The Brewer of Buyeo,
Taewan Kim

Taewan Kim is a serial entrepreneur from Korea's IT sector, who built and sold a blockchain service before turning to brewing. He spent his career in the world's fastest-moving industry - and chose, for his next chapter, the opposite: one of the slowest crafts there is.

During his years in tech, brewing began as a hobby and a pursuit of learning. He found himself drawn to a process whose essence is waiting. For his third venture, he chose to build a one-person brewery - and within Korean tradition, not the popular paths of makgeolli or soju, but the road less traveled: reviving wines that history had forgotten.

He left Seoul for Buyeo with a single goal - to restore Korea's lost traditional wines and bring them back into the world. Gamtanju is his first answer. He runs the brewery hands-on, from production to sales, marketing, and trade shows.

"Reviving a traditional Sool isn't about copying an old recipe line by line. In the hundred years it was lost, people's palates changed. When I made it the old way - only rice - just 2 out of 10 people liked it. So I began searching for a flavor that today's drinker would embrace. That turned out to be Hallabong. With it, all 10 out of 10 loved it

That was the moment Gamtanju was born."

- Taewan Kim