Seomun Market · Grilled Pork Belly Street
Cheongju Samgyeopsal Street
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Locals claim their city invented the whole idea of grilling pork belly strips as a stand-alone restaurant dish — a claim you'll hear repeated at nearly every table along the block.
Thick-cut strips of pork belly are grilled tableside over charcoal until the fat crackles, then dipped in a soy-based sauce rather than the usual ssamjang, a local variation locals call distinctly their own. A roughly 340-meter stretch of Cheongju's Seomun Market is lined wall to wall with samgyeopsal restaurants built around the one cut.
Why it's made this way: Cheongju is widely regarded within Korea as the birthplace of samgyeopsal as a restaurant dish, and the city formalized that claim in the 2010s by developing this dedicated grilling street — one of the only alleys in the country built entirely around a single cut of meat.
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