"Snack" Foods in Korea

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          In America, you can choose what you want to eat for dinner from a variety of choices - Chinese, Mongolian, Italian, American... Korea also has their own categories of food and one of them is 분식 (boon-shik), snack food.

          There are 분식점 that exclusively serve only snack food in Korea, and as I've only lived in America, I've hardly been to one. So it wasn't until my very first visit to Chicago, where there's a large Korean population, when I went to H-Mart and saw that the foods I've been eating as meals my whole life are considered "snacks". I'm talking about 떡볶이 (dduk - bokk - ee), 김밥 (kim bap), 라면 (ramen), 순대 (sun - dae) etc.! You can click on the picture source link above and see more pictures of Korean snack foods.

          The first one, 떡볶이 (dduk - bokk - ee), is just a dish of spicy rice cakes. To you who are not Korean/ have never heard of dduk-bokk-ee might think it's gross based on the description, but oh my goodness, you are in the wrong!!! Gag Concert actually did a survey for its Korean viewers (which is basically all of Korea) to see which of the four representative snack foods (listed in the above paragraph) is the most popular, and dduk-bokk-ee held first place! It's actually a wonder, when you think about what a simple dish dukk-bokk-ee is, why it is so enticingly delicious. Excuse me while I go cry and yearn for some dukk-bokk-ee.

          김밥 (kim bap) is also one of my favorites. It's also called Korean Sushi, but it's not sushi at all, there's no fish involved but occasional tunas. Think of kim bap this way - it's a California roll but instead the rice being on the outside and dried seaweed on the inside, it's the complete opposite. So kim bap has dried seaweed on the outside with rice and some sort of meat (which meat it is is entirely up to the cook) and vegetables (also different based on the cook's choice). It's delicious. No more questions.

          You should know this one - RAMEN! Oh, who can resist some good old ramen noodles? But let me tell you this: Korean ramen is different from the American ones. Personally for me, American ramen is gross - chicken flavor?! Beef flavor?! There's none of that in Korea! They are all spicy, usually kimchi flavor, and I declare that ramen should all be spicy, otherwise it's not ramen. Hey, no hate, just stating my own opinion. Seriously, I grew up with just spicy ramen and when I found out there are such things as non-spicy ramen, it was like finding out that there's a pizza without any cheese out there.

          순대 (soon-dae) are blood sausages. Sound gross? Well, can't argue about that with you there. I used to really like soon-dae, until one day, I ate some and got sick and ever since, I can't even stand the smell of it. (What's that psychological term for this case?) Anyway, soon-dae is very popular in Korea and it's like a buddy with dduk-bok-ee and just snack foods in general.

          I mentioned something about how I grew up thinking these foods were all for meals and not snacks. It's still odd to me today that these foods are considered as snacks. My parents did not make this distinction and I grew up devouring kim bap and dduk-bok-ee and ramen for meals. I mean, don't they all sound like potential meals to you? It's like eating fries for snack, which, I think some people actually do, but it's still weird. So Korean students eat these snack foods as, well, snacks, like after school and all of that and very recently, one of my younger siblings asked my dad why Korean kids tend to not eat a lot of food during meal times. My dad said it's because they eat a lot of snacks which makes so much sense! They eat something like California rolls (kim bap) as snacks, so it's no wonder they're not that hungry for  dinner! But hey, absolutely no hate for Korean snack foods, I heart them all, except for soon-dae.

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