Directory of South Korean Pipe Brands

Directory of South Korean Pipe Brands brings together the workshops in the southern Korean peninsula that could be documented as making pipes. Since the country has no long-standing factory tradition, production there proceeds through independent makers recorded individually by name. The directory currently holds a single record; it will be expanded as new documentation emerges.

Brands

• Kim Jong Wook — an independent maker working in the city of Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province. He comes from a painting background: he completed his university studies in fine arts and made his living from painting for many years. Born in 1961 in Seoul, Kim began smoking a pipe in 1983. It was not until 2010, the year an online pipe club was founded in the country, that he took up the bench; he got his start repairing and personalizing club members' pipes, and gathered most of his technical knowledge from online sources, video tutorials, and pipe forums. In his first three years he made close to two hundred pipes, and his name spread through the club circle; in 2013 he left painting behind for full-time pipe making. His current output ranges between sixty and seventy pipes a year. Records cite Hiroyuki Tokutomi among the names he looked to as models.