Korean Street Food Names: Read the Hangul on Stall Signs

붕어빵 means “crucian carp bread,” and the classic filling is sweet red bean, not fish. That gap between name and contents is the whole game with Korean street food names: each one is built from a shape, a cooking method or an ingredient, so once you can split a name into its parts, a hand-lettered stall sign stops being decoration and turns into a menu. The eight names below were picked because each one teaches a piece of sign-reading you’ll reuse at the next cart. Every entry gives the Hangul as it’s written on the board, the official romanization and what the words literally say. For where the carts actually stand, see our guide to Myeongdong street food.

Quick answers

• Read a name as a description: 붕어빵 (bungeoppang) is “crucian carp bread” for the shape of its mold, and 떡볶이 (tteokbokki) is simply rice cake, stir-fried.
• Trust the Hangul over any English spelling: the Revised Romanization adopted in 2000 writes 떡볶이 as tteokbokki, and Korea’s rules for government English have spelled 순대 “sundae” instead of “blood sausage” since 2021.
• A handful of word parts do most of the decoding: 빵 (ppang, bread), 떡 (tteok, rice cake), 꼬치 (kkochi, skewer), 튀김 (twigim, fried) and 군 (gun, roasted).

1. 떡볶이 (Tteokbokki): Rice Cakes, Stir-Fried

떡볶이 is 떡 (tteok, rice cake) plus 볶이 (bokki), from the verb 볶다, “to stir-fry,” so the name is the recipe in two words. The Standard Korean Language Dictionary defines it as garae-tteok cut to size and stir-fried with vegetables and seasoning, and it adds that the seasoning can be soy sauce or gochujang. At a cart, look for the wide pan where chewy white cylinders slump in a bubbling red sauce. Say the name aloud and the middle hardens into something like tteok-ppo-kki; the official romanization leaves tensed sounds unmarked in compounds like this one, which is why the spelling never shows it. When the same board lists 라볶이 (rabokki), ramen has joined the pan, and the open dictionary 우리말샘 builds the word from râmen plus 볶이. Sauce styles and the rosé-versus-regular question get their own page in our guide to the types of tteokbokki.

2. 어묵 or 오뎅 (Eomuk or Odeng): One Fish Cake, Two Names

Both words mean fish cake, the kind threaded onto long skewers and left to steep in a pot of broth. 어묵 is the Korean term: 어 (魚, fish) plus 묵 (muk), the word for a firm jelly set from acorn, buckwheat or mung bean starch. 오뎅, on the other hand, is a loanword from Japanese oden, and the Standard Korean Language Dictionary doesn’t even define it; the entry just points you to 어묵. That same dictionary is frank about the food’s roots, describing fish cake as originally a Japanese dish. Treat the two signs as the same snack.

Its fried cousin, 핫바 (hatba), comes from the English words “hot bar,” and 우리말샘 describes it as fish paste kneaded with flour, vegetables and seasoning, then fried. Cold weather is when the broth earns its keep. Korea.net, the Korean government’s official website, called skewered eomuk a real treat on frosty evenings in 2017, and on a freezing night you’ll understand why.

3. 순대 (Sundae): Not the Ice Cream Kind

순대 is Korean sausage, and the English spelling’s collision with the dessert is pure coincidence. The dictionary describes pig intestine stuffed with a seasoned mix that can include meat, tofu, bean sprouts, green onion, blood and 당면 (dangmyeon, glass noodles), tied at both ends and boiled. That spelling is now official policy. Under the culture ministry’s revised guidelines for translating public terms, in force from July 22, 2021, government materials romanize 순대 as sundae, because the literal “blood sausage” risked putting foreign readers off. Glass noodles are a standard part of the filling, so don’t let the old translation scare you away.

4. 튀김 (Twigim) and 김말이 (Gimmari): The Fried Tray

튀김 means fried food, and on a sign it acts like a suffix: whatever sits in front is what went into the batter. The dictionary’s definition is fish, meat or vegetables coated in flour and fried in oil, so 오징어튀김 (ojingeo-twigim) is squid, 야채튀김 (yachae-twigim) is mixed vegetables and 고구마튀김 (goguma-twigim) is sweet potato.

One name won’t decode on sight. 김말이 is literally “gim roll”: vegetables or glass noodles rolled up in gim, the same dried laver sheet that wraps gimbap, then battered and fried. Spoken, the ㄹ slides into the next syllable, which is why it’s romanized gimmari rather than gimmal-i; our guide to reading Korean words faster walks through that liaison rule. When a board lists 떡튀순 (tteoktwisun), you’ve found the classic trio, a clipped word that 우리말샘 defines as tteokbokki, twigim and sundae taken together. Drag a 김말이 through the tteokbokki sauce before the first bite and the crisp shell soaks up the heat.

5. 꼬치 (Kkochi): Anything on a Stick

꼬치 means food threaded on a skewer, and the word in front of it tells you what’s on the stick. 닭꼬치 (dak-kkochi) is chicken, while 떡꼬치 (tteok-kkochi) is rice cake, which 우리말샘 describes as tteok skewered and grilled.

The trap is that stick food doesn’t always say 꼬치. 회오리감자 (hoeori-gamja) means “whirlwind potato”: 우리말샘 describes a whole potato pushed onto a stick, cut in a spiral, stretched apart and then fried or baked, sometimes dusted with cheese powder. 소떡소떡 (sotteok-sotteok) clips 소시지 (sausage) and 떡 into one bouncy name, and a 2018 list of highway rest-stop must-eats on Korea’s government policy portal included the version at the Anseong rest stop. Read the noun first and the stick takes care of itself.

6. 핫도그 (Hatdogeu): The Korean Corn Dog

핫도그 is “hot dog” spelled in Hangul, but the sense you want at a stall is the second one 우리말샘 lists: a long sausage on a stick, coated in flour batter and fried. That’s the snack English speakers call a Korean corn dog, though the definition specifies flour, so the English nickname describes the shape more than the batter. Here 핫 (hat) is just the English word “hot,” the same syllable that opens 핫바. Variants announce themselves in the name, too. 우리말샘 defines 치즈핫도그 (chijeu-hatdogeu) as a hot dog with cheese stuffed inside or laid on top, and it’s the one that stretches into long, salty strings when you pull it from your mouth.

7. 호떡 (Hotteok): The Pancake Named for Foreigners

호떡 is a flat, griddle-fried cake with a sugar filling, and its first syllable is the Chinese character 胡 (ho), an old label for “barbarian” outsiders. The Standard Korean Language Dictionary writes it 胡떡 and notes simply that the dish came from China. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture fills in the rest: Chinese migrants brought it in the 1880s, after an 1882 trade agreement opened the way for Chinese settlement, and by October 1930 Chinese-run hotteok shops numbered 1,139 nationwide.

Notice the 떡, too. Hotteok is made from wheat or glutinous rice flour, so on a sign 떡 can mean a pan-fried cake as well as a rice cake. Bite carefully, because the melted sugar inside runs hot. What’s sold on the street today is a Korean reworking, which the encyclopedia says Chinese-speaking regions tell apart as 黑糖餠, “brown sugar cake.” In Busan’s Nampo-dong, look for 씨앗호떡 (ssiat-hotteok, “seed hotteok”): fried, slit open and stuffed with crushed peanuts, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, a version the encyclopedia says started on Nampo-dong’s streets in the 1980s.

8. 붕어빵 (Bungeoppang): Fish Bread With No Fish

붕어빵 is named for its mold, not its filling: the dictionary defines it as thin wheat batter and red bean filling baked in an iron shaped like a 붕어 (bungeo), the crucian carp. It belongs to the 풀빵 (pulppang) family, mold-baked batter cakes that the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says take their names from the shape of the iron. That makes the rest of the family easy to read.

잉어빵 (ingeoppang) swaps in a 잉어, the common carp, and 우리말샘 adds that it’s crisper and oilier than 붕어빵. Next comes 국화빵 (gukhwappang), chrysanthemum bread, the same idea baked in a flower-shaped plate. Then there’s 계란빵 (gyeranppang), egg bread, 계란 (鷄卵) being the Sino-Korean word for egg; Korea.net describes it as a soft, fluffy loaf containing a whole egg. If the sign says 달걀빵 (dalgyalppang), it’s the same snack under the native Korean word, since the dictionary treats 계란 and 달걀 as synonyms. Red bean is still the classic filling, though Korea.net’s 2020 winter-snack feature traces how custard cream arrived, followed by cream cheese and then chocolate.

How to Read Korean Street Food Names: The Word Parts on Every Sign

Split each name in two: in most of the names above, the last part says what kind of food it is and the first part says what’s in it or what shape it takes. Learn the handful of parts below and you can make a decent guess at a name you’ve never seen.

Part	Romanized	Means	Spot it in
빵	ppang	bread (a loanword from Portuguese pão)	붕어빵, 계란빵, 국화빵
떡	tteok	rice cake, but also a griddle cake	떡볶이, 떡꼬치, 호떡
볶이	bokki	stir-fried	떡볶이, 라볶이
꼬치	kkochi	food on a skewer	닭꼬치, 떡꼬치
튀김	twigim	battered and fried	오징어튀김, 야채튀김
말이	mari	rolled	김말이
군	gun	roasted over a fire	군고구마, 군밤
핫	hat	English “hot”	핫도그, 핫바
호	ho	胡, “foreign,” in 호떡 only	호떡

Two of those parts look alike and aren’t. The 호 in 호떡 is 胡, but the 호 in 호빵 (hoppang), the steamed bun with a sweet bean filling, has nothing to do with it: 우리말샘 says that word comes from a product name, and Korea.net’s explanation is that ho is the sound you make blowing on a hot bun before biting in. The encyclopedia even credits the 1970s hoppang craze with taking the shine off hotteok.

Cold weather has its own vocabulary. 붕어빵, 호떡 and skewered 어묵 all appear in Korea.net’s roundups of winter street snacks, and the prefix to watch for is 군 (gun), meaning roasted: the dictionary defines 군고구마 (gun-goguma) and 군밤 (gunbam) simply as sweet potato and chestnut roasted over a fire. Korea.net wrote in 2017 that most people think of roasted sweet potatoes as the representative winter snack, and pointed out that where barrel-stove vendors were once easy to spot, some convenience stores near offices and campuses now roast them on a grill.

A price board is easy once you know three words. 개 (gae) is the counter for single items, 원 (won) is the currency, and 천 (cheon) means a thousand, so a board reading 3개 2천원 would mean three pieces for 2,000 won. If you’d rather point a phone at the sign, our translation app guide covers which apps still read photos offline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why do some menus spell it ddeokbokki or dukbokki?

Because those spellings ignore the official system. The Revised Romanization of Korean, adopted on July 7, 2000, writes ㄸ as tt and ㅓ as eo, which gives tteokbokki, and it leaves the tensed sounds of a compound unmarked. Copy the Hangul rather than any English spelling when you search for a stall or show a vendor.

Q: Did bungeoppang come from Japan?

Partly. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says the molds for Korea’s 풀빵 batter cakes were introduced from Japan in the 1930s, and that 오방떡 (obangtteok) traces back to Japan’s ōbanyaki. Cheap flour in the 1960s is what turned them into an everyday Korean snack.

Q: What do you say to order at a street food cart?

Point and say 이거 주세요 (igeo juseyo), “this one, please.” To ask for more than one, put a number before 개: 두 개 주세요 (du gae juseyo) means “two, please.”

Q: Is it wrong to call fish cake odeng?

Not wrong, just non-standard. The Standard Korean Language Dictionary treats 오뎅 as a Japanese loanword and redirects it to 어묵, so 어묵 is the safer choice in anything written. Either word names the same snack.

Q: When is bungeoppang season?

Winter. Korea.net’s 2020 feature calls it a popular street snack in winter and credits it with comforting people through the cold months.

Start with number one: find the pan of 떡볶이, read the sign out loud, and only then point.