In 2022 we started a YouTube channel. The reason was simple: there is a great deal of Korea that never makes it into English, and video says some of it faster than a page of text can.

The first film we made was in Gimhae, in Gyeongsangnam-do — the sights of the city and, mostly, the eating. We shot it together with two partners: the Gimhae injeolmi (rice cake) tour and Local Story Cooking in Changwon.

We will be honest about how it went. Standing in front of a camera turned out to be much harder than standing in front of a group of travellers. Knowing that somebody would watch it later made us nervous in a way that guiding never has.

Why we bothered

We are a small Korean operator and most of what we do happens outside Seoul, in places that have almost no English-language coverage at all. If you search for the islands on the maritime border, or for the inland lake country, or for a county town in Gangwon-do, you will find very little written by anyone who has actually been.

Filming is one more way to close that gap. It also keeps us honest — it is difficult to oversell a place on camera.

The part we are proudest of

Alongside the film we ran a giveaway, and what we gave away mattered to us more than the views did: a zero-waste travel kit. A shampoo bar and a body soap (90 g each) made with yuja powder from Namhae, a bamboo toothbrush, a soap bag and a stainless soap holder. The bars were made with a Korean social enterprise.

Travel creates a remarkable amount of waste — miniature bottles above all. A solid bar does the same job, weighs less in your bag, and does not leave a row of little plastic containers behind in a hotel bathroom.

That giveaway closed in 2022 and is no longer running. We have left this post up because the reason behind it has not changed: we would still rather hand a traveller a soap bar than a tray of sachets.

Where this ended up

The sustainability thinking stayed with us. It shows up now in small, unglamorous ways — refillable water rather than cases of bottles in the van, local guesthouses and family restaurants over chains, and routes built so that we are not driving the same stretch of road twice in a day.

We are not going to call ourselves a green travel company. We are a small operator trying to leave a lighter mark on places that do not get many visitors, and that is a different and more modest claim.

Travel with us

Private trips outside Seoul, your group only, with an English-speaking driver-guide.

Choose a trip by how long you have — from two days to three weeks

Tell us your dates and we will come back with a plan and a price.

Photograph: ©Korea Tourism Organization — Song Heejae. Used under the Korea Open Government License (KOGL) Type 1.