These days the word you hear is bungsegwon (붕세권). It means living within walking distance of a bungeoppang stall, the same way yeoksegwon means living near a subway station. The fact that people needed a word for it says plenty. Street snack carts are a lot harder to find than they used to be.
Still, when I'm out walking in winter and catch the smell of hotteok or bungeoppang on the griddle, I get in line. Even a long one. Walking down the street with a hot bungeoppang in your hand, blowing on it before every bite, is about as Korean-winter as a scene gets.
If you're in Korea from the first cold snap until spring, you'll meet three classics of Korean winter street food: bungeoppang (the fish-shaped one), hotteok (the syrupy one) and gun-goguma, roasted sweet potatoes. Here's what each one is, what it costs this season, why the carts got scarce, and how to eat hotteok without regretting it.
1. Bungeoppang (and the cousin you'll probably get)
Good for: a first try · Fillings: red bean or custard · Price: often 1 for 1,000 won or 3 for 2,000 won
Bungeoppang means "crucian carp bread." There's no fish in it. The vendor pours batter into a hinged iron mold shaped like a fish, drops a spoonful of filling in the middle, adds more batter on top and flips the mold over the flame until the shell turns crisp and brown. The classic filling is pat, sweet red bean paste. The other standard is custard, which Koreans call shu-cream. People pick sides, and the argument never really ends.
The idea came from Japan's taiyaki, which a Tokyo shop started selling in 1909 in the shape of a sea bream. On this side of the sea the fish turned into a carp, and the snack became so ordinary that "bungeoppang" is also slang for two people who look exactly alike. Your kid looks like you? Bungeoppang.
Here's something most guides skip. A lot of the carts you'll pass are actually selling ingeoppang (잉어빵), "carp bread," which started out as a brand name and comes from a slightly different fish mold. When YTN went through a crowd-sourced cart map in December 2019, it counted 796 spots tagged ingeoppang and only 38 tagged bungeoppang. Nobody on the street cares much about the difference. Ask for bungeoppang, get ingeoppang, eat it happily.
Higher ingredient costs have made bungeoppang pricier, but it's still a small winter treat. Expect around 1 for 1,000 won or 3 for 2,000 won, depending on the neighborhood.
Fresh bungeoppang cooling on the rack. Photo: EBS via Gongu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.
2. Hotteok, the sweet pancake with a lava core
Good for: sugar cravings and cold hands · Watch out for: the syrup · Price: up to about 2,000 won in Seoul
Hotteok is a soft yeasted dough wrapped around brown sugar and cinnamon, sometimes with crushed peanuts or seeds mixed in. The vendor drops a ball of it on an oiled griddle and squashes it flat with a round metal press, which is what you see in the photo at the top of this post. The outside fries crisp. The sugar inside melts. It's usually traced to Chinese merchants who settled in Korea in the late 1800s, but nobody here thinks of it as foreign anymore.
Busan has its own take, ssiat hotteok (seed hotteok), where the fried pancake is slit open and stuffed with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and nuts. At most Seoul carts, plain brown sugar hotteok is still the default. Expect to pay around 2,000 won at Seoul carts, a small treat to warm both hands at once.
Now the warning, because this is how first-timers get hurt. The sugar turns into syrup that's far hotter than the dough around it, and it stays hot longer than you'd think. That's why vendors hand hotteok over folded in a paper cup. Keep it in the cup, bite a small corner first, let the steam out, and don't tilt it toward your coat, because the syrup runs. Give it a minute. Yes, a minute feels long when it smells like that.
If you have a nut or seed allergy, ask before you order. Ttangkong isseoyo? means "Is there peanut in it?" Seeds and nuts can be in the filling, and everything shares one griddle.
3. Gun-goguma, roasted sweet potatoes
Good for: something filling · Where: drum-stove carts, markets, convenience stores · Price: by size or by the bag at carts
Gun-goguma is the plainest of the three and, honestly, the most filling. Whole sweet potatoes go into a drum stove or onto a tray of hot stones and roast slowly until the skin wrinkles and the inside goes soft and sweet. No filling, no sauce. They come in a paper bag that doubles as a hand warmer for a while.
Korean sweet potatoes come in two broad textures. Bam-goguma, "chestnut sweet potato," is dry and crumbly. Hobak-goguma, "pumpkin sweet potato," is moist and almost syrupy. Carts don't always say which one they're roasting, so just look when you break it open. Peel the skin back with your fingers and eat from the top down. Plenty of Koreans eat it with kimchi, which sounds odd until you try the sweet-and-sour combination.
Sweet potatoes on hot stones at a stall in Daegu. Photo: Brücke-Osteuropa / Wikimedia Commons, CC0, cropped.
4. The convenience-store backup
Good for: when no cart is around · Where: CU, GS25, 7-Eleven, especially in subway stations · Price: about 2,000 to 2,200 won per sweet potato
Can't find a cart? Walk into a convenience store. Roasted sweet potatoes there have turned into a near year-round item. CU said its June 2026 sweet potato sales were up 65.3% on a year earlier and GS25's were up 45.6%, with both selling them at 2,000 won each. CU's busiest store sold about 470 a day, and five of its top ten stores were inside subway stations (Edaily, July 14, 2026). So the station you're standing in may be the best place to look.
Here's a detail that shows how seriously the chains take this. 7-Eleven is using a Korean variety called Hopungmi through November, then switching to Beniharuka, aged before roasting, from December. It also made each potato 30 g (about 1 oz) heavier while keeping the price at 2,200 won (Newsis, October 21, 2026). A December sweet potato from that chain is literally a different potato from a November one.
The chains do fish-shaped bread too. Last winter 7-Eleven sold red bean and custard bungeoppang at 1,300 won, and GS25 is running discounts on bungeoppang and sweet potatoes this season. They're fine. But a cart's bungeoppang comes straight out of the iron mold, and the smell on the street is half the point.
Why the carts got so hard to find
Bungsegwon became a word because the carts really did thin out. Seoul's own count of street stalls (georigage, all kinds, not only snacks) fell from 6,669 in 2018 to 4,741 in 2024, a drop of 29%. Higher ingredient costs pushed some vendors out, and districts have been clearing unpermitted stalls. In 2022 only 1,872 of the city's 5,443 stalls held a road-use permit.
Seoul street stalls, 2018 to 2024. Source: Seoul Metropolitan Government (checked November 2, 2026) and Yonhap. Chart: A Korean's Take (CC BY 4.0).
The permit rules also explain where carts stand. Under Seoul's street-stall permit guideline, in force since January 2019, a permitted stall needs a sidewalk at least 2.5 m (about 8 ft) wide. It has to stay 2.5 m away from subway exits, underground-mall entrances and crosswalks, and 2 m (about 6.5 ft) from bus and taxi waiting areas. It can't be bigger than 3 m by 2.5 m (about 10 by 8 ft), and it has to be movable, on wheels or raised off the pavement. The permit lasts a year, and the holder has to run the stall in person. Each district applies this its own way and plenty of stalls are unpermitted, but it's one reason you often find the cart a few steps around the corner from the exit rather than right in front of it. Follow your nose past the stairs.
How to find one, and how to pay
There's no official start date. Carts come out when it gets cold. GS25 looked at three years of its own sales and found instant fish cake sold 74% more on days averaging below 15°C (59°F) than on warmer days, and about 12 times more than on days above 20°C (68°F). Street vendors follow the same thermometer. This year the carts started appearing in early October, when the weather turned cold all of a sudden.
To find a cart, try the street-snack map app Gaseumsok 3-cheonwon (가슴속 3천원), named after the joke that in winter you should always keep 3,000 won tucked inside your coat, just in case. It's in Korean, but a pin on a map is a pin on a map. Treat the pins as hints, and check for recent activity. The old method still works too: walk past subway exits and the edges of traditional markets in the late afternoon and look for steam.
Bring small cash, meaning 1,000-won notes and a few 500-won coins. Plenty of carts don't take cards, and the bank account number taped to the cart is for locals paying by app transfer, which doesn't help much without a Korean bank account.
Is it hygienic? Fair question if you're used to food from closed kitchens. My answer: it's heated piping hot and handed straight to you, and I've never had an upset stomach from street food. Eat it beside the cart without blocking the next customer, and hang on to your wrapper until you find a bin. Seoul has fewer public trash cans than most visitors expect.
Quick answers
How much does bungeoppang cost in Korea? This season the usual cart price is 1 for 1,000 won or 3 for 2,000 won. Prices vary by neighborhood.
When is bungeoppang season? Roughly from the first cold snap in October or November until spring. Carts follow the temperature, not the calendar.
Can I pay by card at street food carts? Don't count on it. Carry small cash. Convenience stores take cards if you strike out.
Is bungeoppang the same as taiyaki? Same idea, different fish. Taiyaki is a sea bream, bungeoppang is a carp, and Korean carts mostly stick to red bean and custard.
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- Korea Winter Festivals & Light Shows 2026-27: Dates Tracker
So, red bean or custard? And be honest: head first or tail first?
Top photo: hotteok pressed flat on a griddle in Busan. Photo: Ka23 13 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.
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