Category: Street Food

Name: How Dalgona From Squid Game Is Made
Uploaded: 2021-10-05T22:20:17Z

Yakgwa: Korea’s Trendiest K-Dessert Is a 1,000-Year-Old Royal Honey Cookie
Yakgwa — deep-fried, honey-soaked, and suddenly the most wanted sweet in Korea. Photo: KOREA.NET, CC BY-SA, via Openverse.

Right now in Korea, people are setting alarms to buy a cookie. The hottest Korean dessert of the decade is yakgwa (약과) — a dense, fudgy, deep-fried Korean honey cookie soaked in honey and ginger syrup — and it has gone so viral that Koreans invented new words for the frenzy: yakgwa open-run (sprinting to a bakery at opening) and yakgeting (competitively pre-ordering it online, like concert tickets). Cafes now stack it with ice cream; even big chains sell yakgwa-topped everything.

In plain terms, yakgwa is a traditional Korean dessert made from wheat flour, honey, and ginger syrup — a glossy honey cookie that’s chewy and moist inside rather than crisp. And here’s the twist: this trendy K-dessert is one of the oldest sweets in Korea. The cookie today’s twenty-somethings queue for at dawn was being eaten by Korean royalty more than a thousand years ago — back when a single spoon of honey was treated as something close to holy. Let’s start with the hype.

“Gen Z lines up at dawn for a cookie that once belonged to kings.”

The dessert Koreans line up at dawn for

Hangwa — Korea’s family of traditional confections, from yakgwa to pressed dasik. Photo: 丘崈 (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

For years, yakgwa was the slightly old-fashioned sweet you found at ancestral-rite tables and grandma’s house. Then Gen Z rediscovered it — and made it a phenomenon. Trendy cafes started glazing it, layering it, and crowning it with soft-serve; specialty bakeries sell out within minutes; celebrities hand it out in gift boxes. It’s the poster child of what Koreans call the halmaennial trend — a wave of younger Koreans (millennials and Gen Z) rediscovering the foods their grandmothers loved and remixing them for Instagram.

The genius of the comeback is that yakgwa didn’t have to change much. This Korean honey cookie was always chewy, glossy, deeply sweet, and satisfying. All it needed was a new audience — and a country primed to romanticize its own tradition. But to see why it feels so special, you have to know where it came from. And it came from very high up.

A 1,000-year-old royal sweet in disguise

Sneaking a yakgwa fresh from the royal kitchen — some temptations are timeless (playful illustration).

Sweets like yakgwa were fixtures of royal gatherings and ancestral rites for centuries. Painting: Joseon dynasty, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Yakgwa’s story reaches back to Korea’s Three Kingdoms era and the Unified Silla period — more than a thousand years ago. Here’s the detail that changes everything: back then, honey was rare and precious, treated as almost sacred, reserved for Buddhist temples and royal households, where it symbolized purity and vitality. A cookie built around honey wasn’t a snack. It was a luxury of the powerful.

Its very name gives it away. Yakgwa means “medicinal sweet” — yak (medicine) plus gwa (confection) — from the old Korean belief that good food and healing are the same thing. For centuries it was a required item at court banquets and at ancestral rites (jesa), the solemn ceremonies honoring one’s forebears. And it stands apart from its neighbors: unlike Japanese wagashi or Chinese mooncakes, yakgwa is deep-fried first and then soaked in syrup, which is exactly what gives it that dense, moist, almost fudgy bite.

So when a Korean twenty-something posts a photo of a glossy yakgwa with a scoop of ice cream, they’re doing something quietly wonderful: eating a royal offering, once too precious for commoners, as a Tuesday treat. The cookie was never really reinvented — it was simply handed down for a thousand years, and finally shared with everyone.

Yakgwa is just the start: meet the hangwa family

Dasik — pressed, patterned tea cookies, another jewel of the hangwa world. Photo: forcoolife, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Gangjeong — crunchy puffed-rice crackers, another beloved member of the hangwa family. Photo: KOREA.NET, CC BY-SA, via Openverse.

If yakgwa is Korea’s best-known traditional sweet today, hangwa is the broader family it belongs to — the umbrella term for Korea’s traditional confections, made by working grain or grain flour with a sweetener like honey or rice syrup. Like yakgwa, these traditional Korean sweets were the fare of the royal class, especially in winter when fresh fruit was scarce, and they starred at royal weddings, birthdays, and ancestral rites.

If yakgwa has you curious, the rest of the family is worth meeting: delicate pressed cookies stamped with patterns, crunchy puffed-rice crackers, and glistening candied fruits. Together they make up a centuries-old Korean dessert tradition that the modern cafe boom is only beginning to rediscover — one viral cookie at a time.

The main types of hangwa to know

Your quick guide to Korea’s traditional sweets:

The hangwa family in one frame — glossy yakgwa, pressed dasik, crunchy gangjeong, and candied jeonggwa. Photo: Amsikle, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Yakgwa (약과) — deep-fried wheat cookies soaked in honey and syrup. Dense, chewy, glossy — the current superstar.
- Dasik (다식) — bite-sized pressed cookies of ground grain or seeds, stamped with beautiful patterns. Tea’s best friend.
- Gangjeong (강정) — crunchy fried glutinous-rice crackers, often coated in puffed grains or nuts.
- Jeonggwa (정과) — fruits and roots slowly candied in honey or syrup until jewel-like.
How to eat yakgwa like a modern Korean

Flower-shaped yakgwa, ready to enjoy — best warm, and even better with something cold. Photo: Hyeon-Jeong Suk, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Buy a box of yakgwa and you might wonder how Koreans actually eat it now. A few ways it’s enjoyed today:
- With ice cream. The cafe-viral move: top a warm yakgwa with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or soft-serve. The cold cream balances the rich honey syrup and turns it into a proper dessert plate.
- The air-fryer trick. Store-bought yakgwa can taste even better warmed: a few minutes in an air fryer or toaster oven crisps the edges while the center goes soft and gooey again.
- Paired with a bitter drink. Yakgwa is very sweet, so Koreans love it beside an iced Americano or a cup of green tea — the bitterness cuts through the honey and keeps every bite interesting.
Questions people ask about yakgwa

What is yakgwa? Yakgwa is a traditional Korean dessert: a wheat-flour cookie deep-fried and soaked in honey and ginger syrup. Its name means “medicinal sweet,” and it dates back more than a thousand years, when it was a royal and ceremonial treat.

What does yakgwa taste like? Rich, honey-sweet, and gently warmed by ginger. The texture is the surprise: dense, moist, and chewy — closer to a fudgy little pastry than a crisp cookie.

Is yakgwa crunchy or soft? Soft and chewy, not crunchy. Because it’s soaked in syrup after frying, the inside stays moist and dense. (If you want crunch, that’s gangjeong, its puffed-rice cousin.)

Why is yakgwa so popular right now? It became a viral cafe trend in 2020s Korea — reinvented with glazes and ice cream and embraced by younger “halmaennial” foodies nostalgic for grandmother-era flavors. Bakeries sell out so fast that Koreans coined the term “yakgeting.”

Is yakgwa healthy? It’s a treat, not a health food — deep-fried and steeped in honey syrup, so it’s rich and high in sugar. The “medicinal” in its name comes from an old Korean idea of food as medicine, not from being low-calorie. Enjoy it as the indulgence it is.

Where can you buy yakgwa? In Korea, it’s everywhere — bakeries, traditional markets, supermarkets, and convenience stores. Abroad, look in Korean and Asian grocery stores (like H Mart) or order it online; boxed yakgwa keeps well and travels easily.

What are traditional Korean sweets called? Hangwa — the umbrella term for Korea’s traditional confections, including yakgwa, dasik, gangjeong, and jeonggwa, historically enjoyed by the royal court.

An old sweet, a new obsession

There’s something perfect about the yakgwa craze. A country racing toward the future set its morning alarm for a cookie a Silla king would have recognized. The original K-dessert didn’t need reinventing — it just needed a generation ready to fall in love with it again. Next time you see one glistening under a scoop of soft-serve, remember: you’re looking at a thousand years of Korea in one bite.

Hungry for more of Korea’s sweet-and-savory story? Snack your way through Gwangjang Market, mix a royal-style bowl at Jeonju’s bibimbap table, or restore yourself with a bowl of samgyetang Want to see how royal banquets like this were actually documented? Our guide to the Oegyujanggak Uigwe at the National Museum of Korea covers the real court records..

Yakgwa’s origins in the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla eras, the sacred status of honey, and its role in royal court banquets and ancestral rites are drawn from The Korea Herald, Korea.net, and Korean culinary histories. The modern “yakgwa open-run” / “yakgeting” cafe trend and the “halmaennial” phenomenon reflect recent reporting on Korea’s dessert scene.
2026-07-26
Squid Game Dalgona: The Candy Korean Kids Were Cheating At for Decades

Lee Jung-jae, the actor whose dalgona scene made this candy world-famous. Photo: K-POPIT, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A hush falls over a hundred players in green tracksuits. Each is handed a tin of brittle honeycomb candy with a shape pressed into it — a circle, a triangle, a star, an umbrella — and ten minutes to carve that shape out without cracking it. Snap the line, and you’re dead. Seong Gi-hun (성기훈), played by Lee Jung-jae, looks down and realizes he has drawn the umbrella. The hardest one.

That scene, from Episode 3 of Netflix’s Squid Game (오징어게임), turned a humble Korean street snack into a global obsession overnight. But here’s the part most viewers never learned: the candy is real, it’s called dalgona (달고나), and Korean kids had been playing — and cheating at — this exact game for decades before Gi-hun ever picked up a needle.

The umbrella that almost killed Gi-hun

The four shapes, exactly as the show used them. The umbrella (우산) is the assassin. Photo: LATE&LATE, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The game — called the “sugar honeycomb” round — is brutally simple. Four shapes, four difficulty levels. The circle (동그라미) is a gift. The triangle (세모) is fine. The star (별) is a challenge. And the umbrella (우산), with its thin curved handle and all those little ribs, is a near-impossible death sentence. Gi-hun, of course, picks the umbrella.

“Foreign viewers saw a death game. Koreans saw a childhood.”

He isn’t alone in his panic. Cho Sang-woo (조상우), played by Park Hae-soo, immediately clocks the shape he chose and works the odds like the ex-investment banker he is. Kang Sae-byeok (강새벽), played by Jung Ho-yeon, takes the needle with the same cold focus that carried her through every other round. The tension is unbearable — and it’s all riding on a piece of candy you can buy for pocket change on a Korean street.

Park Hae-soo as Sang-woo — the ex-banker who ran the odds even on a piece of candy. Photo: Elle Taiwan, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Korean kids beat this game for decades

Long before Netflix, this was just after-school life: crouch around the cart, win a free one. Photo via Wikimedia Commons (public record image).

Here’s what the drama never explained. The dalgona challenge wasn’t invented for the show — it’s an old Korean street game, sometimes called ppopgi (뽑기, “the pick”). A vendor would melt sugar at a cart, stamp a shape, and hand it to a kid with a simple deal: carve out the shape cleanly and you win a second one, free. Crack it, and you just paid for a snack. For generations of Korean kids, the umbrella was already the shape you prayed you wouldn’t get.

So when Gi-hun stares down that umbrella, older Korean viewers aren’t just watching a thriller. They’re watching a childhood memory turned into a matter of life and death — which is exactly why the scene hit so hard at home.

The trick: lick the back

Thin, brittle, and unforgiving — one wrong bit of pressure and the whole disc snaps. Photo: PhareannaH[berhabuk], CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Cornered, Gi-hun does the thing every Korean kid eventually figures out: he flips the candy over and licks the back. His saliva and warmth melt the sugar just enough to loosen the seams around the shape, so the umbrella lifts out clean. Other players notice, start licking too, and the guards — who clearly never grew up on a Korean street — are left baffled. It’s the oldest trick in the book, and it’s the whole reason the “dalgona challenge” exploded on TikTok and YouTube worldwide. I tried it myself with a store-bought disc, and the trick works exactly as advertised — a little spit and patience, and the shape lifts right out.

That’s the magic of the scene: a global audience thought they were learning a clever hack, while Koreans were nodding along at a shortcut they’d known since grade school.

So what is dalgona, actually?

Strip away the tracksuits and the drama, and dalgona (달고나) is almost embarrassingly simple: sugar and a pinch of baking soda. You melt sugar in a small ladle until it turns golden, drop in a tiny bit of baking soda, and it foams up into a light, airy toffee. Pour it flat, press it thin, stamp a shape — done. Two ingredients, one childhood in a disc.

Want to see the whole thing made from scratch, ladle and all? This short breakdown walks through it:

One candy, a whole cast on edge

Jung Ho-yeon as Sae-byeok — she took the needle with the same nerve she brought to every round. Photo: Ariela Ortiz-Barrantes, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What makes the dalgona round land isn’t the candy — it’s who’s holding it. The show spends two episodes making you care about Gi-hun, Sang-woo, and Sae-byeok, and then hands each of them a brittle disc and a needle. Even the ones watching from the sidelines, like detective Hwang Jun-ho (played by Wi Ha-joon) tracking the game from the shadows, are pulled into its orbit. A snack becomes a scale that weighs their lives.

Off-screen, it’s just a sweet, cheap street treat — best eaten before it cracks. Photo: 동운맘, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

That’s the trick of Squid Game in one round: it takes the most innocent thing imaginable — a candy kids beg for after school — and makes you hold your breath over it. And it sent millions of people worldwide scrambling to melt sugar in a ladle, umbrella side up, just to feel a sliver of what Gi-hun felt.

Wi Ha-joon as detective Jun-ho — tracking the games from the shadows. Photo: Elle Taiwan, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A few quick questions people always ask

What episode is the dalgona game in Squid Game? Season 1, Episode 3, titled “The Man with the Umbrella” (우산을 쓴 남자). It’s named after the umbrella-shaped dalgona that Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is stuck with.

What is the Squid Game dalgona trick? Licking the back of the candy. The warmth and saliva melt the sugar just enough to loosen the shape’s edges so it pops out without cracking — a shortcut real Korean kids have used for decades.

Is dalgona hard to make? No — it’s just sugar and a pinch of baking soda melted in a ladle and pressed flat. The hard part isn’t making it; it’s carving out the shape (especially the umbrella) without breaking the disc.

Want to taste the real thing?

You don’t need a green tracksuit — just a street cart. Dalgona is classic Korean street food, and the fastest way to find it (plus a hundred other snacks worth the trip) is to wander a proper market. Start with the street-food stalls of Gwangjang Market, or plan a whole eating trip with our what-to-eat-in-korea food guide.

And if you do try the challenge at home: pick the umbrella, lick the back, and spare a thought for Player 456. In Korea, that’s not a death game — it’s just Tuesday after school.

Squid Game (Netflix, 2021), Episode 3 “The Man with the Umbrella,” and the dalgona game details are a matter of record; cast per official credits. Video: Insider Food, “How Dalgona From Squid Game Is Made.” Photos credited inline (CC via Wikimedia Commons).

2026-07-21
Korean Salt Bread (Sogeum-ppang): Why Seoul Lines Up in Seongsu, the City’s “Brooklyn”

In one Seoul neighborhood, the line for a single bread roll can wrap around an entire block. The pastry is sogeumppang (소금빵), Korean salt bread, and the neighborhood is Seongsu-dong, the district everyone now calls the “Brooklyn of Seoul.” Here’s what the fuss is about, and how to taste it like a local.

The short version

Sogeumppang is a buttery, salt-topped roll that has become Korea’s most obsessed-over bakery item, and Seongsu-dong is its epicenter. A former factory district turned cafe playground, Seongsu draws young Koreans and travelers alike to warehouse cafes and salt-bread bakeries where the queues are half the experience. Below: what salt bread actually is, why Seongsu became so cool, and exactly where to line up.

What is sogeumppang (Korean salt bread)?

Sogeumppang (소금빵) literally means “salt bread.” It’s a laminated dough, folded again and again with butter the way a croissant is, then rolled up and finished with a small pat of butter and a pinch of coarse salt on top. The result is a roll with a thin, crackly, deeply golden crust and an airy, almost custardy inside that tastes of sweet cream and sea salt.

The style has roots in the Japanese shio-pan, but Korea has made it completely its own over the past few years. What began as one item on a bakery shelf turned into a nationwide craze, with bakers competing over the flakiest layers and the perfect salt-to-butter balance. In my experience, it’s the kind of thing that sounds too simple to line up for, until you bite into a warm one straight from the oven and immediately understand.

Seongsu-dong: from factories to Seoul’s “Brooklyn”

To understand the salt-bread craze, you have to understand the neighborhood behind it. Not long ago, Seongsu-dong was a gritty industrial quarter full of shoe factories, print shops, and warehouses. Rents were cheap, the buildings were huge, and slowly, artists, roasters, and young entrepreneurs moved in.

They kept the raw bones of the place. Today many of Seongsu’s most loved cafes still have exposed concrete walls, soaring warehouse ceilings, steel beams, and plants spilling over old loading docks. That contrast, industrial grit meeting careful design, is exactly why people started calling it the “Brooklyn of Seoul.” On weekends the streets buzz with a young crowd drifting between boutiques, pop-up stores, coffee, and, of course, bread.

Korea’s bread pilgrimage

Sogeumppang didn’t rise alone. It’s part of a broader wave sometimes called Korea’s “bread pilgrimage,” where a single bakery item, bagels one season, croissants the next, salt bread now, becomes a destination worth traveling across the city for. Social media fuels it: a photogenic roll, a long line, a stylish cafe, and suddenly a bakery is a landmark.

For visitors, that’s part of the appeal. Chasing sogeumppang is a low-cost, high-reward way to experience how young Koreans actually spend a weekend, not at a palace or a tower, but strolling a trendy neighborhood with a warm paper bag in hand. It’s food as culture, and it tells you more about contemporary Seoul than most guidebook stops.

Where to try salt bread in Seongsu

Two Seongsu bakeries anchor any salt-bread run. They sit within walking distance of each other on and around Yeonmujang-gil, so you can compare them in a single afternoon. Hours and prices change, so it’s worth a quick check before you go, and both can have lines, so earlier is easier.

Jayeondo Sogeumppang (자연도소금빵) — the icon

The bakery most travel guides send you to, Jayeondo is a salt-bread specialist on Seongsu’s main bakery alley, reportedly selling around 7,000 rolls a day. It’s essentially a grab-and-go counter: the smell of butter pulls you in, and the bread comes in packs (a set of four is the standard order rather than singles). Warm, flaky, and gone in a few bites, it’s the postcard version of the craze.

Address: 56-1 Yeonmujang-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul (성동구 연무장길 56-1) · Hours: around 09:00–22:00 (check before visiting) · sold in packs.

Beton (베통) — the locals’ pick

A short walk away, Beton has a quieter reputation as the salt bread many Seoul residents quietly prefer, known for its distinctive round, looped shape and a more balanced, less aggressively salty flavor. If Jayeondo is the tourist headline, Beton is the one locals point you to when they want you to taste the “better” one.

Address: 8 Yeonmujang 7ga-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul (성동구 연무장7가길 8) · Hours: roughly 09:00–18:30 (check before visiting).

How to do a Seongsu cafe crawl

Salt bread is the excuse; the neighborhood is the reward. A few tips to enjoy Seongsu the way locals do:

Go on a weekday morning if you can. Weekends are lively but crowded, and the most famous bakeries sell out or grow long lines by afternoon. Mornings mean warmer bread and shorter waits.

Pair your bread with a warehouse cafe. Many Seongsu cafes are enormous converted factories with roasteries, art, and rooftop seating. Grab your sogeumppang to go, then settle into a big concrete-and-plants space with a coffee.

Wander the side streets. The real charm of Seongsu is stumbling into boutiques, pop-ups, and hidden alleys between the cafes. Leave time to just walk, and check our full guide to what to eat in Korea for more one-bite ideas to fuel the stroll. For the official rundown of the city’s salt-bread scene, VisitSeoul keeps a handy guide to Seoul salt bread.

Frequently asked questions

What does sogeumppang taste like?
Like a cross between a croissant and a soft roll: a crisp, buttery, golden crust with an airy, slightly custardy inside, finished with a hit of sea salt that makes the sweetness pop.

Why is Seongsu-dong so popular?
It’s a former factory district reborn as Seoul’s trendiest cafe and arts neighborhood, full of huge warehouse-style cafes, boutiques, and pop-ups. Its industrial-meets-design vibe earned it the nickname “Brooklyn of Seoul.”

Do I have to buy salt bread in packs?
At some specialists, yes, single rolls aren’t always available and bread is sold in sets (for example, packs of four). Check the counter; it’s easy to share if you’re bakery-hopping.

When is the best time to go?
Weekday mornings. Bread is freshest right out of the oven, and you’ll beat the afternoon lines and weekend crowds.

How do I get to Seongsu-dong?
Seongsu Station on Subway Line 2 puts you in the heart of the cafe district; Ttukseom Station and Seoul Forest are also nearby if you want to add a park walk.

Is sogeumppang originally Korean?
The style is related to Japanese shio-pan, but Korea has embraced and reinvented sogeumppang into its own nationwide craze, with local bakeries competing over texture, layering, and the salt-butter balance.

A warm roll and a walk

Salt bread is small, cheap, and gone in minutes, and yet it captures something big about how Seoul eats right now: playful, trend-driven, and best enjoyed on foot in a neighborhood with a story. Chase a warm sogeumppang through Seongsu’s old-factory streets and you’ll taste the city’s present tense. For more edible ways to explore Korea, browse our full what-to-eat-in-Korea guide and follow your nose.

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

2026-07-20
Gimbap (김밥): Korea’s Everyday Seaweed Rice Roll — and Why It Isn’t Sushi
Walk into any Korean neighborhood and you’re never far from gimbap (김밥) — the seaweed-wrapped rice roll sold at every corner bunsik (snack) shop, packed into school lunchboxes, and grabbed by the piece at the market. In one line: gimbap is cooked rice and fillings rolled in dried seaweed and seasoned with sesame oil rather than vinegar — Korea’s cheap, portable, everyday meal. And in 2023 it did something very un-everyday: a frozen version landed at Trader Joe’s in the US and sold out nationwide after a single TikTok video. So what is this humble roll, really — and why do Koreans get a little touchy when you call it “Korean sushi”?

Gimbap — rice and fillings rolled in seaweed, brushed with sesame oil, sliced into bites.

⭐ Gimbap at a glance

🍙 Everyday-ness (you’ll see it everywhere) ★★★★★

🎒 Portable / picnic-friendly ★★★★★

💸 Easy on the wallet ★★★★★

🌶️ Spice level ★☆☆☆☆

A personal take — how often you’ll meet it, how travel-friendly it is, and the price. Yours may differ.

The short version: Gimbap is cooked rice and a row of fillings — egg, vegetables, often ham or fish — rolled tight in a sheet of gim (dried seaweed), brushed with sesame oil, and sliced into rounds. It’s cheap, portable, and endlessly customizable. Here’s how it’s different from sushi, where it came from, the varieties worth knowing, and where to eat it.

It looks like sushi. It really isn’t.

The comparison is understandable — rice, seaweed, a roll sliced into circles. But bite in and the difference is immediate. The giveaway is the rice: sushi rice is seasoned with rice vinegar, giving it that clean tang. Gimbap rice is dressed with sesame oil and a little salt — nutty, savory, and served at room temperature rather than chilled.

The tell is the rice — sesame oil, not vinegar — and hearty, cooked fillings.

The fillings tell the rest of the story. Instead of raw fish, gimbap leans on fully cooked, homey ingredients: strips of egg omelette, seasoned spinach, carrot, danmuji (yellow pickled radish), and often bulgogi, ham, tuna, or fish cake. The seaweed is brushed with sesame oil so it glistens, then scattered with sesame seeds. Where sushi is often restaurant food, gimbap is the opposite — it’s what a Korean parent rolls at dawn before a family outing.

The story: a roll Korea made its own

Here’s where it gets interesting — and a little contested. Koreans have wrapped rice in seaweed for a very long time; gim was already being farmed in the southern Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces by the 1400s, and old Joseon-era dishes like bokssam involved bundling rice into seaweed. So the raw idea is deeply Korean.

From market stalls to lunchboxes — gimbap became Korea’s go-to portable meal.

The rolled-and-sliced form we know today, though, took shape in the early 1900s, when the Japanese makizushi arrived during the occupation (1910–1945) — and the word for it was the Japanese loanword norimaki. The first known printed use of “gimbap” comes from a 1935 newspaper. After liberation, as part of a push to purify the language, Koreans deliberately swapped norimaki for the homegrown gimbap, and the dish kept evolving down a distinctly Korean path — sesame oil, Korean fillings, no raw fish. By the postwar decades it was the nation’s default packed lunch, the thing you ate on a school field trip with your name practically written on it.

One roll, many moods

“Gimbap” is really a whole family. A few worth knowing:
- Mayak gimbap (마약김밥) — “drug gimbap,” the addictive mini rolls of Seoul’s Gwangjang Market: just carrot, spinach, and pickled radish, dipped in a mustard-soy sauce. The name is a joke about not being able to stop.
- Chungmu gimbap (충무김밥) — from the seaside town of Chungmu (now Tongyeong): plain rice rolls with nothing inside, served alongside spicy seasoned squid and radish kimchi. Born as a food that wouldn’t spoil in the heat.
- Samgak gimbap (삼각김밥) — the triangle convenience-store version, wrapped so the seaweed stays crisp until you open it.
- Everyday fillings — tuna (chamchi), kimchi, bulgogi beef, cheese, fried pork cutlet. Every bunsik shop has its own lineup.
The little roll that went global

For decades gimbap was too everyday to be exciting. Then, in August 2023, a small Korean company called Allgot put frozen gimbap on Trader Joe’s shelves in the US — a strange idea, since freezing usually wrecks the texture. A Korean-American creator posted a TikTok of her mother heating it up; the clip passed 11 million views, and the product sold out across the country within weeks, with some stores capping it at one per customer. A humble packed lunch had quietly become a global craving — proof that the most ordinary food can travel the farthest. It’s a strange thing to watch a roll that costs a few thousand won at a Seoul convenience store turn into a rationed, one-per-customer item on another continent.

🗓️ Plan your visit

Where it’s easiest: everywhere. Any bunsik shop or convenience store in Korea sells gimbap, usually for around ₩3,000–4,500 a roll. For the famous market version, head to Seoul’s Gwangjang Market.

Getting there: From Incheon Airport, take the airport railroad into Seoul; Gwangjang Market is a short walk from Jongno 5-ga station (Line 1). It’s central and easy to fold into a day of sightseeing.

Costs: This is budget food at its best — a plate of ten mayak gimbap runs about ₩3,500. Bring a little cash for market stalls.

Where to try it

Gwangjang Market (광장시장) — Seoul

Korea’s oldest continuously running market, open since 1905, and the spiritual home of mayak gimbap. Follow the crowds to the gimbap alley, grab a plate of the little rolls with their mustard-soy dip, and pair it with a mung-bean pancake. It’s messy, loud, and exactly the point.
- 📍 Address: 88 Changgyeonggung-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul (서울 종로구 창경궁로 88)
- 🚇 Getting there: Jongno 5-ga Station (Line 1) or Euljiro 4-ga Station
- 🍙 Mayak gimbap: about ₩3,500 for a plate of ten · cash is handy at stalls
Down south, the port town of Tongyeong is the place for Chungmu gimbap — plain little rolls with spicy squid on the side, a regional specialty you’ll find all over the waterfront.

One honest caveat: prices and hours shift, and market stalls come and go. The details here are accurate as of July 2026 — a quick check before you go never hurts.

🔗 More Korean food to explore: gimbap is the calm cousin of Korea’s louder snacks — try tteokbokki, the spicy rice cakes, and browse the stalls of Gwangjang Market. For the bigger picture, see our Korean street food guide or the regional what to eat in Korea guide. · More on Wikipedia

A few quick questions

Is gimbap the same as sushi?
No. Gimbap’s rice is seasoned with sesame oil and salt (not rice vinegar), it’s served at room temperature, and the fillings are cooked — egg, vegetables, meat or tuna — rather than raw fish.

Is gimbap vegetarian?
It can be — mayak gimbap and plain vegetable rolls are meat-free — but many everyday versions include ham, tuna, fish cake, or bulgogi, and some rice is brushed with fish-based seasonings. Ask or check the fillings.

Why is it called “mayak” (drug) gimbap?
It’s a playful nickname for the mini rolls at Gwangjang Market — they’re so moreish, dipped in that mustard-soy sauce, that people joke you can’t stop eating them.

Does gimbap keep well for travel?
That’s its whole appeal — it’s designed to be portable and eaten at room temperature, which is why it’s Korea’s classic picnic and field-trip food. Eat it the same day, though; it’s best fresh.
2026-07-14
Tteokbokki (떡볶이): Korea’s Spicy Rice Cakes, Born in Seoul’s Sindang-dong
Ask a Korean where spicy tteokbokki (떡볶이) really comes from and, sooner or later, someone will say Sindang-dong (신당동). It’s an unassuming neighborhood in central Seoul, a short walk from Dongdaemun, and it holds a genuine claim: this is where a grandmother named Ma Bok-rim started selling chili-red rice cakes back in 1953, and where a whole alley of tteokbokki shops grew up around her. Come today and you’ll find a bubbling pot of instant tteokbokki cooked right at your table, a DJ still spinning old requests, and rice cakes that taste like half a century of Seoul.

Sindang-dong’s tteokbokki alley — the birthplace of Korea’s spicy rice cakes, still going strong.

⭐ Sindang-dong 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. Sindang-dong isn’t a sightseeing district, but it’s a two-minute walk from a subway line and packs Seoul’s most storied tteokbokki into one short street. Your own mileage may vary.

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

The short version: Tteokbokki is Korea’s beloved spicy rice-cake dish — chewy cylinders of rice cake simmered in a sweet-and-spicy gochujang (고추장) sauce. Sindang-dong is its spiritual home, and its specialty is jeukseok tteokbokki (즉석떡볶이), or “instant tteokbokki”: a shallow pan of rice cakes, fish cake, noodles and egg that a waiter sets bubbling on a burner at your table, so you eat it as it cooks. Here’s how the dish works, how it got here, and where to eat it.

What to eat in Sindang-dong — instant tteokbokki

First, the basics. Plain tteokbokki is one of the most familiar street foods in Korea: garae-tteok (가래떡), finger-length cylinders of chewy rice cake, cooked down in a glossy red sauce built from gochujang, chili flakes, sugar and a little soy, usually with sheets of fish cake (어묵, eomuk) folded in. You’ll see it steaming in wide pans at market stalls all over the country, scooped into a paper cup for a few thousand won. It’s sweet, spicy, chewy, and mildly addictive.

Jeukseok tteokbokki — rice cakes, fish cake, noodles and egg simmering at your table.

Sindang-dong does something different, and it’s the reason to come. Its house style is jeukseok tteokbokki, which literally means “on-the-spot” tteokbokki. Instead of arriving finished, it comes raw in a wide, shallow pan and cooks in front of you on a gas burner set into the table. Into that pan go the rice cakes, plenty of fish cake, cabbage and onion, a boiled egg or two, and a scoop of the shop’s dark, deeply savory sauce — a gochujang base rounded out with a touch of jjajang (짜장), the black-bean paste, which gives Sindang-dong tteokbokki its distinctive smoky depth. You stir, you wait, you eat straight from the pan as it thickens.

Build your own pan

Half the fun is loading it up. Most shops let you add extras to the pan, and a few are almost mandatory. Ramyeon (라면), instant noodles, dropped in to soak up the sauce — this combination is so beloved it has its own name, rabokki (라볶이), and it was born right here. Jjolmyeon (쫄면), thick, springy wheat noodles with real bite. Sheets of extra fish cake, dumplings, a slice of cheese if you like it milder. In my experience the move is to eat the rice cakes and noodles first while the sauce is loose, then, near the end, ask for bokkeum-bap (볶음밥) — rice fried right in the leftover sauce, scraping up every last bit. It’s the perfect greedy finish.

Loaded up with ramyeon and jjolmyeon — the rabokki combo that started in Sindang-dong.

One tip for visitors: it’s spicy, but not brutally so, and most shops will dial the heat down if you ask. It’s also built for sharing. A two-person set is the standard order, so this is a dish for company — grab a friend and split a pan.

From a royal kitchen to a Seoul back alley

Tteokbokki used to be a palace dish

Here’s the surprise: the original tteokbokki wasn’t spicy at all. The oldest version, gungjung tteokbokki (궁중떡볶이) or “royal court tteokbokki,” was a refined dish served to Joseon-dynasty kings — rice cakes stir-fried with beef, mushrooms and vegetables in ganjang (간장, soy sauce) and sesame oil, savory and gently sweet, with no chili anywhere. It’s recorded in a late-19th-century Korean cookbook, the Siuijeonseo, and you can still order this soy-braised version today. It tastes almost nothing like the fiery street food most people picture.

The red revolution came much later, and it came from Sindang-dong. Chili peppers only reached Korea in the 1600s, and gochujang took centuries more to become an everyday seasoning. The spicy tteokbokki the whole world now knows is barely seventy years old — and by most accounts it was invented on one Seoul street corner in the 1950s.

Grandma Ma Bok-rim and the alley she started

The story goes like this. In 1953, in the hard years just after the Korean War, a woman named Ma Bok-rim (마복림) was selling snacks near a theater in Sindang-dong. As the tale is told, she was at a Chinese restaurant one day, watched a rice cake fall into a dish of black-bean jjajang sauce, tasted it, and had an idea. She began coating rice cakes in a sauce of her own — gochujang blended with that black-bean paste — and spicy tteokbokki was born. Whether every detail is exact, the timeline is well documented, and locals have no doubt about the address.

Her stall did well, and when the nearby Cheonggyecheon stream was covered over, crowds grew and the business expanded. Other vendors opened tteokbokki shops around her, and by the late 1970s a full tteokbokki alley had formed. The 1980s were its golden age. Each shop installed a DJ box, where a smooth-talking DJ took song requests and read out dedications, and a plate of tteokbokki over the radio hits became the classic date for a generation of Seoul teenagers. The alley is now designated a piece of Seoul’s Future Heritage, and a few shops keep the DJ tradition alive to this day.

Sindang-dong in the 1980s — DJ boxes, song requests, and shared pans of tteokbokki.

Ma Bok-rim herself became something of a national figure. A television commercial made her catchphrase famous across Korea: asked for her secret sauce recipe, she’d smile and say “myeoneuri-do molla” — “even my daughter-in-law doesn’t know.” She kept cooking almost to the end, and passed away in 2011 at the age of 91. Her shop is still there, run by her family, and it still isn’t telling.

🗓️ Plan your visit

When: Tteokbokki is an all-year, all-weather comfort, but a bubbling table pan is best on a cold evening, when the burner warms the whole booth. Most shops run late into the night, so it’s a great after-dark stop, especially paired with the neighboring Dongdaemun (동대문) shopping district, which stays open into the small hours.

Getting there: The alley sits right by Sindang Station (신당역) on Seoul subway lines 2 and 6 — just step out and walk a couple of minutes. From Incheon Airport, it’s roughly an hour and a half by the airport rail link and a subway transfer, all easy on public transit and covered by a standard transit card.

Costs: This is cheap, cheerful eating. A two-person set of instant tteokbokki runs somewhere around the mid-teens in thousands of won, with add-ons like ramyeon or extra noodles costing a little more each. Prices drift over time, so treat any figure as a guide — but tteokbokki has always been, and still is, a bargain.

Where to eat tteokbokki in Sindang-dong

The shops line a short stretch near Sindang Station, close enough that you can walk the row and read the crowds before choosing. Two names anchor the alley — one the acknowledged original, one the big, buzzy all-nighter:
- 📍 Mabongnim Tteokbokki (마복림떡볶이): 5 Dasan-ro 35-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul (서울 중구 다산로35길 5)
- 🕒 Hours: about 09:00–22:50, closed the 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month
- 🍲 Two-person set around 17,000 won · this is Grandma Ma Bok-rim’s original shop, in business since 1953 and still run by her family · free valet parking
- 📍 I Love Sindangdong (아이러브신당동): 50 Toegye-ro 76-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul (서울 중구 퇴계로76길 50) — a big shop at the mouth of the alley, open 24 hours (closed the 1st and 3rd Mondays), two-person set around 17,000 won, with a DJ, live acoustic sets and free valet parking
One honest note: the alley has close to a dozen shops, and locals argue endlessly over the best one — Mabongnim and I Love Sindangdong are the famous anchors, but you won’t go wrong wandering in wherever the pans look busiest. Hours, closing days and prices shift over time, and the popular spots draw weekend lines, so a quick check before you go is never wasted. You can also read up on the neighborhood on Korea’s official tourism guide to Sindang-dong Tteokbokki Town.

🔗 More Korean meals worth the trip: graze snacks and street food at Seoul’s Gwangjang Market, warm up with a bowl of milky ox-bone soup, seolleongtang, or head south for Jeonju’s famous bibimbap.

A few quick questions

What exactly is tteokbokki?
Tteokbokki is a Korean dish of chewy rice cakes (garae-tteok) simmered in a sweet-and-spicy gochujang sauce, usually with fish cake and vegetables. It’s one of Korea’s most popular street foods, sold everywhere from market stalls to sit-down shops, and it’s beloved for being sweet, spicy and satisfyingly chewy all at once.

Why is Sindang-dong famous for tteokbokki?
Sindang-dong is widely regarded as the birthplace of spicy tteokbokki. Grandma Ma Bok-rim began selling it there in 1953, an alley of tteokbokki shops grew up around her, and the neighborhood became the home of jeukseok tteokbokki — the “instant” style you cook in a pan at your table. The alley is now recognized as part of Seoul’s Future Heritage.

What is instant (jeukseok) tteokbokki?
It’s Sindang-dong’s signature style. Rather than arriving cooked, the rice cakes, fish cake, noodles, vegetables and sauce come raw in a wide pan and simmer on a burner at your table, so you eat as it cooks and can add extras like ramyeon (making rabokki) or jjolmyeon noodles. It’s usually ordered as a set for two or more people to share.

Is tteokbokki very spicy?
It’s mild-to-moderate by Korean standards — sweet as much as hot — and most Sindang-dong shops will happily reduce the heat if you ask. The black-bean paste in the sauce also softens the chili, so it reads more savory and rich than searing.
2026-07-10
Sungsimdang Bakery (성심당) & Dubu-Duruchigi (두부두루치기): Daejeon’s Must-Eat Duo
Daejeon (대전) sits almost dead center on the Korean map, an hour south of Seoul by high-speed train, and for years Koreans half-jokingly voted it their most boring big city. Then a bakery changed the story. Today people ride the KTX down to Daejeon for two things that couldn’t be more different — a legendary 70-year-old bakery and a fiery bowl of tofu — and both hide in the same worn-in old downtown. If you only have half a day in central Korea, this is how to spend it.

Eunhaeng-dong, Daejeon’s old downtown in Jung-gu — home to the bakery that put the city on the food map.

⭐ Daejeon at a glance

🏛️ Sights & things to do ★★★☆☆

🍜 Food ★★★★★

🚆 Easy to reach ★★★★★

A personal take based on our own visits — how much there is to see, the food, and how easy the city is to get to. Daejeon is a transit hub more than a sightseeing headliner, so we rate it as a food stop first. Your mileage may differ.

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

The short version: Daejeon is a two-in-one food trip. First, Sungsimdang (성심당), a Catholic bakery founded in 1956 whose deep-fried streusel bun, tuigim-soboro (튀김소보로), pulls all-day queues — and which flatly refuses to open a single branch outside Daejeon. Second, dubu-duruchigi (두부두루치기), a Daejeon-born dish of tofu simmered in a bubbling gochujang broth, best finished by swirling kalguksu noodles into the leftover sauce. Both sit in the same old downtown. Here’s what to eat, where each came from, and how to get there.

What to eat in Daejeon

One dish is sweet, cheap and eaten standing up. The other is red, fiery and meant to be shared. Together they make the case for getting off the train in Daejeon.

Sungsimdang’s tuigim-soboro (튀김소보로) — the fried bun that built a city’s fame

Tuigim-soboro — a crumbly soboro bun packed with red-bean paste and then deep-fried, Sungsimdang’s signature.

Start with the bun everyone lines up for. A regular soboro bun is the Korean cousin of Mexican concha bread, topped with a sweet, crumbly streusel. Sungsimdang’s twist is to stuff it full of sweet red-bean paste and then deep-fry the whole thing, so the outside turns crisp and golden while the inside stays soft. That’s the tuigim-soboro, and it’s been the shop’s headline act since 1980.

It’s also almost comically cheap — a couple thousand won each — which is a big part of the charm. You’ll see people walk out with towers of pink boxes, and the smart move is to eat one warm on the spot before the crust loses its crackle. Beyond the soboro, keep an eye out for the fantalong buchu-ppang (판타롱 부추빵), a savory bun stuffed with garlic chives that locals are just as loyal to. In my experience the first bite of a warm tuigim-soboro explains the queue better than any review can.

Dubu-duruchigi (두부두루치기) — Daejeon’s fiery tofu, finished with noodles

Dubu-duruchigi — slabs of tofu simmered in a bubbling red gochujang broth, a Daejeon original.

Now for the opposite of a pastry. Dubu-duruchigi is thick slabs of tofu cooked down in a shallow pan of spicy, garlicky gochujang broth, often with a little squid, pork or greens thrown in. It arrives bubbling at the table and stays hot the whole meal. The tofu soaks up the sauce and turns silky, and the broth is deep and punchy rather than subtle. It’s a drinking-and-sharing dish more than a delicate one.

Here’s the part first-timers miss: you don’t stop at the tofu. In Daejeon, dubu-duruchigi is almost always ordered with kalguksu (칼국수), the thick knife-cut noodles. You eat the tofu first, then tip a portion of freshly boiled noodles into the leftover red sauce and toss it all together, so nothing goes to waste. Locals will tell you the noodle finish is the real point of the meal. A pot easily feeds two, so bring an appetite and a friend.

How Daejeon became Korea’s bread city

The Sungsimdang story starts with two sacks of flour and a steamed-bun cart at Daejeon Station.

From two sacks of flour to a bakery legend

Sungsimdang begins with a refugee. Im Gil-sun (임길순), born in 1912 in what is now North Korea, was a Catholic who fled south during the Heungnam evacuation of December 1950, one of the war’s great sea rescues. Years later, in 1956, the train he was riding broke down at Daejeon Station and he decided to stay. A priest at the nearby Daeheung-dong Cathedral, Father Oh Gi-seon, handed him two sacks of flour to get started — and with his wife, Han Sun-deok, Im began selling steamed buns from a stall in front of the station.

The shop moved to its Eunhaeng-dong home in 1970 and never really left. The name Sungsimdang means “house of the sacred heart,” and one habit stuck from those early Catholic roots: bread left unsold at the end of the day wasn’t sold the next morning — it was given away to struggling neighbors. That give-it-away ethic is still part of the brand’s story, and it’s a big reason Daejeon feels genuine affection for the place, not just appetite.

The bakery that refuses to leave town

What makes Sungsimdang unusual is what it won’t do. Despite nationwide fame, it has stubbornly refused to open branches in Seoul or anywhere outside Daejeon — a rarity in an era of franchise everything. If you want the real thing, you have to come to the city. That single decision turned a bakery into a reason to travel, and locals now proudly flip the city’s dull reputation on its head, calling Daejeon a “bread city” instead. One shop did that.

How a plain block of tofu got its kick

Dubu-duruchigi has humbler roots, and they’re local too. The story traces to a small Daeheung-dong eatery called Jinro-jip (진로집), which opened around 1969 serving plain tofu as a cheap snack to go with drinks. As the tale goes, a regular suggested seasoning it up instead of serving it plain, and the spicy, saucy version was born. The playful name comes from Korean words for beating and tossing the tofu around in the pan. From that one shop the dish spread across the old downtown to spots like Gwangcheon Sikdang and beyond, until it became what it is now — Daejeon’s hometown comfort food, forever paired with a swirl of kalguksu.

🗓️ Plan your visit

When: There’s no wrong season for Daejeon — this is an all-year, all-weather food stop. The one thing to plan around is the Sungsimdang line. The main store opens at 8 a.m., and mornings are far calmer than afternoons, which snake into long queues by lunchtime. Weekdays beat weekends. Get your bread early, then go hunt down tofu.

Getting there: Daejeon is one of the easiest trips in Korea. It’s roughly an hour from Seoul by KTX to Daejeon Station, which sits in the heart of the city. Coming straight from Incheon Airport, plan on about 2.5–3 hours all in — airport rail or bus up to Seoul (or a direct airport bus), then the fast train down. The old downtown around Eunhaeng-dong is a short taxi or bus ride from Daejeon Station, and the two food stops here are close together.

Costs: This is a cheap day out. Sungsimdang’s buns run just a couple thousand won each, and a shareable pan of dubu-duruchigi is modest for two people. Daejeon isn’t a resort town, so there’s no big seasonal tourist premium on hotels or food — most people simply fold it into a wider central-Korea trip or do it as a day return from Seoul.

Where to eat in Daejeon

Both institutions sit in Jung-gu, the old downtown, within a short ride of each other and of Daejeon Station.
- 📍 Sungsimdang, main store (성심당 본점): 15 Daejong-ro 480beon-gil, Jung-gu, Daejeon (대전 중구 대종로480번길 15, 은행동)
- 🕒 Hours: daily 08:00–22:00, open year-round (expect a line, shortest early)
- 🥐 Tuigim-soboro just a couple thousand won · also try the fantalong garlic-chive bun · cash-friendly, fast-moving queue
- 📍 Gwangcheon Sikdang (광천식당): 29 Daejong-ro 505beon-gil, Jung-gu, Daejeon (대전 중구 대종로505번길 29, 선화동)
- 🕒 Hours: Tue–Sun 10:30–21:30, break 15:00–17:00, closed Mondays (can change)
- 🌶️ Dubu-duruchigi around 18,000 won (a shareable pan) · add kalguksu noodles to finish · rice about 1,000 won
- 📍 Jinro-jip (진로집): the Daeheung-dong original credited with inventing the dish back in 1969, if you want to eat where it all started
One honest caveat: Sungsimdang’s lines are real, and popular items sell out, so go early and don’t set your heart on one specific bun. The tofu shops keep old-school hours with a mid-afternoon break and a weekly closing day, and prices drift up over time. Check before you go, especially on a Monday.

🔗 More Korean regional food worth the trip: if you like chasing dishes to their hometowns, read about chodang sundubu, Gangneung’s seawater-set tofu, Jeonju’s famous bibimbap, and Seoul’s Gwangjang Market street food. · More on Wikipedia

A few quick questions

Why is Sungsimdang in Daejeon so famous?
It’s a 1956 bakery with a genuine backstory, wildly cheap signature buns, and a refusal to open branches anywhere else — so it has become a reason to visit the city. The deep-fried soboro bun draws lines all day, and the shop’s long tradition of giving unsold bread to the needy gives it real local goodwill.

Can I buy Sungsimdang bread outside Daejeon?
Not from a proper Sungsimdang shop — the bakery famously keeps all its stores within Daejeon and won’t franchise out. That’s exactly why people travel there for it. Buy it fresh in the city and eat the fried soboro warm if you can.

What does dubu-duruchigi taste like, and how do I eat it?
It’s spicy, garlicky and savory — soft tofu simmered in a bubbling gochujang broth, more of a bold sharing dish than a mild one. Eat the tofu first, then add freshly boiled kalguksu noodles to the leftover sauce and mix, which is the classic Daejeon way to finish it.

Is Daejeon worth a trip from Seoul?
For food travelers, yes, and it’s easy — about an hour each way by KTX, right into the city center. You can do Sungsimdang and a tofu lunch as a relaxed day trip, or make Daejeon a tasty pit stop on a longer journey through central Korea.
2026-07-09
Ojingeo Sundae (오징어순대): Sokcho’s Stuffed Squid, a Refugee Dish
On the far northeast corner of South Korea, right where the Seoraksan mountains tumble into the East Sea, sits a small port city called Sokcho (속초). Cross a tiny hand-pulled ferry there and you land in Abai Village (아바이마을), a low huddle of houses built by war refugees from the North. This is home to one of Korea’s most inventive dishes: ojingeo sundae (오징어순대), a whole squid stuffed like a sausage and steamed. It’s comfort food born out of homesickness, and once you know the story, it tastes different.

Sokcho’s Abai Village, reached by a small hand-pulled ferry across the channel.

⭐ Sokcho at a glance

🏛️ Sights & things to do ★★★★★

🍜 Food ★★★★☆

🚌 Easy to reach ★★★★☆

A personal take based on our own experience — the range of things to see, the food, and the travel time from Seoul. Yours may well differ.

The short version: ojingeo sundae is a squid stuffed with a savory filling of vegetables, glass noodles and a little meat, then steamed and sliced into rounds. It was created in Sokcho by refugees who fled the North during the Korean War and rebuilt their hometown cooking with what the East Sea gave them. Here’s what it is, why the squid, and where to eat it.

First — what exactly is ojingeo sundae?

Start with the word. Sundae (순대) is Korea’s classic stuffed sausage, usually a pork casing packed with glass noodles, rice and seasoned blood, then steamed. It’s a beloved street food, sold by the plate at markets all over the country. Now swap the pork intestine for a whole squid, and you’ve got ojingeo sundae — ojingeo just means squid.

Ojingeo sundae, sliced into rounds — squid on the outside, a savory stuffing within.

How it’s actually made

The cook cleans out a squid body so it becomes a hollow tube, then dries the inside and dusts it with a little flour so the filling grips. The stuffing does the heavy lifting: finely chopped vegetables — carrot, onion, chili, scallion — plus glass noodles, tofu, a bit of minced meat, and seasonings like garlic and sesame oil. The squid gets packed full but not tight (it shrinks as it cooks), sealed, and steamed for around twenty minutes. Some shops then slice it, give the rounds an egg coating and lightly pan-fry them. That’s the version I like best — a soft, springy bite with a golden edge.

How to eat it

It arrives already sliced, so you don’t have to do anything clever. Dip a round in the soy-and-vinegar sauce on the table and go. The squid is chewy in that satisfying way; the filling is savory and a little sweet. Locals often eat it alongside a bowl of sundae-guk (순대 soup) or the sharp, cold myeongtae-hoe naengmyeon — pollock in chilly noodles. My honest advice? Order it as part of a spread rather than a single plate. It shines next to other Hamgyeong-style dishes.

The story behind the dish

This is where ojingeo sundae stops being just a clever snack. It’s a piece of the Korean War, still on the plate.

A village built by refugees

In 1951, refugees from the North settled the Sokcho sandbar and waited for a way home that never came.

During the war, in the great retreat of early 1951, thousands of people from Hamgyeong Province (함경도), a region now in North Korea, fled south with the retreating troops. Many got as far as Sokcho and stopped on a spit of sand at Cheongho-dong (청호동), certain the fighting would end soon and they’d cross back home in a few months. The war ended in a stalemate. The border froze. And they stayed.

The settlement they built became known as Abai Village. Abai (아바이) is a Hamgyeong dialect word for “father” or, more broadly, an older man, the way these northerners addressed one another. So the name itself is a fragment of a lost dialect, kept alive on a signboard. Walk the lanes today and you’ll still hear it in the shop names.

Why squid? Because home was gone

Back in Hamgyeong, a prized local dish was myeongtae sundae, fresh pollock stuffed with a seasoned filling and steamed. When the refugees tried to recreate it in Sokcho, two things had changed. Pollock wasn’t always easy to come by, and neither were the pork casings for ordinary sundae. But squid? The East Sea off Sokcho was full of it. So they used what the new sea offered, stuffing the squid the way they’d once stuffed the fish back home.

That’s the quiet genius of it. Ojingeo sundae isn’t a chef’s invention or a marketing idea. It’s a memory of the North, rebuilt with the ingredients of the South. A hometown recipe adapted so it wouldn’t be lost. I find that quietly moving. You’ll find its cousin, Abai sundae (아바이순대), the heartier pork-casing version, in the same village, but the squid one is Sokcho’s own signature.

The village that a TV drama made famous

The galbae — a ferry with no engine. You pull the boat across yourself on a steel cable.

To reach Abai Village the fun way, you ride the galbae (갯배), a flat little ferry with no motor. Passengers grab a hooked pole and haul the boat across the narrow channel on a steel cable, hand over hand. It costs only a few hundred won and takes about a minute, and honestly, it’s half the reason people come.

If the crossing looks familiar, there’s a reason. The galbae featured in Autumn in My Heart (가을동화), the hit 2000 Korean drama that aired across Asia, and fans have been making the pilgrimage ever since. There’s a little photo spot by the dock. So you get a bowl of refugee history and a K-drama backdrop in the same fifteen minutes.

🗓️ Plan your visit

When: Sokcho is a year-round base for Seoraksan National Park, and each season has its pull. Autumn (roughly October) is the showstopper, when the mountain turns red and gold, though it’s also the busiest. Summer brings beach crowds; late spring and early winter are quieter and mild. The squid, happily, is good in any weather.

Getting there: From Incheon Airport, plan on roughly 3–4 hours. The simplest route is an express bus from Seoul straight to Sokcho (about 2.5 hours over the mountains); intercity buses also run from other cities. From Sokcho’s bus terminal, Abai Village is a short taxi ride, then the galbae ferry across.

Costs: A plate of ojingeo sundae runs roughly ₩15,000–17,000, and a bowl of sundae soup a bit less. Solid value for a regional specialty. For the trip, autumn foliage season and summer weekends are the priciest and most crowded times for east-coast rooms, so book ahead or aim for the shoulder months.

Where to eat it

Both of these sit right inside Abai Village, a short walk from the ferry dock:

Dancheon Sikdang (단천식당) — the village classic

This is usually the shop with a line out front, and for good reason. The name is a homesick nod to Dancheon, a city up in Hamgyeong that the founding family left behind. Order the ojingeo sundae, and add a bowl of the Abai-style sundae soup if you’re hungry. The pairing is the whole point.
- 📍 Address: 17 Abai-maeul-gil, Sokcho, Gangwon (강원 속초시 아바이마을길 17)
- 🕒 Hours: 08:30–19:00 (last order 18:30)
- 🦑 Ojingeo sundae: from around ₩15,000 · Abai sundae-guk around ₩10,000 · pollock naengmyeon around ₩10,000 · parking near the beach lot
2-dae Songnim Sundae-jip (2대송림순대집) — two generations in

The “2-dae” in the name means “second generation,” and that’s the draw: a family shop passing the recipe down. They do both the squid version and the classic pork-casing Abai sundae, plus a mixed plate if you can’t choose — which, the first time, you probably can’t.
- 📍 Address: 12 Abai-maeul-gil, Sokcho, Gangwon (강원 속초시 아바이마을길 12)
- 🕒 Hours: weekdays 10:00–19:00 · weekends 08:00–20:00
- 🦑 Ojingeo sundae: from around ₩17,000 (small/medium/large) · mixed sundae plate available · public parking nearby (limited)
One honest caveat: prices and hours are accurate as of July 2026, but small family restaurants change both more often than you’d expect, and busy ones sometimes close early when they run 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. stay on the east coast for Gangneung’s seawater tofu, chodang sundubu, head into the Gangwon mountains for gondeure namul bap in Jeongseon, or go back to Seoul for the street food of Gwangjang Market. · More on Wikipedia

A few quick questions

Is ojingeo sundae the same as regular sundae?
No. Regular sundae is a pork casing stuffed with glass noodles, rice and blood. Ojingeo sundae uses a whole squid as the casing and a milder vegetable-and-noodle filling, with no blood. Different texture, different flavor, same idea of stuffing and steaming.

Does it taste very fishy?
Not really. The squid is clean and springy rather than strong, and the savory filling balances it out. If you like calamari, you’ll be fine here. The dipping sauce adds a little tang.

What’s the difference between ojingeo sundae and Abai sundae?
Both come from the same refugee community in Sokcho. Abai sundae is the hearty pork-casing sausage; ojingeo sundae is the squid version. Many Abai Village shops serve both, so you can compare them side by side.
2026-07-08
Gwangjang Market (광장시장): The Ultimate Seoul Street-Food Guide
If you only have time for one food stop in Seoul, a lot of locals — me included — would point you straight to Gwangjang Market (광장시장). It sits in the old downtown district of Jongno, a short walk from Insadong and the palaces, and it’s the kind of place where you eat elbow-to-elbow with strangers on plastic stools, grease on your fingers, completely happy. It’s also the oldest market of its kind in the country — but we’ll get to that.

Gwangjang Market — Seoul’s most famous street-food alley, in the heart of Jongno.

⭐ Gwangjang Market 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.

The short version: Gwangjang Market is Seoul’s oldest and most beloved street-food market, born in 1905 out of a quiet act of resistance. Come hungry, bring cash, and go for three things above all: bindaetteok, mayak gimbap, and yukhoe. Here’s what to eat, the story behind the market, and how to visit.

What to eat at Gwangjang Market

You could graze here for hours, but three dishes are the ones people cross the city for. Start with these.

Bindaetteok (빈대떡) — the sizzling mung-bean pancake

Bindaetteok, ground fresh from mung beans and fried to a crisp — the market’s signature.

If Gwangjang has a signature dish, this is it. Bindaetteok is a savory pancake made from mung beans that are soaked, stone-ground on the spot, then mixed with pork, bean sprouts, and kimchi and fried in a generous slick of oil until the edges go lacy and crisp.

You eat it hot off the griddle, dipped in a little soy-and-onion sauce. The way I see it, watching the batter hit the pan is half the experience — the whole alley smells like it. Grab a seat at Sunhui-ne Bindaetteok, the market’s most famous pancake stall, and you’ll understand the hype in one bite.

Mayak gimbap (마약김밥) — the “addictive” mini rolls

Mayak gimbap — bite-sized rolls you dip in a sharp mustard-soy sauce.

The name literally translates to “drug gimbap” — a cheeky nod to how hard they are to stop eating. These are tiny seaweed-and-rice rolls, no bigger than your thumb, brushed with sesame oil and served with a punchy mustard-soy dipping sauce.

They’re plain-looking and dangerously moreish. In my experience, you order one plate thinking it’s a snack and somehow end up flagging down a second. The stalls around Monyeo Gimbap are the classic spot for them.

Yukhoe (육회) — Korean raw beef, done right

Yukhoe — fresh raw beef, sesame oil, and a glossy egg yolk on top.

For the more adventurous, Gwangjang is famous for yukhoe — Korean-style beef tartare. Fresh raw beef is cut into fine strips, seasoned with sesame oil, garlic, and a touch of sweetness, then crowned with a raw egg yolk you stir through just before eating.

There’s a whole lane of the market known as Yukhoe Alley, where side-by-side restaurants have been serving it for decades. It’s silky, rich, and nothing like you’re expecting. If you eat one “brave” thing in Seoul, I’d make it this.

The market’s surprising history

Founded in 1905 by Korean merchants — a market built as quiet resistance.

Here’s the part most visitors never hear while they’re slurping their noodles. Gwangjang isn’t just old — it was born out of defiance.

In the early 1900s, as Japan tightened its grip on Korea, control of the country’s biggest market, Namdaemun, slipped into Japanese hands. In response, a group of Korean merchants and investors pooled their own money and, in 1905, founded a new market that would stay under Korean control. That market was Gwangjang.

It’s been running continuously ever since, which makes it the oldest permanent market in Korea — well over a century of the same trade, now layered with fabric shops upstairs and that legendary food alley below. I find it quietly moving that a place this joyful started as an act of holding on to something.

🗓️ Plan your visit

When: The food alley runs all year and is at its liveliest in the evening, though many stalls open late morning (around 10–11 a.m.). Come genuinely hungry, and bring some cash — a lot of stalls prefer it. Upstairs fabric shops keep daytime hours and close on Sundays.

Getting there: It couldn’t be easier — Gwangjang is right in central Seoul. From Incheon Airport it’s about an hour on the airport railroad into the city, then a short subway hop to Jongno 5-ga Station (Line 1), Exit 8, or Euljiro 4-ga Station (Lines 2 & 5), Exit 4 — both a 3-minute walk.

Costs: The food is wonderfully cheap — most dishes are a few thousand won each. For the trip itself, spring (blossoms) and autumn (foliage) are peak season in Seoul, so flights and hotels climb and book out early; winter outside the holidays is easier on the wallet.

Where to eat it — the market & its famous stalls

Everything is inside one market, so the address below gets you to all of it. A few names worth seeking out:
- 📍 Gwangjang Market: 88 Changgyeonggung-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul (서울 종로구 창경궁로 88)
- 🕒 Food stalls: roughly 09:00–23:00 (varies by stall; many open late morning)
- 🥞 Sunhui-ne Bindaetteok (순희네빈대떡): mung-bean pancakes · ~09:00–23:00
- 🍙 Monyeo Gimbap (모녀김밥): mayak gimbap · ~09:00–20:30
- 🥩 Yukhoe Alley (육회골목): raw beef restaurants, clustered together
One honest caveat: stall hours and prices shift more than you’d expect, and some spots take cash only. It’s worth a quick check — and an ATM stop — before you go.

🔗 Nearby in Jongno: the same neighborhood is home to seolleongtang, Seoul’s original ox-bone soup — including the oldest restaurant in the country. Heading out of the city? Read about gondeure namul bap, a mountain-herb rice from Jeongseon Planning an actual visit? Our travel guide to Gwangjang Market covers stall-by-stall pricing and ordering tips.. · More on Wikipedia

A few quick questions

What should I eat first at Gwangjang Market?
Start with bindaetteok (the mung-bean pancake) — it’s the market’s signature. Then chase it with mayak gimbap, and, if you’re game, a plate of yukhoe.

Is Gwangjang Market good for vegetarians?
Partly. Bindaetteok often contains a little pork, and mayak gimbap is usually veggie-friendly, but recipes vary by stall — it’s always worth asking before you order.

Do I need cash?
Yes, bring some. Many stalls take cards now, but plenty still prefer cash, and it keeps things quick during the busy hours.
2026-07-07

🍙 Everyday-ness (you’ll see it everywhere)	★★★★★
🎒 Portable / picnic-friendly	★★★★★
💸 Easy on the wallet	★★★★★
🌶️ Spice level	★☆☆☆☆

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

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

Category: Street Food

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A few quick questions

First — what exactly is ojingeo sundae?

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The story behind the dish

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The village that a TV drama made famous

Where to eat it

Dancheon Sikdang (단천식당) — the village classic

2-dae Songnim Sundae-jip (2대송림순대집) — two generations in

A few quick questions

What to eat at Gwangjang Market

Bindaetteok (빈대떡) — the sizzling mung-bean pancake

Mayak gimbap (마약김밥) — the “addictive” mini rolls

Yukhoe (육회) — Korean raw beef, done right

The market’s surprising history

Where to eat it — the market & its famous stalls

A few quick questions