A stall by the station, and a book with unusually large type

The writer, opening 우리가 사랑한 빵집, 성심당, was first surprised by how large the type was. The local press Namhae’s Spring Day, the notes later explain, had set the book that way so older readers with weak eyes could manage it, even if more pages were not in a publisher’s interest. It is the kind of book, the writer says, that is hard to shorten, and hard to review without losing its warmth.

Sungsimdang, in this reading, is more than a busy bakery. It leads, the writer says, a piece of Daejeon’s local economy, and does not behave like a firm whose first aim is the largest possible profit. The shop begins in 1956 as a steamed-bun stall by Daejeon Station, with two sacks of flour for capital. Over some sixty years, the notes say, it held to a belief that one cannot be happy alone while leaving unhappy people nearby, and each month gave away more than thirty million won in bread to nursing homes and orphanages in the city. That figure is the writer’s, and is left in the book’s own window.

Staff rooms, a faucet on the alley, and a recipe given away

The notes dwell on ordinary kindnesses. There is a staff-only rest room with massage chairs, and a buffet dining room that takes menu requests three days ahead, stays open five hours for people in a rush, and tries to match staff tastes. Japanese and other language classes are offered, and so is overseas training. A ‘Champion of Love’ scheme, the writer says, rewards staff who have been kind, with bonuses and a better chance of promotion. Main chefs, the notes claim, are paid salaries in the hundreds of millions of won; every member of staff is hired as a regular employee, and the same work is paid the same, whether or not someone went to university, a point that genuinely startled the writer.

Each month, the notes say, the accounts are shown to the staff, and fifteen percent of the profit is paid as a bonus. Tax is paid in full, and goods are settled in cash. When the firm was at its hardest, the writer adds, the debt ran to five billion won, and even then the books were opened and the tax was paid; some staff, seeing the numbers, found that honesty difficult to understand. Out on the alley by the main shop’s first floor, a faucet was installed so the nearby street stalls could take water without charge. Sungsimdang, the writer says, does not treat those stalls as rivals stealing customers. It thinks of living together.

The bakery has also published its recipes, with a dry confidence that anyone who copies them will still miss the taste. Im Young-jin, named as the president, tells the notes that supporting a staff member’s study is only natural, because it helps the company, and that a recipe without love will not taste as it should. A family newspaper, 한가족, is used to talk with staff and to encourage them.

A fire, a pope’s table, and an economy meant for everyone

The notes do not pretend the road was smooth. There was the IMF crisis, a group disappearance of skilled bakers, trouble at a branch, bankruptcy and heavy debt, and a large fire in 2005 from which, the writer says, the shop recovered with help from staff and from people in the city. Offers from large Korean and foreign firms were turned down, because the couple wanted the bakery to remain a local pride. Im Young-jin and his wife, raised in a devout Catholic home, later visited the Philippines and joined a Focolare program the notes call a ‘new humanity’ school, a Catholic social movement that began in Italy. There they met EoC, Economy of Communion, which the writer also calls an economy for everyone, and tried to practice it at the very moment when skipping it would have been easy to excuse.

In 2014, when Pope Francis visited Korea, the notes say Sungsimdang became still better known for sending freshly baked bread by KTX each day to his table. In the same passage the writer calls the bakery a pride of Daejeon, with some four hundred staff, and the workplace young people in the city most wanted to join, with a single-digit turnover rate. Those are the notes’ claims, tied to that telling, and are not presented here as later official totals. The same Korean essay, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A student reading of the Korean book 우리가 사랑한 빵집, 성심당, on the Daejeon bakery and its staff.
2. Years and figures as the notes give them, including 1956, a fire in 2005, bread sent by KTX in 2014, and claimed staff and donation numbers left in that window.
3. Im Young-jin, EoC (Economy of Communion), and the Focolare program, as the notes name them.

Last updated: 14 November 2026