South Korea Street Food

Late-night snacking turned into its own culinary category.

🌙 One popular street snack is served from red tented carts that only really come alive after dark.

5 street food dishes from South Korea — what each one is, why it's made that way, and what to expect when you order it.

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Signature street foods of South Korea

Farmer's Brew · Milky Rice Wine Makgeolli It's unfiltered on purpose — the cloudy, milky look comes from leftover rice sediment, and you're supposed to shake or stir the bottle before pouring. Makgeolli is a low-alcohol, slightly fizzy rice wine made by fermenting steamed rice with nuruk (a fermentation starter), giving it a tangy, faintly sweet taste. It's traditionally poured…

Tteokbokki (Spicy Rice Cakes)

Main · Simmered Tteokbokki (Spicy Rice Cakes) These chewy rice cakes started out as a royal court dish, not street food. Cylindrical rice cakes simmered in a sweet-spicy gochujang sauce, often with fish cakes and boiled egg, sold from red tented street carts called pojangmacha.

Hotteok (Sweet Filled Pancake)

Snack · Griddled Hotteok (Sweet Filled Pancake) Pressed flat so hard the filling turns molten right before you bite in. A sweet, chewy pancake filled with brown sugar, cinnamon, and chopped nuts, pressed flat on a griddle until the filling turns molten, sold hot especially in winter months.

Eomuk / Odeng (어묵)

Skewers · Winter Warmer Eomuk / Odeng (어묵) Order it at a Korean street cart and you get more than the skewer — the hot fish broth it simmered in is ladled out free, in a paper cup, on the side. Pureed white fish is pressed and steamed into sheets of fish cake, then threaded onto skewers and simmered in a savory radish-and-kelp broth at street carts, a favorite cold-weather snack…

Korean Corn Dog (핫도그)

Street Snack · Battered & Fried Korean Corn Dog (핫도그) Unlike the American original, most Korean corn dogs aren't made with cornmeal batter at all — vendors use a yeasted, chewy dough, then roll the… A sausage — often with a block of mozzarella skewered alongside it — is coated in sticky dough, deep-fried until golden, then rolled in a crunchy coating of choice and drizzled with…

More street food in Asia

Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Photo credits.