Incheon Chinatown & the Jajangmyeon Museum

Full transcript

Annyeong, yeoreobun! Yul here, and I'm already hungry. Because today we're visiting the birthplace of one of Korea's favorite comfort foods: jjajangmyeon, noodles in a thick black bean sauce. Welcome to Incheon Chinatown!

Let's travel back to 1883. Incheon opens its port to the world. In 1884, a concession for people from Qing China is set up right here, and many of the newcomers come from Shandong province, just across the Yellow Sea. And of course, they bring their cooking with them.

At the busy port, the dockworkers needed something cheap, fast and filling. So noodles mixed with fried soybean paste, a Shandong dish called zhajiangmian, became the perfect working lunch.

Now meet the star of our story: Gonghwachun. A Chinese man from Shandong opened a restaurant here in the early 1900s. Sources disagree on the exact year, somewhere between 1905 and 1908. Around 1912, it took the name Gonghwachun, meaning something like spring of the republic, to celebrate the new Republic of China. It's known as the first restaurant in Korea to serve jjajangmyeon. Over the decades, the dish changed to suit Korean taste, and it became a national favorite.

Twist! The restaurant closed in 1983. But the building survived, and in 2012 it reopened as the Jajangmyeon Museum. Only in Korea!

Yul's tip! Take subway Line 1 to Incheon Station, and Chinatown is about a five-minute walk. Visit the museum, then enjoy a bowl of jjajangmyeon nearby. For dessert, try gonggal-ppang, a big, hollow, crispy bread.

Next, let's go to a romantic island from a famous K-drama. Kaja!