Korea Curated is a monthly subscription box service designed to bring unique, high quality items made by local Korean artists, designers, and small to large businesses, to your doorstep anywhere in the world! Korea Curated was created by a Canadian entrepreneur, Marie Frenette, and a popular Korean-American YouTube vlogger, Cory May, who live and work in central Seoul, South Korea. Marie and Cory personally explore the streets and neighborhoods of Seoul, meet with local artists and shops, and find amazing items to include in each month’s box. There are two box sizes available with free worldwide shipping: Discovery Box ($74) and the MINI Discovery Box ($43).

The Homespun Chics received this box for review. All opinions are 100% our own.

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Korea Curated April 2016

I was adopted from Busan, South Korea as a teeny tiny baby and am so fortunate to have a mom who raised me to be proud of my heritage and encouraged me to learn all I could about my birth country. When we lived in Florida I attended an amazing Korean preschool program geared toward adopted Korean and Korean-American children where we learned to speak Korean, studied hangul, and learned about Korean culture and history. We moved to North Carolina when I was 7 years old and we were unable to find a similar program anywhere nearby.

As an adult I still think back to my time at the Korean school and want to learn more about my birth country and introduce Little G to the culture, food, and language. I found Korea Curated during another one of my late night Instagram binges and couldn’t believe my eyes. Here is a company that is bringing Korea to the rest of the world… and not just amazing beauty products and food. This subscription box contains a treasure trove of Korean art, culture, taste, and more. Korea Curated even has a YouTube channel (HERE) that offers one-on-one exclusive interviews with the companies and artists behind the featured products and box guide videos for each month’s Discovery Box. Absolutely everything is personally hand-selected by the founders, Marie Frenette and Cory May.

…At this point I need to stop myself from going All-Out-Fan-Girl on this company and start showing you what’s inside!!

*Disclaimer:  I feel I need to warn you that I took a LOT of pictures and I am going to continue fan-girling throughout this review…

The Costs:

Discovery Box | $74.00 per month (free worldwide shipping)
Subscribers receive 8-10 quality Korean products monthly; recurring billing – cancel anytime 

MINI Discovery Box | $43.00 per month (free worldwide shipping)
Subscribers receive 4-6 quality Korean products monthly; recurring billing – cancel anytime

30% Off Coupon:  SPRING30

Korea Curated is celebrating Spring by offering a 30% Off Coupon for first-time subscribers!! That makes the regular Discovery Box only $51.80 and the MINI only $30.10 (Offer ends soon.)

 

First peek into the box! I love the amount of branding on the box itself. Practically every surface has crisp, clean text that looks great and provides a little information about the company or box. The packing peanuts are biodegradable too, so yay for a happy environment!

So I totally couldn’t wait to receive my box and YouTube stalked Korea Curated to find the box guide video for April’s box. (Yup, you can find it right HERE.) I found out that Cory May designs the newsletter-style information sheet for each month’s box, which even includes carefully selecting the background color every month! You should check out the April video to learn more!

Each month, Korea Curated highlights one item in the box and features that company / brand / artist in the newsletter. This month it is the Korean indie band, Jun Bum Sun and the Yangbans. The bottom half of the page features a short Q&A with the “Subscriber of the Month,” which is pretty much the coolest thing since sliced bread. How many subscription box companies do you know that highlights the subscribers of the boxes???

The flipside of the newsletter details the items included in the box with pictures and Korean translations.

Jun Bum Sun & The Yangbans Revolution Songs

The band signed the CDs!!

This is probably the nicest quality CD packaging I have ever owned. I like indie music and was curious to hear the music… This is their newest album, which happened to be officially released on my birthday! After listening to the whole CD, I realized two things… 1) This is a very technically proficient band that knows how to groove. 2) I have absolutely no comprehension of the Korean language.

Nor can I read hangul anymore. Sweet. I think this is the perfect opportunity to reach out to Korea Curated for a little help with translation! Little G and I loved the music and will be putting this in our car for the daily commute to school and work!

Also included is a cool band sticker in a traditional font! Heck yeah! Rumor has it the band is trying to plan a U.S. tour soon, most likely only in California (on the exact opposite side of the states from me). And so, Cali friends, if you see Jun Bum Sun & The Yangbans on any billboards, I highly recommend you grab a ticket and watch these guys. PLUS I hear Jun Bum Sun typically wears traditional hanbok during performances!

 

Green Bliss “Don’t Buy Adopt Me” Organic Socks Set

Over the past year, Green Bliss has been thinking of ways to reduce abandonment. In Korea, abandoned pets are a hundred thousand a year. What can we do to reduce that? To announce to the people why the animal rights groups are conducting a campaign called, “Don’t buy, Adopt me!” and to help reduce abandonment, we have made socks of ‘Don’t buy, Adopt me!’ with the Korea Animal Welfare Association, an animal rights group.

Though there are healthy pets, there are lots of old or ill pets. Because they have lived on the streets for a long time, they get diseases, and there are pets wounded by abuse of people. Excepting cost of production, all the proceeds will be spent on curing abandoned pets who are living in the Korea Animal Welfare Association. – Green Bliss

Green Bliss socks are knitted and manufactured in Korea using Indian organic cotton. The packaging is eco-friendly using soy ink on recycled paper.

I love absolutely everything about these socks, the company, and this collaboration. The socks themselves are extremely soft and just adorable. I’m actually happy we have a cold snap this week so I can rock these socks at work!

Bokumjari Citron Yuja Tea Portions (15 qty)

 

Unfortunately during the long travel across the globe, one of the little tea portion cups busted in the bag. 🙁 I am so grateful I only lost one so I could try it out! I have really been loving some hot tea lately, ever since getting the Luxily Box honestly with that divine apricot marmalade tea…

The little capsule is filled with a syrupy-type liquid that has little bits of yuja zest and what feels like crystalized sugar inside.

I took Marie and Cory’s advice (from their box guide video) and was careful not to mix too much hot water with the tea so as not to dilute it. I loved this tea! It has a perfect balance of sweet and tart. Of course, I live in the south so my perception of “perfect sweetness” is extremely different than the midwesterners that I knew while in Nebraska. I am looking forward to having the remaining tea capsules as another wonderful option for my evening cuppa!

Move to Move ㅋ Tape

I learned from Marie and Cory that ㅋㅋㅋ is the Korean version of written laughter, where we would write, “hahaha.” The symbol ㅋ makes a “kuh” sound, so it’s kinda like cute cackling.

This is a pretty decent size roll of clear packing tape with ㅋㅋㅋ printed in black down the center of the tape. I love the look and the concept of laughter tape… but I’m going to have a really hard time convincing myself that hoarding is bad and that tape is meant to be used. The only way I can justify this is to simply use it when I package up all of our giveaway prizes that I ship out from my office! 🙂 If I know one of you will be receiving it, I won’t feel so bad.

Appree Sticky Leaf Cherry Blossom

So when Marie and Cory were putting these boxes together, cherry blossoms were blooming like crazy in Korea. I love cherry blossoms and feel there is something almost magical to their fleeting beauty in the springtime. This set contains full flower sticky notes as well as cute little individual petals. I think I’ll use the petals as page markers for work!

I love the look of the flower stickies, but apparently so did my cats. I’m sure I’ll find these stickies in a few years when we decide to clean under the couch and lift up the rugs… oh well.

Studio Dan-B NO DO Postcard

This is a cute postcard from Studio Dan-B that comes from the NO DO postcard line. There are a lot of variations of the card with silly sayings like, “NO sleep, DO ramen” or “NO today, DO tomorrow.” This particular postcard says, “NO exercise, DO meok-bang” (NO 운동, DO 먹방)

I’m going to assume that you are, like myself, clearly not hip with the growing meok-bang trend in South Korea. The word “meok-bang” is a mash-up of the Korean words for eating (meok-guh) and broadcasting (bang song). Yes, meok-bang is basically when people gorge themselves on obscene amounts of food and stream it all live through the internet. I. Am. So. Confused. Regardless, this postcard is a really cool inclusion in the box and I am happy I got to learn strange factoids about what the cool kids are doing in Korea! (A constant reminder that I’ll never be cool.)

Sempio Bibim Gooksu Noodles

 Again, thanks to Marie and Cory’s box guide video, I learned that Koreans really enjoy cold noodle dishes when the weather warms up. I love that the box guide video gives you instruction on how to cook and serve the noodles…

Especially since everything is in Korean (duh) and like I said, I cannot read hangul anymore. I have not gotten around to cooking this yet, but as soon as I have a second to boil an egg, cut up some fresh veggies and hunt down an Asian pear, I will TOTALLY do this. Good news, this sucker has a shelf life of about a year from the manufacture date so I think I have some time. 🙂

Lotte Limited Edition Mon Cher Honey Yuja Pie (2 qty)

Yum!!! Yummy yum yum. We received two of these cute snack cakes that look like fancy Little Debbies. There’s a chocolate shell with a soft cake and this deliciously light citrus-tasting honey cream filling. This is a limited edition flavor for Lotte and I’m already so, so sad that I ate one of my two snack cakes already. How can I go on without yuja pies in my life???

I guess this would be a good time to sort of explain a little about yuja fruit… (Thanks WIKIPEDIA!) Yuja is an East Asian fruit that is pretty much what would happen if a grapefruit and an orange had a baby. It tastes very citrusy, similar to a mandarin orange, just sorta different and a little more tart.

L-Toy Grinning BB

This is an extremely unique, adorable piece of stationery that I just can’t get over! You unfold this little guy, who is highly detailed, by the way, and write your note on the flat sheet of paper that is before you (above).

Then you follow instructions on the card that is provided and pray to high heavens that you aren’t going to rip it because you can’t follow instructions as well as you think you can…

Then you get this utterly adorable little guy to give someone! I love the little feet! Marie and Cory said that the feet are printed so that the L-Toy character can scurry to the recipient with your message. Eep! I want to keep him! He’s so cute!

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My Thoughts

 I am so stoked by this box! (Could you tell?) I felt like I was sitting in class during show-and-tell. I learned SO much fun and interesting information just by going through the box and researching everything that was included. Marie and Cory have a wealth of knowledge about Korea and they are happy to answer any questions that may arise as you go through your box. My favorite item would have to be the socks (being a huge animal lover with a soft spot for animal rescue), though I honestly just love everything for different reasons.

Korea Curated is an amazing company that supports local business, seeks out up and coming trends, and provides a well balanced array of unique, quality items to subscribers every month. It is a box I would LOVE to receive every month and share with my little family and my mom. I felt the variety in this box is unparalleled and I was able to catch a glimpse of life in Korea without ever leaving my house!

I highly recommend Korea Curated for anyone interested in discovering South Korea.

xo
Sarah

Don’t forget to take advantage of Korea Curated’s generous 30% Off Coupon, SPRING30, to be used quickly for first-time subscribers! I believe the offer will expire very soon!!