Advertise on podcast: Humans of Jeju

RUSTY HOMIES began when Lim SeongJun started making workwear and tools he personally needed while helping with his parents’ farm work. The brand creates durable workwear and accessories designed around real movements in the field, such as squatting, bending, and carrying tools. Although he studied graphic design, he later learned sewing and continued developing his skills through repeated hands-on practice. Today, he also collaborates with businesses including cafés, vivarium companies, hair salons, and stays to create uniforms suited to different work environments. He currently works from an old family stone warehouse in Cheongsu-ri, Hangyeong-myeon, Jeju, and plans to develop the site into a studio and showroom that people can visit.

Byungman Kim is a comedian known for KBS’s Gag Concert segment Master and SBS’s Law of the Jungle. He enjoys learning through direct experience and has taken on a range of challenges, including survival in the jungle, diving, flying, and working with wood. He continues to learn about flying, including weather, navigation, English radio communication, and making decisions in different situations. Now living in Jeju, he spends time close to the island’s sea, forests, and oreums while gradually building relationships with people in his local community. In the future, he hopes to create spaces and content where he can share his experiences in broadcasting, the jungle, survival, flying, and making things.

Based in Sagye, Jeju, Minsu Cho runs SOLV Studio and teaches barre classes there. She first discovered barre while attending college in the United States, and after returning to Korea, she completed instructor training and certification and began teaching professionally. Through barre, which combines elements of ballet, Pilates, and strength training, she focuses not only on physical strength but also on helping people improve their mood and energy. After getting married, she moved to Jeju in search of a life closer to nature and later opened SOLV Studio near Sanbangsan in Sagye. Today, the studio has become a space where Korean and international members exercise together and connect naturally.

Hana Jang has been living in Jeju since 2018, working in both art education and as a haenyeo. She teaches students at an art studio near the Global Education City, helping them develop their art portfolios and prepare for their future studies, while also working as a haenyeo in Daepo-dong for the third year. She studied Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design and lived in the United States for about 16 years before settling in Jeju. Although she was once afraid of the sea and could not swim, she gradually became comfortable in the water, attended haenyeo school, and eventually became a working haenyeo. Today, she continues to bring art, education, and the ocean together in her life in Jeju.

Drawing on his experience as a photographer, Jisol Jung runs ODUJEJ, a Jeju-based design brand. The name ODUJEJ comes from spelling “JEJUDO” backwards, and the brand creates everyday objects and projects that offer a slightly unfamiliar view of familiar Jeju. Through subjects such as Jeju pottery, dongjaseok, and stone, ODUJEJ reinterprets the island’s objects and culture from a new perspective and introduces them both in Korea and abroad. Through ODUJEJ, he hopes to create a “Small Jeju Museum” that holds the small and personal stories of Jeju.

In an old mill in Sehwa-ri, Gujwa-eup, Jeju, three generations — grandmother, aunt, and granddaughter — work together to make local Jeju food. The family mill, which has been running since 1982, has grown into today’s Sehwa Mill, while the wish to make tteok, or Korean rice cakes, easier to enjoy as everyday desserts became the starting point of RICE NICE. At RICE NICE, they make rice cakes for gifts, holidays, and casual desserts, including cheddar cheese seolgi and sweet potato chalbbang, while also offering Jeju’s traditional gireum-tteok as frozen dough that can be easily cooked at home. At Sehwa Mill, they reintroduce older Jeju foods in a more contemporary way, starting with borigaeyeok, a Jeju-style grain powder made with barley and beans. More recently, under the name Sehwa Grocery, Kang has been growing the brand from a Jeju-based food business into a broader grocery brand that shares good local food with more people.

Based in Moseulpo, Jeju, Doyeon Park runs Sanhoyo and creates ceramic works using Jeju clay and seashells from the island’s sea. The discarded shells collected from haenyeo and local restaurants are washed, dried, and used as ceramic materials, giving new purpose to what was once thrown away. A story about leftover shells once being used to make buttons in Moseulpo became a point of connection between the memory of this seaside village and Park’s work. One of Park’s signature works, the Half Moon Jar, is a personal reinterpretation of the traditional moon jar, changing with light, time, and the viewer’s perspective. Recently, Park has been preparing a new Sanhoyo studio where people can experience Jeju’s materials and culture more closely.

After meeting in Paris and becoming a married couple, Misun Song and Ceng Hong Law moved to Jeju with their family, where they now run Jeju Bao Club. Misun studied natural language processing in Paris and worked as a project manager before launching and operating her own children’s play mat brand in Europe. Born and raised in Paris, Ceng Hong worked for a French luxury fashion brand for ten years before moving to Jeju. At Jeju Bao Club, they serve handmade bao alongside Hong Kong-inspired dishes such as char siu pork, dongpo pork, mango sago, and egg tarts. They also incorporate local ingredients, including Jeju pork and Hallabong citrus, while shaping the restaurant around a lifestyle that allows them to prioritize time with their family.

Gavin and Jinha first met in Ireland, spent time between Ireland and Korea, and eventually settled in Jeju. Gavin studied anthropology and now runs an online English reading group, where people read books together and share conversations. Jinha worked in PR, marketing, and film photography in Seoul, and after moving to Jeju, she has mainly worked in accommodation content marketing. She is currently in charge of the management and marketing of a newly opened stay. While continuing their own work in Jeju, the two are also thinking together about English book clubs, content work, and new cultural projects they could create on the island, such as a book festival connecting writers from Ireland and Korea.

Based in Jeju, Moon Singi works in illustration and design, while also expanding his practice through painting, writing, and travel. After studying Western painting, he has worked across publishing, illustration, and graphic design, and has also participated in guidebook projects on Okinawa and Spain. His experience of being born and raised in Jeju has led to his interest in islands and island people, which he has explored through his fictional island project, Arkaia. Recently, he has been teaching in the Department of Design at Jeju National University, while also taking an interest in new technologies and media such as AI. Drawing from the landscapes, people, climate, and local stories he encounters through travel and everyday life, he continues to develop his own visual language.

Park Keun Ju works with photography in Jeju and is currently continuing a color-field abstract series on buildings under the theme of “reality and ideal.” He studied photography at university, and began his first personal project after a volunteer trip to Madagascar in 2008, which led him to pursue his path as an artist. Since moving to Jeju in 2017, he has photographed landscapes, buildings, and people from behind. His work has been introduced overseas through Saatchi Art, and he presented his Romantic Melancholy series in an exhibition in Germany. He has also expanded his photography practice through local projects, including a Jongdal-ri village booklet project and photography classes with children in Jeju.

He is an experimental filmmaker working with 16mm film in Jeju. He runs Samguri Film Lab, an artist-run film lab in Seogwipo focused on analog film and darkroom processes. At the lab, he shares knowledge of film developing, alternative materials, and experimental 16mm techniques through workshops. His work is shaped by hands-on processes, chance discoveries, and the community around analog filmmaking. He continues to explore film as a medium for artistic inquiry and community-based practice. He is also a sailing activist active in the anti-base movement in the Pacific as well as recently on the flotilla to break the siege in Gaza.

She founded and runs Dongbaek Small School, an alternative boarding school in Jeju. After working for nearly 20 years as a teacher and head teacher at Gandhi School, where she experienced the philosophy of alternative education and community life, she established a school in Jeju to create a smaller learning community. Dongbaek Small School values learning that helps students live as themselves, care for one another, and stay connected with the world, rather than focusing on exams, rankings, or standardized textbooks. Through boarding life, self-governing meetings, project-based classes, and activities connected to Jeju’s villages and nature, students learn democracy, peace, ecology, and human rights in everyday life. She hopes the school will continue as a small educational community where every student’s voice is heard and each person can grow as their true self.

He is a freediving instructor who runs Jeju Freediving School near Seopseom Island in Seogwipo and goes into the ocean every day. After working as a brand manager at a foreign pharmaceutical company for 11 years, a trip to Jeju led him to ask himself, “Am I happy?” and eventually change the direction of his life. Through freediving, he shares the experience of entering the sea on a single breath and observing the body and mind, seeing it as a kind of meditation underwater. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Jeju Freediving School has grown into a space where several instructors now work together to help shape Jeju’s freediving culture. He hopes the school will continue not simply as a place to earn a certificate, but as a place where people can encounter something real in the ocean and discover new possibilities for their own lives.