In Sehwa-ri, a small village on the eastern tip of Jeju Island, one street carries the nutty scent of roasting cacao. It drifts from the store of Cocoha, the cacao brand of Cacao Family, a local Jeju company that imports beans directly from Guatemala and roasts and processes them on site. Cacao, a crop long seen as an unlikely match for Jeju, has become the local content that defines Sehwa-ri. Tourists from across the country come to experience it, and foreign visitors are arriving as well.
Kim Jung-ah, chief executive of Cacao Family, said on the 25th at the Cocoha store in Sehwa-ri, Gujwa-eup, Jeju, that starting a business on the island was not simply a matter of it being home. "Watching Indigenous residents in Guatemala leave their hometowns because of poverty, even as they grew cacao, made me think of Jeju's rural areas," the CEO said in an interview with The Seoul Economic Daily. "I thought cacao could create new content and new jobs that would revive commerce in rural Jeju."
Kim first encountered cacao in the late 2000s. After in-laws settled in Guatemala, the family headed there around 2007. The CEO later moved to Mexico and taught music at middle and high schools, while a spouse taught computing. What interested the couple was building, through business, a foundation on which local residents could support themselves. Kim came to know cacao while making and eating chocolate the Mayan way in Guatemala.
Returning to Jeju in 2011 to give birth, Kim settled in Sehwa-ri rather than going back to Guatemala. To Kim, rural Guatemala and rural Jeju looked much alike. "In Guatemala, cacao was a treasure of a resource, but farming could not support a living, so families sent their children away," the CEO said. "In Jeju, too, I grew up hearing that if you did not study you would end up diving for seafood and farming carrots, and naturally all the young people wanted to leave as soon as they could."
Cocoha uses Guatemalan cacao to make a range of products, including cacao caramel and milk tea. Imports came to about 7 tons last year, with a target of 20 tons this year. That volume ranks second in South Korea behind Lotte, the country's largest cacao importer.
About 70% of Cacao Family's revenue comes from online sales, including its own web store. Its flagship product, cacao caramel, accounts for roughly half of total revenue. The company posted 1.6 billion won ($1.2 million) in revenue in the first half of this year alone and is targeting 3 billion won for the full year. It turned profitable at the start of last year.
Kim does not treat Cacao Family's own growth as the goal. Building up the entire Sehwa-ri commercial district alongside neighboring merchants is another direction the company pursues. The leading example is "Around the World in Sehwa-ri," which began in 2023.
About 16 shops currently take part in the program. Each was matched with a country's content according to its own character: Turkish kaymak, German charcuterie, French desserts, a Japanese izakaya, a Korean traditional mother-of-pearl workshop, and American-style pizza and fashion. "At an ordinary restaurant you eat and that is the end of it, but on this world tour you hear why the owner started making this food and what kind of life they have lived," the CEO said. "The aim is to make visitors like the person rather than the shop, and in the end to make them want to come back to Sehwa-ri."
Collaborations with outside companies are also expanding across the village. A partnership with Ottogi (007310) is one example. Chefs at food and beverage outlets run by Ottogi developed menu items using products from 13 Sehwa-ri shops, while the village's merchants released items that reinterpreted Ottogi products in their own way. Cocoha created "Jin Ramen Caramel" and "Curry Caramel," and one Sehwa-ri perfume maker developed scents using Ottogi's green tangerine and hallabong marmalades. A mother-of-pearl studio unveiled a keyring featuring the Ottogi logo.
The Sehwa-ri team also took part in the first pop-up staged by Muji, which opened its first store on Jeju this year. In a joint fundraiser through NAVER's Happybean platform, 19 shops in the village raised about 125 million won in 25 days. Along the way, shops with no experience in online selling set up Smart Store pages and overhauled their product design and branding.
Work is also under way to translate the world tour program's results into revenue for the whole Sehwa-ri commercial district. Cacao Family and the village's merchants plan to release six chocolates at the end of September, each carrying the story of an individual shop. Those in preparation include a chocolate developed with the pizza restaurant Red Rocket, one telling the story of Cafe Bean Gwangdeok, which makes oatmeal vegan coffee, and a jambon chocolate created with Charcuterie Dogam. Each store will sell its own chocolate. "The chocolates are a kind of content product, made so tourists can take Sehwa-ri's stories home with them," the CEO said. "At the same time, they will serve as a new source of revenue for small business owners who find it hard to develop products of their own."
