Tuna: Conquering the Human Table from Cans to Otoro

In a corner of the pantry, there is always a yellow can of tuna sitting on the shelf.

It is an ordinary, everyday side dish—something you mix with rice when you’re hungry or toss into a kimchi stew.

However, in January 2025, this common fish appeared in the news with an entirely different face.

At the first auction of the New Year at Tokyo’s Toyosu Fish Market, a 276kg bluefin tuna was sold for 207 million yen, or approximately 1.9 to 2 billion Korean won. It was the second-highest price since auction records began in 1999. The record high was a 333.6 million yen tuna in 2019.

Why is it the same fish, yet one is a thousand-won can and the other is a multi-billion-won piece of sashimi?

After digging through various articles, the answer lies not in the fish itself, but in the technology humanity uses to handle it.

Canning and freezing—these two technologies have pushed the value of tuna in opposite directions, resulting in the two faces we see today.

Era	Event
Neolithic Age	Tuna bones discovered in the shell mounds of Dongsam-dong, Busan
Ancient Rome	Mediterranean tuna fishing and processing; trade of the condiment ‘Garum’
1804	Nicolas Appert invents canning technology for a reward offered by Napoleon
1903	First canned tuna produced in California, USA, using tuna caught by mistake while fishing for sardines
1957	Korea’s first deep-sea fishing vessel, the Nam-ho, catches tuna, the origin of the Korean word for tuna
1969	Kim Jae-chul founds Dongwon Industries
1970	Kindai University in Japan begins research on full-cycle bluefin tuna farming
1971	Joo In-yong changes the company name from Sijeonsa to Sajo Industries
1982	Dongwon Industries launches Korea’s first canned tuna, ‘Dongwon Tuna’
2002	Kindai University succeeds in the world’s first full-cycle bluefin tuna farming after 32 years
2025	First New Year auction at Toyosu, sold for 207 million yen (approx. 1.9–2 billion won)

From the Neolithic Korean Peninsula to Rome, why was tuna a measure of civilization?

Catching a bluefin tuna—a massive creature that swims at 70–90 km/h—with manual fishing techniques was proof that a society possessed significant navigation skills and organizational power.

In the Dongsam-dong shell mounds of Yeongdo, Busan, tuna bones were found along with Neolithic artifacts, meaning our ancestors already had the boats and technology to venture into the open sea to hunt tuna.

Ancient Rome was no different.

Roman fishermen ventured into the Mediterranean to catch tuna, and hundreds of processing plants along the coast shipped salted tuna throughout the empire.

In particular, ‘Garum,’ a fish sauce made by fermenting tuna entrails, was an indispensable condiment on the Roman table. With Garum jars even found in the ruins of Pompeii buried by volcanic ash, tuna was deeply embedded in Roman economy and food culture.

The birth of canned tuna, created by Napoleon’s bounty

Ironically, it was war that allowed us to access tuna at any time.

In the early 19th century, Napoleon needed a way to supply fresh food to soldiers for long periods and offered a bounty for long-term food preservation technology. Parisian confectioner Nicolas Appert discovered that food would not spoil if placed in glass jars, sealed, and boiled. In an era without the concept of bacteria, he grasped the principles of sterilization and sealing through experience alone.

Time passed, and in 1903, a sardine cannery in California, USA, faced a raw material shortage.

They tried canning albacore tuna that had been caught instead of sardines, and the cooked meat was mild and tender, much like chicken. Sailors had long called the white-fleshed, mild-tasting albacore ‘Chicken of the Sea,’ a nickname that would later become a brand name for canned tuna.

When World War I broke out, canned tuna was mass-supplied to soldiers in the trenches as a cheap, nutritious source of protein, and after the war, it moved into the daily diets of Americans.

The origin myths of food brands are often packaged slightly differently than the reality.

Even the story explaining the founding myth of Trader Joe’s with just two newspaper articles has different layers when examined closely. It is easy to simplify canned tuna as ‘a single accident creating a brand name,’ but it is actually closer to a case where the long-standing habits of sailors solidified into an industry.

Dongwon Tuna and Sajo Tuna: How was the K-tuna myth written?

Canned tuna, which began in the US, crossed the Pacific to Korea, and two figures divided this market: Kim Jae-chul of Dongwon and Joo Jin-woo of Sajo.

Kim Jae-chul, a former deep-sea fishing captain, founded Dongwon Industries in 1969 at the age of 35.

It is a famous anecdote that he started the business by leasing two ships from Japan with no collateral, relying solely on the credibility of ‘Captain Kim.’

The turning point came during an advanced management program at Harvard University. After learning the theory that “tuna becomes popularized in countries with a per capita income exceeding $2,000,” he thought of the Korean market, which was just crossing that threshold.

Thus, in 1982, ‘Dongwon Tuna’ was released as a domestic canned product for tuna that had previously been entirely for export.

When initial sales were sluggish, all employees focused on tasting events, and by actively promoting recipes like tuna kimchi stew, it settled into the Korean table. I still remember the tuna kimchi stew my mother used to make when I was young, and it feels surreal that the beginning of that taste was a decision made by a businessman.

On the other side, Joo Jin-woo was studying political science in the US and planning a different career path.

Then, when his father passed away suddenly in 1979, he inherited the company at the age of 29. The company’s roots trace back to ‘Sijeonsa,’ founded by his father Joo In-yong, which changed its name to Sajo Industries in 1971. Although he was a stranger to the sea, Joo Jin-woo expanded the company by acquiring struggling firms. He steered the company into a comprehensive food group by successively acquiring Sajo Haepyo, Sajo Daelim, and Oyang Fisheries.

Category	Dongwon Group (Kim Jae-chul)	Sajo Group (Joo Jin-woo)
Founder background	Former deep-sea captain	Political science major, 2nd gen successor
Motivation	Found the market through field experience	Sudden succession due to father’s passing
Core strategy	Created the domestic canned tuna market	Expanded through M&A
Leadership	Field-oriented	Strategist-oriented

Looking at the two founding histories side-by-side, the two growth models of the Korean food industry—the field experience of the first generation and the M&A strategy of the second generation—are perfectly reflected in a single can of tuna.

For reference, if you want to read another article about brand rivalries, The 120-Year Soda War: Cider vs. Sprite is equally interesting from a similar angle.

How did tuna belly, which even cats ignored, become ‘Otoro’?

While canned tuna was filling the public’s table, tuna belly, or ‘Toro,’ was walking a very different path in Japan. Because it was fatty, spoiled easily, and smelled fishy, Toro was called ‘Nekomata-gi’ just over 100 years ago during the Edo period—meaning it was a part so undesirable that even a cat would ignore it and walk away.

The reason this nuisance rose to the pinnacle of gourmet cuisine was not a change in taste, but an advancement in technology.

After World War II, freezing technology and nationwide cold-chain distribution networks changed everything.

When tuna is flash-frozen to minus 60 degrees Celsius immediately after being caught on a deep-sea fishing vessel, the fat that once caused spoilage began to serve as a way to lock in the flavor. It was a moment when a disadvantage was flipped into an advantage thanks to technology.

Japan’s economic boom poured oil on this fire.

As people gained more disposable income, they began to seek more expensive and delicious things, and the beautifully marbled Toro became a symbol of wealth and gastronomy. This is the background behind the multi-billion-won winning bids at the Toyosu market’s first auction every January.

Can full-cycle bluefin tuna farming save the future of tuna?

As demand exploded and resources dwindled due to overfishing, humanity had to shift from ‘hunters’ to ‘farmers.’

Kindai University in Japan was the first to take on this challenge. In 1970, their Fisheries Research Institute began research on ‘full-cycle farming’ of bluefin tuna. Full-cycle farming is a technology that completes a life cycle without relying on wild resources by raising artificially hatched fry to adulthood, having them lay eggs again, and raising the next generation from those eggs.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

Bluefin tuna are endothermic, meaning their body temperature is about 3 degrees higher than the water temperature, and they are such sensitive fish that they can die from being startled by noise or light. In fact, in the early days of domestic farming, there were cases where they died from a single clap of thunder. Very few individuals survived from the egg to the point of producing the next generation of eggs, and after 32 years of managing this extreme survival rate, the first generation of artificially hatched tuna finally succeeded in spawning in 2002. It was the world’s first full-cycle bluefin tuna farming.

Korea also jumped into securing this technology and succeeded in its first commercial shipment in 2018, but there is still a long way to go before mass production. Tuna hunting from the Neolithic era is currently moving into a new stage called ‘marine animal husbandry.’

Canning technology popularized tuna in a single tin, and freezing technology elevated the belly of the same fish to the highest level of luxury goods.

Although the directions were opposite, it was ultimately technology that rewrote the value of tuna in both cases. Next time you take a can of tuna out of the pantry, you might want to remember that it contains this long tug-of-war that has continued since the Neolithic Age.