CHEONGYANG — Young people with no prior ties to Cheongyang County in South Chungcheong Province are building a new commercial alley around the area's signature chili pepper. After drawing tourists with bread made from Cheongyang chili peppers, they have launched a project to create a "Spicy Street" together with young entrepreneurs who settled in the county through their tourism programs.
At the center of the effort is Eojjeoda Local, a company founded by young people who moved to Cheongyang in 2021 through the Ministry of the Interior and Safety's youth village program. The firm runs stay-based tourism programs and a food business built on Cheongyang chili peppers.
"Running a business in a rural area taught me there is a limit to what one successful shop can do," Soh Chul-won, chief executive of Eojjeoda Local, said at the Cheongyang Chili Pepper Bread Factory in Cheongyang County on the 23rd. "I want to create a Spicy Street where diverse food and content come together, and turn Cheongyang into a place people visit from across the country."
The company traces its origins to 2021, when three young people weighing new career paths met while spending a month living in Cheongyang. They set up a corporation in early 2022 and began building businesses around local resources.
Soh worked as a taekwondo instructor in Seoul for nearly 20 years. The two other co-founders were university students with expertise in tourism and cooking. "I started taekwondo at age 8, stayed at the same gym throughout and even taught children as an instructor, but I was thirsty for different experiences," Soh said. Soh later left the gym, spent a year living on Jeju Special Self-Governing Province and then arrived in Cheongyang. "Cheongyang was like an unknown countryside to me," Soh recalled. "It felt like a blank sheet of paper where I could draw anything new, so I chose it as a place to settle."
The first business the founders started was a stay-based tourism program for young urbanites. Through a program called Eojjeoda Minbak, designed to help participants cultivate an alter ego, young visitors stayed in Cheongyang for one to two weeks and tried out the lives they had long dreamed of. A participant who wanted to be a painter drew in the fields, while one who hoped to become a poet climbed a mountain to write. The program also arranged farm experiences and meetings with local entrepreneurs. Since it began in July 2022, about 800 people have taken part. It still runs four to five times a year.
Tourism programs alone, however, could not generate stable revenue. The founders turned to Cheongyang chili peppers. After roughly a year of product development, they opened the Cheongyang Chili Pepper Bread Factory in 2024. Combining the heat of the peppers with bread, they rolled out flavors including original, rosé cheese, ham and cheese, and cream cheese. As word spread among tourists, they expanded the store and hired two local residents. Online sales began this year.
"At first we had no money, so we did the store interior ourselves and scraped together what little we had to test countless recipes," Soh said. "The biggest achievement was gaining the confidence that our own ideas could bring tourists to Cheongyang."
Once the business took hold, Eojjeoda Local began helping young entrepreneurs settle in the area. Quite a few participants in its tourism programs had wanted to move to the county and start businesses. Early on, the founders discouraged them because housing and jobs were scarce, but they judged that conditions had changed as Cheongyang County expanded housing and startup support. About five young people have now settled in Cheongyang and are preparing to launch businesses, and the company plans to support more of them in putting down roots and starting ventures.
The project they are pursuing together is the Spicy Street. The plan is to create a commercial alley in the Cheongyang town center lined with restaurants using Cheongyang chili peppers, from tacos and rice noodles to Korean street food and chicken tenders. A street food outlet is set to open first, and several young founders are preparing to open in the first quarter of next year. Eojjeoda Local is sharing its own startup experience to help them get ready.
"Even when a commercial alley draws attention like Garosu-gil or Hwangnidan-gil, popularity is hard to sustain without a clear identity," Soh said. "Cheongyang has a powerful asset in the Cheongyang chili pepper, which everyone in the country knows, so combining it with distinctive brands can create a competitive street."
Soh added: "At first it was often lonely running the business with just three of us, but now colleagues who take on the challenge with us are emerging. For young people to settle in a region securely, generating steady income matters, so I want to prove to many people that you can eat well and live well in Cheongyang too."