Budae Jjigae: The Dark History Behind Korea's Army Stew

Budae jjigae looks like pure comfort food. The bubbling Korean stew sits in the middle of the table, loaded with Spam, hot dogs, instant ramen, and kimchi, topped with a slice of American cheese slowly melting into the red broth. Friends gather around a tabletop burner, chopsticks fighting for the best pieces. The Michelin Guide named it one of the must-eat dishes in South Korea in 2019.

But budae jjigae carries a heavier story. Its name translates to "army base stew." The ingredients tell you exactly where they came from. This dish exists because after the Korean War, starving Koreans had no choice but to eat food scraps from American military garbage.

When Korea Was Starving

The Korean War lasted from June 1950 to July 1953. Approximately three million people died, and the majority were civilians. The Peace Research Institute Oslo attributed the death toll to battle, starvation, disease, and massacres committed by both sides.

South Korea's economy was destroyed. Per capita income dropped below $100, comparable to the poorest countries in Africa and South Asia at the time. Agricultural production fell by 27 percent. About a quarter of the population faced severe starvation.

The war displaced millions. Families fled south, crisscrossing the peninsula to escape North Korean troops and American bombing. Food was whatever you could find. Koreans scoured hillsides for edible plants. Flour-based dishes became staples because rice was scarce. Boiled barley replaced white rice in most meals.

The reconstruction period stretched through the late 1950s. From 1946 to 1976, the United States provided $12.6 billion in economic assistance to South Korea. Only Israel and South Vietnam received more on a per capita basis. American aid accounted for nearly 80 percent of the South Korean government's budget at one point in the mid-1950s.

But the money went toward stabilization and relief, not development. South Korea remained desperately poor. The World Food Programme provided nutrition assistance to South Korea through 23 different projects from 1945 to 1999.

Piggy Porridge: The Real Origin

Before budae jjigae, there was kkulkkuri-juk. The name translates to "piggy porridge."

Here is how it worked. American soldiers on military bases had more food than they could eat. Portions were large enough that GIs threw away what they could not finish. Word spread among hungry Koreans that the bases had food to spare.

Koreans waited in long lines outside mess halls. They bought bags of "leftovers," though some called them bags of garbage. Sociologist Grace M. Cho documented oral histories of Korean War survivors who described these transactions. Their voices carried humiliation and resentment, but also gratitude. The emotions did not resolve neatly.

The bags contained whatever Americans had discarded. There were scraps of meat but also inedible things like cigarette butts. Vendors set up outside bases and cooked everything together in large pots. They sold it by the bowl. A bowl cost around 5 won in 1963. Even at that price, many Koreans could not afford it.

One survivor, Lee Si-yeon, recalled an incident from his boyhood when he worked at Camp Henry. He approached a U.S. military chaplain, a major called "Ap," about the situation. The major followed Lee to the market, bought a bowl of kkulkkuri-juk, and took a bite. His eyes welled with tears. He finished the bowl in silence. The next day, he sent notices to all U.S. military bases: "Koreans are eating food scraps from the bases, so be cautious to not let foreign substances enter them."

The story sounds heartwarming until you remember what prompted it – an American officer realizing that Korean civilians were eating garbage that contained cigarette butts because they had no other option.

The Black Market That Built a Dish

American products were not legally available to South Koreans. The military's Post Exchange system brought goods into Korea tax-free on the condition they would only be sold to military personnel, dependents, and civilians doing defense work.

So a black market formed. It operated through several channels. Korean women who had relationships with American soldiers gained access to PX stores. Goods walked off bases in bags and pockets. Employees skimmed from shipments.

A 1959 Time magazine article called "The PX Affair" implicated "Korean girls" with connections to American soldiers as largely responsible for this trade. The framing blamed Korean women, but the system existed because starving people needed food and Americans had more than they could use.

Black markets called "Yankee markets" specialized in these goods. Canned products were prized because they lasted without refrigeration. Spam and baked beans moved quickly. So did hot dogs and American cheese. Some of these markets still exist in places like Incheon, though they now operate as regular markets.

Under the Park Chung Hee administration, smuggling food like Spam was a crime punishable by death. Koreans did it anyway. They needed protein. Meat remained scarce in Korean markets long after the war ended.

Heo Gi-Suk and the First Restaurant

One woman claimed to have invented budae jjigae. Her name was Heo Gi-Suk. She was a North Korean defector who worked at a fishcake stand in Uijeongbu, a city north of Seoul with multiple U.S. Army bases nearby.

People approached her with meat they had obtained from the base. They asked her to cook it. She started by simply stir-frying the meat. Over time, she developed a stew. She added kimchi, lard, and wild sesame oil. The Korean ingredients transformed the American scraps into something that tasted like home.

In 1960, Heo opened a restaurant called Odeng Sikdang. It nominally served fishcakes. Everyone came for the stew.

The customs office confiscated her ingredients repeatedly and charged her fines. Selling black market American goods remained illegal. She kept cooking. The restaurant had long lines as recently as 2013. Heo died in 2014.

The Dish Evolves

The early versions of budae jjigae were rough. American sausages ran saltier and greasier than Korean ones. There was no instant ramen yet because ramen had not reached Korea. The dish lacked the balance that defines modern versions.

Jeon Jung-yun, the founder of Samyang Foods, cited the poor quality of kkulkkuri-juk as inspiration for creating Korea's first domestic instant ramen brand, Samyang Ramen, in 1963. He deliberately priced it as low as possible so people who would otherwise eat garbage soup could afford it instead.

Instant ramen became a budae jjigae ingredient. So did tteok, the Korean rice cakes. Restaurants started using anchovy-kelp stock as a base instead of just water. The addition of gochujang and gochugaru brought heat and a slice of American cheese on top became standard.

By the 1990s, Spam had shifted from survival food to something approaching a luxury. CJ CheilJedang began domestic production in 1987. The timing coincided with democratization and economic growth. Spam gift sets became popular for Lunar New Year and Chuseok.

As of 2022, more than 1.9 billion 200-gram Spam products had been sold in South Korea. That works out to approximately 40 cans for every person in the country. South Korea consumes more Spam than any country except the United States.

Why Some Koreans Won't Touch It

Not everyone feels warm about budae jjigae.

Some older Koreans call it "garbage stew" and refuse to eat it. The name alone brings back memories they would rather forget. Sociologist Cho described the dish as "a perversion of Korean cuisine, indeed, a perversion of real food" when she first encountered it, though she eventually softened her view.

In 2014, Cho wrote about Korean War survivors speaking of the dish. They remembered waiting in line for bags of American garbage. They remembered the phrase they used: "Americans have the best food and throw it away, and then Koreans buy that garbage."

Uijeongbu, the city most associated with budae jjigae, has tried to rename the dish "Uijeongbu-jjigae" to distance it from war-time connotations. The effort has not caught on. The original name persists.

Whether budae jjigae counts as Korean cuisine remains a genuine question. In a 2022 survey, Korean adults viewed the dish as less Korean than foods like kimchi-jjigae. Chef Park Chan-il argued that Korean cuisine has always accepted adaptations. She pointed out that kimchi only became spicy after the Portuguese brought peppers to Asia in the 16th century.

A Dish Now Banned in North Korea

Budae jjigae crossed into North Korea around 2017. Restaurateurs brought it north, and it became popular.

In 2024, North Korea banned the dish. Authorities also banned tteokbokki, the spicy rice cakes. Both dishes are South Korean in origin, and North Korea's "Rejection of Reactionary Thought and Culture Act" from 2020 aims to suppress Southern cultural influence.

Vendors caught selling budae jjigae face having their stalls shut down. Restaurant managers who served the dishes are under investigation. The irony is stark – North Korea bans a dish that South Koreans created because they were starving after a war that North Korea started.

What the Dish Means Now

Chef Hooni Kim, whose New York restaurant Danji became the first Korean restaurant to earn a Michelin star, observed that younger Koreans tend to have more positive reactions to budae jjigae than older generations. They do not carry the same trauma.

In a 2016 survey by the Korea Tourism Organization, 200,000 Chinese tourists to South Korea ranked budae jjigae as their favorite dish that they ate in the country. The stew now appears on menus from Beijing to New York.

Researcher Christina Klein used the term "budae jjigae cinema" to describe South Korean films after the Korean War. She compared the dish to how filmmakers picked and chose various ideas "without asking within profoundly unequal relations of power, and incorporated that material into new cultural production."

A journalist for The Chosun Ilbo likened budae jjigae to BTS. Both borrow elements of Western culture but remain widely accepted as Korean.

The dish has become a metaphor for Korean resilience and creativity, though also for the uncomfortable realities of American military presence on the peninsula. In 2017, the mayor of Uijeongbu used it as a metaphor for U.S.-South Korea ties.

How to Think About Budae Jjigae

You can enjoy budae jjigae without pretending it is simple comfort food. You can acknowledge its origins and still appreciate what Korean cooks made from terrible circumstances.

The dish emerged from a power imbalance so severe that Koreans ate American garbage to survive. Some of that garbage contained cigarette butts. Korean women faced arrest for smuggling Spam so their families could have protein.

The American military still maintains bases in South Korea. Camp Humphreys, south of Seoul, is the largest overseas U.S. military base in the world. The black market in PX goods persisted for decades. A 1997 report estimated that 10 percent of military store sales were diverted annually to Korean black markets.

Budae jjigae tastes good. The salty processed meat and spicy broth work well together. The chewy noodles soak up the gochujang while the tangy kimchi cuts through the fat. There is a reason it remains popular 70 years after the war ended.

But the dish deserves its full story. The next time you order it, you might think of Heo Gi-Suk getting fined for cooking with illegal ingredients. Or the American major crying into his bowl of garbage soup. Budae jjigae carries all of that in every bite.