The young Korean saved diligently for more than a year to come to Brisbane.

Night after night, as her savings mounted, she studied Australian culture and language, determined to fit in when she finally arrived.

Like any other travelling 22-year-old, she landed in the foreign land full of aspiration and excitement.

Within just 40 days she was dead, the victim of an unfathomable killing in the country she had so longed to visit.

"Eunji, as she came down this street, was just in that moment in time in the wrong place," Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk told mourners at a city memorial service on Wednesday afternoon.

An estimated one thousand mourners gathered near the city park where Eunji's battered body was found to pay tribute to a young life cut so tragically short.

The vast majority of the crowd had not met the girl whose kindness they were told was her defining characteristic.

Yet still they came.

Members of Brisbane's 30,000-strong Korean community, many of them inconsolable, stood in the sun among office workers, men in workboots and people in shorts and thongs, all of whom had been touched by Eunji's heartbreaking death.

Many men came clutching bunches of flowers to lay at the Wickham Park staircase that has become a makeshift memorial to the young student.

There were infants, the elderly and all in between, many of them wiping tears from their eyes.

Some came to mourn, some came to pay respect.

All came to affirm one message.

Eunji's violent, senseless and brutal death is not reflective of our city.

This is not our Brisbane.

"To Eunji's family, I simply say the City of Brisbane and its people grieve with you," Cr Quirk said.

"While it's hard to find answers as to why a crime of this sort would occur, today we stand as one in sorrow."

Ms Ban left her Roma Street apartment at 4am Sunday to make the short walk to work at a nearby hotel where she was a cleaner.

Her bloodied body was found in Wickham Park by a passerby at 4.20am.

Police have charged Spring Hill teenager Alex Reuben McEwan, 19, with her murder.

Korea Society Queensland president Richard Lee struggled to maintain his composure on Wednesday when he stepped up to the microphone to pay tribute to the young woman.

Turning to the flowers laid out near the spot Ms Ban's body was found, he quietly wept, but was soon comforted by Cr Quirk who whispered, "I'll stand with you mate".

Mr Lee thanked the Brisbane community for sharing in the Ban family's grief.

"I hope that we take this opportunity to improve responsibility to make this great city of Brisbane a better and safer place to live in," he said.

Like many Koreans, Eunji was a devout Christian and worshipped in Brisbane at the Korean Presbyterian Church in Ann Street.

Minister Manyoung Kim told the crowd that since arriving in the city less than six weeks ago, Eunji had diligently studied English, while working early mornings as a hotel cleaner.

He said she had quickly made friends among the city's Korean student population and lamented that her promising life was cut so short.

"She was hoping to continue studying [at] post-graduate level in her chosen field, microbiology," he said.

"What a brief and incomplete life was hers."

Eunji Ban leaves behind her parents and twin younger brothers in Korea.

A fund has been established to help her family return her body to her homeland for burial.

Donations can be made to ANZ Bank

BSB: 014 240

Account number: 3518 53582

Account name: Korean Society