Korean fried chicken is such an ordinary part of life in Korea today that it can be hard to imagine a time when it did not exist in its current form. We order it while watching football or baseball, choose it when nobody in the family can agree on dinner, and scroll through delivery apps filled with fried, spicy, soy-garlic, cheese-seasoned, and extra-hot versions.
But the food now known around the world as Korean fried chicken is not an ancient Korean tradition. Koreans have eaten chicken for much longer, of course, but the modern culture of buying tongdak, ordering fried chicken by phone, eating yangnyeom chicken, and pairing chicken with beer developed mainly over the past several decades.
I have lived through much of that change myself. The chicken I remember from childhood looked quite different from the branded boxes and delivery-app menus I see today.
Before Korean Fried Chicken, There Was Tongdak
One important predecessor of modern Korean fried chicken was electric-roasted whole chicken. In 1960, Yeongyang Center opened in Myeongdong, Seoul, serving whole chickens roasted in an electric oven. According to the Korea Tourism Organization’s history of fried chicken in Korea, this style became popular during the 1960s and was followed in the next decade by the rapid spread of deep-fried whole chicken.
The Korean word tongdak literally refers to a whole chicken, and for people of my generation it also brings back a particular kind of memory. A chicken brought home was not necessarily an everyday meal. It could feel like a small treat for the family.
When I think about chicken from my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember brownish paper bags rather than today’s colorful branded boxes. Sometimes the chicken was wrapped in aluminum foil, which we commonly called “cooking foil” at home. I also remember seeing fathers returning from work carrying a whole chicken for their families, an image that is still sometimes recreated in Korean dramas set in that period.
But I distinctly remember small plastic bags of white pickled radish tied beside the chicken, along with salt carefully folded inside a small piece of paper. As a child, I wanted nothing to do with the radish. I disliked vegetables and concentrated entirely on the chicken. Decades later, my tastes have completely changed: now, if I order chicken and there is no chicken-mu, the meal feels strangely incomplete.
The 1970s: From Whole Fried Chicken to Fried Chicken Pieces
The rise of fried chicken in Korea was connected to broader changes in the country’s food industry. Cooking oil became much more widely available in the 1970s, while poultry production and the availability of wheat flour also increased. The Korea Tourism Organization notes that Haepyo Cooking Oil entered the market in 1971 and connects this period with the spread of tongdak twigim, whole chickens deep-fried in oil.
This is worth distinguishing from the fried chicken most people picture today. Instead of cutting the bird into standardized pieces first, shops could fry the whole chicken and customers would tear it apart at the table.
Another change came in 1977, when Lim’s Chicken opened in the basement of Shinsegae Department Store in Seoul. It is commonly cited as an early Korean fried-chicken franchise that helped popularize the method of cutting chicken into separate pieces before frying it.
The transition happened gradually as cooking oil, commercial poultry production, urban dining habits, and franchise businesses developed together. What matters is the gradual transition from roasted and whole-fried tongdak toward the portioned fried chicken that became familiar in the following decades.
The 1980s: Yangnyeom Chicken Changes the Flavor
The development that made Korean fried chicken feel distinctly Korean was the rise of yangnyeom chicken. Instead of serving fried chicken only with salt or a dipping sauce, shops began coating it in a sweet, spicy, garlicky sauce.
There are competing stories about who exactly invented the first version of yangnyeom chicken, so I do not think it is useful to present a single dramatic inventor story as settled history. What is much clearer is that by the 1980s, chains such as Pelicana and other early chicken franchises were helping make sauced fried chicken familiar across the country.
Pelicana’s own company history says that its founder developed a gochujang-based sauce after seeing chicken served with dipping sauce in Daegu and began selling its seasoned chicken in 1984, expanding it nationwide the following year. Because this is the company’s own account, I treat it as part of Pelicana’s brand history rather than proof that no similar chicken existed elsewhere.
Gochujang became one of the ingredients associated with many versions of Korean spicy-sweet seasoning, although recipes differ widely between brands. If you are curious about the fermented pastes behind many Korean flavors, I explain gochujang, doenjang, and ganjang separately in my guide to essential Korean fermented sauces.
As fried and yangnyeom chicken became established side by side, banban, or “half and half,” became one of the most practical ways to order both. When several people were eating together, it was an easy solution to different preferences and remains common today.
Yangnyeom chicken is sometimes confused with dakgangjeong, especially outside Korea, because both can be sweet, sticky, and fried. They overlap in some modern versions, but dakgangjeong is generally treated as a different dish, often made with smaller pieces coated in a thicker glaze and sold as a snack as well as a meal. Yangnyeom chicken grew more directly out of Korea’s fried-chicken restaurant and delivery culture.
Neighborhood Chicken Shops and the Age of Phone Delivery
By the late 1980s and 1990s, chicken shops had become a familiar part of Korean neighborhoods. Large franchises expanded, but there were also many independent shops, and ordering chicken for dinner or as a late-night snack became increasingly ordinary.
Before smartphone apps, delivery was much simpler. We kept restaurant flyers and telephone-number stickers around the house, called the shop, gave our address, and ordered something like “one fried chicken” or “half fried, half seasoned.” A delivery rider would then arrive by motorcycle with the food.
For a regular local shop, the process could feel surprisingly personal. Some stores already knew repeat customers and their apartment complexes, and the entire transaction happened through a short phone call rather than a screen full of menus, reviews, coupons, and delivery fees.
This fits into the wider history of food delivery in Korea, which developed long before today’s smartphone platforms. Chicken eventually became one of the foods particularly well suited to that system because it travels relatively well and can easily be shared by several people.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis also affected the small-business landscape. Corporate restructuring and job losses pushed many people toward small self-employment, including restaurants and franchise businesses. A KDI economic-policy publication notes that livelihood-oriented startups increased after the IMF crisis as displaced workers entered small service businesses.
Fried chicken, franchises, and home delivery were already well established. The crisis was one factor that increased entry into an already growing small-business market rather than the beginning of Korean fried chicken itself.
The 2002 World Cup, Chimaek, and an Explosion of Choices
Chicken and beer were eaten together before 2002, so the Korea-Japan World Cup did not invent chimaek. What the tournament did was give the combination an unusually large national stage as people gathered in homes, restaurants, and public spaces to watch Korea’s matches.
The Korea Tourism Organization describes the 2002 World Cup as an important turning point for the chicken industry and cites an increase from roughly 10,000 fried-chicken shops before the tournament to around 25,000 afterward. The figures show how strongly chicken consumption and football viewing became associated during this period.
The word chimaek combines “chi” from chicken with “maek” from maekju, the Korean word for beer. It is now one of the better-known Korean food terms overseas, but in Korea it is less exotic than the international image sometimes suggests. People also order chicken for children, family dinners, late-night snacks, office gatherings, or simply because they do not feel like cooking.
During the 2000s and 2010s, the menu expanded far beyond fried versus yangnyeom. Soy-garlic styles, spicy sauces, spring-onion chicken, powdered seasonings, cheese flavors, boneless options, and countless limited menus appeared as franchises competed for customers.
From Phone Calls to Delivery Apps
The biggest difference between the chicken of my childhood and the chicken I order now may not be the chicken itself. It is the way I buy it.
In the past, I called a neighborhood shop directly. Today, I can open a delivery app, compare brands and prices, choose bone-in or boneless chicken, select a half-and-half combination, add sauces or extra pickled radish, check the expected delivery time, and pay without speaking to anyone.
Chicken-mu has changed in presentation too. The white pickled radish I remember arriving in a tied plastic bag is now usually sealed neatly in a plastic container. Extra radish may even appear as a paid option on an app.
The menus have also become much more complicated, but the basic food still connects several generations. The brown paper bag and aluminum foil I remember from childhood became printed franchise boxes, and those boxes are now ordered through smartphones rather than landline telephones.
That is why I do not see the history of Korean fried chicken as a simple story about Korea taking American fried chicken and adding a spicy sauce. It is a story of electric-roasted tongdak, whole fried chicken, franchising, yangnyeom, neighborhood delivery, the World Cup, changing tastes, and digital ordering gradually building on one another.
Even my own relationship with chicken-mu follows that timeline in a small way. I ignored it completely when I was a child, but now a box of chicken without those cold, sweet-and-sour cubes of radish feels unfinished.
If you want to explore more foods tied to ordinary Korean memories rather than formal cuisine, you can also read my Korean Comfort Food Guide.
About the Author 🇰🇷
I live in South Korea and write about the small details of Korean life and culture that I experience and observe firsthand.
English is my second language, so I sometimes use tools such as Gemini and Google Translate to help with translation and editing. The experiences, observations, opinions, and cultural perspectives in my articles are my own, and I personally review and edit every article before publishing it.
My goal with Korea Core Info is simple: to share everyday Korea from a local perspective and help international readers discover things they might not always find in a typical travel guide.
I hope my stories and guides help you understand Korea a little better — not just as a place to visit, but as a place where people live their everyday lives.