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Dish guide · Meat

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Korean fried chicken

치킨

Chikin, Korean-style fried chicken

♨️ Served hot🌶 Mildly spicy🥬 Not vegetarian

Extra-crisp fried chicken, either plain, glazed in a sweet and spicy sauce, or fried whole in the old style. Chicken with beer has its own word: chimaek.

What it is

  • Huraideu is plain fried; yangnyeom is coated in a sweet, spicy sauce.
  • Tongdak is an old-style whole fried chicken.
  • It's often double-fried, which makes the coating very crisp. Pickled radish cubes are the usual side.

Styles & local versions

Dakgangjeong닭강정

Fried chicken pieces tossed in a sticky glaze of starch syrup, often with gochujang, garlic and chili. Unlike regular fried chicken, the coating gets crunchier as it cools. Part of the name comes from gangjeong, a traditional sweet also hardened with syrup. Sokcho Central Market is one of the most famous places for it.

Suwon tongdak수원 통닭

Tongdak is a whole chicken fried in oil, the old-school way of making Korean fried chicken. Suwon's Chicken Street, by Hwaseong Fortress, has had fried chicken restaurants since the 1970s. Expect crispy skin and juicy meat.

Dak-ttongjip닭똥집

Chicken gizzards, a favorite drinking snack in Daegu. On Pyeonghwa Market's gizzard alley, where around 30 shops line the street, they're usually deep-fried like fried chicken; a mixed platter lets you try several styles. The alley traces its start to the early 1970s, when gizzards were a cheap snack for day laborers.

How to eat it

  1. 1Order half fried, half yangnyeom if you can't decide, and eat with your hands and a cold beer.

History

  • American-style fried chicken is commonly said to have reached Korea with the US military after the Korean War, though the rise of cooking oil in the 1970s also mattered. Yangnyeom chicken is usually credited to Yun Jonggye, in the early 1980s.
  • Chimaek joins "chicken" and maekju, the Korean word for beer.

Allergies and diet

Usually contains

chickenwheatsoy
  • Yangnyeom sauce may contain peanuts, garlic and gochujang.
  • Frying oil may be shared with other foods.
  • Dakgangjeong is often topped with crushed nuts, such as peanuts.

Recipes differ between restaurants. If you have an allergy, always ask the staff before you order.

🗣️ Allergy card for the staff

Pick your allergy to see the sentence in Korean.

📍 Where to try it

Sources

We check every fact against at least two sources and write it in our own words. Last checked: 2026-11-04.