FAQ, shipping & refunds

In Korea. Every product is sourced and shipped from here.

About 1.5 weeks at the moment.

Yes! Email daniel@gochujar.com with the products you’re interested in, the quantity and the delivery country.

Same products, different delivery areas. Gochujar ships only to the U.S.; Gochujar Global ships to every other country. If you’re in the U.S., shop here.

Korea Post and FedEx. Korea Post parcels are handed to USPS once they reach the U.S., and USPS delivers them to your door.

A flat $5 to the U.S., and free when your order has two or more items. No surprise fees at checkout.

Within 1–3 business days of your order. If something is out of stock, we’ll email you with the expected delay.

In the shipping confirmation email we send when your order leaves. It often lands in spam, so check there first.

Larger orders ship in several boxes, each with its own tracking number, so check your email for all of them. Splitting keeps shipping costs down (large boxes are charged by size) and helps parcels clear U.S. Customs faster.

Open the USPS or FedEx tracking page and paste in your tracking number (it looks like “LK3SDCFXS…”).

That’s usually normal. Once your parcel reaches the U.S., USPS or FedEx updates the tracker, and holidays, bad weather or backlogs can pause updates — sometimes they all appear at once. No update doesn’t mean it’s lost; it’s most likely moving from U.S. Customs to a regional hub to your local post office. If there’s no update for more than 2 weeks, email daniel@gochujar.com.

If your order hasn’t shipped yet, update the address in My Account and email us too. If it has shipped, we can’t reroute it — contact your local post office with the tracking number and ask about correcting the address.

We can reship it once the new postage is paid, or give you a partial refund. For a partial refund, the postage already paid is deducted and food items can’t be refunded.

Full refund if your parcel is lost in transit or arrives damaged. Partial refund if delivery fails and the parcel returns to Korea: we deduct the postage already paid, and food items aren’t refundable (non-food items can be restocked and refunded). You can also ask us to reship a returned parcel once the postage is paid.

We can’t refund or exchange if: you’ve changed your mind (size, colour, etc.); the product was damaged through use or handling; only the outer box has cosmetic damage and the product is fine; you refused delivery, or refused to pay customs fees, VAT or similar, and the parcel came back; or Customs opened the parcel and it’s reported as damaged.

We inspect everything before it ships, but things can get damaged in transit. Email daniel@gochujar.com within 10 days of delivery with photos or video. If it was clearly damaged in shipping, we’ll ask you to send it back or dispose of it, then refund you in full or send a replacement. We can’t help if more than 10 days have passed, there’s no photo or video, the product has clearly been used, Customs opened it for inspection, or our assessment finds it wasn’t damaged in shipping or defective. A note on fermented foods: gochujang, doenjang and liquid extracts can seep slightly from the lid because of air-pressure changes during the flight. This isn’t considered damage and isn’t eligible for a refund or exchange.

If your tracker hasn’t updated in 4 weeks, email us and we’ll open a trace with Korea Post. If it’s confirmed lost, you’ll get a full refund. Lost parcels are rare — usually it’s waiting at U.S. Customs or moving slowly through USPS.

We can’t refund for delays. Delivery estimates come from Korea Post and most parcels arrive on time, but the last stretch depends on U.S. Customs and your local post office, which neither Korea Post nor we can speed up.

We can’t refund products that Customs seizes, refuses or sends back to Korea.

U.S. orders include a 10% import tax, charged at checkout because of new U.S. import regulations. It applies to product value only — shipping is excluded — and you’ll see it under “Estimated Taxes” before you pay. Beyond that, there are usually no extra fees on delivery: we package carefully and fill in customs forms correctly to avoid them, but we can’t guarantee it. Any additional taxes or fees charged on delivery are the customer’s responsibility.

Yes. We may refuse customers who repeatedly abuse our policies — for example, repeated damage or delivery claims, chargebacks or fraud. Those accounts are flagged.

Yes, for a full refund, as long as we haven’t started processing it. Email us right away. Once processing has started, it can’t be cancelled.

Usually, if you email us within 24 hours of ordering. Once it has shipped, we can’t make changes.

Both. Cards are processed through PayPal, but you don’t need a PayPal account.

1. At the Payment step of checkout, click “Pay with PayPal”.

2. In the pop-up, choose “Pay with Card”.

3. Enter your email.

4. Fill in your card details and choose “No” (on mobile, slide to “No”) when asked to create a PayPal account.

5. Click Continue.

Yes. Payments go through PayPal, so we never see or store your card details.

Email us a screenshot of your cart and your PayPal email address, and we’ll send you a PayPal invoice you can pay in a few clicks.

Log in, open your cart and choose your store credit from the drop-down menu.

On desktop, enter it on the payment page after your cart. On mobile, the field is at the bottom of the payment page.