. Ha.

Mr. Ha trained in the Japanese thermal reconditioning method in the early 1990s and has been practicing it continuously ever since. He is the reason clients drive from Seattle, Tacoma, Auburn, and Olympia for a single appointment.

His approach is patient and unhurried. A straightening session with Mr. Ha runs four to six hours because that is how long it takes to do the work properly — section by section, with the heat and cream calibrated to your specific hair, not a generic protocol.

If you are a first-time straightening client, Mr. Ha or Mona will do the consultation themselves. If your hair isn’t a good candidate, they will tell you. If it is, you will walk out with the best hair you have ever had.

Mona opened Moa Hair Studio in Federal Way in 1993 and has run it the same quiet way ever since. Honest consultations. Imported Korean care products. The belief that great hair is built one client at a time.

Mona answers the phone most days. If you call Moa, there is a very good chance you are speaking with the owner herself — and that she will tell you straight whether your hair is ready for the service you’re asking about.

Outside the studio, Mona is a long-standing fixture in the Federal Way small-business community and a believer in serving regulars for decades, not seasons.