A popular YouTube channel chronicling traditional cuisines and street foods around the world once featured offerings in Myeongdong. The video showed marinated and buttered lobsters on a grill, joined by huge pen shells on the other side. It also filmed whole squids getting grilled on an iron plate, and shot another vendor making a Korean holiday staple japchae, stir-fried glass noodle mixed with beef and vegetables. The video was uploaded in the pre-pandemic days three years ago, and garnered over 8.7 million views.

For the past couple of years during the pandemic, Korea drew very few international tourists, though online activities soared rapidly. The Korean pop culture, in the forms of films, music, or series featured on global streaming services, has firmly established itself on the international stage.
The worldwide popularity of the Korean culture began to manifest itself at the end of last year, when travel restrictions were lifted. According to a Korea Tourism Organization survey from the beginning of this year, the number of foreign tourists to Korea jumped 18 times compared to the same period a year ago.

It’s absolutely stunning just how many different types of food you can sample in this neighborhood. Fish cake bars, tteokbokki-fish cake combo, spiral potatoes, takoyaki, crepe with Nutella and fruits and charcoal-grilled chicken skewers are some of the basic offerings. There are some you likely won’t find anywhere else: bungeoppang (Korean fish-shaped pastry) filled with red bean, cream cheese and pizza-flavored fillings, handmade churros, sipwonppang filled with cheese, and honey bungeo topped with ice cream and honey. You will even find fried jumbo shrimp, kimchi-wrapped samgyeopsal and grilled lobster, offerings that seem a bit out of place on these streets. Halal-style kebab and skewers are also available for Muslim tourists. As we walked along these streets out of Myeongdong Station, we started counting the types of foods on hand there. We lost count at 50. Going out to Myeongdong in the evening is like dining at an outdoor buffet.

The popularity of the drama series has done wonders to dalgona candy (crackly, honeycomb-like snack). You will run into some serious ‘ppopgi’ players on these streets, crouched down and trying to melt the candy with saliva. And you will also hear many different languages spoken by people holding skewers or cups full of foods, be it Japanese, English, Chinese, Spanish and those spoken in Southeast Asia.
Street foods have not been immune to inflation, though. Since they mostly target foreign tourists, rather than locals, the prices tend to be a bit high regardless of inflation. On average, chicken skewers or fish cake bars go for at least 5,000 won each. Grilled lobster is almost 20,000won. Still, even on a weekday evening, it’s not hard to see long queues all over Myeongdong.