Donge Hotteok: Adventures in Entrepreneurship
Written and photographed by William Urbanski.
How far would you go to learn a recipe? If you’re anything like me, maybe to the other side of town, tops. But faced with a virtually impenetrable society of hotteok (호떡, sweet filled pancake) shop owners who refused to divulge their secrets and resisted a changing of the guard to the younger generation, Sophia Jung had to take some pretty extreme measures.
So that’s the short explanation of why, when Gwangju native Sophia Jung opened Dongne Hotteok (동네호떡) three years ago, she had just one major problem: She couldn’t make hotteok. Although visiting over 30 different hotteok establishments around the country, offering to work for free in exchange for help, as well as doing extensive online research and experimentation, she had little success developing a recipe that satisfied her. What’s more, older people with established hotteok enterprises actively discouraged her, suggesting that she just find a company job and give up her dream of starting a new business from scratch. In what can only be described as a Herculean effort, truer than the Bible itself, it took a journey to Scandinavia in order to finally succeed in creating her own version of the sweet treat.
If you’ve never tried hotteok, it most closely resembles some kind of thick pancake. What sets it apart from a regular old flapjack are its varieties, such as cheese, sesame seeds, and strawberry. And although I am no hotteok connoisseur (yet), I can say with absolute confidence that the one I tried at Dongne Hotteok tasted like there was a party in my mouth with everyone invited.
Three years ago, Jung submitted a detailed proposal to open a business at the Songjeong Market (송정시장). Fortunately, the application was selected, and she was able to open her shop. When I asked her about why she wanted to open a business in the first place, she said it was because she noticed there was nobody in the market who was supplying one of her favorite foods. In most cases, budding entrepreneurs focus on the difficult administrative and logistical hurdles, but Jung’s top priority was always developing a unique and delicious product. Since members of the aforementioned “Dark League of Hotteok Shop Owners” (DLHSO, for short) were not willing to help her (probably because they didn’t want anyone encroaching on their business), for a brief time, she relied on a factory-supplied recipe that, while decent enough, was not what she had in mind.
Help came from an unlikely place: Copenhagen, Denmark, which while being a very beautiful and interesting place in its own right, isn’t known for its Korean culinary history. Jung got in touch with a Korean expat who’d been shown by the DLHSO how to make hotteok, but only because he made it explicitly clear he was opening a shop on the other side of the world. So, Jung flew to Copenhagen to meet this man, who shall forever remain anonymous, and slowly but surely, started putting the pieces together. After developing the requisite technique and carefully determining the proper ingredients and proportions, it was off to Stockholm, Sweden. At the behest of the “secret chef,” she participated in an international food festival that was both a way to test out her recipe and to help spread Korean culture. What started as straightforward research into how to make a delicious treat ended up being a full-fledged adventure in food diplomacy and, as video evidence shows, the Swedes were more than happy to cast aside their pickled herring for Korean hotteok. This eye-opening cultural experience was the symbolic threshold of her true journey into entrepreneurship, after which she brought what she’d learned abroad all the way back to the City of Light for your enjoyment.
The lineups to buy her product, the number of employees she has, and the fact that she’s kept the business going for three years are testaments to her success. But since yesterday’s homeruns don’t win today’s ballgames, promoting her shop in interesting and innovative ways is an ongoing process. At the start of every year, she gives away 1,000 hotteoks to pregnant women and the elderly, which while in addition to just being a really nice thing to do, also shows a commitment to giving back to the community. In addition to the television and other national Korean media attention her shop’s received, she’s also a YouTube creator who regularly documents her shop and other culinary adventures. Besides checking out her shop in person, a good place to get familiar with what she’s up to is by subscribing to her YouTube channel (해피소피HappySophie) and following her Instagram @sophia___jung.
If you want to try Scandinavian-inspired Korean hotteok while also supporting a great business by one of Gwangju’s hardest-working and definitely most creative young entrepreneurs, drop by the Songjeong Market. Also, the market has street festivals with live music performances pretty much every weekend in the summer. Come for the smooth rhythms, stay for the hotteok.
The Author
William Urbanski, managing editor of the Gwangju News, has an MA in international relations and cultural diplomacy. He is married to a wonderful Korean woman, always pays cash, and keeps all his receipts.