Your First Step Into Real Korea

Food, places, and everyday life from someone who grew up here — not a tourist’s take on Korea.

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Not a Tourist’s Take on Korea

This Korean food and travel blog exists because Korea gets flattened a lot once it travels abroad — the food gets sweeter, the culture gets simplified, the version people see is built for outsiders. I grew up in Jeollabuk-do, in the part of Korea where a lot of the country’s food and traditions actually come from.That gap between the place I grew up in and the version that gets exported abroad is why First Korea Food exists.

This isn’t a blog written by an outsider discovering it for the first time. I’ve spent the last twenty years living abroad — Japan, the United States, the Philippines, China, and Madagascar, with more than a decade in some of those places. That distance gave me a clearer eye for what’s actually worth knowing about here: the food, yes, but also the places, the routes, and the small local details most visitors never hear about. Every recipe here is tested the way it’s actually made at home, and every place or route I recommend is somewhere I’d genuinely send a friend.

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