Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time Podcast

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...

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 D...

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 Ride...

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 withou...

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...

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, t...

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 ) an...

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...

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 bec...

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 afterwa...

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 lang...

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 runnin...

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 collect...

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. I...

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...

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...

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. Th...

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. Get full access to Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time at yoon...

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 pop...

This is the companion episode to this week’s newslette r, 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 lik...

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 f...

“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...

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 t...

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. Light...

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-mi...