In 1973, the year she turned 17, she left home to become a nun at Yangjinam of Donghwasa in Daegu. In 1975, she received the novice nun precepts. In 1981, she received the full precepts and became a fully ordained bhikkhuni.
In 2006, she took charge of temple food events, starting with the Korean Traditional Temple Food Research Association. In 2010, she led the first Jogye Order Korean Temple Food Day event held in New York, in connection with the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism. The next year, she took charge of the temple food dinner at the Daegu World Championships in Athletics, hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
In February 2015, she introduced temple food at Le Bernardin in New York, and that October The New York Times ran an article titled “Jeong Kwan, the Philosopher Chef.” The next year she met chef Kang Min-goo at the Seoul restaurant Mingles and talked with him about temple food.
The breakthrough yearIn 2017, the year she turned 61, she appeared in Chef’s Table season 3, the Netflix documentary, and became known. That year she was invited to the Culinary Cinema section of the Berlin International Film Festival, and in June she explained temple food at Le Bernardin in New York with chef Eric Ripert.
In February 2019, Park Na-rae took on a temple stay at Baekyangsa on MBC’s I Live Alone and joined her cooking class, and in July she opened Dusugobang, a restaurant and food workshop, at Alleyway Gwanggyo in Suwon. In 2020, on SBS’s Lee Dong-wook Wants to Talk, she said she decided to become a nun after her mother died. In 2021, a cast from MBC’s Son Hyun-joo’s Small Stations visited Baekyangsa and tasted her temple food.
In 2022, she was appointed a Jogye Order temple food master. In 2023, she launched five kinds of vegan bugak with a professor of culinary science at Honam University. In 2024, she took part in a temple meal event at Baekyangsa for chef Eric Ripert.
In 2025, she appeared on tvN’s You Quiz on the Block, and in April published her first book, Jeong Kwan: My Food, with 58 recipes. In August, the Me and Pet Campaign was held at Cheonjinam of Baekyangsa, and in October she took part in Korean Temple Food Week in London and held a temple food pop-up restaurant.
In February 2026, Wavve’s The Chefs of the Temple Kitchen was released and KBS2’s The Philosopher’s Kitchen aired. In June she gave a book talk at the Seoul International Book Fair, and in August eight French chefs stayed in the Cheonjinam kitchen and made doenjang with her.
Jeong Kwan (born 1956) became a nun at Yangjinam of Donghwasa in Daegu in 1973, the year she turned 17, and became known in 2017, the year she turned 61, when she appeared in Netflix’s Chef’s Table. In 2022, the year she turned 66, she was appointed a Jogye Order temple food master.
Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.