A seasoning maker in Busan, renamed four times.

Chung Jung One — written 청정원 in Korean and run together as “chungjungone” in the brand’s web address — is a brand rather than a company. It belongs to Daesang Corporation, the Seoul food group, and Korean Wikipedia dates its introduction to 1996. Daesang America, the group’s US arm, uses the three-word spelling “Chung Jung One” in English and calls it Korea’s leading food brand, which is the company’s own description.

The company behind it is four decades older. Korean Wikipedia, citing Korean newspapers of 1975 and 1982, says Lim Dae-hong, a businessman from Jeongeup in North Jeolla, learned how seasoning was made in Japan and on his return founded Dong-A Hwaseong Industrial in Busan in 1956 to make a glutamate seasoning called Miwon. The same article says the Miwon trademark, with a pot-shaped emblem, was registered that year and that the firm began making its seasoning by fermentation in 1960.

Miwon became the name of the business. According to Korean Wikipedia the firm was renamed Miwang Industrial in 1959, Miwon Co. in 1962, Seoul Miwon in 1964 and Miwon again in 1986, before taking the name Daesang in 1997. Lim Dae-hong’s son, Lim Chang-wook, ran the group for ten years from 1987; in 1997 a professional manager took over, the company adopted the Daesang name and Lim Chang-wook became honorary chairman, the article on the Daesang Group says.

Korean Wikipedia lists the steps by which Daesang built up a grocery business before 1996: a joint venture with the American food company CPC International to form Korea Knorr in 1979, the purchase of Hwayoung Foods in 1982, and supply agreements with Sunchang Foods and Chungjung Foods in 1989. In 1996, it says, these scattered food names were gathered under the single brand Chung Jung One.

Gochujang from Sunchang.

The brand’s best-known product is Sunchang gochujang, the fermented red-pepper paste. The Korean news agency Newsis, in a 2023 feature on long-running brands, and the business daily Herald Business, in 2015, both say Daesang first sold it in 1989, when the company entered the market for jang, the fermented soybean and pepper pastes of Korean cooking. Korean Wikipedia, citing Maeil Business, says Daesang chose to build its plant in Sunchang County in North Jeolla rather than near the capital, where labour, logistics and sales were easier.

Newsis reported in 2023 that Daesang built its production plant in Sunchang and, in 2011, set up a fermentation microbe centre there inside the county’s own facility. The same report says Daesang began isolating its own strains of Bacillus bacteria for fermentation in the mid-1990s and, also in 2011, developed a fermentation method modelled on the traditional earthenware jar, and that production uses two stages of fermentation and two of ageing. The recipe has changed over time. Herald Business reported in April 2015 that the main grain in Sunchang gochujang had moved from wheat flour to rice in 2009 and was then moving to brown rice; Newsis gives the same sequence.

Chung Jung One covers much more than gochujang. The brand website lists sub-brands including Sunchang for jang, Haetsaldameun soy sauce, the Hongcho fruit-vinegar drink base and Curry Queen, each with its own slogan; the Sunchang line calls itself “the mainstream of Korean jang,” in our translation. Korean Wikipedia’s product list adds ready meals, noodles, oils and processed meats.

The wider shelf.

The seven brands in this group are all food and drink names from South Korea: Jinro, Paris Baguette, Chilsung Cider, Pulmuone, Dongwon, Sempio and Chung Jung One. Korean food and drink brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food and drink groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A food or drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the meal, snack or drink it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

One name at home, O’Food abroad.

At home the brand has had more than one look. Korean Wikipedia records a change of brand identity in 2014 without naming a designer, and the Daesang Corporation itself adopted a new corporate identity in 2021. The current Korean website pairs the Chung Jung One name with the slogan “오늘을 더 맛있게,” roughly “make today more delicious,” and uses the English heading “The Better.” Korean Wikipedia also says Chung Jung One was named official jang sponsor of the Korean national football team in 2001.

Outside Korea the products travel under another name. Daesang America says O’Food is the global brand of Chung Jung One and runs a separate US website for it, alongside Jongga, the group’s kimchi brand. Newsis reported in 2023 that Sunchang gochujang was exported to 72 countries, that Daesang had worked with the American chef Edward Lee to promote it in 2014, and that the US O’Food gochujang came in a stand-up pouch with a design of its own.

Daesang’s head office moved in November 2021 from Sinseol-dong, where it had been since 1973, to a leased building in Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korean Wikipedia says, citing Maeil Business; the company is listed on the Korea Exchange and its parent is Daesang Holdings. Miwon, the seasoning the business began with, is still a Daesang brand, and Korean Wikipedia lists it among Chung Jung One’s products.

For a design guide, Chung Jung One shows how a food company can gather old product names under one umbrella brand, then give that brand a different name for export. Compare CJ CheilJedang, another Korean food group with a separate export brand, and Sempio, a Korean soy sauce and jang maker. For this guide we use pine green, gochujang red and rice white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Chung Jung One’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.