Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Bringing fresh food to the door
Hello Nature supplying
safe goods at lower prices
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CEO Park Byung-yul
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Park Byung-yul, 30, has long wanted to supply fresh and safe food to people and established Hello Nature in 2012.
Hello Nature is an on-line shopping mall, selling organic agro-fishery products.
It only deals with organically cultivated products through direct dealing with farmers.
Unlike other organic food online shopping malls, it delivers the ordered food on daily basis.
“I know that many people buy agricultural products directly from farmers, but the process has been inconvenient, as they have to buy in large quantities. Besides, customers have to pay delivery charges for every purchase if the purchases are made with different producers,” Park said.
When customers order products, each different producer sends the items to Hello Nature’s distribution center in Gyeonggi Province.
After gathering and sorting out the items, staffers send the parcels to customers home.
From order to delivery, it takes only a day, Park said.
Besides, customers can buy items at lower prices than off-line organic food markets such as Chorok Maeul (Green Village) and Orga.
Park said this is because he could reduce costs by cutting supply channels.
Currently, Hello Nature provides delivery services from Monday to Friday, but the CEO said it will soon start services on Saturday.
Park said all the process from sanitary conditions at farms to packaging is thoroughly supervised by the company’s merchandisers.
“Our people visit our partner’s farms at least once in three months. Providing organic and safe food is our main goal. We check whether the items have organic food certification and whether the foods have gone through radioactivity testing,” Park said.
Park used to work at a multinational consulting company but he said he was not able to suppress his passion for doing something more productive.
He quit the consultant company and began to work for Coupang, a social commerce website in 2011.
“There were only 20 to 30 staffers at Coupang at that time, but the work process was more attractive,” Park said.
He made his mind to set up his own business while working at Coupang.
At that time, he believed people would become more interested in eco-friendly agricultural food.
“If I could reduce retail margin and provide foods at lower prices, it would definitely have a chance of success, I thought,” Park said.
And his prediction was right.
He launched the service in January 2012. About 500 producers now provide the products to Hello Nature and around 40,000 subscribers use the service.
“My goal is to make people instantly bring Hello Nature to their mind when it comes to organic food online shopping mall, and there are still many details to be worked out in order to achieve that dream,” Park said.
“It’s only two years since the service has been launched, but I believe I will be able to achieve the goal in the near future.”