InterviewWhy kimchi maker Daesang bets on movies

Korea's kimchi and traditional sauce giant Daesang is thinking outside the box to promote its products globally — turning to movies instead of conventional food marketing.

The company's Eat & Travel Film Festival (ETFF), which held its sixth edition in August, is attracting growing interest from international participants and overseas consumers.

Held for first time in Europe this year, the festival brought together 48 students, half of them from 24 countries, who spent two weeks engaging with locals and tourists in Budapest while promoting the event and serving free Korean dishes made with Daesang's products.

Eo Ho-kyung, brand communication team manager at Daesang Holdings who coordinates the festival every year, has renewed her perception of foreigners’ positive reception of K-food and Korea during this year's event. She pointed to not only the growing interest among international students participating in the festival, where they produce short films using smartphones, but also to the positive response from local residents who enjoyed the films and Korean dishes unfamiliar to Western palates.

“Foreign students' participation grew each year. Their costs during the trips are all covered by us. We also prepared five Korean dishes including kimchi pancake, cold kimchi noodle, kimchi gimbap and boiled pork slices with kimchi for 600 local guests,” Eo said in an interview with The Korea Times.

“The students premiered their movies at the festival and shared behind-the-scene clips. The audience sympathized well, and loved our food. An Albanian tourist in the city visited the festival and said in Korean that she is studying the language and knows about ETFF. I was deeply surprised by our culture’s local popularity.”

ETFF began in 2019 as an exchange program between Korea and Indonesia, inviting students to produce short films about food using smartphones, based on the company's belief that food is a “universal language.”

The festival expanded to Vietnam in 2020 and adopted a more open format in 2024, welcoming local residents and offering free Korean food to participants and audiences.

In 2025, Daesang opened the festival to students from all countries by removing nationality restrictions on eligibility. University students in Korea from 17 countries applied to participate that year. This year, the festival also began allowing participants to make films on subjects other than food to broaden the range of topics covered.

For students, ETFF offers an international field trip experience. Selected based on their attitude and English proficiency, participants prepare scripts and assign roles before departure, then begin filming upon arrival. Eo said the festival also seeks to familiarize students with local cultures through food and other experiences.

“I believe hosting the festival helps our sales overseas because of the way Chungjungone and Jongga are exposed to local people during the event,” Eo said, referring to the company’s flagship sauce and kimchi brands.

“I think we will host the next festival in Australia or Georgia in Eastern Europe, where K-food is not yet widely popular. The United States and Japan are our largest overseas markets, and we will certainly bring the festival there as well once we overcome practical constraints.”

Eo said ETFF is more than a student film festival, serving as a strategic branding initiative to foster Daesang Group’s brands. "To support Daesang Group as a global K-food pioneer, ETFF aims to transcend regional boundaries and expand to destinations all around the world," she said.

Daesang has a long-standing connection to films. Its founding chairman, Lim Dae-hong, began sponsoring Blue Dragon Film Awards, the most prestigious film award here, in 1963 to support the domestic film industry.