The people you need to meet in Korea,
and the ones you will want to.
I design those meetings, and I see them through.
I am a K-Culture specialist based in Seoul. I shape what visitors want to do in Korea, and I open the door to the people they want to meet. What I bring is everything gathered over many years in tourism, culture and technology, and in the academy — both the relationships and the knowledge.
Jason's K Table · Seoul
Hyundai Group · Coupang, Head of Travel & Leisure · PhD in Tourism · Experiences running on Klook, GetYourGuide, Viator and Airbnb
Where to start
What are you trying to do in Korea?
Four doors, not a menu. Tell me which one is yours and I will start from there.
Where I can open a door
Eight fields,
and more than one person in each.
- Beauty & cosmetics
- Medical & healthcare
- Manufacturing — OEM & ODM
- Retail & e-commerce
- Sport & entertainment
- Media & journalism
- Talent & organisation
- Finance, accounting & law
Not listed? Ask anyway. Most requests begin that way.
How this is different
This is not
a matchmaking service.
A trade agency will introduce you to a company. What arrives is a meeting room, a deck, and someone whose job that day is to be careful.
I introduce you to a person, and I put them somewhere they are willing to talk. That somewhere usually has Korean tea in it. This is not decoration. It is the reason the conversation goes where a conference room never does.
What you leave with is understanding and access — how the industry actually works, and a person who now knows your face. Whether that turns into anything is between the two of you.
How I help
Three ways this works.
Most people start at the first.
One seat
You need to understand something, or someone, and one conversation will do it. I find the person and build the seat.
A visit
The question is bigger than one meeting. I map who you actually need, arrange the meetings in the right order, sit in them with you, and follow up afterwards.
On the ground
You keep needing Korea. I stay on as your side of the table here — taking meetings in your absence, and keeping the relationships warm.
The seat
Tell me who you need to understand.
I will find that person and build the seat.
Small, over Korean tea, with an interpreter. Most of my hosts hold a working conversation in English, but business is too expensive to lose in translation. Time and place are set around what you came for.
Three examples, so you can see the shape of it. Each is one of several I could seat in that field.
Beauty & cosmetics
An executive of a listed Korean cosmetics manufacturer.
What you get. How a Korean cosmetics company decides what to make. How OEM and ODM manufacturing really works here — what a manufacturer looks at before taking on a foreign brand, what you should have ready before you approach one, and where new brands most often fail.
For. Brand owners with a product idea and no factory. Distributors and retailers. Investors. Anyone who wants the industry below the surface of K-beauty.
Where it can go. If it fits, the conversation can continue into a real manufacturing discussion afterwards. That is not what the seat is for, and nothing is decided at the table.
Medical & healthcare
A dentist who spent more than thirty years as a specialist at a Korean dental university hospital, and taught there. He no longer practises. His interest now is the field itself, which is why he can be plain with you about it.
What you get. How Korean dentistry actually works — the standard of care, how wide the scope of treatment runs, how hospitals and clinics are structured, where the technology and the money sit, and why prevention sits at the centre of how Koreans are treated.
For. Dentists. Dental device and material companies. Clinic groups. Investors and researchers. Anyone who wants to do business with Korean dentistry, or to understand it properly before deciding to.
One line. He will not examine you or advise you on your own treatment.
Sport & entertainment
A former editor-in-chief of a Korean sports daily, with three decades of relationships across the industry.
What you get. How Korean sport is organised and paid for — leagues, clubs, federations, agencies, sponsorship and media rights — and, more usefully, who actually decides things and how a decision gets made.
For. Rights holders and agencies. Sponsors. Clubs and federations. Media companies. Anyone who wants Korean sport explained by someone who covered it from the inside for a living.
Off the record. He is no longer a working journalist. Nothing said at the table is for publication.
Not here? Tell me which part of Korea you need to understand and who you would need to hear it from. Finding that person is the work.
Bespoke
Say the word,
and I will build it.
Nothing on this page has to be your starting point. Tell me what you want the day to be, and I will build something that does not exist yet — made once, for you, with no extra charge for the design.
- A day with the person who turned a place no one visited into one of Korea's best-known destinations.
- Korean art, with someone who has spent a career collecting it and putting it on a wall.
- Korean food with a chef who took it abroad, and what that actually took.
- Or something no one has asked me for yet.
What is underway
Two things in motion
right now.
-
In preparation
A launch for a European K-beauty brand, built around a traditional Korean tea ceremony.
-
Underway
A Korean cosmetics brand of my own, founded for the American and European markets and produced in Korea with a well-known manufacturer.
How it works
Six steps,
and I stay on afterwards.
- A written interview about the purpose of your visit.
- An itinerary designed around that purpose — who you meet, where, when, and what else is worth your time.
- Adjustment, in conversation with you.
- The final itinerary, with its budget.
- Once you confirm it, we go.
- Three months of support afterwards, as your representative on the ground.
Meetings taken on your behalf, and whatever else the relationship needs after you leave. I work as your partner in Korea.
About me
I hold a doctorate in tourism and teach K-Culture tourism at university level. I began as a marketer at Hyundai Group, then led Travel and Leisure at Coupang as its head, where I grew both the organisation and the scale of its business. I have also founded a technology startup and taken it to exit.
What I hold today is a network among people in Korean business, society and culture who want to work with companies and individuals from abroad. For visitors who hope for a meeting of that kind, I design the visit and carry it out.
Few people have passed through both the industry and the academy. It taught me to see what sells and what carries meaning at the same time, and my work now is to build the occasions where those two meet.
I also design and operate private experiences of my own, sold on Klook, GetYourGuide, Viator and Airbnb. Three of them:
Temple journey with Michelin dining
Hours inside a city temple, followed by a meal at a temple-cuisine restaurant listed in the Michelin Guide.
Temple, meditation and hanok tea
From Jogyesa to a hanok teahouse in Insadong, ending with a formal tea ceremony led by a specialist.
Private Korean barbecue
The dish most guests think of first, presented as culture rather than as a meal.
Let's talk
Tell me the kind of occasion
you have in mind.
Tell me what you need in Korea, and which Korean specialist in which field you would like to meet. I will tell you plainly what I can do and what I cannot.
Prefer that I reach out?
Leave your name and number, and I will message you on WhatsApp.