Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time Podcast

Somewhere in Korea right now, a coffee truck is wearing an actor’s face. It’s covered in banners and jokes, and it’s serving lattes to an entire crew. Somebody paid for all of it, and somebody else kept the receipts.

In this episode, we meet fans in the Philippines who arrange a coffee delivery to a Korean drama set and see what happens when stars treat their fans in return. We also look at why a gift can get complicated once everyone can see what everyone else received.

This is the companion to the ne...

Twenty-three years ago, my husband’s job at LG in Korea came with a place to live—and three meals a day. His monthly dormitory fee, including breakfast, was ₩21,000 (about $18 at the time). Lunch and dinner at work were free. We sometimes spent more on a single date-night meal.

In this episode, we explore how meals and housing became part of some Korean employers’ role, and why a job seeker might love the cafeteria while getting nervous about a company that calls itself “like a family.”

The companion essay, The Lunch Tray Grows Up, explores workplace ca...

A school lunch can arrive on time even when the people making it are struggling. How did South Korea’s school kitchen workers get others to listen?

This episode follows the workers whose accounts of illness helped prompt investigations and lung cancer screening, and the unions, researchers, and parents who brought kitchen conditions into public view.

There’s also a small thought experiment: one worker is off sick, the ingredients have arrived, and the lunch bell shows no interest in rescheduling.

The companion newsletter, The Cost of a Hot Lunch, examines working conditions and...

The same school cook might be called ‘teacher,’ ‘auntie,’ or ‘ajumma,’ and each name can change what we notice about her work.

In this episode, we follow the words spoken around Korean school lunch—from a serving counter to a workers’ strike—and ask what happens when care becomes someone’s job.

The companion essay, The Women Behind Korea’s School Lunch Trays, follows the skill behind the meal. Here, we listen to the language around it. Together, they give you the whole picture.

Curious about more everyday stories from Korea? Browse my visual essay archive a...

In a Korean school, “teacher” can be someone who plans your lunch. And the person cooking it might end up competing on Netflix.

Why does South Korea have nutrition teachers? This episode explores the people behind Korean school lunches: dietitians, teachers, cooks, and the different kinds of expertise their titles recognize. Along the way, we meet Kim Min-ji, whose school menus became an online sensation, and Lee Mi-yeong, the “Master of School Meals” from Culinary Class Wars. Their stories raise a bigger question: what makes everyday cafeteria skill worthy of public recognition?

Curious to see the scho...

Before Korea’s stainless-steel lunch trays, there were dosirak: lunches packed at dawn, compared at shared desks, and, in some classrooms, inspected by teachers checking the grains in a child’s rice.

After a month of research, conversations, and memory-gathering, I trace the lived history behind Korean school lunch: the kindergarten that assigned my mother a different side dish to pack each day; the coal stove in my fourth-grade classroom; the families who packed two lunchboxes because school lasted into the night; and the strange moment when a school-lunch referendum led Seoul’s mayor to resign.

This...

A Korean school lunch tray looks simple: rice, soup, kimchi, and a few side dishes. Follow it far enough, though, and it leads straight into politics, invisible labor, hagwon schedules, convenience-store dinners, child poverty, and the very different ways childhood can look depending on the family you are born into.

That is where this new season is headed.

Also in this episode: I return after a two-month break, explain the podcast’s new Tuesday rhythm, and introduce a project I have been quietly building all summer—an online program about taegyo, the Korean tradition of pren...

Yes, I did say I was taking a break last week. And yet, here I am in your feed again. (Life comes at you fast, especially during the summer.)

In this special, highly personal episode of Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time, I am sitting down with a cup of coffee to share the honest story behind my summer hiatus. No formal essays today, just a warm, behind-the-scenes chat about what happens when life, parenting, and independent writing collide.

Read the companion newsletter here: I Said I Was Taking a Break. Here’s the Wh...

What if convenience has a night shift?

In this Season 1 finale of Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time, I look at Korea’s culture of speed through the people who make everyday convenience possible: delivery workers, warehouse workers, cleaners, cafeteria workers, and others whose labor is visible as service but often invisible as work.

This episode is not a reading of the newsletter. Think of it as the companion route: same destination, different road. The essay and podcast work together to show the bigger picture behind Korea’s fast delivery culture, invisible labor, platform work...

What if the most dangerous factory floor in South Korea had no walls?

In 2022, a food delivery platform claimed the number one spot for industrial accident insurance filings in South Korea — and has held it every year since. It beat out shipyards, coal mines, and steel mills.

The workplace was a public road.

The machinery was an app.

In this episode, I review Park Jung-hoon’s 2023 book Platforms Do Not Deliver Safety (플랫폼은 안전을 배달하지 않는다), a raw and clear-eyed account of Korean delivery riders, platform labor, road danger, and the hidden systems that turn speed into risk.

We look a...

You’ve seen the map. You’ve watched the little dot move toward your door. You’ve opened the bag without thinking twice about who carried it there.

This episode is here to make you think twice.

In this companion episode to this week’s newsletter, “The App Does Not Deliver,” I look more closely at Park Jung-hoon’s 2020 book Baedal Minjok Does Not Deliver: Korean-Style Platform Labor, as Told by Riders.

This is not the audiobook version of the essay. It is the exploded-view diagram.

The newsletter gives you the argument. The...

Food delivery seems ordinary until you start following the meal.

You tap the app. The food arrives. You eat.

Simple, right?

But in Korea, that small sequence can lead you almost everywhere: to eighteenth-century cold noodles, moving-day jjajangmyeon, fried chicken at the Han River, one-person households, app reviews, apartment towers, invisible labor, and the strange comfort of eating alone without being seen.

This week’s newsletter is “Dinner Will Find You: The History and Hidden Infrastructure of Korean Food Delivery.” The essay follows the history and infrastructure. The podcast follows the feelin...

This week, we return to mukbang, but not the gentle “screen-table” version. We’re talking about what happened when comfort became content, and content became an industry.

If the newsletter is the clean narrative (money, scandals, trust), this companion podcast is the director’s commentary: my “Professor Yoon” deep dive into grounded cognition (why your brain can practically taste the screen), the rise of the Global Average Diner, a quick “taste algorithm” breakdown, and a practical media-literacy checklist you can actually use. Read + listen, and you get the whole picture.

💬 I’d really love to hear what this brough...

This week’s newsletter looked at mukbang as the next step after honbap (혼밥), or eating alone in Korea. But this episode is not just the newsletter read aloud with better breathing.

Think of it as the companion dish.

In the essay, I wrote about how mukbang turns the table for one into a screen-table. In this episode, I stay closer to the feeling of it: the voice in the room, the sound of food, the livestream chat, the strange comfort of watching someone eat, and why a person might press play before taking the first bite o...

This week’s newsletter followed honbap (혼밥), or eating alone, through Korean popular culture: dramas, webtoons, variety shows, and coin karaoke booths.

This companion episode takes the slower path.

Instead of repeating the newsletter, I spend more time with two Korean books that have not yet been translated into English: 혼자 점심 먹는 사람을 위한 산문 (Prose for People Who Eat Lunch Alone) and 나만 잘되게 해주세요 (Please Let Me Be the One Who Makes It).

Together, these books show what screens cannot always capture as easily: the inner texture of lunch, labor, family, small talk, exhaustion, and the strange relief of eating alone.

So if the newsletter gives you the cu...

This week’s episode is a companion to my newsletter essay, not an audio version of it. Read the essay and listen to the episode together, and you’ll get the fuller picture.

The newsletter tells the broader story of how honbap, eating alone in Korea, moved from quiet embarrassment to restaurants, map filters, one-person menus, and a visible part of modern Korean life.

The podcast takes a slightly different route. Here, I slow down and ask what it feels like to eat alone in a culture where eating together has carried so much meaning. Why...

This is the companion episode to this week’s newsletter, “Did You Eat?”: The Three Words That Explain Korean Culture.

The newsletter opens the door. This episode stays in the kitchen a little longer.

In the essay, I wrote about why the Korean question “밥 먹었어?” (bap meogeosseo?, “Did you eat?”) is never just about food. In this episode, I go deeper into the Korean table itself: how meals became a language of care, how families became sikgu or “eating mouths,” how children learned nunchi at the dinner table, and how even workplace dinners carried the old grammar of hierarchy, loya...

This episode is a companion to this week’s Substack essay, “The Korean Table Is Not Finished Until Someone Suggests Coffee.”

Today, we move from Korean restaurant buttons and “저기요!” to paper napkin hygiene, shared banchan, sungnyung, nurungji, mix coffee, iced Americano, and the family memories hidden inside everyday eating habits.

The newsletter is the table.This episode is the coffee afterward.

💬 I’d really love to hear what this brought up for you. Come find me here and share your thoughts, stories, or questions.

Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time is written and hosted...

This episode is the companion to this week’s Substack essay. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s waiting for you right here!

But even if you have, come listen anyway. The podcast goes further.

Korean food doesn’t just feed people. It stages little social worlds. In this companion episode, I follow tteokbokki, ramyeon, winter street snacks, and the Korean art of “just one bite” into the deeper language of relation.

In this episode

* Why tteokbokki (떡볶이, spicy rice cakes) feels like childhood for so many Koreans

* The after-school w...

What if Korean food isn’t less joyful than Swedish fika or Spanish tapas, but simply joy spoken in a different accent?

This episode is the audio companion to this week’s Substack essay:

Beyond the Iced Americano: Does Korea Have Food That Is “Just” for Fun? — Searching for the Soul of Agenda-Free Joy (Part 1)

It started with a reader comment. Lena asked:

“If iced Americanos keep the country running and soju keeps people functional enough to show up the next day, what’s the Korean food that’s purely about pleasure?”

Once a month, I read a book written in Korean that hasn’t been translated into English and bring it to you. Not because I enjoy being the only one who can read it — though honestly, sometimes — but because some of the most interesting thinking about Korea is happening in Korean, and it deserves a wider audience.

This month's book is “What Pain Makes Visible” (아프면 보이는 것들). It's a collection by thirteen medical anthropologists asking one question across thirteen very different kinds of suffering: whose pain does Korean society take seriously, and whose does it quietly set aside?

The newsletter and the p...

Sorry this week’s episode is late. I had recorded it, but when I opened the file to edit, my voice suddenly sounded oddly metallic, so I had to scrap it and record again.

This episode grows out of this week’s newsletter, but it wanders a little farther: into the backstory, the books, and the very Korean logic behind iced Americano in winter. In other words, this is not just a story about coffee.

It’s a story about work, habit, space, youth, and the small stubborn self that still says, “I’ll have it iced.”<...

This week’s episode takes the long way around one deceptively simple idea: after birth, mothers need care.

We begin with Korea’s sanhujori (산후조리) and follow what happens when an old postpartum instinct of warmth, rest, and nourishment becomes a modern system: the joriwon, or postpartum care center.

Along the way, I take a quick world tour through China’s zuo yuezi (坐月子), Japan’s satogaeri bunben (里帰り分娩), and the Dutch tradition of kraamzorg — and yes, I’m spelling them out here in case my Korean tongue committed a few minor international offenses while pronouncing them out loud.

This episode also includ...

This episode is a companion audio to this week’s Substack newsletter on sanhujori (산후조리), Korean postpartum care. In it, I explore why Korea has long understood birth not only as the arrival of a baby, but as the beginning of a mother’s recovery — through warmth, seaweed soup, ritual, and care.

One small correction from the episode: I referred to the K-drama Goblin (도깨비), but its official English title is Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (쓸쓸하고 찬란하神 - 도깨비). My apologies for the mix-up.

💬 I’d really love to hear what this brought up for you. Come find me here and share your thoughts, stories, or qu...

Before you listen: My new microphone and I are still in the “getting to know you” phase. Unfortunately, the first 22 minutes of this recording are a bit rough. I desperately wanted to re-record it, but then I remembered the lesson from this week’s books: compromise. In the spirit of choosing sanity over perfection, I’m sharing it as is. The audio improves significantly after the 22-minute mark. Thank you for your “warmth” and patience as I navigate this learning curve!

This week’s episode is a book review, but it’s also a thank-you letter to the people doing...

Why do Koreans call boiling soup “refreshing”?

Why does warm water show up in K-dramas before advice ever does?

In this companion episode to my newsletter, we follow the logic of siwonhada (시원하다) into ondol (온돌), Korea’s heated-floor system, and trace how warmth became architecture, medicine, and a way of caring for people.

Quick audio note

A small behind-the-scenes update: I used to record this podcast with a clip-on mic plugged into my phone, sitting in my walk-in closet. My husband felt sorry for me and surprised me with a real microphone for my birthday in early February. So now I’m recording at my desk, like a proper adult. I’m still learning the settings, though, so you may hear a few little volume jumps or pops. Sorry if it’s distracting. I’m working on it, and I’ll keep improving the sound.

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Why do Koreans...

This is the companion episode to this week’s newsletter, but it goes deeper into what I couldn’t fully hold on the page.

I talk about what “Gwangju” means in the Korean nervous system, why certain places become stages for power, and why democracy rarely moves forward on autopilot.

I also reflect on Korea’s exhausting cycle of backsliding and accountability, and why Minnesota, right now, looks like a community refusing to normalize coercion through real civic follow-through.

If you have been feeling tired, cynical, or numb lately, I made this episode with you i...

Editing this episode, I noticed my voice sounds a little different.

Maybe it is because my sleep has been shaky lately, with panic creeping back in at night. Maybe it is because I recorded earlier than I usually do. Or maybe it is simply because this story asks for a different kind of honesty than my usual episodes.

In today’s episode, I share how political despair in Korea first became physical for me during my PhD years, how I learned to live through panic, and what “healing” has looked like for me. Not as a clea...

“Wait and see” sounds calm in English. In Korean parenting culture, it can feel like negligence.

In this episode, I’m introducing a Korean book that hasn’t been translated into English: The Sociology of Marriage and Childcare by Oh Chan-ho (결혼과 육아의 사회학, gyeol-hon-gwa yuk-a-ui sa-hoe-hak). It’s part of a series I do about once a month, where I bring English-speaking listeners inside Korean books and ideas that often stay behind the language barrier.

We’ll trace how Korea’s caregiving instinct evolved from survival mode (mountains, wars, and folk remedies) into something more modern and sneakier: a system that turns pa...

What do you do first when your child gets sick?Check symptoms, open the patient portal, set timers, preserve bedtime routines?

When my 7-year-old spiked a fever, my body did something else. It reverted to a Korean instinct I call distance zero: closing the space, staying close, and letting touch do part of the work.

This episode is personal, a little funny, and unexpectedly tender. It is about the hidden “grammar” of care, and what our bodies remember even after decades in a different culture.

This podcast episode was created from my Substack essa...

Happy New Year! 새해 복 많이 받으세요!

This is my first episode of 2026, and it comes as a companion to this week’s Substack essay. It’s not a word-for-word reading. Think of it as the version I’d tell you over coffee.

If you read the post and then listen, you’ll get the full picture.

This year, I’m leaning into what this show was always meant to be: Understanding Korea, one story at a time.

Lighter on the inbox, deeper in the long run, with the book getting its own separate space to grow. If you listen to th...

This episode is the audio “director’s commentary” to my latest Substack essay in the K-Book Uncovered series, where we have been walking through Yu Si-min’s My History of Contemporary Korea (나의 한국 현대사) together.

If Korea’s modern history were a movie, 1987 would be the perfect place to roll the credits. The crowds win. The generals step back. Democracy arrives. The end.

Except... Yu Si-min refuses to end the story there.

In this finale, we ask the quiet, uncomfortable question that doesn’t make it into history movies: Once you finally win democracy and development, what do you a...

This podcast episode is the audio companion to my newsletter essay:“Two Desires, One Nation, Part 3: The City That Would Not Stay Silent”

Read first? You’ll get the photos, timelines, and historical context.Listen first? You’ll get the feeling, the emotional core I couldn’t fit into 3,000 words.

Both together? That’s the full experience.

Here’s a question: Why do Koreans protest so much?

No, seriously. Every few years, millions take to the streets. Light sticks. Chants. Grandmothers and college students side by side.

Western media always say, “K...

Hello, everyone.

Last week, we stood at “Ground Zero.” This week, we enter the “Barracks State.”

In this week’s newsletter (Part 2), we covered the history of the 1960s and 70s—the economic explosion, the dictatorship, and the tragic death of Jeon Tae-il.

But in this podcast episode, I want to go behind the text. I want to talk about the emotional and psychological weight of living in a country that tried to turn its citizens into soldiers and machines.

I talk about Park Chung-hee’s “Barracks State,” why so many people accepted th...

Hello everyone!

Last month, I started a monthly K-Book Uncovered series, where I explore essential Korean books that haven’t yet been translated into English. We began with historian Kim Won’s The June 1987 Uprising (87년 6월 항쟁), a vivid chronicle of the democracy movement that forced Korea’s military regime to accept direct presidential elections.

This month, we moved one step wider in scope.

In the newsletter, I’m doing a four-part deep dive into Yu Si-min’s My History of Contemporary Korea (나의 한국 현대사), using his frame of two rival camps—industrialization and democratization—to understand how Korea went from ruins and dictat...

Dive into South Korea’s turbulent cultural history under authoritarian rule.

This episode unpacks how dictators used censorship alongside the 3S Policy—Sex, Sports, and Screens—to control pop culture, silence dissent, and inadvertently spark a resistance movement. Hear stories of banned songs, erotic cinema, rigged baseball leagues, and hidden books fueling democracy. Includes short clips from banned songs to give you a real feel for the era’s soundtrack.

Whether you know Korea or are new to its stories, this episode connects culture and politics with vivid examples and lively commentary.

Music excerpts...

A Nation in Uniform: How Emergency Became Everyday in South Korea

Summary

After the 1968 shocks, South Korea rebuilt everyday life around emergency. This episode looks at how the state turned men into reserve soldiers, schools into drill grounds, and citizens into trackable numbers. It is the “hardware” of the garrison state that sat on top of last week’s “software” of laws, policing, and ideology.

What’s inside

1968 aftershocks: Blue House Raid and the Uljin–Samcheok landings

Hardware 1: Yebigun (reserve forces) and the monthly culture of readiness

Hardware 1.5...