From concert halls to fish markets: How a quadrilingual performer built a 1-billion-won seafood brand

A performance producer who studied in China and France reinvents Mokpo seafood after COVID-19

Seaweed pesto, squid protein snacks win over buyers in 13 countries; US market push set for November

Sales rose to 750 million won last year; company targets 1 billion won this year

Namdosoban CEO Choi Yong-jun (left) poses for a photo with his father Choi Jong-jae, CEO of Yeongsin Sussan, who has spent 30 years in the seafood distribution industry. [Namdosoban]

Namdosoban CEO Choi Yong-jun (left) and his father Choi Jong-jae, CEO of Yeongsin Sussan, inspect seafood being dried at their facility. [Namdosoban]

A young man who once planned classical concerts in Seoul has reinvented himself as a seafood entrepreneur in Mokpo. Choi Yong-jun, born in 1986, is the CEO of Namdosoban and six years into the seafood industry. The products he sells look nothing like conventional Korean seafood. Dried seaweed and gulfweed are no longer just banchan — they have become pesto to spread on bread. Squid fritters, long familiar as a bar snack, have been reborn in the US market as a protein snack. Seaweed has been reimagined as a seasoning to sprinkle over food.

"I wondered whether people were avoiding seafood not because they disliked it, but because they didn't know how to prepare or cook it," Choi said. That question became the starting point for his vision of what seafood could be.

Choi launched a raw seafood distribution business, Sammyeonibada since1991, in 2021 and founded Namdosoban in 2023. The company has just four employees, yet it posted sales of 750 million won ($555,000) last year. Sales for the first nine months of this year have already reached 600 million won, and Choi is targeting 1 billion won for the full year.

Choi grew up as the son of a seafood broker. From childhood he naturally learned how to select fish and source quality raw ingredients, but he never assumed he would take over the family business.

He studied Chinese at Jeonnam Foreign Language High School and at Kyonggi University, then pursued a master's degree in international business at the University of Orléans in France. Living in China and France, he watched ordinary agricultural products — wine, cheese, mustard sauce — become globally recognized brands through the power of branding.

After returning to Korea, he entered the workforce as a performance producer. From 2016 to 2020 he organized classical and jazz concerts, working at the company of Belgian classical guitarist Denis Sungho on productions that ranged from hotel performances to shows blending fashion and classical music. He also ran a hostel for foreign visitors in Yeonnam-dong, Seoul.

Combined income from his work at the performance agency and the hostel came to about 120 million won a year.

Then COVID-19 upended everything. With both the performance and travel industries hit simultaneously, he wound down his businesses. During three to four months spent in a village in Seogwipo, Jeju, pondering his next move, his father's seafood suddenly caught his attention.

"I figured that if I combined my father's generation's deep knowledge of sourcing and raw ingredients with what I had learned in international business, foreign languages and event production, I could create a new market," Choi said.

Namdosoban CEO Choi Yong-jun (fifth from right) poses with participants at a South Jeolla Province trade delegation event held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September 2025. [Namdosoban]

Namdosoban CEO Choi Yong-jun (far right) consults with a local buyer at an export consultation event held in Russia in September 2025. [Namdosoban]

His family was skeptical. When the son who loved singing and concert production announced he wanted to head to the fish market before dawn, they assumed he would give up quickly. People around him also kept asking why someone with study experience in China and France, a background in international business and a career in performance production would choose the grueling seafood trade.

But Choi saw something others did not. Even when quality fish and seaweed were available, their value was almost entirely determined by size and the day's market price. Where the product came from and how best to eat it were rarely communicated to consumers. For younger buyers in particular, seafood carried a reputation as food that was hard to clean, smelly and difficult to prepare.

His solution was to stop selling seafood as seafood — and instead transform it into forms consumers already recognized and understood.

Namdosoban's seaweed pesto, developed using dried laver and designed to be paired with bread, seafood and a variety of other dishes. [Namdosoban]

Namdosoban's gulfweed pesto, developed using gulfweed and designed to be paired with bread, seafood and a variety of other dishes. [Namdosoban]

The most visible result is a line of seaweed pestos. Rather than leaving domestically grown laver and gulfweed as ingredients to be stirred into rice or soup, Choi turned them into pestos to spread on bread or serve alongside pasta, salads and meat dishes — taking seaweed familiar to Korean consumers and recasting it in a sauce format that resonates with global tastes.

The market response was immediate. When Namdosoban began offering samples at Seoul Food Week, the line at its booth stretched past three neighboring stalls. People who had tasted the product came back for more or brought others with them. The seaweed pesto went on to secure an export deal with Switzerland, and a contract with Indonesia followed.

Choi also rethought the squid fritter from the ground up. He identified a new attribute in a snack Koreans have long enjoyed with drinks: protein. Noting that the product is roughly 20 percent protein, he repositioned it for the US market as a "Protein Snack" and redesigned the packaging to look like a snack product rather than a traditional processed seafood item.

Namdosoban's squid snack products on display at an overseas trade fair booth. [Namdosoban]

Choi also reversed the conventional product development process. Rather than making a product first and then searching for buyers, he identifies what overseas buyers and consumers want before designing the taste, volume, specifications, packaging, labeling, pricing and minimum order quantities. His ability to communicate directly with international buyers in Korean, Chinese, English and French gives him a further edge.

He has pursued sales channels just as actively. He attended 17 trade fairs and export consultation events in 2024 and 21 the following year. Across roughly 50 overseas fairs and consultations to date, he has built a network of about 700 buyers in 13 countries. He follows up with those buyers by sending newsletters in all four languages.

At present, 90 percent of Namdosoban's sales still come from distribution products — raw seafood and semi-dried fish. Its own branded products account for about 10 percent. Choi has set a goal of reaching a 50-50 split within five years, using the stable income from distribution as a base while raising the share and profitability of proprietary products such as the seaweed pesto and crunchy seasoning lines.

Namdosoban CEO Choi Yong-jun (far left) promotes squid snacks using a "Squid Game" concept at a seafood trade fair held in Boston in March 2025. [Namdosoban]

The next battleground is the United States. In November, Namdosoban will hold a promotional event for its seaweed crunchy seasoning at Ultari Mall, a Korean grocery chain in the US, marking the start of a full-scale push into the American market.

The product draws inspiration from Japan's furikake rice topping and from Trader Joe's "Everything but the Bagel" seasoning, which Americans have embraced as a topping for a wide range of foods. Choi developed a Korean seaweed-based seasoning that can be sprinkled not only over rice but also over salads, egg dishes, pasta, toast and meat. He is counting on the US push to help Namdosoban hit 1 billion won in sales this year, and within three years he aims to break into mainstream American retail channels such as Costco and Trader Joe's.

Along the way, Choi has made active use of government support programs for startups and small businesses. This year, Namdosoban was selected as one of 60 finalists out of about 9,000 applicants for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' program to develop high-growth small businesses — an initiative designed to upgrade the branding, products and services of promising small operators and cultivate them into entrepreneurial-scale enterprises.

Namdosoban CEO Choi Yong-jun poses for a photo at the "2026 Innovative Small Business Final Audition" held at SVC Seoul in Mapo-gu, Seoul, from Sept. 7 to 10. Namdosoban was selected as one of 60 finalists out of 9,422 applicants. [Namdosoban]

Through government-backed programs including a youth food startup package and a startup-focused university initiative, Choi expanded his opportunities in product development, branding and market access. He treated the support not merely as funding but as a chance to test market reactions through trade fairs and buyer consultations and to refine both his products and his business direction.

To younger farmers, fishers and entrepreneurs, his advice is straightforward: "Rather than trying to solve everything on your own, collaborate with people from different fields." Connecting a product all the way through branding, marketing, distribution and exports, he says, requires a network of specialists in each area.

Next year, Choi plans another venture in Mokpo — a combined café, dining and accommodation space centered on seaweed. The idea is to link products, food, the sea and local culture into a single experience, applying the skills he built in performance production and hospitality to the seafood business.

His ambitions extend beyond Namdosoban's own success. "I want to show that companies don't have to go to Seoul or the greater metropolitan area to grow," he said. "You can reach global markets by building on the quality ingredients, producers and manufacturing facilities that Mokpo and South Jeolla Province have to offer."

A rendering of the café planned as part of the seaweed-themed complex Namdosoban will develop in Mokpo next year. The seaweed crunchy product shown in the image is one Namdosoban currently exports. [Namdosoban]

adastra@heraldcorp.com