A student at K-ORIGIN SCHOOL, Alicja Bielska, was staring blankly at the Han River as it flowed by.
Whenever something felt stifling, Alicja would come out to the Han River and watch the water flow.
Sitting here made her heart feel at ease.
It was as if she were not in the unfamiliar country called Korea,
but on the banks of the Vltava River that cut through Prague.
That was why, whenever she felt suffocated, she would come and sit by the Han River.
‘I thought everything would work out if I just came to Seoul.’
Alicja was confident in her cooking.
Back in Czechia, she had always been praised.
She had often been told she had talent.
So she thought that if she could just come to Seoul, everything would go smoothly.
But reality was completely different.
Classes moved quickly, and her hands kept lagging behind.
She understood it in her head, but making it happen was difficult.
The students in the same class as Alicja were an even bigger problem.
Every single one of them was too good.
Some already had field experience,
some had been preparing for this path since childhood.
Some even came from families that ran restaurants.
And there were people who seemed like geniuses.
After tasting something once, they immediately figured out what was in it and how it was made.
Among people like that, Alicja felt as if she kept falling behind, and her heart grew impatient.
Could she survive here?
She agonized over it several times a day.
In truth, Alicja had never imagined she would leave Czechia and come to Korea.
It had started as simple curiosity.
Alicja liked K-dramas.
She had devoured Korean dramas on OTT platforms.
The Korean language was fun,
and Korean culture was fascinating.
Since cooking was her profession, she also tried making the Korean dishes that appeared in dramas.
Whenever she had time, she went to the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Prague to experience Korean culture.
Through Korean food events, film screenings, and exhibitions, she learned about Korea.
She became a Korea fanatic.
Then she found out.
That something called K-ORIGIN SCHOOL had been created.
That it taught Korean culture.
K-ORIGIN, where the government participated directly
and selected students from all over the world.
It was trustworthy, and the benefits were incredibly good.
To Alicja, it was fate.
Go.
Go no matter what.
She made up her mind and submitted her application.
Documents, interviews, portfolio.
When she passed every demanding step and heard she had been accepted, she screamed in the middle of Prague.
That was how she came to Seoul.
She entered K-ORIGIN.
She had thought she would dominate everything now.
“This time, we’re going to make desserts. No matter where you go in the world, there are desserts.”
“Dessert is the end of a meal and the beginning of a memory.”
“You can reinterpret existing foods, or you can create something completely new.”
“Try making your own dessert.”
“The goal of this semester is to complete that.”
“Fail, and fail again.”
“And record the entire process.”
“The evaluation will be done through the uploaded YouTube video.”
The instructor was said to be a famous chef in Korea.
No, rather than a chef, he was closer to a businessman.
Someone who had risen after several failures to reach where he was now.
From a pojangmacha to a major franchise.
A person who did not break or yield.
Regardless of his cooking skills, he was someone worthy of respect.
While Alicja was briefly lost in thought,
the others had already begun cooking.
Alicja had not even decided what to make,
but the others were already moving their hands.
They prepared ingredients and lit the burners.
It was as if they had recipes ready.
Alicja could not even move.
What should she make?
Dessert. Dessert.
No matter how much she thought about it, nothing came to mind.
She thought of the desserts she had eaten in Czechia.
Trdelník, medovník, větrník, ovocné knedlíky, jablečný štrúdl.
They were all sweet and delicious desserts, but they did not seem to fit here.
She wanted to make a dessert that suited K-FOOD.
While she hesitated like that, class ended.
In the end, class came to an end without her having done anything at all.
That night.
Instead of trying to sleep in the dormitory, Alicja headed to the Han River.
A cool breeze brushed against her face.
The river flowed black, and lights trembled on the bridge.
She sat on a bench and took a deep breath.
She watched the people passing by.
She watched the cars heading somewhere.
She looked up at the sky over Seoul.
Her thoughts began to arrange themselves little by little.
Her heart also calmed down.
Growl.
Once she calmed down, she began to feel hungry.
Come to think of it, she had not eaten dinner either.
Alicja got up and headed back to the dormitory.
On the way, she saw a mart with the words “Open 24 Hours” written on it.
She went in without hesitation.
To choose something to soothe her hunger, she slowly walked around the mart.
She scanned the products with her eyes.
Foods, ingredients, packaging completely different from those in Czechia.
Just looking at them was fun.
Her mood improved a little.
Then, at one corner, her feet stopped dead.
Yakgwa.
She had seen this in dramas.
In dramas called historical dramas, where people wore hanbok.
The protagonists all treated this yakgwa as something very precious.
They gave it to people they liked, and savored it like rare food.
And now that yakgwa was right before Alicja’s eyes.
She had been curious about it, but had rarely been able to see it.
‘Fine, let’s try this.’
She picked up the yakgwa.
There were ten pieces, but the price was only 5,000 won.
It was very cheap too.
After paying and stepping outside, she opened it right away.
And the moment she took a bite.
The outside was chewy,
and sticky syrup immediately wrapped around her tongue.
The sweetness of honey.
The savoriness of something fried in oil.
The subtle lingering cinnamon and spices.
It was not simply sweet.
It was heavy, yet strangely light,
rough, yet oddly refined.
Alicja stopped where she stood.
It was an old taste.
And yet it was not old-fashioned.
It was traditional food, but even eating it now did not feel strange.
At that moment.
Something clicked perfectly inside her head.
“This is it.”
Alicja immediately realized what she had to do.
Not leaving the past as it was,
but remaking it in the language of the present.
What K-ORIGIN kept talking about.
That culture mixed, was interpreted, and was reborn.
She understood what those words meant.
.
.
.
The next class was different.
Alicja moved before anyone else in the class.
She decided to make the recipe she had thought about all night.
She placed the yakgwa she had prepared on the worktable.
Then she chopped the yakgwa finely.
Not into powder, but to about the size of a pinky fingernail.
She left it that way for a chewy texture.
She felt the gazes around her.
They seemed curious about what Alicja was doing.
She poured milk into a pot and gently simmered it to about 50 degrees.
No, she warmed it.
Into that, she put all of the chopped yakgwa.
From somewhere, she heard a gasp.
That meant someone had been watching Alicja.
Along with a sweet smell, the scents of cinnamon and ginger rose.
The aroma and flavor of the yakgwa dissolved into the milk.
She added cinnamon and several other spices.
The yakgwa mixed with the milk began to turn into a paste.
To that, she added sugar and salt.
“What, she’s adding more sugar? Yakgwa is already sweet as hell. She’s adding more sugar?”
Someone spoke in a voice too small to be heard.
But to Alicja, it sounded as clear as if they were speaking right beside her.
The yakgwa in the pot was loosening.
The consistency was thin enough to make one wonder, isn’t it a little watery?
At that moment, Alicja took out the gelatin she had been soaking in cold water and put it into the pot.
“Oh.”
“Seriously?”
“Whoa!”
Exclamations came from here and there.
After checking the consistency with a spatula, Alicja poured the yakgwa paste onto a wide tray.
The yakgwa, mixed with milk, spread out like a thin sheet of paper.
She spread cream cheese on top of it and began rolling it up like gimbap.
The others now showed more interest in Alicja’s cooking than in their own.
Jang Dohyeon, the instructor of this class, was also watching Alicja’s dish closely.
Alicja sprinkled brown sugar on top of the yakgwa jelly that had been neatly rolled like gimbap, or perhaps like a roll cake.
Then she began burning the brown sugar with a torch.
“Whoa.”
“That’s insane.”
“She’s pouring even more sugar on that?”
“A free-pass-to-diabetes dessert.”
“If you eat that, your blood sugar spike will hit its peak instantly.”
“But it’s probably delicious.”
“If it’s too sweet, you can’t even taste the sweetness, though?”
Regardless of the sounds around her,
Alicja, who had been torching it, quietly turned off the flame.
The brown sugar had been burned to just the right degree at a glance.
Then she picked up a knife and cut the yakgwa jelly.
Crack.
The thin layer of sugar shattered with a sharp sound.
That sound was so appetizing.
Looking at the cut surface, the yakgwa jelly and cream cheese were rolled beautifully.
“It’s pretty.”
“It’s more than enough as a dessert.”
“It would be easy to make variations.”
“I think it would go well with coffee.”
“No, you’d have to eat that with black tea.”
As opinions were divided, the instructor, Jang Dohyeon, stepped forward.
“May I try one?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Jang Dohyeon picked up the yakgwa jelly with a fork.
Holding a small plate beneath it, he first smelled it.
Then he brought it to his mouth.
Crunch.
Along with the sensation of the sugar breaking, sweetness rushed in.
But it was not as sweet as he had expected.
The milk and cream cheese held back the sweetness.
Here and there, chunks of yakgwa were chewed.
And the gelatin.
‘So this was the kicker.’
The texture, far chewier than yakgwa, was fun.
Jang Dohyeon smiled without realizing it.
No, laughter burst out of him.
“Puhahahaha.”
Perhaps embarrassed to be seen by the students, he covered his face with his hand, but the laughter did not stop.
Even amid that, his mouth continued to taste the flavor.
The students were curious about the instructor’s behavior, which they had never seen before.
Jang Dohyeon had not been the kind of person to react like this.
The students asked Alicja.
“Can I try some too?”
“Yeah.”
As soon as Alicja gave permission, hands reached out from here and there.
And then.
Crunch.
Puhaha.
Puhahahaha.
Puhahahahaha.
Laughter burst out from all around.
It burst out in a chain reaction.
Everyone had the same response.
This scene was captured exactly by the camera,
and uploaded as it was, without editing.
That was the class up to that point.
******
Cooking YouTuber Park Junho was sitting at his desk, writing notes on his tablet with a pencil.
Convenience store new product review X
Following broadcast recipes X
Overseas street food X
Home-cooked meal content X
He marked an X on everything he had thought of as an idea.
A sigh escaped him.
They were all things he had already done.
He had no more ideas.
No recipes came to mind.
But he could not simply stop uploading videos.
If uploads stopped, subscribers would fall away in no time.
Views would crash too.
Consistent uploads were the basics for a YouTuber.
But uploading careless, identical content was a sin.
He had the confidence to put in the effort.
But he had no item.
No item.
His channel had 1.03 million subscribers.
It had recently entered a period of stagnation, but this channel was everything to Park Junho.
He absolutely did not want to lose it.
It was a channel he had built by grinding away five years of his life.
So he was scouring YouTube.
Wasn’t there anything good?
With the heart of a fisherman waiting to catch a big one in the vast sea.
It had been several days since he began clicking through YouTube by following the algorithm.
Then one video caught his eye.
K-ORIGIN SCHOOL / FOOD LAB Dessert Practical.
In the thumbnail, Jang Dohyeon was clutching his face.
Jang Dohyeon?
He was not someone who gave exaggerated reactions.
And that kind of person was clutching his face.
Park Junho was curious.
First, he clicked.
Foreigners appeared, and a blonde woman in her twenties began cooking.
He skipped the cooking process.
He was not interested.
It would probably be more or less the same.
He was only curious why Jang Dohyeon was clutching his face.
He dragged the playback bar back and went straight to the scene where Jang Dohyeon ate.
Jang Dohyeon ate the food and laughed.
“Puhahahaha.”
Jang Dohyeon was laughing?
Not smiling, but laughing out loud.
Only then did Park Junho drag the playback bar back to the very beginning and watch the cooking process again.
No, he went back and looked at the name of the dish first.
Burn Yakgwa Jelly
What was this horrifying name?
The name alone made him feel like throwing up.
Burned yakgwa jelly?
And the cooking process was even more brutal.
Yakgwa in milk?
And they’re pouring even more sugar into it?
Insane... gelatin?
When brown sugar was piled on at the end, Bak Junho felt like his blood vessels were clogging just from watching.
And yet everyone who ate it had the same reaction.
Puhuhu.
Puhuhuhuhu.
Puhuhuhuhuhu.
What is this?
Why are they laughing?
Curious, Bak Junho decided to try it himself.
For the first time in a while, his interest as a YouTuber was piqued.
.
.
.
“Hello. This is Junho.”
Standing in front of the camera, Junho raised his hand in greeting with practiced ease.
“Today... I’ve brought something bizarre.”
“I happened to come across it while watching YouTube too... and honestly, I wondered, can people really eat this?”
“The source is a K-ORIGIN SCHOOL / FOOD LAB dessert practice video.”
“The dish is called ‘Burnt Yakgwa Jelly.’ It’s burnt yakgwa jelly, and I honestly have no idea what to expect.”
“First, let’s make it.”
Bak Junho began cooking.
He took out the yakgwa and started chopping it up.
“Chop up the yakgwa... and put it into milk. Add the spices too.”
“Watching the video, it seemed like they weren’t boiling the milk, just warming it until it got gently heated through.”
He put the chopped yakgwa into the pot.
“And... don’t be shocked. We’re pouring this much sugar in here.”
Bak Junho poured in the sugar with a slightly exaggerated motion.
“Yakgwa is already terribly sweet as it is, and now sugar on top of that. I can’t understand it.”
“We’ll also add a pinch of salt.”
He pinched a little salt and flicked it in as if tossing it.
“And then we warm it until the flavor of the yakgwa seeps richly into the milk. It must not boil.”
“It might look like there’s a bit too much milk, but there’s a reason.”
He took the gelatin out of the cold water.
“And into this... I truly don’t understand it, but we add gelatin.”
“Even as I’m making it, I’m feeling ashamed of myself, wondering what on earth I’m doing.”
Bak Junho shook his head as if he couldn’t comprehend it.
“Now, we spread this out on a wide tray and shape it.”
“Spread it thinly and let it cool.”
“And then, if we spread cream cheese over the top, it’s almost done.”
Bak Junho set down the spatula he had been using to spread the cream cheese and spoke.
“Now we roll this up nicely. Like gimbap.”
“This is the hardest part of today’s dish.”
“Roll it carefully so it doesn’t burst.”
“Of course, the even harder part was the moment I decided I was going to make this.”
Even as he spoke, Bak Junho let out a disbelieving little laugh.
“You thought it was over, didn’t you?”
“More sugar goes in.”
“Sugar goes in again. Again.”
“This time, it’s brown sugar.”
“This is real.”
“They really use sugar in all kinds of ways.”
“For now, I’ll follow the recipe.”
“Put the brown sugar on top and burn it with a torch.”
“I guess that’s why it has ‘burnt’ in the name.”
Bak Junho burned the brown sugar with the torch.
The charred brown sugar gleamed with a glossy sheen.
“Now, it’s complete.”
“I should taste it.”
He cut the well-made Burnt Yakgwa Jelly with a knife.
Then he smelled it.
“I have absolutely no idea what this smell is.”
“I’ve been smelling sweet things nonstop, so I feel dizzy.”
“Still, the smell itself is good. The cinnamon aroma is pretty nice.”
He brought it straight to his mouth.
Crunch.
The fire-scorched brown sugar shattered.
And then.
Puhuhu.
Puhuhuhu.
Bak Junho burst into laughter without realizing it.
He wanted to stop, but he couldn’t.
Every time he tried to stop, it made him laugh even more.
“Puhu. What is this?”
“How can something taste like this?”
Bak Junho picked up another piece and ate it.
“It’s good. It’s good, but... ah. How do I put this?”
“It tastes completely different from what I expected.”
“The ingredients are obvious, but...”
Bak Junho ate another piece.
“Oh, come on. Why is this so fancy?”
“The texture is so good. The gelatin was a stroke of genius.”
“It’s chewy, and the cinnamon aroma is wonderful.”
“It isn’t insanely sweet either.”
Bak Junho kept picking up pieces and eating them.
“It’s just good.”
“I think I understand why everyone laughed.”
Before he knew it, the plate was empty.
“I wasn’t planning to eat this much, but I finished it all.”
“I’ll have to work out hard today.”
“That’s it for today.”
“It doesn’t require an enormous amount of ingredients, so if any of you are interested, I think it’d be worth trying once.”
“Just watch your blood vessels.”
“I’ll leave the recipe I used in the description.”
“Then, goodbye.”
The video ended there.
And the views on that video began to soar like crazy.