Hamdeok black pork with garden-view folding windows: Jeju Samchun

I went to eat at Jeju Samchun, a black pork restaurant near Hamdeok Beach :)

Where is Jeju Samchun Hamdeok, and its hours and parking

Jeju Samchun's Hamdeok Beach black pork restaurant is located at 537-1 Sinbuk-ro, Jocheon-eup, Jeju-si, Jeju-do, 1st floor. It's open daily from 12:00 to 23:00, and I was able to use the free parking lot in front of the restaurant.

• 📍Location · 537-1 Sinbuk-ro, Jocheon-eup, Jeju-si, Jeju-do, South Korea, 1F
• 🕔Hours · Daily 12:00–23:00
• 🚗Parking (free) · Lot in front of the restaurant

Garden view through the folding windows at Jeju Samchun

Jeju Samchun's Hamdeok branch has a calm interior with wide folding windows, so I could eat while looking out at the garden outside. The spacious restaurant, seating up to 50 people, gave off a comfortable atmosphere. There was decent space between tables and seats, and overall it felt relaxed and easy to eat in. The wide folding windows opened up onto the garden outside, giving the space a real sense of openness.

It seemed like a good layout for various kinds of visits too — families, work dinners, group gatherings.

The Jocha Set: grapevine smoke when the lid lifts

Jeju Samchun's Hamdeok Beach black pork restaurant stood out from other BBQ places thanks to its aging and smoking method, and the fact that staff grill the meat for you — I was looking forward to it. I ordered the Jocha Set, one of Jeju Samchun's signature dishes, centered on pork neck and pork belly. The meat arrived under a lid filled with smoke, and lifting the lid at the table, watching the smoke spread out, felt like its own little performance.

Jeju Samchun's black pork is reportedly aged at low temperature for 300 hours, then initially seared and smoked over grapevine wood. So it had a different depth of aged, smoked flavor from typical black pork BBQ. The advantage of the Jocha Set is that you're not eating just one cut — you get to enjoy meat with different textures together.

What side dishes and sauces come with the black pork?

Jeju Samchun Hamdeok's table had basic wrap vegetables, garlic and chili peppers, but also a good variety of kimchi, pickles, shredded green onion, cucumber salad, pollack roe, seaweed, and several sauces — a great combination with black pork. You could taste the meat's natural flavor with plain salt, or add Jeju-style flavor with fermented anchovy sauce (myeoljeot). The black pork paired well with the shredded green onion and cucumber salad too.

The staff recommended putting black pork, white kimchi and pollack roe with cheongyang chili pepper on rice and wrapping it all in seaweed — the salty pollack roe and the spicy chili really worked together. Pollack roe itself is salty and rich in umami, and adding cheongyang chili and seaweed on top gave it a crunchy texture and nutty aroma.

Staff grill the black pork at your table

Thick cuts of meat hold onto their juices better and taste best when grilled properly, so at Jeju Samchun the staff do the grilling themselves. Because they grill the meat to a consistent thickness and doneness, the meat stayed in much better condition than if customers had to keep flipping and cutting it themselves at the grill.

For meat like the Jocha Set that emphasizes aging and smoking, they recommended tasting it with just a light touch of salt at first, rather than dipping it in various sauces right away. Properly grilled, the black pork had a clean yet moist texture, and the more you chewed, the more the pork's characteristic savoriness came through, layered with a lingering hint of smoke.

How was the seafood doenjang jjigae?

At Jeju Samchun Hamdeok, the seafood doenjang jjigae (soybean paste stew) was just as satisfying as the meat. The savory, salty flavor of the doenjang combined with the umami from the seafood, so it wasn't just a salty soybean paste soup — it had that refreshing seafood flavor, making it great to spoon up between bites of meat. Where a plain doenjang jjigae is savory and rich, this seafood version had that extra umami and clean flavor coming from the seafood.

If you're looking for a black pork restaurant near Hamdeok Beach or in Hamdeok, I'd recommend visiting Jeju Samchun :)