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In late April, a small group of American chefs spent a week in Korea not on a food tour, but at work. They pounded soybeans by hand in Damyang. They packed kimchi by hand in Namyangju. They stood in a mountain kitchen at Baegyangsa and cooked alongside Monk Jeong Gwan — temple cuisine made from foraged and fermented ingredients, prepared in silence with intent. They marked their own jars of doenjang and ganjang and left them on Master Kisoondo's grounds to ferment. Somewhere in South Jeolla Province, those jars are still aging.

This is what Kim'C Market built access to.

From April 25 to May 2, Kim'C Market's Culinary Odyssey to Korea brought a group of chefs and food professionals from across the U.S. on an eight-day immersion through Korea. The week was built around direct work with three of the country's most respected food figures.

In Damyang, the group spent a full day at Master Kisoondo's fermentation school — Korea's foremost jang master, 55 years of practice. The session began with theory: nitrogen content, protein-derived umami, the chemistry of what time and salt and soybeans actually produce. Then they worked. By the end of the day, each chef had their own jar labeled and set to age on her grounds.

In Namyangju, they worked with Master Lee Ha-yeon — kimchi master, teacher to roughly 1,000 students a year — with enough depth to understand not just process but variation: why a batch made with soy sauce instead of salted seafood behaves differently, what that means for a working kitchen.

At Baegyangsa, they cooked alongside Monk Jeong Gwan — the temple cuisine master who has drawn René Redzepi, Eric Ripert, and chefs from Noma, Central, and Disfrutar to study with her. In March of this year, over 200 French chefs visited her temple. The group were not observers. They participated in the preparation: foraged and fermented ingredients, techniques rooted in centuries of monastic practice.

The week extended further — Seoul's live markets, the ceramics culture of Icheon, the organic green tea of Boseong, and the tidal flats of Sinan, where the group harvested the surf clams native to the region and encountered firsthand the salt and seafood traditions that run through so much of Korean cooking.

Why It Matters

Korean food is gaining serious traction in fine dining globally. Foreign chefs are no longer satisfied with secondary sources. They want the primary ones. They want to understand why 55 years of practice produces a soy sauce that smells like aged cheese. They want to know what "hand taste" actually means in fermentation terms. They want a jar with their name on it aging in Damyang.

That kind of access — direct, immersive, technically serious — is only possible through personal networks. Kim'C Market is that network. The same relationships that put Master Kisoondo's jang, Master Lee's kimchi, and the ingredients from Boseong and Sinan in Kim'C Market's catalog are the relationships that opened these doors.

For chefs working with Korean ingredients — or considering it — understanding where those ingredients come from, and who makes them, is not supplementary. It is the work.

The Ingredients You Already Source

Several of the producers and regions from the trip map directly to what's available through biz.kimcmarket.com:

• Kisoondo jang — doenjang, ganjang, and ssamjang from Master Kisoondo's school in Damyang
• Boseong organic green tea — from the fields the group visited
• Sinan sea salt — from the tidal flats where the group harvested clams

These are not proximity claims. The trip was built on the same sourcing relationships the catalog reflects.

Browse the full catalog — biz.kimcmarket.com
Wholesale pricing available after account registration.

November 2026

The next tour runs in November 2026. If you're interested in joining — or want to know more about how Kim'C Market works with culinary professionals — reach out at hello@kimcmarket.com.

As featured in Chosun Ilbo, May 7, 2026: "Star Chefs Master Korean Fermentation with Local Artisans"
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