War-Era Staple · Pork Bone Soup
Dwaeji Gukbap
Photo: LWY / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0
Busan has an entire street named after this soup, and more than a thousand restaurants across the city serve it.
Pork bones are simmered for hours into a milky white broth, ladled over rice with slices of boiled pork, and finished at the table with shrimp sauce, chives, and kimchi. It's sold everywhere from market food stalls to 24-hour diners across Busan.
Why it's made this way: Refugees who fled south during the Korean War couldn't afford proper cuts of meat, so they cooked down pork bones discarded by the U.S. military into a cheap, filling soup — a wartime survival dish that became Busan's defining comfort food.
More from South Korea
Makgeolli
Tteokbokki (Spicy Rice Cakes)
Hotteok (Sweet Filled Pancake)
Eomuk / Odeng (어묵)
Korean Corn Dog (핫도그)
Ssiat Hotteok (Seed Hotteok)
Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below.
Photo credits.