Why Koreans Eat That

Category: Soups & Stews

  • What BTS Eats to Survive Korea’s Hottest Days: Boknal and the Stamina Foods

    What BTS Eats to Survive Korea’s Hottest Days: Boknal and the Stamina Foods


    BTS Jimin and Jungkook in uniform at their military discharge in 2025, before the group's 2026 reunion — bts boknal summer

    Jimin and Jungkook at their military discharge, June 2025. By summer 2026, all seven are back. Photo: K-POPIT TV10, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    By the summer of 2026, all seven members of BTS are finally out of the military, back together, and working on their first full-group album since 2022. And their reunion lands right in the middle of the strangest food season in Korea: boknal, the three hottest days of the year, when the entire country lines up to eat boiling hot soup on purpose.

    Here’s the short version: on boknal, Koreans fight the heat by eating hot, protein-heavy “stamina food” to recharge, and the most famous is samgyetang, ginseng chicken soup. What’s fun is that the dishes BTS members have talked about loving are, almost one for one, the exact foods Koreans reach for on these days. One of them was even photographed at a samgyetang restaurant on the hottest day of the year. But before we get to who eats what, let’s talk about why the group’s timing is so good.

    “On the hottest day of the year, Korea eats boiling soup. On purpose.”

    BTS in 2026: back from the military, back together

    BTS, all seven members, the group reuniting in 2026 after finishing military service — bts boknal summer

    All seven, together again. Photo: The White House (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons

    If you lost track of BTS during the hiatus, here’s where things stand. The members served their mandatory military service in waves, and by June 2025 the last of them were discharged: RM and V on 10 June, Jimin and Jungkook the day after, and Suga finishing his alternative service on 21 June. Then they did the thing fans had waited years for. They got back in a room together.

    In a reunion video, the seven confirmed a 2026 comeback: a new album, built from each member’s own ideas, plus a world tour. It’s their first full-group release since the 2022 anthology Proof. They said they’d start writing over the summer, which means this boknal season is the first one in years with all of BTS home, off-duty, and eating like regular Koreans again. And that’s the fun angle here, because “eating like a regular Korean” in July means something very specific.

    Wait, what is boknal? (Korea’s “fight heat with heat” days)

    Boknal (복날) is Korea’s name for the three hottest days of summer: chobok (the first), jungbok (the middle), and malbok (the last), together called sambok. They fall between roughly mid-July and mid-August. The tradition: eat hot, nourishing “stamina food” to recover the energy the heat drains out of you.

    Samgyetang, Korean ginseng chicken soup served in stone bowls, the classic boknal stamina food — bts boknal summer

    Samgyetang on a summer day. Yes, it’s boiling. That’s the point. Photo: KOREA.NET, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons

    Now, the part that confuses every first-time visitor. On the single hottest day of the Korean year, restaurants fill up with people ordering a soup so hot it’s still bubbling when it hits the table. Why would anyone do that?

    The logic is called iyeol-chiyeol (이열치열), “fight heat with heat.” Eating something piping hot makes you sweat, and sweating cools you down. More importantly, summer heat drains your body, and a bowl of samgyetang loads you back up with protein and energy: a whole young chicken, stuffed with rice, simmered with ginseng and herbs. So boknal isn’t really about the temperature of the food. It’s about recovery. Koreans treat these three days like scheduled maintenance for the body.

    Once you know that, a lot of “weird” Korean summer behavior suddenly makes sense, including why a global pop star would be spotted ducking into a chicken-soup restaurant on the hottest afternoon of the year. Which brings us to BTS.

    What each BTS member reaches for in summer

    Here’s the quick version before we dig in. These are the summer and stamina foods BTS members have actually mentioned or been seen with, and how neatly they map onto Korea’s boknal classics:

    • Jimin — samgyetang (삼계탕), the ginseng chicken soup
    • Jungkook — eel (장어), a classic summer stamina food
    • Jin — naengmyeon (냉면), cold noodles for the heat
    • Suga — galbi (갈비), grilled ribs
    • V — kimchi jjigae (김치찌개), kimchi stew

    Jimin: caught eating boknal exactly right

    This is the one that started this whole article. On 11 July 2023, which was chobok that year, Jimin was spotted at a samgyetang restaurant, cheerfully signing an autograph for the staff. Think about the timing: the single first day of Korea’s hottest stretch, and there’s Jimin at a ginseng-chicken-soup place. You genuinely could not script a more perfectly Korean summer moment. Samgyetang is the boknal dish, and he went for it on the boknal day.

    Samgyetang bowls lined up at a Korean restaurant during the hot summer boknal season — bts boknal summer

    On chobok, samgyetang places fill up like this. Photo: KOREA.NET, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons

    Jungkook: eel, the other stamina classic

    Korean grilled eel (jangeo gui), a traditional summer stamina food that BTS Jungkook enjoys — bts boknal summer

    Grilled eel: the boknal food people forget, but Koreans swear by. Photo: Mar del Este, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons

    Jungkook has said he likes eel, and if samgyetang is the famous boknal food, grilled eel (jangeo) is the insider one. Ask older Koreans about summer stamina food and eel comes up almost as fast as chicken soup. It’s rich in protein and healthy fats, exactly the “recharge your battery” profile boknal is built around. So Jungkook’s taste isn’t a random preference; it’s textbook Korean summer eating.

    Jin: the cold-noodle counterpoint

    Naengmyeon, Korean cold buckwheat noodles in icy broth, a summer favorite of BTS Jin — bts boknal summer

    Naengmyeon: the other half of Korean summer, cold and sharp. Photo: chomjong, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Not every member fights heat with heat. Jin once said naengmyeon, cold buckwheat noodles in an icy, tangy broth, was a food he could happily eat every single day. And honestly, that’s the other, equally Korean way to survive summer: while half the country is sweating over samgyetang, the other half is slurping ice-cold noodles. Jin represents team cold-noodle, and no Korean would argue with him about it.

    Suga & V: meat and stew, the everyday comfort

    Korean galbi grilled ribs on a barbecue, a favorite of BTS Suga — bts boknal summer

    Galbi on the grill: Suga’s kind of dinner. Photo: ayustety, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Then there are the members who just want the good stuff year-round. Suga is a well-known lover of galbi, grilled short ribs, which is its own form of protein-loading if you think about it. V has talked plenty about kimchi jjigae, the humble kimchi stew that’s the ultimate Korean comfort food. Neither is strictly a boknal dish, but both fit the same instinct that drives the whole season: when you’re worn out, eat something hearty and Korean and feel human again.

    Kimchi jjigae, a bubbling Korean kimchi stew, the comfort food BTS V loves — bts boknal summer

    Kimchi jjigae: V’s comfort bowl, and half of Korea’s. Photo: miyagawa, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Why this all fits together

    Step back and the pattern is kind of lovely. The most famous group on the planet, freshly reunited, and when it comes to food they reach for the same things a Korean grandmother would push on you in July: chicken soup, eel, cold noodles, grilled meat, kimchi stew. No superfood powders, no influencer diets. Just the food of a Korean summer.

    That’s the quiet reason K-pop fans keep tripping over Korean food culture. You come for the group, and you leave knowing what boknal is, and why a bubbling pot of samgyetang is basically a national love language. The next hot day you’re in Seoul, do the very Korean thing. Find a samgyetang place, order the soup that’s far too hot for the weather, and sweat it out like an idol on chobok.

    A few things people keep asking about BTS and boknal

    What is boknal?
    Boknal (sambok) is the three hottest days of the Korean summer: chobok, jungbok and malbok, from roughly mid-July to mid-August. Koreans eat hot stamina food, above all samgyetang, to recover energy lost to the heat.

    Did Jimin really eat samgyetang on boknal?
    He was photographed at a samgyetang restaurant on 11 July 2023, which was chobok that year, signing an autograph for staff. It’s about as on-theme as a summer sighting gets.

    Why eat hot soup in hot weather?
    It’s the “fight heat with heat” idea (iyeol-chiyeol). Hot soup makes you sweat and cool down, while the chicken, ginseng and rice restore protein and energy. Recovery over temperature.

    Is BTS really back in 2026?
    Yes. All seven finished military service by June 2025 and announced a 2026 full-group comeback with a new album and world tour, their first full release since 2022.

    Keep going down the rabbit hole

    If the boknal thing grabbed you, we wrote a whole guide to what boknal is and why Koreans eat the way they do on the hottest days, and a deep dive on samgyetang, the ginseng chicken soup at the center of it all. And if you want the full BTS menu beyond summer, here’s what BTS actually eats in real life, member by member.

    Come for the group. Stay for the soup.

  • Korea’s Hottest Food Tradition in Summer: What Is Boknal(복날)?

    Korea’s Hottest Food Tradition in Summer: What Is Boknal(복날)?

    Koreans lining up to eat a steaming bowl of hot soup on Boknal, the hottest day of Korean summer — boknal korean summer

    Imagine visiting Korea in the middle of July. The temperature is above 35°C (95°F), the air feels heavy, and people are lining up — not for ice cream or cold noodles, but for a bowl of boiling hot soup. It sounds completely backwards. But that’s exactly what Boknal (복날) is.

    The short answer

    On the three hottest days of Korean summer, collectively called Boknal, Koreans deliberately eat hot, nourishing soup instead of cooling down. The logic is a centuries-old principle called iyeol chiyeol (이열치열), “fight heat with heat.” They’re not trying to cool down. They’re trying to recharge. Below is what Boknal means, where it comes from, and exactly what to eat (and where) if you’re in Korea right now.

    So what exactly is Boknal?

    A calendar marking the three Boknal days of Korean summer, Chobok Jungbok and Malbok — boknal korean summer

    Boknal refers to the three hottest days of summer, spread across roughly a month based on the traditional East Asian lunar calendar. Each has its own name: Chobok (초복), the first; Jungbok (중복), the middle; and Malbok (말복), the last. Together they’re known as Sambok (삼복), meaning “three boks.”

    The dates shift a little each year. In 2026, Chobok falls on July 15, Jungbok on July 25, and Malbok on August 14 — so the whole stretch of peak heat runs from mid-July into mid-August. If you’re in Korea during those weeks and notice restaurants suddenly packed at lunch, this is why.

    The Chinese character for bok (伏) means “to lie low” or “to crouch.” The idea is poetic: in the face of overwhelming summer heat, everything — even the strongest among us — bows down for a moment. Boknal is the day you acknowledge the heat, and then quietly prepare your body to outlast it.

    Where the tradition comes from

    This isn’t a modern marketing invention. The custom is recorded in the Dongguk Sesigi, a book on seasonal customs written during the Joseon Dynasty, and its roots reach back much further into East Asian agricultural life.

    For most of Korean history, summer was the hardest season for the body. Farmers worked long hours under punishing sun, sweating out energy and salts with no air conditioning to retreat to. People genuinely believed the intense heat drained the body’s core strength. So rather than cooling the body from the outside, the wisdom of the time said to restore it from within, with a warm and deeply nourishing meal on the very hottest days. Boknal became the calendar’s built-in reminder to do exactly that.

    Fight heat with heat: the iyeol chiyeol philosophy

    A steaming hot Korean soup served on a sweltering summer day, illustrating the iyeol chiyeol fight heat with heat principle — boknal korean summer

    The philosophy behind Boknal is called iyeol chiyeol (이열치열) — literally, “fight heat with heat.” It sounds like a contradiction, but the reasoning is surprisingly practical.

    When your body is exhausted from extreme weather, a hot, protein-rich meal helps replenish lost energy and get your circulation moving. There’s also a comfort logic. Eating something hot raises your body temperature slightly, which narrows the gap between you and the sweltering air, so afterward the heat outside feels a little less shocking. Whether or not modern science fully signs off on every claim, generations of Koreans have kept the tradition because it stands for something real: resilience, self-care, and bracing the body to endure the rest of a brutal summer.

    Samgyetang: the star of Boknal

    The dish most closely tied to Boknal is samgyetang (삼계탕) — a whole young chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, garlic, jujubes, and ginseng, then slowly simmered into a milky, restorative soup. Every ingredient earns its place: ginseng for vitality, garlic for stamina, jujube for warmth, and the chicken itself for clean, easy protein. On Boknal, samgyetang restaurants fill up so fast that regulars know to arrive before noon.

    There’s a lot more to this one bowl than a single paragraph can hold — its history, the different regional versions, and how to order and eat it like a local. If it’s the dish that brought you here, read our full guide to samgyetang, Korea’s ginseng chicken soup.

    Beyond samgyetang: other summer stamina foods

    An assortment of Korean summer stamina foods including grilled eel and loach soup for Boknal — boknal korean summer

    Samgyetang gets the spotlight, but Boknal is really about a whole family of boyangsik (보양식) — restorative, energy-building foods rooted in the old Korean idea that “food and medicine share the same origin.” The official Korea Tourism Organization guide to Korean stamina foods covers the same tradition. If you want to eat your way through the season, here’s what locals reach for:

    Jangeo (장어), grilled eel. One of the classic summer stamina foods, freshwater or sea eel is grilled over charcoal until the skin crisps and the flesh turns rich and buttery. It’s prized for being dense with protein and healthy fats — exactly what the tradition says a heat-drained body needs.

    Chueotang (추어탕), loach soup. A hearty, earthy soup made from ground or whole loach (a small freshwater fish), thickened and seasoned into something deeply savory. It’s an old-school tonic dish, the kind of bowl grandparents swear by, and a favorite among Koreans who find samgyetang too plain.

    Ori-baeksuk (오리백숙), boiled duck, and abalone (전복) versions of samgyetang are richer variations on the same idea. Some ginseng chicken soups are even upgraded with abalone, octopus, or medicinal herbs for an extra restorative punch.

    And if the thought of hot soup in 35-degree heat is simply too much? Koreans have a cool-side answer too. Kongguksu (콩국수), chilled noodles in a creamy soybean broth, is the refreshing counterpart. The season has options whether you follow “fight heat with heat” or not.

    Where to try boyangsik in Seoul

    You’ll find restorative soup all over the city during Boknal, but these two long-running institutions are a great, low-stress place to start — and both are the kind of historic spot where a curious visitor is very welcome. Hours and prices can change, so it’s worth a quick check before you go.

    Yonggeumok (용금옥) — loach soup, Jung-gu

    Opened in 1932, Yonggeumok is often cited as one of the oldest restaurants in Seoul, and it’s earned a spot in the Michelin Guide’s Bib Gourmand list. It has served its signature chueotang (loach soup) for generations — a warming, deeply savory bowl that’s the definition of an old-Seoul stamina meal.

    Address: 24-2 Da-dong-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul (중구 다동길 24-2) · Hours: Daily 11:00–22:00 (closed 2nd, 4th & 5th Sundays).

    Bangujeong Minmul Jangeo (반구정 민물장어) — grilled eel, Jongno-gu

    For the eel side of Boknal, this spot sits on the 19th floor near Dongmyo Station, pairing charcoal-grilled freshwater eel with a city view. Grilled eel is one of summer’s canonical stamina foods, and eating it up high with Seoul spread out below makes for a memorable, only-in-Korea meal.

    Address: 19F, 29 Jibong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul (종로구 지봉로 29, 금호팔레스빌딩 19층) · Hours: Daily 10:00–22:00 · 1 min from Dongmyo Station Exit 7.

    Frequently asked questions

    When is Boknal in 2026?
    The three days are Chobok on July 15, Jungbok on July 25, and Malbok on August 14, 2026. The dates follow the traditional lunar calendar, so they shift slightly each year.

    Why do Koreans eat hot soup in summer instead of cold food?
    It comes from iyeol chiyeol, meaning “fight heat with heat.” The belief is that a hot, nourishing meal restores energy drained by the heat and helps the body cope with it, rather than shocking it with cold food.

    Do I have to eat samgyetang on Boknal?
    Not at all. Samgyetang is the most iconic choice, but grilled eel (jangeo), loach soup (chueotang), and boiled duck are all popular. There are even cold options like kongguksu for those who’d rather not eat hot soup in the heat.

    Is Boknal a public holiday?
    No. It’s a seasonal food custom, not an official holiday, so shops and offices run as normal — but restaurants serving stamina food get very busy, especially at lunch.

    Can vegetarians take part in Boknal?
    The classic dishes are meat- or fish-based, but the spirit of Boknal is simply eating something warm and nourishing. Hearty vegetable or bean-based soups fit the idea, and kongguksu (soybean noodles) is a naturally plant-forward summer option.

    What does the word “Boknal” actually mean?
    “Bok” (伏) means to crouch or lie low, the image of everything bowing before the summer heat, and “nal” means day. So Boknal is, literally, the “day of lying low” against the heat.

    They’re not trying to cool down — they’re trying to recharge

    So if you ever see Koreans happily spooning up steaming soup on the hottest day of the year, don’t assume they’ve forgotten how hot it is. Boknal is a small, delicious act of resilience — a centuries-old habit of meeting the heat head-on and refueling for whatever summer throws next. For more one-bowl ideas to try while you’re here, browse our full guide to what to eat in Korea. Pull up a seat, order the soup, and recharge like a local.

    Restaurant details such as hours and prices are current as of 2026; please double-check before visiting.

  • Samgyetang (삼계탕): Why Koreans Eat Boiling Chicken Soup on the Hottest Day of Summer

    Samgyetang (삼계탕): Why Koreans Eat Boiling Chicken Soup on the Hottest Day of Summer

    Steaming stone bowl of Korean samgyetang ginseng chicken soup on a summer day in Seoul

    Here’s something that confuses almost every visitor: on the hottest days of the Korean summer, Koreans line up — in the sun, sometimes for an hour — to eat boiling hot chicken soup. Not cold noodles. Not shaved ice. Scalding broth, served in a stone bowl that keeps bubbling after it hits your table.

    This is samgyetang (삼계탕), and the logic behind it is older than the dish itself.

    The short version

    Samgyetang is a whole young chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, garlic, jujube and ginseng, simmered until the meat slides off the bone.
    Koreans eat it on bok-nal (복날) — the three hottest days of summer — to fight heat with heat.
    In 2026 those days are July 15, July 25, and August 14.
    It started in the royal court, not the street. Commoners couldn’t afford ginseng.
    The name used to be gyesam-tang (chicken-ginseng). Someone flipped it — and that flip tells you everything.

    Why Koreans eat hot soup in hot weather

    The idea is called iyeolchiyeol (이열치열), which translates roughly to “control heat with heat.” The reasoning goes like this: in extreme summer heat, your body pushes warmth outward to the skin, leaving your core cold and your digestion weak. Cold food makes that worse. Hot food restores the center, you sweat, and the sweat cools you down.

    Is that physiologically airtight? I’ll leave that to doctors. But stand in a Seoul alley in August with a stone bowl of ginseng broth in front of you, sweat through your shirt, then walk out into the heat — and you’ll notice the outside air suddenly feels manageable. Whether it’s thermodynamics or ritual, it works on people.

    Bok-nal: the three days that matter

    Koreans queuing outside a samgyetang restaurant in Seoul on a hot bok-nal summer day — samgyetang ginseng chicken

    Koreans don’t eat samgyetang randomly. There are three specific days, collectively called sambok (삼복):

    • Chobok (초복) — first bok day, July 15 in 2026
    • Jungbok (중복) — middle bok day, July 25 in 2026
    • Malbok (말복) — last bok day, August 14 in 2026

    The dates move every year because they’re set by the old lunar-solar calendar, counted from the summer solstice. And the character bok (伏) literally means “to lie prostrate” — the image is autumn’s cool energy crouching down, pinned under the summer heat, waiting.

    One detail for 2026: there are 20 days between jungbok and malbok instead of the usual 10. Koreans call this wolbok (월복), and the folk reading is simple — the heat is going to drag on longer this year.

    Traveler’s note: If you’re in Seoul on a bok day, expect queues at any well-known samgyetang restaurant — often 30 to 60 minutes at lunch. Locals take the tradition seriously. Come at 11am or after 2pm, or pick a different day entirely.

    This soup was never peasant food

    Joseon dynasty royal court kitchen preparing ginseng chicken soup illustration — samgyetang ginseng chicken

    Here’s where most food blogs get it backwards. Samgyetang looks humble — a small chicken, some rice, a root. It reads like something a farmer would make.

    It wasn’t. Ginseng was luxury. During the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), chicken soups were part of gungjung yori (궁중요리), the royal court cuisine, precisely because the ingredients were out of reach for ordinary households. Records from King Injo’s reign describe chicken boiled with milkvetch root being served to the ailing queen. This was medicine for royalty, not lunch for the village.

    The soup had other names first

    Joseon-era Koreans ate several chicken soups that circle around what we now call samgyetang — yeonggye-tang (영계탕), chonggye-tang, hwanggye-tang. Serving young chicken soup to elders during summer was already customary. The dish existed. The name didn’t.

    The name flip that explains everything

    Samgyetang only became a restaurant dish around the 1940s, and in the 1950s it was sold as gyesam-tang (계삼탕) — literally chicken-ginseng-soup. Chicken first. Ginseng second.

    Then two things happened. From the 1960s, cooks started stuffing the bird with a whole ginseng root instead of sprinkling in powder. And sellers, wanting to foreground the medicinal value that people were actually paying for, flipped the name to samgye-tang (삼계탕) — ginseng-chicken-soup.

    Same soup. Reversed name. That reversal is a small piece of economic history: it’s the moment the ginseng became the selling point and the chicken became the vehicle. During the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945) this was still a wealthy person’s indulgence. Only after the 1960s did it reach ordinary tables — which is to say, samgyetang has been a “common” food for about sixty years, and a royal one for five hundred.

    What’s actually in the bowl

    Samgyetang ingredients whole young chicken ginseng root jujube garlic and glutinous rice — samgyetang ginseng chicken

    A proper samgyetang is a whole young chicken, cavity packed with glutinous rice (찹쌀), whole garlic cloves, a jujube (대추), sometimes chestnut, and a ginseng root (인삼). It simmers for hours until the meat gives up.

    The broth is where people get surprised. There’s no soy sauce, no gochujang, no chili — nothing to hide behind. It’s chicken, ginseng, garlic and time. That’s it. If you’ve built your idea of Korean food around red and spicy, this will reset it.

    How to eat it without looking lost

    1. Season it yourself. There’s salt and pepper on the table for a reason — the broth arrives deliberately unsalted. Take a spoonful plain first, then salt to taste. Many people mix salt and pepper into a small dish and dip the meat instead.
    2. Pull the chicken apart with your spoon and chopsticks. No knife. It should surrender easily.
    3. The rice inside is the point. Once you’ve eaten some meat, break the stuffed rice into the broth. It thickens into something like porridge. This is the part regulars come for.
    4. Eat the ginseng. It’s bitter and woody and that’s correct. Chew it slowly. Some leave it; you shouldn’t.
    5. The jujube is optional. Nobody will judge either way.

    You’ll often be offered a small cup of insamju (인삼주), ginseng liquor, at the start. It’s traditional to pour a little into the broth or drink it alongside. It’s strong. Pace yourself.

    Where to eat it in Seoul

    Traditional hanok style samgyetang restaurant interior near Gyeongbokgung Palace Seoul — samgyetang ginseng chicken

    If you’re doing Gyeongbokgung Palace anyway — and most visitors do — the timing works out neatly.

    Tosokchon Samgyetang (토속촌 삼계탕)
    Seoul’s most famous samgyetang house, a short walk from Gyeongbokgung Palace.

    📍 Address — 5, Jahamun-ro 5-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul (서울 종로구 자하문로5길 5)
    🕙 Hours — 10:00–22:00 daily (last order 21:00)
    💰 Price — Standard samgyetang around ₩20,000; the black-silkie version costs more
    🚇 Getting there — Gyeongbokgung Station (Line 3), Exit 2, then a few minutes on foot
    🚗 Parking — Available, first hour free
    📞 02-737-7444

    It sits in a converted hanok complex of low rooms and wooden beams, and it’s known as a favorite of the late President Roh Moo-hyun. Expect a line at lunch, especially on bok days. It moves faster than it looks.

    Prices and hours change. Please confirm before you go.

    Plan your visit

    • When — Samgyetang is served year-round, but the atmosphere peaks on the three bok days. Come then if you want the cultural moment; come any other day if you want a seat.
    • Pairing it — Gyeongbokgung in the morning, samgyetang at 11am before the rush, then Bukchon Hanok Village or Tongin Market in the afternoon. It’s a natural half-day.
    • If you don’t eat chicken — there isn’t really a substitute here. Consider seolleongtang, Korea’s other great white-broth soup, made from ox bone instead.

    Samgyetang came down from the palace; budae jjigae came up from a US army base after the war. Two soups, opposite directions — that contrast is most of Korean food history in miniature. For the wider picture, our Korea food guide by region maps them out. And if you’re staying in the city, the Seoul neighborhood food guide covers what to eat where.

    FAQ

    Why do Koreans eat hot soup on the hottest day of the year?

    It’s a principle called iyeolchiyeol (이열치열), “fight heat with heat.” The traditional reasoning is that summer heat drives warmth to the body’s surface and leaves the core weak, so warming food restores balance and the resulting sweat cools you. It’s as much ritual as physiology, and it’s taken seriously.

    When is bok-nal in 2026?

    Chobok falls on July 15, jungbok on July 25, and malbok on August 14, 2026. The dates shift each year because they follow the lunar-solar calendar from the summer solstice. 2026 is a wolbok year — 20 days between jungbok and malbok instead of 10 — which folk wisdom reads as a longer heat.

    Is samgyetang spicy?

    No. There’s no chili at all. The broth is chicken, ginseng, garlic and jujube — clean and mild, and it arrives unsalted so you season it yourself. It’s one of the easiest Korean dishes for someone who doesn’t handle heat.

    Do you eat the whole chicken, bones and all?

    The meat only. The chicken is young and small, so the flesh separates easily with a spoon — no knife needed. Leave the bones in the bowl. Do eat the rice stuffed inside and the ginseng root.

    Was samgyetang always a common dish?

    The opposite. Ginseng was expensive enough that chicken-and-ginseng soups belonged to royal court cuisine during the Joseon Dynasty, and records from King Injo’s reign describe a version served to the ailing queen. It only reached restaurants around the 1940s and ordinary tables after the 1960s.

    Why is it called samgyetang and not gyesamtang?

    It was gyesam-tang (chicken-ginseng-soup) when it was first sold commercially in the 1950s. From the 1960s, cooks began stuffing whole ginseng roots into the bird rather than using powder, and the name was flipped to samgye-tang — ginseng first — to emphasize the medicinal value people were paying for.

  • Budae Jjigae (부대찌개): The ‘Army Stew’ Born from War, and Where It All Started

    Budae Jjigae (부대찌개): The ‘Army Stew’ Born from War, and Where It All Started



    Most Korean stews carry the name of a place or an ingredient. This one carries the name of an army. Budae jjigae (부대찌개) literally means “army base stew,” and the name is not a metaphor — the dish really was pieced together from what came out of American military bases after the Korean War. In one line: budae jjigae is a bubbling red stew that simmers Spam, sausage, and baked beans together with kimchi, tofu, and instant noodles in a spicy broth. It is comfort food with a complicated past, and to understand it you have to go back to a time when Koreans were hungry and the only surplus meat in town wore a US Army label. Let me show you the pot, the story behind it, and the little shop in Uijeongbu where it all began.

    Bubbling pot of Korean budae jjigae army stew with spam sausage ramyeon noodles kimchi and cheese
    Budae jjigae — a spicy, bubbling pot that turned wartime leftovers into a national comfort dish.

    ⭐ Budae jjigae at a glance

    🍲 Flavor (rich, spicy, savory) ★★★★★
    🍻 Comfort & share-with-friends factor ★★★★★
    🕰️ History you can taste ★★★★★
    🌶️ Spice level ★★★☆☆

    A personal take — the flavor, the mood, and the heat of a typical pot. Yours may differ.

    The short version: Budae jjigae is a spicy Korean stew built around American processed meats — Spam, hot dogs, and ham — simmered with kimchi, tofu, gochujang, and a nest of instant ramyeon noodles, usually with a slice of melting American cheese on top. It was born in the hungry years after the Korean War, near the US bases at Uijeongbu, and it has since grown from survival food into a joyful, bubbling pot that friends crowd around today. Here’s what’s in it, how it came to be, and where to eat the original.

    First — what’s actually in the pot?

    Budae jjigae is a study in contrasts, because it puts two very different pantries into one pot. From the American side come the processed meats the dish was built on: Spam, sliced sausages or hot dogs, ham, and often a spoonful of pork-and-beans in tomato sauce. From the Korean side come the flavors that tie it all together — kimchi, gochujang (red chili paste) and chili powder, tofu, scallion, garlic, and onion, all simmering in a broth that turns deep red and savory as it cooks.

    Close up of budae jjigae ingredients spam sausage tofu kimchi ramyeon noodles before cooking — budae jjigae army
    American processed meats meet Korean kimchi and gochujang — the whole story of the dish, in one pot.

    Then there are the two toppings that make everyone smile. A block of instant ramyeon noodles goes in near the end, soaking up the broth, and a slice of American cheese is laid over the top to melt into a mellow, salty richness. Some newer versions add rice cakes, dumplings, or even baked beans and macaroni. There’s no single “correct” recipe, and that is rather the point — budae jjigae was always about making something warm and generous out of whatever was on hand.

    The story: a stew born from hard times

    To understand budae jjigae, you have to picture Korea just after the Korean War (1950–1953). The country was devastated and food was scarce, especially meat. But around the US military bases that remained, there was a steady flow of American army rations — canned Spam, hot dogs, ham, and cheese — that made their way, officially and unofficially, into the local markets.

    Vintage-feeling street near a US military base in postwar Uijeongbu Korea where budae jjigae began — budae jjigae army
    Budae jjigae grew up in the postwar towns around the US bases — turning scarcity into a shared meal.

    Koreans took those unfamiliar meats and did the natural thing: they threw them into a pot with kimchi and chili paste, the way they would with any other stew, and simmered it all into something hot and filling. Because the meat came from the army base — budae (부대) — the dish took its name from its origin. In its early days it also went by the nickname “Johnson tang” (존슨탕), a nod to the American president of the era. What began as a way to stretch a little precious meat into a meal for many became, over the decades, a beloved comfort food in its own right.

    Uijeongbu: where it all started

    If budae jjigae has a hometown, it is Uijeongbu (의정부), a city just north of Seoul that sat beside major US military bases. This is where the stew first took shape, and the city still celebrates it with an entire Budae Jjigae Street lined with specialist restaurants. Uijeongbu-style budae jjigae is known for leaning on a clean, kimchi-forward broth rather than heavy stock — a reminder of the dish’s thrifty roots.

    The shop most often credited with turning this improvised stew into a proper dish is Odeng Sikdang (오뎅식당). It opened around 1960 not as a stew house at all, but as a humble stall selling odeng (fish cake). Only later did the owner begin simmering the American base meats into a stew for hungry customers — an early, and now legendary, version of budae jjigae. Three generations of the same family have run it since, and today it’s recognized as one of Korea’s official long-established shops (a “Baengnyeon Gage,” or hundred-year store). Eating there is about as close as you can get to tasting the dish’s origin.

    🗓️ Plan your visit

    When: Budae jjigae is a hearty, shared meal, best at lunch or dinner with a group. It’s served year-round, but a bubbling pot is especially welcome on a cold day.

    Getting there: Uijeongbu is an easy day trip from Seoul — about 40–50 minutes on the Seoul Subway Line 1 to Uijeongbu Station, then a short taxi or walk to the Budae Jjigae Street area.

    Costs: Expect roughly ₩11,000 per person for the stew, with add-ons like extra sausage or noodles costing a little more. Prices and hours change, so it’s worth checking before you go.

    Where to eat it: the original

    To taste budae jjigae where the story began, head to the shop that started it:

    Odeng Sikdang (오뎅식당) — Uijeongbu

    The shop widely credited as the birthplace of budae jjigae, running since around 1960 and now a recognized hundred-year store. Its Uijeongbu-style stew is clean and kimchi-forward — the taproot of the whole tradition.

    📍 15 Hoguk-ro 1309beon-gil, Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi-do  ·  🕘 Around 9:30–21:30 (check before visiting)  ·  💸 Budae jjigae about ₩11,000 per person

    FAQ

    Why is it called “army stew”?

    Because it was made from food that came out of US military bases. Budae (부대) means “military unit” or “base,” and the stew got its name from the Spam, sausages, and ham that originated there after the Korean War. Locals combined those meats with Korean kimchi and chili paste to make a filling stew.

    Is budae jjigae very spicy?

    It’s moderately spicy — warming rather than punishing. The heat comes from gochujang and chili powder, but the Spam, cheese, and noodles balance it out into something rich and comforting. If you can handle a typical kimchi stew, you’ll be fine.

    What’s the difference between budae jjigae and “Johnson tang”?

    They’re essentially the same dish. “Johnson tang” (존슨탕) was an old nickname for the early army-base stew, named after US President Lyndon Johnson. Over time, “budae jjigae” became the standard name, though you may still see the older term here and there.

    Do I add the ramyeon noodles myself?

    Often, yes. Many restaurants bring the pot to your table and let it boil in front of you, adding the instant noodles near the end so they don’t overcook. Eat the noodles first while they’re springy, then work through the meats, tofu, and broth — and add rice at the end if you like.

  • Kongnamul-gukbap (콩나물국밥): Jeonju’s Hangover Cure, and Its Two Rival Bowls

    Kongnamul-gukbap (콩나물국밥): Jeonju’s Hangover Cure, and Its Two Rival Bowls




    Every Korean city has a soup it swears by the morning after a long night. In Jeonju (전주) — the country’s UNESCO-designated City of Gastronomy — that soup is kongnamul-gukbap (콩나물국밥). In one line: kongnamul-gukbap is a clear, gently spicy soup of soybean sprouts and rice, eaten across Korea as a hangover cure — and Jeonju makes the most famous version. What most visitors don’t realize is that the city quietly argues about how it should be served, splitting into two camps. Let me show you the dish, the story, and the delicious divide.

    Steaming bowl of Jeonju kongnamul-gukbap bean sprout soup with rice and dried seaweed — kongnamul gukbap jeonju
    Kongnamul-gukbap — Jeonju’s clear, restorative bean sprout soup with rice.

    ⭐ Kongnamul-gukbap at a glance

    🍜 Flavor (clean, savory, mild heat) ★★★★★
    🥴 Hangover-cure reputation ★★★★★
    💸 Easy on the wallet ★★★★★
    🌶️ Spice level ★★☆☆☆

    A personal take — the taste, the reputation, and the price of a typical bowl. Yours may differ.

    The short version: Kongnamul-gukbap is a Jeonju specialty — bean sprouts and rice in a clear, scalding-hot broth, topped with dried seaweed, scallion, and often an egg. It’s cheap, comforting, and famous as a hangover cure. Here’s what’s in the bowl, why Jeonju owns it, the two rival ways it’s served, and where to try each.

    First — what’s actually in the bowl?

    The name is a plain list of parts: kongnamul means “soybean sprouts,” guk is “soup,” and bap is “rice.” Put them together and you get exactly what arrives — rice sitting in a clear broth thick with pale, crunchy bean sprouts. It’s finished with gim (dried seaweed) crumbled on top, chopped scallion, a little garlic and chili for warmth, and usually an egg. There’s no gochujang-red heaviness here. The whole point is that it’s light and clean.

    Close up of kongnamul-gukbap showing bean sprouts clear broth rice and crumbled dried seaweed — kongnamul gukbap jeonju
    Pale, crunchy bean sprouts in a clear broth — light where other Korean soups are rich.

    Why it’s the morning-after soup

    This isn’t just folklore. Bean sprouts are rich in aspartic acid, an amino acid that supports the body’s breakdown of acetaldehyde — the compound behind that pounding hangover. So when Koreans stumble into a kongnamul-gukbap house at 8 a.m., there’s a bit of real biochemistry behind the ritual. Add the hot, hydrating broth and the easy-to-eat rice, and it’s about the kindest thing you can do for a rough morning.

    The story: how a market soup became a city’s pride

    Jeonju had two things a great bean sprout soup needs: clean water and a talent for growing sprouts. The city sits in Korea’s rice-and-vegetable heartland, and its soft local water was long said to grow especially fine kongnamul — thin, crisp, and sweet. Give a city that ingredient and a culinary streak a mile wide, and a signature dish is only a matter of time.

    Early morning at Jeonju Nambu Market where kongnamul-gukbap became a working person's breakfast — kongnamul gukbap jeonju
    Jeonju’s Nambu Market — where the soup grew up as a working person’s breakfast.

    The dish as Jeonju knows it took shape in the lean decades after the Korean War, when a filling bowl for a few coins mattered. By the 1970s it was the fuel of Nambu Market and the streets around Jeonju Station — merchants, porters, and travelers all needing something hot, fast, and cheap before dawn. Through the 1980s, stalls serving it spread to markets across the city, and what began as humble market food quietly became one of the things Jeonju is proudest of.

    The great divide: two ways to serve it

    Here’s the part locals will happily argue over. In Jeonju, kongnamul-gukbap comes in two schools, and which one you prefer says something about you.

    The boiled bowl (the Sambaekjip school)

    In the first style, everything is cooked together in a ttukbaegi — a stone pot — and comes to your table still bubbling, the egg stirred right into the hot soup. It’s the version that arrives dramatically, furiously boiling, and you eat it straight from the roaring pot. The flavor leans clean and honest, carried by the sprouts themselves. This is the house style of Sambaekjip, Jeonju’s most famous old name.

    The Nambu Market bowl (the toryeom school)

    The second style — the true “Nambu Market style” — never boils at the table. Instead the rice is warmed by toryeom: hot broth is ladled over it and poured off again, over and over, until the bowl is hot but never cooked to a boil. The signature move is the egg. It comes on the side, as a soft poached egg (suran, 수란), and you’re meant to spoon a little hot broth and some crumbled seaweed over it, then eat it alongside — not stir it in. It’s fresher-tasting, a touch more playful, and some houses even add chopped squid. This is the style of Hyundaiok and most of the market’s other bowls.

    Neither is “correct.” Boiled-and-bubbling or gently-warmed-with-a-poached-egg — the fun is trying both and picking your side.

    🗓️ Plan your visit

    When: This is a breakfast dish above all — many kongnamul-gukbap houses open at dawn, and the market originals often close by early afternoon. Come hungry in the morning. Jeonju’s Hanok Village is prettiest in spring and autumn, and quieter on weekdays.

    Getting there: From Incheon Airport, plan on roughly 3–4 hours via Seoul — the airport railroad into the city, then a KTX train from Yongsan to Jeonju (about two hours) or an intercity express bus. Nambu Market sits right by the Hanok Village, so you can walk it off afterward.

    Costs: One of Korea’s great cheap eats — a bowl rarely tops ₩10,000, and many market bowls cost less. Bring a little cash; the oldest places aren’t always card-friendly.

    Where to eat it: one from each school

    To taste the divide for yourself, try one of each:

    Sambaekjip (삼백집) — the boiled classic

    Jeonju’s most storied kongnamul-gukbap house, going strong for some six decades. The name — “three hundred house” — comes from the founder, grandmother Lee Bong-sun, who is said to have refused to sell more than three hundred bowls a day so she could keep the quality up. It’s an institution, and a fine place to meet the bubbling, boil-at-the-table style.

    • 📍 Address: 22 Jeonju Gaeksa 2-gil, Wansan-gu, Jeonju (전북 전주시 완산구 전주객사2길 22)
    • 🕒 Hours: 06:00–22:00 (last order around 21:30)
    • ☎️ Tel: 063-284-2227 · 🍲 Bean sprout soup with rice, plus a famous side of fried chili dumplings

    Hyundaiok (현대옥) — the Nambu Market original

    Right inside Nambu Market, Hyundaiok is the name most associated with the true market style — warmed by toryeom, served with a poached egg on the side. It has been part of the market since 1979, and it’s about as authentic a bowl as you’ll find. Note the hours: like a proper market kitchen, it’s a morning-to-early-afternoon affair.

    • 📍 Address: 63 Pungnammun 2-gil, Wansan-gu, Jeonju — inside Nambu Market (전북 전주시 완산구 풍남문2길 63)
    • 🕒 Hours: roughly 06:00–14:00 (breakfast and lunch only; closed some holidays)
    • 🍲 The style: Nambu Market toryeom bowl with a side poached egg (suran)

    One honest caveat: hours and prices are accurate as of July 2026, but small family kitchens change both — and sell out — more often than you’d expect. A quick check before you go never hurts, and earlier is always safer.

    🔗 More Korean food to explore: while you’re in Jeonju, don’t miss the city’s famous Jeonju bibimbap. For another beloved hangover soup, read about seolleongtang, Seoul’s ox-bone soup — or plan a whole trip with our regional guide to what to eat in Korea. · More on VisitKorea

    A few quick questions

    Is kongnamul-gukbap spicy?
    Only mildly. The broth is clear and clean, with a little garlic and chili for warmth rather than fire. If you want more heat, most places set out extra seasoning you can stir in yourself.

    Is it vegetarian?
    Often close, but not guaranteed. The core of bean sprouts, rice, and seaweed is plant-based, but many broths are built on anchovy or seafood stock and an egg is standard. Ask before ordering if that matters to you.

    What’s the difference between the Sambaekjip and Nambu Market styles?
    Sambaekjip’s bowl is boiled together in a stone pot and served bubbling, with the egg stirred in. The Nambu Market (toryeom) style is warmed with ladled broth rather than boiled, and the egg comes poached on the side to eat alongside.

    Do I really have to eat it for breakfast?
    No, but it’s traditional — and the most famous market places open at dawn and close early. If you want the original bowl in its natural habitat, make it a morning plan.

  • Gaegukji (게국지) & Baksok Nakji-tang (박속낙지탕): Korea’s West-Coast Tidal-Flat Comfort Food

    Gaegukji (게국지) & Baksok Nakji-tang (박속낙지탕): Korea’s West-Coast Tidal-Flat Comfort Food

    Drive out to Korea’s west coast, to the twin counties of Seosan (서산) and Taean (태안), and the first thing you notice is how far the sea goes out. When the tide drops on the Taean Peninsula, it leaves miles of gray-brown tidal flats (갯벌, getbol) — soft mud you can walk into with a bucket and come back from with dinner. That mud is the whole story here. It’s why this quiet corner of Chungcheongnam-do cooks two dishes you’ll find almost nowhere else: gaegukji (게국지), a deeply savory crab-brine kimchi stew, and baksok nakji-tang (박속낙지탕), a clear, delicate broth built around live tidal-flat octopus.

    Wide tidal flats at low tide on the Taean and Seosan west coast of Korea with mudflats stretching to the sea — seosan taean gaegukji
    Low tide on the Taean coast — the mudflats that feed both of these dishes.

    ⭐ Seosan & Taean at a glance

    🏛️ Sights & things to do ★★★★☆
    🍜 Food ★★★★☆
    🚆 Easy to reach ★★★☆☆

    A personal take from our own trips out west — how much there is to see, how good the eating is, and how easy it is to get to. Taean has real beaches, national-park coastline and tidal-flat walks, so there’s plenty to do around the meals; the catch is that it’s a car-friendly region without a train line, so reaching it takes some planning. Your own mileage may vary.

    New to Korean food? Start with our complete guide to what to eat in Korea.

    The short version: Seosan and Taean sit on the same muddy stretch of Korea’s west coast, and they turned that mud into two very different comfort foods. Gaegukji is a rustic kimchi stew fermented with crab brine and salted seafood, then simmered until it’s rich and funky. Baksok nakji-tang goes the opposite way — a clean, almost clear soup of gourd flesh, radish and small live octopus, finished with hand-cut noodles. One is bold and salty, one is gentle and sweet. Both are tidal-flat cooking at its most honest. Here’s what makes each one special, and where to eat them.

    Two dishes the tidal flats made

    These two dishes rarely share a table; one is a winter warmer, the other an early-summer treat. But they come from the same instinct: take whatever the getbol gives you that day, and don’t waste a scrap of it. Let’s take them one at a time.

    Gaegukji — the crab-brine kimchi stew

    Bubbling pot of Seosan gaegukji crab-brine kimchi stew with cabbage and crab in an earthenware bowl — seosan taean gaegukji
    Gaegukji, simmered to order — a funky, salty kimchi stew you eat with a spoon of rice.

    Start with the name, because it tells you what’s in the pot. Gaegukji breaks down to gae (게, crab), guk (국, here meaning the briny liquid), and ji (지, an old west-coast word for kimchi). So: crab-brine kimchi. It’s built from the tough outer leaves and stalks left over after the winter kimjang (김장) — the big communal kimchi-making — that a thriftier era refused to throw away. Those coarse greens get chopped up and mixed with the leftover brine from crab that had been salted down earlier in the year, plus salted shrimp or other jeotgal (젓갈), and packed into an onggi crock to ferment.

    Here’s the honest part: aged gaegukji comes out so pungent and salty that people traditionally didn’t eat it cold. They tipped it into an earthenware pot and simmered it, often with a few fresh crabs or a handful of vegetables thrown in, and that bubbling stew is what most restaurants serve today. It’s murky, deeply savory, a little fishy in the good way, and it exists to be eaten in small salty bites over a big bowl of white rice. If you love the funk of a well-aged kimchi jjigae, this is that turned up a notch.

    Baksok nakji-tang — clear broth and live octopus

    Pot of Taean baksok nakji-tang clear octopus soup with white gourd flesh and radish in a light broth — seosan taean gaegukji
    Baksok nakji-tang — small octopus blanched in a clean gourd-and-radish broth, noodles to follow.

    The Taean specialty is a completely different mood. Its full name, baksok milguk nakji-tang (박속밀국낙지탕), is a little instruction manual. Baksok (박속) is the soft white flesh scraped from the inside of a bottle gourd; nakji (낙지) is a small octopus; and milguk — we’ll get to that in a moment. The gourd flesh and some radish go into a light broth with garlic, onion and scallion, and it simmers into something clean and faintly sweet, nothing like the fiery red octopus dishes you might expect.

    Then comes the ritual, and it’s half the fun. Live nakji, small ones caught out on the Taean tidal flats, go into the simmering pot right at the table and cook in under a minute. You pull them out, dip them in a light soy sauce, and eat them while they’re tender and barely set. When the octopus is gone, the broth has taken on all that sweet seafood flavor — and that’s when the noodles go in. In my experience the noodle course is the part people quietly fight over: the soup by then is the best thing on the table.

    How the mudflats shaped both dishes

    Gaegukji: thrift, and a small crab called neungjaengi

    Folk painting style illustration of women gathering small crabs and octopus on the Seosan Taean tidal flats in old Korea — seosan taean gaegukji
    The old way: whatever the getbol gave up that day went into the crock and the pot.

    Gaegukji is peasant cooking, plain and proud of it. On the Seosan and Taean coast, small crabs were the one thing the tidal flats always handed over for free — little mud crabs the locals call neungjaengi (능쟁이). Families would salt them into a crude crab paste and work through the jar over winter, and the salty brine left at the bottom was too precious to pour away. Mixed with the ragged leftovers of the kimjang cabbage, it fermented into gaegukji: a way to stretch two things that were almost trash into a side dish that lasted into the lean spring. That’s the real root of it — not luxury, but making the coast’s small gifts go a long way.

    One thing worth clearing up, because a lot of visitors get it wrong. Thanks to an old TV appearance, many Koreans now picture gaegukji as a bubbling kkotge (꽃게, blue crab) hot pot. The traditional Seosan and Taean dish is really a fermented kimchi first, crab-flavored and pungent, that happens to be cooked in a pot. Modern restaurants do add fresh crab and dial back the salt for today’s palates, which is delicious — just know that the crab-heavy stew on your table is a friendlier descendant of a much saltier, humbler original.

    Baksok nakji-tang, and what ‘milguk’ really means

    The Taean octopus soup carries its own history in that odd middle word, milguk. In the hungry gap before the barley ripened, west-coast villages, like much of Korea, stretched their meals with wheat flour — hand-torn sujebi (수제비) dough flakes and knife-cut kalguksu (칼국수) noodles. Around here they called that flour-based food milguk, from mil (밀, wheat). Toss a few cheap tidal-flat octopus into a pot of that gourd broth, finish with the flour noodles, and you’d fed the whole family from the mudflat and the flour sack. What began as ordinary home cooking became a restaurant dish in the 1960s, and the villages of Wonbuk-myeon and Iwon-myeon in northern Taean are still known as its birthplace.

    There’s a nice logic to the whole meal, too. You eat the delicate octopus first, while it’s at its best, and the humble flour noodles last, once the broth has quietly turned into the richest thing in the room. It’s frugal food that happens to be built like a tasting menu. For more of Korea’s resourceful countryside cooking, it rhymes with mountain dishes like Jeongseon’s gondeure namul bap, born of the same make-do spirit inland.

    🗓️ Plan your visit

    When: The two dishes actually split the calendar. Baksok nakji-tang is at its best when the tidal-flat octopus are sweet and tender, roughly early summer into early autumn (about June to September). Gaegukji is winter-into-spring food by origin, though good restaurants serve it year-round. Either way, Taean’s coast is loveliest in late spring and autumn, and the wide beaches inside Taeanhaean National Park (태안해안국립공원) pull big crowds through July and August.

    Getting there: This is the one honest hurdle: there’s no train to Taean. From Seoul, intercity buses run to Seosan and Taean in roughly two and a half to three hours, and having a car makes the scattered coastal restaurants far easier. From Incheon Airport, plan on the better part of a day by public transit, so most travelers fold Seosan and Taean into a west-coast road trip rather than a quick hop.

    Costs: Gaegukji is famously good value, usually served as a set meal with rice and side dishes. Baksok nakji-tang is pricier, since live octopus isn’t cheap and portions are built for sharing, so expect it to be the splurge of the trip. Treat any figure as a guide; seafood prices move with the season and the catch, and summer weekends on the coast get busy, so book ahead where you can.

    Where to eat in Seosan and Taean

    These are regional dishes, so the best versions are near the source. For gaegukji, head into downtown Seosan; for baksok nakji-tang, drive out to the octopus villages of northern Taean. Two names to anchor on:

    • 📍 Jingukjip (진국집), for gaegukji: 19-10 Gwaamun-gil, Seosan, Chungcheongnam-do (충남 서산시 관아문길 19-10)
    • 🕒 Hours: about 08:30–21:00 daily
    • 🍲 Gaegukji set meals from around 13,000 won (a gaegukji-and-boiled-pork set), up to about 26,000 won with grilled dried corvina · a genuine old-timer near Seosan city hall, featured on national TV · no lot of its own, so use a nearby paid car park
    • 📍 Wonpung Sikdang (원풍식당), for baksok nakji-tang: 841-1 Wonyi-ro, Wonbuk-myeon, Taean, Chungcheongnam-do (충남 태안군 원북면 원이로 841-1) — about 09:30–20:00, often closing early once the day’s octopus sells out; baksok milguk nakji-tang around 15,000 won per person, with parking on the lot beside the building

    If you want the deepest roots for the octopus soup, Iwon Sikdang (이원식당) out in Taean’s Iwon-myeon (원이로 1539) has been serving baksok milguk nakji-tang since 1967 and is widely called the original, at around 20,000 won a head. The scenic Taeanhaean National Park coastline runs right past all of these, so it’s easy to build a meal into a day at the shore.

    One honest note: the Taean octopus places live and die by the tide and the catch, so hours slide and popular ones sell out early — call ahead, and treat the octopus soup as a lunch plan rather than a late dinner. Prices, closing days and menus all drift over time, so confirm before you make the drive. The authoritative source on the region’s coast and tidal flats is the government’s own park listing for Taeanhaean National Park, and there’s good background on the wider area in the Taean County overview.

    🔗 More Korean meals worth the trip: graze the seafood and street food at Seoul’s Gwangjang Market, spoon into Gangneung’s seawater-set soft tofu on the east coast, or try the make-do mountain cooking of Jeongseon’s gondeure namul bap.

    A few quick questions

    What exactly is gaegukji?
    Gaegukji is a rustic kimchi stew from the Seosan and Taean coast. Coarse leftover cabbage and radish from the winter kimjang are fermented with leftover crab brine and salted seafood, then simmered in a pot. The name means “crab-brine kimchi,” and the taste is salty, funky and deeply savory. It’s a side dish to eat in small bites over rice, not a soup you drink by the bowl.

    Is gaegukji the same as a crab hot pot?
    Not really. A TV appearance popularized the idea of gaegukji as a blue-crab hot pot, but the traditional Taean and Seosan dish is a fermented crab-flavored kimchi first, cooked in a pot. Restaurants today do add fresh crab and go milder, so the modern version leans that way, but at heart it’s kimchi, not a seafood boil.

    What is baksok nakji-tang, and what does ‘milguk’ mean?
    It’s a clear Taean soup of bottle-gourd flesh (baksok) and radish with small live octopus (nakji) blanched at the table, finished with noodles. “Milguk” refers to the wheat-flour noodles and sujebi dough that lean-season villagers added to stretch the meal, from mil, meaning wheat.

    When is the best time to eat baksok nakji-tang?
    Roughly early summer to early autumn, about June through September, when the tidal-flat octopus are sweet and tender. Gaegukji, by contrast, is winter-into-spring food by tradition, though many restaurants serve it all year.

    Is Seosan and Taean worth the trip from Seoul?
    If you enjoy coast and seafood, yes, but go in with a plan, because there’s no train and it’s a two-and-a-half-hour-plus bus or drive. Most people make Seosan and Taean a west-coast road trip, pairing these two dishes with the beaches and tidal flats of Taeanhaean National Park rather than treating it as a quick day run.

  • Byeongcheon Sundae (병천순대): Korea’s Best Blood-Sausage Soup

    Byeongcheon Sundae (병천순대): Korea’s Best Blood-Sausage Soup

    About an hour south of Seoul, in the city of Cheonan (천안), there’s a little riverside town called Byeongcheon (병천). Its old Korean name is Aunae (아우내), “where the streams meet,” and for most Koreans that name carries real weight: this is where a 16-year-old named Yu Gwan-sun helped lead a huge independence protest in 1919. Come here today, though, and the street is lined with something warmer — steaming cauldrons of Byeongcheon sundae (병천순대), Korea’s most famous blood sausage, ladled into bowls of hot soup at shops that have been at it for half a century.

    Byeongcheon sundae street at Aunae market in Cheonan Chungcheongnam-do Korea with old sundae restaurant fronts and steaming pots — cheonan byeongcheon sundae
    Byeongcheon (Aunae) in Cheonan — a small market town that turned its sundae into a national name.

    ⭐ Byeongcheon (Cheonan) at a glance

    🏛️ Sights & things to do ★★★☆☆
    🍜 Food ★★★★★
    🚆 Easy to reach ★★★☆☆

    A personal take from our own visits — how much there is to see nearby, how good the eating is, and how easy it is to get to. Cheonan is a quick train ride from Seoul, but Byeongcheon itself is a small town out east, so you’ll finish the trip by local bus or taxi. The eating is the reason to come; the independence-history sites are a moving bonus. Your own mileage may vary.

    New to Korean food? Start with our complete guide to what to eat in Korea.

    The short version: Byeongcheon sundae is a Korean blood sausage stuffed into soft pork small-intestine casing, packed with glutinous rice, blood, ground perilla and a lot of vegetables — and going lighter on the glass noodles than the sundae you find in most cities. You eat it two ways: steamed on a plate, or dropped into a hot pork-bone soup with rice, called sundae-gukbap (순대국밥). It grew up at the historic Aunae market and got famous in the 1960s. Here’s what makes it special, and where to eat it.

    What to eat in Byeongcheon — sundae, two ways

    First, what is sundae? At its simplest it’s a Korean sausage: a casing of cleaned pig intestine, stuffed with a filling and steamed. The cheap version sold at street stalls all over Korea is mostly dangmyeon (당면), springy sweet-potato glass noodles, bound with a little blood. It’s fine, filling, a bit one-note. Byeongcheon sundae is a different animal.

    Plate of steamed Byeongcheon sundae Korean blood sausage sliced with pork liver at a Cheonan restaurant — cheonan byeongcheon sundae
    A plate of Byeongcheon sundae — thin, soft casing packed with blood, rice, perilla and vegetables.

    The Byeongcheon style is a proper blood sausage (피순대, pi-sundae). Two things set it apart. The casing is so-chang (소창), the small intestine, the thinnest and softest part, where a lot of places use the chewier large intestine. And the filling is generous and real: pig’s blood (선지, seonji), glutinous rice, ground perilla seed (들깨), onion, scallion, cabbage and other vegetables, with the glass noodles cut way back or left out entirely. Garlic, chives and ginger go in to knock out any off smell. The result is soft rather than rubbery, and the taste is what Koreans call dambaek (담백) — clean, savory, not greasy. It’s the kind of thing that sounds intense on paper and eats surprisingly gently.

    On a plate, or in the soup

    You’ve got two orders to choose from, and honestly you might want both. A modeum sundae (모듬순대) plate brings the sausage sliced and steamed, usually alongside a few busok (부속) — pieces of boiled liver and other pork offal. You eat it dipped in a little salt, or in a saeu-jeot (salted shrimp) and chili mix. Simple, and it lets the sundae itself do the talking.

    The other order, and the one most people come for, is sundae-gukbap: sundae and rice in a deep, cloudy pork-bone broth simmered for hours. It arrives plain, and you season it yourself at the table with salted shrimp, chili paste, chopped scallion and a spoon of ground perilla, tuning it to whatever you’re in the mood for. On a cold day, in a drafty old shop, it’s about as comforting as Korean food gets. In my experience the move is to split a plate of sundae to start, then have a bowl of gukbap each. You’ll walk out warm.

    How a market town’s cheap meal became a national dish

    The five-day market at Aunae

    Sundae itself is old. The first Korean recipe shows up in Eumsik dimibang (음식디미방), a cookbook written around 1670. But Byeongcheon’s version is a market story, and the market is the key. Aunae holds a traditional five-day market (오일장) on dates ending in 1 and 6 — a rhythm recorded as far back as a 1779 county gazetteer, and still running today. Byeongcheon sat on the road toward the old Cheonan crossroads, so traders and travelers passed through constantly, and market-day crowds needed cheap, filling, fast food. Few things fit that bill like a hot bowl of sundae soup.

    The dish as we know it took off in the 1960s. A pork-processing plant opened in Byeongcheon around then, which meant a steady, cheap supply of fresh intestines and blood, exactly what sundae is built from. Shops that had only sold gukbap on market days started opening more often. One of them, Cheonghwajip (청화집), hung its first proper signboard in 1968, and it’s still going. Word spread, the reputation grew, and by the late 1990s “Byeongcheon sundae” was recognized as a local specialty of Cheonan in its own right.

    Folk painting style illustration of the historic Aunae five-day market in Byeongcheon Cheonan Korea with sundae vendors and market crowds — cheonan byeongcheon sundae
    Market day at Aunae — traders, travelers, and cauldrons of sundae, the way it’s been for generations.

    The name Aunae carries

    You can’t really eat here without brushing up against history, and it’s worth knowing why. On April 1, 1919, this same market square was the site of the Aunae independence demonstration led by the teenage patriot Yu Gwan-sun, part of Korea’s nationwide March First Movement against Japanese colonial rule. Thousands gathered; the crackdown was brutal, and around nineteen people died on the spot, Yu Gwan-sun’s own parents among them. She was arrested, imprisoned, and died the next year at seventeen. Today her memorial and birthplace sit just outside town, and the Independence Hall of Korea (독립기념관), the country’s big national history museum, is a short drive away in the same district. So the town you visit for a bowl of soup happens to be one of the more sacred spots on Korea’s map. Locals feel both, and after a plate of sundae, a stop at the memorial makes for a quietly meaningful afternoon.

    🗓️ Plan your visit

    When: Sundae soup is a year-round comfort, but it hits hardest in the cold months, roughly late autumn through winter. If you like a bit of theater with your trip, time it to a market day — dates ending in 1 and 6 — when Aunae’s five-day market fills the surrounding streets. Late February brings the Aunae torchlight festival (아우내봉화제), which honors the 1919 martyrs.

    Getting there: Take a train from Seoul down to Cheonan — the KTX or SRT reaches Cheonan-Asan Station in roughly the better part of an hour, and Line 1 trains also run there more slowly and cheaply. From Cheonan, Byeongcheon is about another 20–30 minutes east by city bus or taxi. From Incheon Airport, plan on a half-day by public transit, so many visitors pick it up as a side trip while touring central Korea.

    Costs: This is famously good-value eating — a bowl of sundae-gukbap runs around ten thousand won, and a sharing plate of sundae not much more, which is part of the dish’s whole character. Prices creep up over time, so treat any figure as a guide, and note many shops take cash more happily than cards.

    Where to eat Byeongcheon sundae

    Bowl of Byeongcheon sundae-gukbap Korean blood sausage soup with rice and perilla in a Cheonan restaurant — cheonan byeongcheon sundae
    Sundae-gukbap — sundae and rice in a long-simmered pork-bone broth, seasoned to taste at the table.

    Byeongcheon’s sundae shops cluster along Chungjeol-ro (충절로) in the old market center, close enough that you can eyeball the crowds and take your pick. Two long-running names to anchor on, and they sit almost directly across the street from each other:

    • 📍 Cheonghwajip (청화집): 1749 Chungjeol-ro, Byeongcheon-myeon, Dongnam-gu, Cheonan, Chungcheongnam-do (충남 천안시 동남구 병천면 충절로 1749)
    • 🕒 Hours: about 09:00–17:00 on weekdays (opens ~08:30 on weekends), closed Mondays
    • 🍲 Sundae-gukbap around 10,000 won, a modeum sundae plate around 15,000 won · in business since 1968 and recognized as a “100-year shop,” it’s the town’s best-known original · a few parking spots out front
    • 📍 Chungnamjip Sundae (충남집순대): 1748 Chungjeol-ro, Byeongcheon-myeon, Dongnam-gu, Cheonan (충남 천안시 동남구 병천면 충절로 1748) — roughly 08:00–19:00 daily until sold out; another long-time favorite facing Cheonghwajip, with sundae-gukbap around 10,000 won and a sundae plate around 16,000 won

    One honest note: most Byeongcheon shops close in the late afternoon and take a day off during the week, and the popular ones can sell out, so this is a lunch trip, not a late dinner. Hours, closing days and prices shift over time, and there are many good shops on the street beyond these two — a quick check before you go saves a wasted drive.

    🔗 More Korean meals worth the trip: graze blood sausage and street food at Seoul’s Gwangjang Market, warm up with a bowl of milky ox-bone soup, seolleongtang, or head east for Gangneung’s seawater-set soft tofu.

    A few quick questions

    What exactly is Byeongcheon sundae?
    It’s a Korean blood sausage from Byeongcheon (Aunae) in Cheonan, made by stuffing soft pork small-intestine casing with pig’s blood, glutinous rice, ground perilla and lots of vegetables, then steaming it. Compared with the common street-stall sundae, it uses far less glass noodle and much more real filling, so it tastes cleaner and less heavy.

    How is it different from ordinary sundae?
    Two ways. It uses the thin, tender small intestine (소창) rather than the chewier large intestine, and its filling is a proper mix of blood, rice, perilla and vegetables instead of mostly glass noodles. That’s why people describe Byeongcheon sundae as softer and more dambaek, or clean-tasting.

    Do I eat it as a soup or on a plate?
    Both are classic. A modeum sundae plate is steamed and sliced, often with a little boiled liver, eaten with a salt or salted-shrimp dip. Sundae-gukbap drops the sundae into a hot pork-bone broth with rice, which you season yourself at the table. Many people order a plate to share and a bowl of soup each.

    Is Byeongcheon worth the trip from Seoul?
    If you’re already touring central Korea, yes. Cheonan is a fast train from Seoul, the sundae is cheap and genuinely distinctive, and the town’s independence-history sites — Yu Gwan-sun’s memorial and the nearby Independence Hall of Korea, make it more than just a food run. For a quick sundae fix alone, Seoul has plenty; the reason to come here is the original, in the place that made it famous.

  • Jeju Galchi (갈치): Cutlassfish Two Ways — Spicy Braised and Clear Soup

    Jeju Galchi (갈치): Cutlassfish Two Ways — Spicy Braised and Clear Soup

    On Jeju Island (제주), the fish that shows up on nearly every dinner table is galchi (갈치) — a long, ribbon-thin, mirror-bright sea fish that English menus call cutlassfish or hairtail. Down in Seogwipo (서귀포), the harbor city on Jeju’s south coast, the line-caught kind glints like polished chrome, and locals turn it into two dishes that couldn’t be more different: galchi-jorim (갈치조림), a fiery red braise, and galchi-guk (갈치국), a clear, gentle soup. Eating them here, a stone’s throw from where the boats land, is the whole point. Galchi doesn’t travel well, and Jeju knows it.

    Seogwipo harbor and blue coastal waters of Jeju Island Korea with volcanic rock and fishing boats — jeju galchi
    Seogwipo on Jeju’s south coast — where the silver cutlassfish comes off the boats and straight into the pot.

    ⭐ Seogwipo & Jeju at a glance

    🏛️ Sights & things to do ★★★★★
    🍜 Food ★★★★★
    ✈️ Easy to reach ★★★☆☆

    A personal take from our own trips — how much there is to see, how good the eating is, and how easy the getting there feels. Jeju scores high on almost everything, but it’s an island, so you’re flying in. Your own mileage may vary.

    New to Korean food? Start with our complete guide to what to eat in Korea.

    The short version: Galchi is Jeju’s beloved silver cutlassfish, and the island’s two signature ways with it are galchi-jorim, a spicy braise of thick fish steaks with radish and potato, and galchi-guk, a clean soup simmered with ripe pumpkin and cabbage. The best comes from line-caught eun-galchi (은갈치), the “silver galchi” that keeps its shine. Seogwipo, on the south coast, is the place to eat it. Here’s what to order, why Jeju’s fish is prized, and how to plan the trip.

    What to eat in Seogwipo — galchi two ways

    Most galchi restaurants on Jeju serve the same short lineup, and the two dishes worth crossing the island for sit at opposite ends of the flavor scale. One is loud and red. The other is quiet and clear. Order both if you can.

    Galchi-jorim (갈치조림) — the fiery braise

    Korean galchi-jorim braised cutlassfish in spicy red gochujang sauce with radish and potato in a pan — jeju galchi
    Galchi-jorim — thick cutlassfish steaks braised down in a red, spicy sauce with radish and potato.

    This is the one people photograph. Thick cross-cut steaks of galchi are laid over a bed of radish and potato and braised in a sauce built on gochujang (고추장, chili paste), gochugaru (고춧가루, chili flakes), garlic, soy and a little sugar until everything glows a deep brick red. The fish stays silky, the radish drinks up the sauce and turns almost translucent, and the whole pot arrives bubbling.

    Here’s a small history hiding in the flavor: old-style galchi-jorim was a milder, soy-and-radish affair, not the fire-engine red you see today. The chili-heavy version is the modern one, and it’s now what most people mean by the name. In my experience the radish and potato underneath are half the reason to order it — spoon them over rice and you’ve got the best bite on the table.

    One honest note on price: because good galchi is premium fish, jorim usually comes as a shared pot priced for two to four people, not a single serving. It’s a dish you split, ideally over a bowl of the soup below.

    Galchi-guk (갈치국) — the clear soup

    Jeju galchi-guk clear cutlassfish soup with ripe pumpkin and cabbage and green chili in a bowl
    Galchi-guk — a clean, clear soup of fresh cutlassfish with ripe pumpkin, cabbage and green chili.

    If the braise is a shout, the soup is a whisper. To a lot of Jeju people it’s the truer galchi dish. Galchi-guk is startlingly plain: fresh fish steaks dropped into a light broth with neulgeun-hobak (늙은호박, ripe golden pumpkin) and cabbage, a few slices of green chili, seasoned with barely more than salt and soy. No chili paste, no red. What you taste is the fish itself, sweet and clean, with the pumpkin turning the broth faintly golden and soft.

    The pumpkin-and-cabbage version is often called galchi-hobak-guk (갈치호박국, cutlassfish-and-pumpkin soup). In summer cooks lean on cabbage; after the autumn harvest, when ripe pumpkin comes in, they switch to that — and Jeju folk will tell you that autumn galchi with autumn pumpkin is the pairing to beat. Jeju even has a dialect word for the mellow, rounded richness of a good broth like this: bejigeun (베지근하다). It sounds odd to first-timers — a clear fish soup with squash in it — but one spoonful usually converts them.

    Prefer nothing spicy at all? Almost every galchi house also grills the fish as galchi-gui (갈치구이) — a whole silver fillet, salted and crisped, no sauce needed. Between the braise, the soup and the grill, there’s a galchi dish for every kind of eater.

    Why Jeju’s silver galchi is the good stuff

    Illustration of Jeju fishing boats at night with bright lamps line-fishing for silver cutlassfish — jeju galchi
    Small boats jigging by lamplight through the night — how Jeju’s prized silver galchi is caught.

    Silver galchi vs. dark galchi

    Not all galchi is equal, and Koreans split it into two grades by how it’s caught. Fish taken by net rub against each other and the mesh, scraping off their scales until the skin looks dark. That’s meok-galchi (먹갈치, “ink galchi”), landed mostly around Mokpo and Yeosu on the mainland. Fish hooked one by one on a line barely get marked, so they keep their bright mirror scales. That’s eun-galchi (은갈치, “silver galchi”), and Jeju is its home. Both eat well, but the intact, gleaming silver of Jeju’s line-caught fish makes it the top grade.

    The catching itself is a sight. Small boats motor out and work through the night, jigging by the glare of bright lamps that draw the fish up — from a distance the fishing grounds off Jeju light up like a floating city. This chae-nakgi (채낚기, hook-and-line) method lands fresher fish than long-line boats, which is exactly why the good galchi houses advertise “line-caught fresh Jeju silver galchi” and charge accordingly.

    A fish worthy of honored guests

    Jeju has a deep soup culture, and galchi-guk sits near the heart of it. On an island where fresh sea fish was everyday food but a truly good galchi still counted as a treat, a clear pot of galchi-guk was the thing you cooked when an important guest came to the house. That “for honored guests” role is why the clean soup, not the flashy braise, is the dish older Jeju cooks talk about with the most pride.

    Season matters, too. Galchi is fished hard from roughly July through October, with the peak landing from late September into mid-October, when the fish are fattest. That autumn timing is no accident in the kitchen — it lines up with the ripe pumpkin harvest, and that is how galchi-hobak-guk became a thing in the first place. Eat it in the autumn and you’re tasting both ingredients at their best, exactly as generations of Jeju households intended.

    🗓️ Plan your visit

    When: Galchi is on menus year-round, but the freshest, fattest fish lands in autumn — roughly late September to mid-October is peak. That’s also ripe-pumpkin season, so it’s the ideal window for galchi-hobak-guk. Jeju is lovely in spring and autumn and busiest in summer.

    Getting there: Jeju is an island, so you fly. From Seoul it’s about a one-hour hop from Gimpo Airport to Jeju International Airport (one of the world’s busiest routes, so flights are frequent). Coming from Incheon Airport, you’ll usually transfer via Gimpo or take a direct Jeju flight where available. From Jeju Airport, Seogwipo is on the far south coast — roughly an hour across the island by car or bus. A rental car makes Jeju far easier, as sights are spread all over.

    Costs: Jeju is a resort destination, so flights and hotels swing a lot with the season — summer and holiday weekends are the priciest, spring and late autumn far gentler. Book ahead in peak season. And budget a little more for galchi itself: it’s premium fish, so a shared pot of galchi-jorim for two to four people runs well above a normal single-bowl meal.

    Where to eat galchi on Jeju

    Galchi houses cluster around Seogwipo and near the big draws on the island’s east side. Two solid, well-known places to start:

    • 📍 Negeori Sikdang (네거리식당), Seogwipo: 20 Seomun-ro 29beon-gil, Seogwipo (제주 서귀포시 서문로29번길 20), by the Seogwipo Maeil Olle Market
    • 🕒 Hours: roughly 07:00–21:40, last order about 20:40 (can change)
    • 🍲 Galchi-jorim (shared pot) ~55,000 won for two, ~65,000 for three · galchi-guk also on the menu · known for line-caught fresh Jeju silver galchi
    • 📍 Buttumak Sikdang (부뚜막식당), Seongsan: 11 Goseong-ojo-ro, Seongsan-eup, Seogwipo (서귀포시 성산읍 고성오조로 11) — near Seongsan Ilchulbong (Sunrise Peak); galchi-jorim ~35,000 (two) / ~55,000 (four), roughly 07:00–20:00

    One honest caveat: galchi is premium seafood, so prices are higher than most Korean comfort food and do drift upward over time — the figures above are a guide, not a promise. Popular houses fill up and hours can shift, so it’s worth calling ahead or checking before you go, especially in peak season.

    🔗 More regional Korean dishes worth the trip: if you like chasing a dish to its home turf, read about chodang sundubu, Gangneung’s seawater-set tofu, the street-food feast at Seoul’s Gwangjang Market, and seolleongtang, Seoul’s milky ox-bone soup Planning the trip itself? Our guide to getting around Jeju without a car covers the logistics.. · More on Wikipedia

    A few quick questions

    What does galchi taste like?
    Mild, sweet and clean, with soft white flesh — much gentler than oily fish like mackerel. That’s why it works both ways: it can carry a fiery braise without turning muddy, and it can stand alone in a clear soup where there’s nothing to hide behind.

    Galchi-jorim or galchi-guk — which should I get?
    If you love Korean spice, galchi-jorim is the showstopper. If you want to taste the fish itself, order galchi-guk, the clear pumpkin soup — it’s the dish many Jeju locals rate highest. Best of all, split a jorim pot and add a bowl of the soup to share.

    Why eat galchi on Jeju specifically?
    Galchi doesn’t keep well, so freshness is everything, and Jeju is where the prized line-caught silver galchi (eun-galchi) comes ashore. Eating it near the south-coast harbors of Seogwipo means the fish is about as fresh as it gets — hard to match back on the mainland.

  • Chodang Sundubu (초당순두부): Korea’s Silky Seawater Soft-Tofu Stew

    Chodang Sundubu (초당순두부): Korea’s Silky Seawater Soft-Tofu Stew

    On Korea’s east coast, about two hours from Seoul, there’s a seaside city called Gangneung (강릉) — all pine-lined beaches, a mirror-flat lagoon, and cafés stacked along the water. Tucked just behind Gyeongpo Beach is a small neighborhood named Chodang-dong (초당동), and it’s famous for one unlikely thing: tofu. Not the bland stuff, but silky, warm Chodang sundubu (초당순두부), soft tofu set with real seawater from the sea a few minutes’ walk away.

    Gyeongpo Beach and pine forest coastline near Chodang tofu village in Gangneung Korea — chodang sundubu
    Gangneung’s east-coast shoreline — the sea that sets Chodang’s tofu is right here.

    ⭐ Gangneung at a glance

    🏛️ Sights & things to do ★★★★☆
    🍜 Food ★★★★★
    🚄 Easy to reach ★★★★☆

    A personal take based on our own experience — the variety of things to see, the taste, and the travel time involved. Yours may well differ.

    The short version: Chodang sundubu is soft, freshly curdled tofu that gets its gentle, faintly briny flavor from being set with clean seawater instead of the usual bittern. A whole village of tofu restaurants grew up around it in Gangneung. Here’s what makes it different, the scholar behind the story, and where to eat it.

    First — what exactly is sundubu?

    Sundubu (순두부) means “soft” or “uncurdled” tofu — the loose, custardy stage before the curds are pressed into a firm block. Scoop it and it barely holds together, more like warm silken clouds than the tofu you slice for a stir-fry. Eaten plain, it’s about as gentle as food gets. That’s the base. What sets Chodang sundubu apart is the way it’s made.

    Bowl of warm silky Chodang sundubu soft tofu with soy dipping sauce in Gangneung
    Warm Chodang sundubu, served soft and plain with a light soy-and-scallion sauce.

    Why seawater is the whole trick

    To turn soy milk into tofu, you need a coagulant — something that makes the proteins clump into curds. Most tofu uses gansu (간수), refined bittern. Chodang does it the old way: with clean seawater drawn straight from the East Sea. That single swap is the whole point. The sea salt sets the curds more softly and leaves a faint, savory brininess and a nutty sweetness you just don’t get otherwise. Locals will tell you the tofu tastes like the sea it came from. After a bowl or two, I understood what they meant.

    Plain, or fired up? Two ways to order

    You’ll mainly see two styles. The classic is chodang sundubu baekban — a bowl of the warm plain tofu with a bowl of rice, a light soy-scallion sauce for dipping, and a spread of Gangwon side dishes. Quiet, clean, comforting. Then there’s the local twist that took over the internet: jjamppong sundubu (짬뽕순두부), soft tofu swimming in a spicy seafood broth borrowed from Korean-Chinese noodle soup. One is a hug, the other’s a wake-up call. My advice? If you’re with someone, order one of each and share.

    Korean jjamppong sundubu spicy seafood soft tofu stew in a black stone pot at a Gangneung restaurant — chodang sundubu
    Jjamppong sundubu — soft tofu in a fiery seafood broth, the local twist that took Chodang national.

    The story behind the bowl

    Most street foods have murky origins. Chodang tofu, by contrast, comes with a name attached — and it belongs to one of the more remarkable families in Korean literary history.

    A scholar named Chodang

    Illustration of a Joseon era Korean scholar making soft tofu with seawater by the coast — chodang sundubu
    As the story goes, a Joseon scholar set his tofu with seawater and gave it his pen name.

    As the story is told in Gangneung, the tofu traces back to Heo Yeop (허엽, 1517–1580), a Joseon-era official whose pen name was Chodang (초당), meaning “thatched cottage.” Serving in the area, he is said to have made tofu using the sweet spring water near his home and seawater from the coast to set it. The result was so good it took his pen name, Chodang tofu, and the very spot where that spring stood is the neighborhood still called Chodang-dong today.

    Here’s the detail I love: Heo Yeop was the father of two of Korea’s most famous writers. His daughter was Heo Nanseolheon (허난설헌), the brilliant, tragically short-lived poet, and his son was Heo Gyun (허균), author of Hong Gildong, often called Korea’s first novel in the vernacular. Nanseolheon’s memorial park sits right there in Chodang-dong, so you can visit the poet’s home and eat the family’s tofu on the same afternoon.

    How one dish became a whole village

    Whether or not every line of the legend is literal, the tradition stuck. Over generations, Chodang-dong households kept grinding soybeans and setting the curds with seawater, and after the Korean War the little cottage industry grew into something bigger. Today the lanes of Chodang-dong hold close to twenty tofu restaurants, many run by second- and third-generation families who still use domestic soybeans and real seawater. Koreans call the area the Chodang Tofu Village (초당두부마을), and it’s a genuine food-pilgrimage stop.

    Traditional soft-tofu restaurant alley in the Chodang Tofu Village in Gangneung Korea — chodang sundubu
    The lanes of Chodang Tofu Village, lined with soft-tofu shops passed down for generations.

    🗓️ Plan your visit

    When: Gangneung is a year-round coast town, but summer is peak beach season, and the shoulder months of late spring and early autumn are calmer and mild. Tofu is a warm, all-seasons comfort, so honestly you can’t go wrong — just expect weekend crowds and waits at the best-known shops.

    Getting there: From Incheon Airport, plan on roughly 3–4 hours via Seoul — take the airport railroad into the city, then a KTX high-speed train to Gangneung (about two hours). From Gangneung Station, Chodang-dong is a short taxi or bus ride toward Gyeongpo Beach.

    Costs: A tofu meal runs roughly ₩11,000–15,000 a person, which makes this one of the better-value regional specialties. For the trip itself, midsummer and any long weekend are the priciest and busiest times for east-coast rooms — book ahead, or come off-peak for calmer beaches and softer rates.

    Where to eat it

    Two very different bowls, both in the Chodang Tofu Village:

    Chodang Halmeoni Sundubu (초당할머니순두부) — the traditional one

    If you want the plain, old-fashioned bowl, this is the address. “Halmeoni” means grandmother, and the name fits — it’s one of the village’s long-running shops, into its second generation, still making the soft tofu by hand the traditional way. Order the sundubu baekban and let the tofu speak for itself.

    • 📍 Address: 77 Chodang-sundubu-gil, Gangneung, Gangwon (강원 강릉시 초당순두부길 77)
    • 🕒 Hours: 08:00–19:00 (Tuesdays 08:00–15:00)
    • 🍲 Sundubu baekban: around ₩11,000 · whole-block tofu (modu-bu) around ₩15,000 · parking available

    Donghwa Garden (동화가든) — the spicy original

    This is the shop credited with inventing jjamppong sundubu, the spicy-seafood version that turned Chodang into a national craze. Expect a line, since it’s been a Blue Ribbon Survey pick for years, but the queue moves, and the deep, fiery broth over that soft village tofu is worth the wait.

    • 📍 Address: 15 Chodang-sundubu-gil 77beon-gil, Gangneung, Gangwon (강원 강릉시 초당순두부길77번길 15)
    • 🕒 Hours: 07:00–19:30 (break 16:00–17:00), closed Wednesdays
    • 🍲 Jjamppong sundubu: around ₩15,000 (spicy seafood soft-tofu stew) · made with 100% domestic soybeans

    One honest caveat: prices and hours are accurate as of July 2026, but small family restaurants change both more often than you’d think, and popular ones sometimes close early when they sell out. A quick check before you go never hurts.

    🔗 More Korean food to explore: New to Korean food? Start with our complete guide to what to eat in Korea. still in the Gangwon mountains, try gondeure namul bap in Jeongseon. Or head elsewhere for Jeonju’s famous bibimbap and a warming bowl of Seoul’s ox-bone soup, seolleongtang. · More on Wikipedia

    A few quick questions

    Does Chodang sundubu taste salty?
    Not really — just faintly savory. The seawater sets the curds, but it isn’t seasoning the tofu like a brine. You get a gentle, clean, slightly nutty flavor, and you add saltiness yourself with the soy-scallion dipping sauce.

    Is sundubu vegetarian?
    The plain tofu is plant-based, so sundubu baekban is usually a good vegetarian bet — though it’s worth checking the side dishes. The spicy jjamppong sundubu, however, is made with a seafood broth, so it isn’t.

    Is this the same as sundubu-jjigae?
    Related, but not identical. Sundubu-jjigae is the bubbling red soft-tofu stew you’ll find all over Korea. Chodang’s specialty is the tofu itself — often served plain to show off its texture — though the local jjamppong sundubu is its own spicy, souped-up cousin.

  • Seolleongtang (설렁탕): Korea’s Milky Ox-Bone Soup and Where to Try It in Seoul

    Seolleongtang (설렁탕): Korea’s Milky Ox-Bone Soup and Where to Try It in Seoul

    In the historic heart of Seoul lies Jongno (종로) — the old downtown where visitors wander the art alleys of Insadong, bow before centuries-old palaces, and graze the food stalls of Gwangjang Market. And tucked into these same streets is the oldest restaurant in the entire country, still doing the one thing it has done since 1904: ladling out seolleongtang (설렁탕).

    Traditional street in Jongno old-town Seoul near Insadong with hanok roofs and lanterns — seolleongtang
    Jongno — old-town Seoul, home to palaces, Insadong, and Korea’s oldest restaurants.

    ⭐ Jongno at a glance

    🏛️ Sights & things to do ★★★★★
    🍜 Food ★★★★☆
    🚇 Easy to reach ★★★★★

    A personal take based on our own experience — the variety of things to see, the taste, and the travel time involved. Yours may well differ.

    New to Korean food? Start with our complete guide to what to eat in Korea.

    There’s a particular kind of cold Seoul morning when the only warm thing on the block is a little shop with its windows fogged white — and inside, almost everyone is bent over the same milky bowl of soup. That soup is seolleongtang, and I’ve ordered it more mornings than I can count.

    Steaming bowl of Korean seolleongtang milky ox bone soup in a stone bowl with beef and noodles
    Seolleongtang — Korea’s milky ox-bone soup, eaten any time of day.

    First — what exactly is seolleongtang?

    Seolleongtang is one of the most popular and traditional dishes we have in Korea — and I mean everywhere. Wander almost any Korean neighborhood and you’ll pass a seolleongtang shop every few blocks, steam curling out the door. It isn’t special-occasion food. It’s the soup people eat on an ordinary Tuesday.

    Why the broth is milky white

    The first thing you’ll notice is the color — a cloudy, milky white, almost as if someone stirred milk into it.

    They didn’t. That color comes purely from ox bones simmered for a very long time, often twelve hours or more, until the broth turns rich and opaque all on its own. The way I see it, that’s the whole magic: no shortcuts, just bone and patience. It’s also why a bowl feels so quietly restorative when you’re tired or cold.

    Close up of milky white ox bone broth seolleongtang with a spoon showing creamy texture
    The milky color comes from bones alone — no dairy, just hours of simmering.

    How to eat it like a local

    Here’s the part that surprises a lot of first-timers: it arrives looking almost pale and simple. When the bowl first lands, before you add anything, it can taste a little plain — even mild. But add a small pinch of salt, give it a stir, and a deep, savory richness suddenly blooms out of the broth. That’s by design. The seasoning is your job.

    Koreans reach for the salt and chopped scallions on the table, and quite a few of us also splash in a bit of kimchi brine for a tangy kick. Personally? I like mine with just salt and scallions, and I eat the kimchi on the side rather than pouring it in. There’s no wrong answer — half the fun is building the bowl to your own taste.

    Korean seolleongtang table setting with salt scallions cubed radish kimchi kkakdugi and rice
    Salt, scallions, and kkakdugi (radish kimchi) — you finish the bowl yourself.

    Two more things I wish someone had told me early on.

    Don’t grab the bowl

    Seolleongtang is served in a ttukbaegi, a heavy earthenware pot, and it comes out genuinely scorching — hot enough to burn your fingers if you grip the rim. Give it a moment, and use your spoon.

    Noodles first, rice last

    There are usually thin somyeon noodles hiding in the broth, and they turn soft and mushy if they sit too long. So I go for the noodles early. Then, near the end — the classic move — I tip in the rice and eat it soaked up in the last of the broth. Noodles first, rice last. That little sequence is how most Koreans actually work through the bowl.

    The royal secret behind the soup

    The origin of seolleongtang, Korean ox-bone soup, from the Joseon royal Seonnongdan altar
    The origin of Korean ox-bone soup (seolleongtang): from a royal harvest ritual to everyone’s bowl.

    So here’s what genuinely floored me when I started digging. This humble, everyman’s soup? It may have started at a royal altar. I’d always known seolleongtang as pure working-class comfort food, so the idea that it could be tangled up with kings never once crossed my mind. I was as surprised as you probably are right now.

    It begins at an altar called Seonnongdan

    Illustration of a Joseon dynasty Korean king ceremonially plowing a field with an ox at Seonnongdan altar — seolleongtang
    A Joseon king personally plowing the ceremonial field — the rite of chingyeong.

    The trail leads to a small stone altar in eastern Seoul, in what’s now the Jegi-dong neighborhood, called Seonnongdan (선농단).

    For centuries, the kings of the Joseon dynasty came here to bow to the gods of agriculture — the mythical fathers of farming — and pray for a good harvest. This wasn’t a minor errand. A bad harvest meant a hungry kingdom, so the ritual carried the weight of the whole nation’s survival on it.

    And the king didn’t simply pray from the sidelines. As part of the rite, he gripped an actual plow and turned the soil with his own hands — a ceremony called chingyeong. Picture it for a second: the most powerful man in the country, out in a field, hands on a plow, publicly bowing to something even he couldn’t command. The rice.

    A king, an ox, and a soup for everybody

    Illustration of a Korean king sharing ox bone soup from a large cauldron with common farmers — seolleongtang
    One giant cauldron, shared by king and farmer alike — the spirit of seolleongtang.

    Here’s where the soup finally enters the story. As the tradition goes, once the ceremony was finished, a whole ox was slaughtered and boiled down in enormous cauldrons — so the king could sit and share a meal with the ordinary farmers who worked the land. One giant pot. Everyone fed. Nothing wasted.

    Think about how radical that image is: a king and a farmer, eating the same soup from the same cauldron, on the same day. That communal broth, the story says, was named seonnongtang after the altar itself.

    And then time did what time does to words. Over centuries of people saying it fast in everyday speech, seonnongtang slowly wore down — seonnong, seolleong — into the word we use today: seolleongtang. A royal ritual dish, softened by generations of ordinary mouths into a soup for everyone. I find that genuinely beautiful.

    But historians don’t all agree

    Now, the historical picture here is genuinely divided, and it’s only fair to tell you so.

    The Seonnongdan version is the most beloved explanation, but it isn’t the only one scholars put forward. Some trace the name to the Mongolian word sülen, an old term for a meat broth — a linguistic fingerprint left over from the Goryeo era, when Korea had deep Mongol ties. Others say it comes from seolnong (雪濃), meaning “snow-thick,” a nod to that cloudy white color.

    So which is true? Honestly, nobody can say for certain, and that’s part of the charm. But notice what every version has in common: a warm, humble bowl meant to be shared as widely as possible. Whichever theory you land on, that spirit is pure Seonnongdan.

    🗓️ Plan your visit

    When: Seolleongtang is a year-round dish, but it’s at its most soul-warming in the cold months (late autumn through winter) — and many old shops open at dawn, making it a perfect breakfast. For sightseeing, Jongno is loveliest in spring, when cherry blossoms frame the palaces, and in autumn, when the foliage turns.

    Getting there: Jongno sits right in central Seoul, so it’s an easy arrival — from Incheon Airport it’s about an hour on the airport railroad into the city, then a short subway hop to Jonggak or Jongno 3-ga station.

    Costs: Spring (blossom season) and autumn (foliage), plus the big holidays, are peak — flights and hotels climb and book out early, so reserve ahead; winter outside the holidays is gentler on the budget. The soup itself is a bargain, around ₩12,000–15,000 a bowl.

    Where to eat it in old-town Seoul

    One a living piece of history right in Jongno, the other a short walk away in the old downtown:

    Imun Seolnongtang (이문설농탕) — Korea’s oldest restaurant, in Jongno

    Opened in 1904 and widely recognized as the oldest continuously running restaurant in the country, Imun holds Seoul restaurant license No. 1 and carries a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The broth is clean and gently nutty, four generations deep — and it’s right in Jongno, a few minutes’ walk from Insadong and Jogyesa Temple.

    • 📍 Address: 38-13 Ujeongguk-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul (서울 종로구 우정국로 38-13)
    • 🕒 Hours: Mon–Sat 08:00–21:00, Sun 08:00–20:00 (break 15:00–16:30)
    • 🥣 Seolleongtang: ₩15,000 · No parking — use nearby paid lots (5-min walk from Jonggak Station)

    Jaembaeok (잼배옥) — a downtown classic since 1933

    A short walk toward City Hall, in old downtown Seoul, Jaembaeok has been ladling seolleongtang since 1933 — the unpretentious, decades-deep kind of place where nearby office workers file in daily. Handy if you’re already around Deoksugung Palace or Jeong-dong.

    • 📍 Address: 68-9 Sejong-daero 9-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul (서울 중구 세종대로9길 68-9)
    • 🕒 Hours: Mon–Fri 10:00–21:30 (break 15:00–17:00), Sat 11:00–15:00, closed Sundays
    • 🥣 Seolleongtang: ₩12,000 · No parking — nearest is City Hall Station, Exit 9

    One honest caveat: prices and hours are accurate as of July 2026, but small restaurants change both more often than you’d expect. A quick check before you go never hurts.

    🔗 More Seoul eating, close by: graze the beef tartare and mung-bean pancakes at Gwangjang Market, sit down to Jangchung-dong’s soy-braised jokbal (pig trotters), or head south for Jeonju’s famous bibimbap. · More on Wikipedia

    A few quick questions

    Is seolleongtang spicy?
    Not at all — it arrives plain and mild, and you steer the flavor yourself with salt, scallions, and kimchi. It’s one of the friendliest Korean dishes for a first-timer.

    Is it the same as gomtang?
    They’re cousins. Both are boiled beef soups, but seolleongtang leans on bones (hence the milky white), while gomtang uses more meat and comes out clearer.

    Can I really eat it for breakfast?
    Absolutely. Many of the oldest shops open at dawn precisely because a hot, cheap, filling bowl is a perfect way to start a Korean day.